At those words, the Silvercrest she-wolves froze mid-strike.
Seraphina stood off to the side, eyes narrowing as she studied me.
"What did you just say? That you're the Luna Queen?"
I met her gaze without flinching. "That's right. If the Supreme Alpha finds out what you've done to me, none of you will walk away from this."
I laid the truth bare, certain that Seraphina would stop.
Instead, they burst out laughing in unison.
"This filthy human-born has lost her mind! She actually thinks she's the Luna Queen?"
"Just because she looks a little like Lady Seraphina, she has the nerve to claim our lady owes everything to her?"
"Everyone across the Six Great Packs knows the Supreme Alpha adores Lady Seraphina and no one else. You're nothing but a wretched human-born who snuck in here, and you dare call yourself the Luna Queen? Do you have a death wish?"
Seraphina's lips curled into a vicious smile.
"I assumed that since you managed to slither into the Abyssal Den using that face of yours to seduce the Supreme Alpha, you'd have at least some cunning. Turns out you're just a brainless fool."
"I've been mated into the Shadowfang Pack for ages, and I've never once heard of a so-called Luna Queen. You're a human-born without a shred of wolf blood. What could possibly qualify you for that title?"
"If you were truly the Luna Queen, why would you be living alone in the Sacred Den, where not a single soul dares to tread?"
With that, Seraphina turned to the other handmaidens and gave the order:
"Cut off this wretch's limbs. Let's see how long that sharp tongue of hers lasts."
The she-wolves drew their silver-edged blades and closed in on me.
None of them knew the real reason the Abyssal Den stood so desolate.
It was because the Supreme Alpha forbade any living creature from coming near.
Even a stray bird that wandered too close would be torn apart, its carcass left as a warning until his fury was spent.
He had kept my identity hidden because he wanted to wait until our pup was born.
Then, before the entire Six Great Packs and all the territories beyond, he would crown me Luna Queen in a grand ceremony under the Blood Moon.
And the reason he was absent today was precisely because he had sensed that this was the day our pup would arrive.
He had gone personally to summon the most powerful Alphas across the Six Great Packs, so they could witness the birth of the Prophesied Alpha.
To welcome the future sovereign of all Six Packs.
And now, every one of those precautions had become the very reasons Seraphina refused to believe me.
Watching them close in, panic seized me. I screamed, "I am the Luna Queen! If you don't believe me, go ask the Supreme Alpha yourself!"
They didn't even pause. Blades rose and fell.
Agony tore through me, bone-deep and blinding, as my limbs were severed one after another.
My whole body convulsed. Every breath came thinner than the last. Somewhere inside me, the faint presence of my wolf, the one Fenris's blood had slowly coaxed awake over centuries, flickered like a candle in a gale and went silent.
Seraphina clapped a hand over her mouth, laughing. "Oh, look at her! No arms, no legs, just that swollen belly. She looks like a turtle pulled into its shell!"
The others doubled over with laughter, clapping and cheering.
I glared at them through a haze of red, my voice raw and shaking. "You will regret this."
Seraphina stepped closer and looked down at me.
"In all the Six Great Packs, no one has ever made me regret a thing."
"But I can certainly teach you what regret feels like."
The moment the words left her lips, she shaped her hand into claws and sliced my belly open.
A fresh wave of agony swallowed me whole.
Through the blur of fading consciousness, I watched Seraphina reach inside me and pull out a blood-soaked infant boy.
He was alive. His tiny fists swung on instinct, batting at Seraphina's arm as if in protest.
Seraphina stared at my son, eyes widening.
"A mongrel born from a human-born, and his life force is this strong?"
"What a pity. You're still nothing but human filth. Leaving you here would only taint the Shadowfang Pack's sacred ground. Today, I'll clean house on the Supreme Alpha's behalf."
Terror flooded every fiber of my being. My voice came out barely above a whisper.
"He is the Supreme Alpha's pup. You must not harm him."
Seraphina's brows twisted together, and she fixed me with a look of pure contempt.
"You wretched human-born. To save this bastard, you'd tell a lie that absurd?"
