Chapter 6

Selene POV:

I ignored the searing pain in my palm, my focus absolute. I knelt on the cold marble, the shards of the Moonstone like fallen stars on a dark night. They were pieces of my mother, pieces of my lineage, and I would not leave a single one behind.

"Sister, don't bother with that," Isabella cooed from behind me, her voice dripping with false sympathy. She was still holding a hand to her cheek where I'd struck her. "It's just a necklace. The wealth Lycan commands could buy you a hundred more, each more splendid than the last."

My hand froze over a sliver of stone that still held a faint, milky light. A laugh, cold and sharp, escaped my throat. I didn't even bother to look at her.

"Be silent," I said, my voice low and level. "A Rogue, living on lies and theft in another's den, has no right to speak to me."

The word "Rogue" hung in the air, a grave insult. Rogues were packless, lawless wolves, the lowest of the low. To accuse someone of having the spirit of a Rogue was to question their very soul.

A sudden, blaring alarm echoed from the main entrance of the den. It was the warning for a territorial breach.

Lycan, who had been standing frozen in a state of shock, finally snapped to attention. But it was too late.

The grand doors burst open, not with a formal announcement, but with the force of a battering ram.

Gamma Jax stood there, my childhood friend, his face a mask of grim determination. Behind him stood a dozen warriors from the Dawnguard Pack, their faces hard, their hands gripping heavy war axes and iron sledgehammers. They were not here for a social call.

Lycan stared, his golden eyes wide with disbelief. This was an act of war. Another pack's Gamma and warriors, armed and on his land.

I rose slowly to my feet, my hand clutching the broken pieces of my past. I met Lycan's gaze across the ruined hall.

"Jax," I commanded, my voice ringing with an authority I had never used before. "Everything in this place that belongs to the Blackstone Pack, I want you to smash it into dust. For any and all damages, the Silvermoon Pack will pay double."

Jax didn't hesitate. He didn't question my authority or the consequences. He saw the bruise blooming on my face, the blood on my hand, and his loyalty was absolute.

"You heard her!" he roared to his men. "Leave nothing standing!"

The first war axe swung, connecting with the massive obsidian table in the center of the hall. The stone, meant to last centuries, shattered with a sound like a thunderclap.

That was the sound of an Alpha's authority being broken.

Lycan finally seemed to understand. This wasn't a tantrum. This was a reckoning.

As the chaos of destruction erupted around me, I tuned it all out, focusing only on the glinting fragments at my feet. The mayhem was a distant storm. Then, a new presence cut through the noise. The warriors parted, and a figure strode through the chaos as if it were a gentle stream.

It was Alpha Caden of the Dawnguard Pack. He hadn't come as a brawler; he'd come as a king.

His gaze was not on the destruction. It was locked on me. He stopped directly in front of me, his golden eyes-so different from Lycan's, clearer, steadier-fixed on the red mark on my cheek. A dangerous fire ignited in their depths.

His voice was a low growl, barely audible over the din. "Who did this?"

I didn't answer. I couldn't. I just opened my bloody palm, showing him the shattered Moonstone.

His jaw tightened. Without another word, he knelt. An Alpha, on his knees. Not in supplication to a schemer, but in service to a wounded Luna. He began to search the floor with me, his keen Alpha senses spotting the tiniest glinting fragments I had missed.

Isabella shrieked as a warrior approached the guest wing where she had nested. "Lycan! Do something!"

But Lycan just stood there, a statue in the heart of a hurricane, watching his home, his sanctuary, his power, be systematically dismantled. His face was a canvas of helpless fury and dawning regret.

With Caden's help, I soon had every last piece. I wrapped them carefully in a handkerchief. I looked at the ruin around me, the shattered furniture, the torn tapestries. I sent a silent apology through the Mind-Link to the den's servants, promising them they would be compensated and cared for.

Then, I turned my back on it all. I walked out of the den, Caden at my side, his warriors falling into a protective formation around us, leaving my mate to stand alone in the wreckage of his life.

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