Chapter 4

Kaelen didn't wait three days. He returned early the next morning.

Wolves are creatures of potent, volatile magic. A human or low-ranking Omega mate can rarely survive carrying a Supreme Alpha's pup without magical intervention. The fetus is simply too powerful and drains the mother's life force.

That was why Kaelen was so desperate. Selene's body was failing, and he needed pureblood vampire magic to stabilize her.

This time, the sky above the Sanctuary was overcast and grim. Kaelen hadn't just brought a hundred men; he brought an entire army. The mountainside was swarming with werewolves.

He descended from the sky, cradling Princess Selene in his arms, and landed gracefully in the courtyard outside my crypt.

When he saw Lucian standing alone on the steps, blocking the entrance to the tomb, Kaelen's lips curled back to bare his fangs.

"Stubborn as your bitch of a mother," Kaelen growled. "I'll give you one last chance, boy. Tell me where Elara is hiding."

"If you tell me, I'll take you back to the pack. I'll adopt you. You'll live like an Alpha's son. You'll never go hungry or cold again. How about it?"

The gathered enforcers muttered among themselves. To be an officially recognized member of the Blood Moon Pack was a privilege lower wolves killed for.

They mocked Lucian, assuming the "mutt" would eagerly accept.

To my surprise, Lucian slowly lowered his head. He nodded. "I will tell you, but on one condition."

A cold smirk played on Kaelen's lips, a look of arrogant triumph. Everyone breaks eventually. "Name your price."

"I want to hug the Luna."

Lucian's voice was small and trembling, perfectly mimicking a terrified child desperate for a mother's touch.

The pack members burst into laughter.

Of course the rogue wanted to suck up to his new stepmother to secure a comfortable life.

But I knew my son. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Selene offered a sickeningly sweet smile. She stepped forward and opened her arms like a benevolent goddess. "Of course, little one. Come to your Luna."

Keeping his head down, Lucian descended the stone steps. The moment he stepped into her embrace, the moment his tiny arms wrapped around her waist, a flash of pure silver glinted from his sleeve.

It was a stake carved from pure silver and coated in wolfsbane.

With lightning speed, Lucian drove the blade upward, aiming right beneath Selene's jaw-a killing blow meant to pierce her brain.

But Kaelen's reflexes were inhuman. He was a Supreme Alpha. Before the blade even grazed Selene's skin, Kaelen moved.

His heavy boot slammed into Lucian's chest.

The sound of shattering ribs was deafening. Lucian was launched into the air, crashing into a stone pillar. He crumpled to the ground, vomiting a massive mouthful of blood.

"You dare attempt to assassinate the Luna?!" Kaelen roared, his aura exploding outward.

The pack enforcers rushed forward, grabbing Lucian by the hair, smashing his face hard against the cobblestones, and twisting his arms behind his back.

Kaelen strode forward and snatched the fallen silver stake from the ground. Unbridled fury contorted his face. "I should have known a mutt's blood is tainted with treachery!"

Without a second thought, Kaelen drove the silver stake straight into Lucian's right shoulder.

Lucian let out a piercing scream-the shrill, agonizing shriek of silver burning through his half-breed flesh.

Kaelen ripped the stake out and drove it into the boy's left thigh, then into his calf.

One strike. Two. Three. Four.

Dark blood rapidly pooled across the cobblestones, mixing with the freezing morning rain.

"Stop! Goddess, please stop!" I shrieked, throwing myself over my son's mutilated body.

I tried to cover his wounds with my ghostly hands, tried to take the blows for him, but the silver stake passed right through me, plunging into my child's flesh again and again.

An unbearable phantom pain ripped through my chest.

Watching this, I felt as though I was dying a thousand deaths.

Selene stepped forward and placed her manicured hand gently on Kaelen's arm. "Enough, Kaelen. I'm unharmed. The poor thing is just confused."

Kaelen yanked the stake out one last time, his chest heaving. He tossed the blood-soaked silver aside. "I never should have trusted the bastard."

"Perhaps my sister hasn't forgiven me," Selene said, her voice trembling, accompanied by perfectly staged tears.

She rested her head on Kaelen's shoulder. "I've taken her place by your side... It's only human nature that she hates me and refuses to give me her core. Let's go, Kaelen. It's my fault. I'm too weak to bear your child. I don't want to see any more bloodshed."

Her words were like oil poured on a raging fire.

He roared and slammed a fist into the crypt's iron gates, bending the thick metal out of shape.

"Elara! You have five minutes to show your face!" Kaelen marched back to Lucian, grabbed him by his blood-matted hair, and violently jerked his head back.

