"Leave me? " Zyan laughed, cold as the moonlight. "I am her moon, her everything, she can die but can never leave me.
Even if Lianna knows she must understand that it was for the sake of this pack, that our previous newborn was offered as a sacrifice to the Rogue King."
The air turned to frost around me.
Offered…?
Three years ago, I remembered kneeling on the cold stone floor of the healer’s room, my hands empty, my ears ringing as they told me my child hadn’t survived.
I remembered how I couldn’t cry at first, how the grief sat in my chest like a boulder crushing my heart.
Zyan had held me that night so protectively. ‘Please don’t hurt yourself, Lianna. We will have more children.’
Now, I couldn’t understand how those moments of being loved that felt so real.
How could they all have been fake?
My tears mixed with blood as I laid limp in horror, shock and betrayal. I awaited a death worse than an animal when a dangerous aura of bloodthirst mingled in the air.
In the next second a blur of black shot through the trees.
A massive wolf darker than night itself bared its canines and with a snap-a rogue’s neck was broken, the others were mauled to death.
Hot blood splattered across my chest, dripping down onto the crushed Moonflower.
And then the impossible happened.
The flower began to glow. Pale blue light spread across my trembling hands, the petals pulsing faintly as if alive again.
The dark wolf turned toward me, his fur matted with blood, eyes blazing golden against the shadows as his gaze locked on mine.
Not wild or rogue but ancient.
My lips trembled as I weakly lifted the glowing flower towards my savior. "Y-you’re hurt…"
I pressed the Moonflower weakly to the gash along his chest. "Please…take it…my repayment. "
For a heartbeat, the glow spilled across his fur like moonfire.
When he shifted, I could only stare. The man before me wasn’t like Alpha Zyan.
His presence was heavier, colder, his eyes almost glowing feral and regal under the moonlight.
The moment my lips parted to thank him with my last breath-ruination, betrayal and utter agony burning in my heart, his hand slipped to the back of my neck, drawing me closer.
The kiss was not gentle. It was hungry and unforgiving-my last kiss.
And before the world faded, the last thing I felt was the sharp puncture of fangs sinking deep into my neck.
The ancient wolf marked me his.