The Luna He Cast Aside Claimed the Alpha ThroneChapter 1
The Moon did not howl for me anymore.
That was how I knew something was wrong.
Every Luna learned to feel it—the gentle pulse beneath the ribs, the invisible tether to the silver light that bound mate to mate, heir to pack. It had been there since the night Kael branded me with his mark beneath the High Moon, when I was still foolish enough to believe devotion could outlast ambition.
But tonight, the Moon was silent.
I knelt alone inside the birthing chamber, my hands braced against the cold obsidian altar. Silver runes burned faintly across its surface, yet the sacred warmth that should have flowed into my womb was absent, leaving only a creeping numbness behind my navel.
“Come on…” I whispered hoarsely, pressing my palm against my abdomen. “Please. You’re still there. I can feel you.”
Nothing answered.
The ritual circle flickered. The carved wolf sigils dulled from white to gray, as though something unseen was devouring the magic midair.
A sharp pain speared through my spine.
I gasped, clutching the edge of the altar as my knees nearly gave way. My wolf whimpered in terror inside me, pacing like a trapped shadow.
This wasn’t labor.
It was extraction.
The doors to the chamber groaned open behind me. Footsteps echoed across the stone floor—unhurried, deliberate.
“Still trying to cling to something you were never meant to keep?” a familiar voice said lightly.
I twisted around.
Lyra stood framed in moonlight, her long raven braid resting neatly over her shoulder, her pale eyes glowing faintly gold—the sign of forbidden rites touching the blood.
My best friend.
My former sister.
The woman who had once sworn she would stand at my side when I became Luna.
“Lyra… what are you doing here?” My voice trembled despite my effort to steady it. “This chamber is sealed. Only the Alpha and his mate—”
“—and the one who controls the blood-keys,” she finished, lifting her hand. A sigil flared across her palm, crimson lines twisting into a pattern I had never seen before.
My stomach dropped.
Blood-keys were older than pack law. They predated the Moon Goddess herself—relics of the age when wolves stole power instead of earning it.
“You shouldn’t have those,” I whispered.
Lyra smiled.
“You always were too devoted to tradition, Elira. That’s why you were never fit to sit beside Kael.”
The rune circle pulsed violently.
Pain exploded inside me.