He pressed a silver dagger against Lucian's throat. "Or I'll chop his head off and mount it on your crypt!"

Five minutes passed.

There was nothing but the patter of rain and Lucian's heavy, wet breathing.

Kaelen paced like a caged beast, his amber eyes scanning the shadows.

Lucian coughed and spat a mouthful of blood and rain onto Kaelen's boot.

"I told you," the boy rasped, a bloody smile creeping across his pale face. "My mother is dead. Just kill me and get it over with, you coward."

Kaelen's jaw twitched, the muscles in his neck pulling taut. "You think I won't?" He pressed the blade deeper into the boy's windpipe, drawing a thin line of blood.

Then, he suddenly stopped. A cold, cruel realization dawned on his face. He lowered the blade.

"No. If I kill you, Elara will just sacrifice more of her power to resurrect you like last time. Let's see if she can heal you from this."

He turned to his Beta. "Bring the Sacred Fire."

My phantom heart plummeted into the abyss.

Vampires are creatures of ice and shadow; there is nothing we fear more than fire.

But Sacred Fire was a different nightmare entirely.

It didn't just burn flesh; it incinerated the soul, completely erasing a being's existence.

As the guards scrambled to retrieve the braziers from the armored vehicles, Kaelen ordered the rest of his men to tear the crypt apart.

"Search every inch! Tear down the walls if you have to!"

Lucian's pale face went entirely white. He struggled weakly against the enforcers holding him down, his eyes darting toward the tomb's entrance.

Minutes later, a shout came from deep within the catacombs: "Alpha! We found a hidden chamber!"

Kaelen let out a manic laugh, the sound of vicious triumph. "I knew the bitch was faking!"

"Alpha... we found this corpse on a slab of ice. It looks... like a mummified vampire."

Two burly werewolf goons dragged my withered, gray body out into the sunlight and dumped it unceremoniously on the wet cobblestones at Kaelen's feet.

Kaelen's smile vanished. He stared down at the hideous, rotting corpse. The skin peeled back from the skull, fangs jutted grotesquely from shriveled lips, and the chest cavity was a gaping black hole.

"Elara was a peerless beauty," Kaelen sneered, nudging my lifeless arm with the toe of his boot. With a sickening crack, my brittle wrist snapped. "This is just some dead hag. Toss it in the trash. Burn it."

"No!"

Lucian thrashed wildly, trying to break free from the goons holding him.

For the first time in five hundred years, the boy's mask of cold apathy shattered. Absolute terror destroyed his composure.

"Don't burn her! Don't touch her!" Lucian screamed, dislocating his shoulder as he fought desperately against their grip. "Kaelen, I swear to God, if you burn her, I'll kill you! I'll tear you to pieces!"

Kaelen tilted his head, genuinely taken aback by the boy's sudden panic.

"Must be someone important to you. A surrogate mother? A friend? Tell me where Elara is, mutt, or I'll burn this little corpse of yours."

"She's dead!" Lucian shrieked, tears streaming down his face, mixing with the blood. "I've told you a thousand times! She's dead, and she's right in front of you! That's her! Don't touch her!"

A flicker of genuine hesitation crossed Kaelen's eyes.

He looked down at the corpse, studying it closely. The shape of the brow, the length of the silver-white hair clinging to the scalp...

But he quickly shook his head, dismissing the thought.

"Nice try. Pureblood vampires only die when their core is destroyed. And I can still feel her core. It's beating. It's close by."

Right then, Selene let out a harrowing gasp. She stumbled, clutching her stomach, and collapsed to her knees in the mud.

"Luna!" the guards shouted, rushing forward.

Kaelen abandoned the corpse and dropped to his knees beside her. "Selene? Is it the pain again?"

The pack healer, who had been hovering nearby, checked her pulse, his face grim.

"Alpha, her vitals are dropping rapidly. Without a Scarlet Core to stabilize the pup's magic, the Luna won't survive the hour."

"Kaelen," Selene whimpered, clutching his shirt, her eyes rolling back. "I don't want to die. The baby... save our baby."

Kaelen held her tight, his face twisted in agony. "I won't let you die. Even if I have to drag Elara out of hell myself."

He stood up, his aura radiating lethal intent. He gestured to the goons holding Lucian. "Tie him to the stake."

They dragged my son to the center of the courtyard and chained his wrists and ankles to a thick iron post. They piled silver-soaked wood at the boy's feet and doused it in alchemical accelerant.