"The Supreme Alpha's power is beyond measure. A human-born body could never carry his offspring."
The other handmaidens chimed in.
"Exactly. The Supreme Alpha's bloodline is so potent that anyone with a weak wolf constitution would be destroyed just from the bonding alone."
"You're a human-born. You don't even have the constitution to bond with him, let alone bear his pup."
"This bastard is obviously the product of some affair with a low-ranking patrol wolf. And you have the audacity to pass it off as the Supreme Alpha's heir? The nerve."
They weren't entirely wrong. The gap between a human-born and a pureblood wolf was vast beyond reckoning.
The Supreme Alpha, above all, was a being no human-born should have been able to touch, let alone conceive a pup with.
That was why he had fed me his Alpha blood essence, day after day.
It kept me ageless and undying, and it tempered my human-born body until the barrier between us slowly dissolved.
Even so, it had taken us hundreds of thousands of years to conceive this pup.
"Everything I've said is true. If anything happens to this pup, no one here will survive the Supreme Alpha's wrath. He will reduce the Six Great Packs to ash and ruin!"
Under the Supreme Alpha's nourishment, my body had long surpassed anything human.
But now, broken and bleeding, I could feel my life draining away with terrifying speed.
I poured every last scrap of strength into those words, praying Seraphina would spare my child.
She only gave a cold, thin smile.
"The harder you beg for this bastard's life, the more I want to kill him."
She raised my son high and hurled him at the ground.
"No!"
The scream ripped from my throat. It changed nothing.
All I could do was watch as my son slammed into the stone.
"He's still alive?"
Seraphina stared at the infant still squirming on the ground, murmuring to herself.
"Let's see just how hard this little mongrel is to kill."
She lifted her foot and brought it down on him.
The impact shook the ground.
The blow carried her full, devastating force.
It cratered the floor beneath him.
Every handmaiden there was certain the pup was dead.
But his tiny hands still moved, waving as though nothing had happened.
"I refuse to believe I can't kill one worthless mongrel!"
Seraphina's composure shattered. She summoned Moonsilver Fire and sent it crashing down on my son.
White-hot flames engulfed him in an instant. The stench of burning silver hit the air, and the scream that left me was not human. It came from somewhere deeper, somewhere the blood-bond had carved open inside me, a place that had no name before this moment and would never close again.
I was close enough to feel the searing heat scorch my skin.
Fear and anguish devoured me from the inside out.
My child was not just the future sovereign of the Six Great Packs.
He was the culmination of hundreds of thousands of years of hope between the Supreme Alpha and me.
Three years I had carried him. My own flesh and blood.
All those years, the Supreme Alpha and I had treasured him more than our own lives.
And this tiny, newborn boy had never even been held. Not once.
He was swallowed by merciless flame before he ever knew what an embrace felt like.
Tears streamed down my face, covering every inch of it.
Seraphina looked at the charred, motionless body and let a smile play across her lips.
"The little mongrel is finally dead."
The other handmaidens beamed.
"A human-born's mongrel, tough as leather. Thank the Moon Goddess Lady Seraphina is so resourceful!"
"Exactly. One look at the pup and you can tell his lowly patrol-wolf father was just as worthless and disgraceful."
"Congratulations, Lady Seraphina, for ridding the Shadowfang Pack of this stain!"
Bathed in their praise, Seraphina lifted her chin and cast a sidelong glance at my dead child, admiring her handiwork.
Satisfaction spread across her face.
"Don't worry, little bastard. I'll find your bastard father soon enough. Your whole wretched family can reunite in death."
The words had barely left her mouth when a howl split the sky above Shadowfang territory. It was not a wolf's howl and not a man's voice. It was something older than both, rolling down from the heavens, shaking the air itself:
"What have you done?"
Hundreds of wolves, shifted and unshifted, descended on the courtyard of the Abyssal Den like a storm breaking.
The Supreme Alpha had arrived.
And with him, hundreds of the most powerful Alphas across the Six Great Packs, every one of them summoned to witness the birth of the Prophesied Alpha.
