I Claimed His Alpha Throne

Chapter 2 The Mad Luna

No one dared to speak. The air in the Sanctum grew thick and heavy, charged with the aftershock of my words. The sacred flames in the braziers seemed to shrink, casting long, dancing shadows that twisted the faces of the elders into grotesque masks.

I did not repeat myself. I simply turned to leave, each step a testament to the agony tearing through my belly and the deeper, soul-crushing wound where our bond used to be.

Kaelen moved faster than I thought possible. He was in front of me in a blur of motion, not grabbing me as a desperate mate, but blocking me as an Alpha asserting control. His elite guards, the Stoneclaws, moved in silent unison, their bulk sealing the arched exit. They did not look at me. Their eyes were fixed on the stone floor, their loyalty absolute.

“You’re not going anywhere, Lyra.” His voice was no longer pleading. It was a low, dangerous growl, laced with the chilling authority of his Alpha command. It was a voice that expected obedience, a voice that could make lesser wolves drop to their bellies. It scraped against my raw nerves, but the bond he would have used to enforce it was a phantom limb, severed and useless.

“Let her go, Kaelen,” my foster mother whimpered, her face ashen. “She’s not well. Can’t you see?”

“Oh, I see perfectly,” Kaelen said, his silver eyes never leaving mine. They were cold, calculating, searching for a weakness to exploit. He took a slow step toward me, circling like a predator. “I see a Luna consumed by a darkness I have prayed to the Moon Goddess we would never witness again.”

He stopped and addressed the elders, his voice ringing with false sorrow and profound gravity. “Elders, what you are witnessing is not a simple marital spat. This is a tragedy. This is the onset of the *Sanguine Delirium*.”

A collective gasp swept through the chamber. The ancient, whispered term, a curse among pure-blooded lines, hung in the air like poison. It was a myth, a tale told to frighten pups—a rare madness said to afflict pregnant pure-bloods, filling them with paranoia, violent jealousy, and delusions. A madness that ended in the destruction of the mother, the pup, and anyone who stood in their way.

“Kaelen, no,” I breathed, the word a wisp of smoke. He was not just defending himself; he was building my cage, forging my chains, writing my diagnosis in front of the only court that mattered.

He ignored me, his performance for the elders masterful. “Her jealousy toward Elara, her violent outburst, this sudden, insane demand to sever a fated bond… these are not the actions of our Luna. They are the symptoms of a disease that threatens her, our heir, and the stability of this entire pack.”

“The heir,” my foster father choked out, his eyes wide with horror. “Goddess, the pup…”

“Exactly.” Kaelen’s gaze swept back to me, devoid of any warmth we had ever shared. It was the look a general gives a compromised asset that must be neutralized. “The pup she so recklessly endangered tonight. Tell me, Lyra,” he said, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper only I could hear, “did you get yourself attacked on purpose? Was it all a ploy for attention? Or perhaps you wanted to get rid of it… to be free for this new mate you’ve so clearly found?”

The accusation was a physical blow. The pain in my womb flared, a white-hot spike of agony, and for a terrifying second, my legs threatened to buckle. He was accusing me of trying to kill my own child. Our child.

I pried the elders’ fingers off me one by one, my own hands trembling but steady.

My foster mother’s voice cracked. “Haven’t you always wanted a child? You waited from twenty to thirty. Now, you finally have one and you want to destroy your family, your bond, everything?”

I didn’t answer her. I used to want a baby—desperately. I had endured three years of failed attempts, of pitying looks from the other pack females. Now, I was finally pregnant, and he was pouring all his fatherly devotion into a human stranger while accusing me of being a monster.

All I wanted now was to cut ties with him completely. To carve him out of my soul before his poison corrupted what little I had left.

They thought they had me. A mad, treacherous Luna, a danger to herself and her own child. I could see the conclusion in their eyes: I would be confined, sedated, my power stripped, the heir taken from me the moment it was born. I would be a prisoner, my life determined by the man who had left me to bleed.

But I was the daughter of the Northern Wilds, born of a line that had never been tamed. I was a pure-blood, and I had power he had forgotten I possessed.

Ignoring the guards, ignoring the pitying and horrified stares, I walked past Kaelen. Not toward the exit, but toward the center of the Sanctum. There, on a dais of black marble, rested the Judgment Bell. It had not been struck in over a century. It was a relic, a symbol of the Old Laws, the ones that came before any single Alpha’s rule. The laws that bound even him.

My hand closed around the heavy, iron mallet.

“Lyra, step away from the bell,” Kaelen commanded, his Alpha voice now a full-throated roar that vibrated through the stone floor. “That is an order!”

I met his blazing eyes across the chamber. And I smiled. It was a terrible, broken thing, a rictus of pure, undiluted grief and fury.

Then, with all the strength left in my battered body, I swung the mallet.

*GONG.*

The sound was not merely loud; it was a physical force, a deep, resonant wave of ancient magic that shook the very foundations of the Sanctum. It bypassed the ears and struck the soul. The flames in the braziers erupted, roaring to the ceiling. The elders cried out, staggering back. Kaelen flinched as if struck.

The Bell of Judgment could only be rung by a member of the Alpha bloodline to demand one thing: a Blood Moon Trial. A binding trial before the ancestors and the pack, a final, unappealable verdict.

It was the ultimate challenge to an Alpha’s authority. It was political suicide.

It was my only way out.

The echoes faded into a stunned, profound silence. Every wolf in the chamber stared at me, their faces a mixture of terror and awe. I was no longer a hysterical female; I was a constitutional crisis.

“You dare?” Kaelen whispered, the fury in his eyes now mingled with a flicker of disbelief, perhaps even fear. He had expected tears, submission, a broken woman he could easily confine. He had not expected this. He had not expected a queen.

I let the mallet drop. It clanged against the stone, the sound a final, definitive period. My legs were shaking, and a fresh trickle of blood ran down my inner thigh, but I stood tall.

“You wished to judge my sanity, Alpha,” I said, my voice clear and cold, ringing through the silent hall. “You have put me on trial in the court of your opinion. So be it.”

I rested a hand on my still-flat stomach, a silent vow to the flicker of life within.

“I invoke the Old Law. I call for a trial under the full light of the Blood Moon. Let the ancestors judge us both. Let them see the truth of your reign.”