"I've been too soft on you!" Kaelen roared, his voice echoing through the mountains. "Elara, this is your last chance! If you don't come out, I'm going to burn this mutt alive and use his ashes to brew a potion for my mate!"

He snatched a torch from a guard and tossed it onto the pyre.

The Sacred Fire erupted in a blinding flash of silver-blue flames.

Lucian threw his head back and screamed.

It was a sound of absolute agony. It wasn't just his flesh burning; his soul was being ripped apart by the holy silver. I knew that pain. It was the feeling of your very existence being unraveled thread by thread.

I fell to my knees before Kaelen, weeping uncontrollably, begging a man who couldn't hear me.

"Kaelen, please! Stop the fire! He's just a child, he's too weak! He's your son! I beg you, take my body, take my ashes, but let him go!"

My wails echoed only in the spirit realm, but suddenly, Kaelen froze.

His body went rigid, and his head snapped toward me, his amber eyes wide.

"Stop!" Kaelen ordered his men, his voice trembling as he raised a hand. "Halt the fire! I... I hear her voice. I can hear Elara."

I froze.

Could the wolf inside him sense my soul? Was the Scarlet Core in his chest-my heart-reacting to my presence?

He took a slow step forward.

He reached out, his fingers brushing the empty air mere inches from my tear-stained, intangible face.

"Elara? Are you right here? Are you invisible?"

Before his hand could find mine, Selene let out an exaggerated, blood-curdling scream. "Kaelen! It hurts so much! My heart is breaking! The baby is dying!"

The trance was broken.

The connection shattered instantly.

Kaelen spun around and pulled Selene into his arms.

"Don't worry, baby," Kaelen kissed her forehead frantically, completely stepping away from where I knelt. "I'm right here. I'll get it for you."

Watching this, watching him hold the woman who killed me while my son burned alive on the pyre, the last thread of my soul finally snapped.

The final lingering trace of love I had clung to for five centuries turned to ash.

Once, he had held me like that. When I was pregnant, he had looked at me with that same concerned gaze.

Promises truly are the most useless things in the world.

Kaelen stood up, his face hardening like stone.

He walked over to my body lying in the mud and hoisted it up by the neck. Stripped of the glacier's protection, the dry, cracking skin flaked off like dead leaves under his brutal grip.

The flames roared around Lucian. My son's skin was charred black, his clothes burned away, but his eyes... his eyes burned with a hatred that not even death could extinguish.

He stopped screaming and just stared blankly at his father.

"Last chance, boy," Kaelen growled. "Tell me where she is, and I'll put out the fire. I'll forgive everything you've done to me."

For a Supreme Alpha like Kaelen, forgiving someone who assaulted his mate was an enormous concession. For Selene's life, he was forcing himself to swallow his immense pride.

He thought he was being generous.

Lucian laughed. Through the scorching flames, his laughter sounded dark and hollow, chilling every werewolf present to the bone.

"You want her back?" Lucian sneered, blood bubbling past his lips. "She doesn't want you anymore. She stopped loving you, Alpha."

The words struck Kaelen like a physical blow, igniting a blind rage. His eyes turned feral, his pupils dilating until they were pitch black. "You're lying! She gave up a throne for me! She would never stop loving me!"

Consumed by fury, desperate to force my hand, Kaelen swung his arm and hurled my shriveled corpse straight into the Sacred Fire.

"No!"

Lucian's scream tore through the heavens.

He lunged forward, thrashing against the silver chains until his flesh tore down to the bone, desperately trying to reach my burning body. But he was too late. The Sacred Fire instantly engulfed my dry, brittle corpse, turning it into a pillar of blinding white flame.

I stood on the outside, watching my own cremation, feeling a numb sense of peace wash over me.

For five hundred years, I had watched my son suffer alone. He was bullied, starved, and treated like an abomination. He never fought back because he spent all his energy trying to keep me tethered to this world.

Perhaps this was for the best.

With my physical anchor destroyed, my soul could finally pass on. Lucian's burden would be lifted.

We could both be free. We could reunite in the afterlife.

Kaelen stared at the roaring flames, his chest heaving. He muttered to himself, "No... she's not dead. She'll show up. She has to show up."

Selene walked up behind him, shivering, and rested her head against his broad back. "Kaelen, let's go home. She's not coming. It's too cold here, it's bad for the baby."

Kaelen nodded numbly. He wrapped an arm around her and turned his back on the burning pyre where my son and my remains were turning to ash.

They took three steps.

Then, the earth cracked open.

A wolf!

A White Wolf!

The most revered bloodline in werewolf history manifested right there.