My Enemy Alpha: From s*****y to his Luna Queen

THE MEMORY

CHAPTER 7

Malakai’s POV.

The hall had emptied, but the echoes still lingered in the air. I could still hear the chants, the crackle of flame. I could still feel the gasps when the light of the goddess burned through her. My mate.

She stood in the fire, though mortally unconscious, and she did not fall. A wolf lived inside her, which was my wolf. I had stood unmoved, but inside, I burned. I'm in disbelief, because the bond was real.

The bond snapped into place with a force that nearly stole my breath. I had felt its hum beneath my skin, and a pull I could not silence. I hated the truth of it, it irritated me to my core.

The Goddess had chosen, but I had not . She had decided to make a mockery of me.

And worse… Orion had moved before me.

I had seen his hand, the way it lingered, the way he covered her with his robe. The way the crowd gasped, murmurs erupted, believing the act meant something more. They thought it was defiance, but I knew better. I knew what it was. Instinct. He was protecting her. Protecting my mate. Orion was the brother I never had.

The fire in my chest deepened, I felt furious. That would definitely not go unanswered.

But first, Her. I need to see her.

I pushed open the chamber door. The door creaked, disrupting the quiet. She lay beneath coarse furs, with very pale skin, her lips looked chapped and dry. Her wrists were bandaged where iron had bitten, her ribs rising shallow with each breath. The wolf light had drained her, leaving her eyes filled with exhaustion. The ritual had torn her apart, yet she was not broken.

Her eyes found me and she looked at me as though I were an executioner and a judge. Good. She knew what I was.

I stepped forward, letting my shadow fall across her. She did not flinch. Her stubbornness cut through even in her weakness.

“The Goddess spoke,” I told her, with a steady, but low voice. “But I have not decided.” That was the truth

She held her breath and I could see her jaw tensed.

“Survival is not victory,” I said.

My name on her tongue was not spoken, but I saw it in her eyes. A challenge.

“I didn’t ask for this,” she said with a cracked but unwavering voice.

Something twisted in me, too sudden to name. I crushed it before it could take shape.

“You will be what I decide you to be,” I said within me. “Nothing more.”

Her nails dug into the furs, but she did not lower her eyes. And for one dangerous heartbeat, I wanted to force her head down, to remind her what it meant to defy an Alpha.

Instead, I turned and left her in silence.

And when I left, the bond followed me. A faint, relentless hum at the edge of my thoughts.

Now, in the quiet of my chambers, I pulled the mask from my face and dropped it onto the table. Cool air touched the scars beneath. Jagged lines slashed across my skin, ridges carved by steel and flame. They throbbed tonight, as though the Goddess had clawed them open again.

I stared into the mirror. The man who looked back was not the Alpha the pack saw. He was something different. He was the product of her father’s work.

***

The memory came rushing.

My brothers’ laughter turned to screams, his blood staining the snow. Fire spilling across the mountainside and my men burned like tyres set ablaze with petrol. Her father’s blade cutting through my flesh while he smiled… a smile that haunts me still.

I remembered the way he looked back as he left me to bleed into the snow, his empty, cold eyes . He thought I would die that night.

I remember my vow. I vowed that if I survived the night. No Starweaver blood would walk free in shadowclaw again.

Now his daughter lay in my pack, my mate, tied to me by the will of the Goddess herself. The bond mocked me.

I pressed a hand to my chest where the scar pulled tight, grounding myself in pain.

Mate or not, she would not rise as Luna. She would not sit beside me as queen.

Yes, a collar forged in iron, branded with my mark. She would wear it as proof of shame and not honor. The Elders and the pack would see her as captive and not the chosen one.

Let them whisper and mock her.

Let them see her as nothing more than what I allowed. The bond may tie us, but I would twist it until it broke.

And yet…

I could still see her in the fire. The way she stood. Her white eyes burning with the Goddess’s light. The silence in the hall as the divine voice spoke through her throat.

I clenched my fist until the scars around my knuckles felt like they would rip apart. My jaw tightened. No… I would not bend.

All of a sudden, the door creaked open. Orion.

He stood in the doorway, steady and silent as ever, his presence exuding a calm aura as always. His gaze found mine, we did not need words to know what hung between us.

“You overstepped,” I said at last, each word carrying the hint of a tempest. “Covering her. Touching her.”

He did not flinch. “She would have collapsed bare before the pack. I spared you the disgrace.”

My jaw tightened. He meant it; he thought he was protecting me, not her. But the bond twisted his words into sparks of rage, within me.

“You think to protect me?” I asked, stepping forward. My wolf clawed at my skin. “Or her?”

His silence was answer enough.

For the moment, the tension between us pressed heavily. My wolf clawed at the edge of my restraint, wanting blood. To strike, to remind him who he served.

Instead, I let the silence stretch, suffocate him until his jaw clenched. Then I turned away. “Do not mistake your place, Orion. You are my Beta. Nothing more.”

He bowed, but his eyes lingered too long before he left. I’ve known those eyes since forever , they spoke without sound, they did not know how to lie.

When the door shut behind him, I was alone again. Alone with her scent still burning my lungs, with the echo of the Goddess’s voice, and with the truth that no punishment I dealt would cut or sever the bond.

So I would do the only thing left. I would make her bleed till she wished the bond existed or was never made.

Tomorrow, the collar will be forged.

And she would learn what it meant to be mine… not as Luna, not as mate, but as captive.