Chapter 10
Charlotte’s screams ripped through the night like a dying banshee as Alpha Raymond plunged the silver blade into her swollen belly.
The moment steel met flesh, the heavens above erupted in light.
Gasps echoed through the pack house. Faces that had been carved with despair suddenly lit up with hope. Even Raymond’s hollow, bloodshot eyes glimmered with a desperate spark.
This was it.
Finally, he could face the spirits of the past Alphas. Finally, he could give the pack an heir… and finally, finally, he could keep his
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promise to join me in death.
But hope lasted only a single heartbeat.
No newborn cries filled the air.
When Raymond’s trembling hands pulled the pup free, what dangled from his grasp was not life–it was rot.
A tiny, bloated corpse, its flesh waterlogged and discolored, the stench of decay filling the chamber. Dead for months.
“No!” Charlotte shrieked, voice cracking like glass. Her wide, bloodshot eyes burned with madness. “No, it’s not true! I drank Herbert’s potion! I ate that filthy Luna’s whelp like he told me to! I followed every step exactly! My pup is the Lycan King! I’m the chosen mother! No one–no one–will take my crown!”
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Her screeching shook the walls.
And then… the ground itself trembled.
The lifeless pup slipped from Raymond’s fingers, hitting the stone floor with a sickening thud. He stared at it, unblinking, for a long, cold moment.
Then, a laugh burst out of him–raw, jagged, unhinged. His skeletal shoulders convulsed as if something inside him had finally cracked. The laughter broke into sobs, into hacking retches that bent him double, as though he could vomit out his own soul.
“Ha… hahaha… Shadowmoon is truly damned,” he croaked, tears streaking his ash–colored face. “By the spirits of every Alpha before me–I’m the monster. I’m the cursed sinner who brought ruin to us all…”
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And me?
I knew in that moment–I would never return.
Raymond had never felt such soul–deep regret. If he could, he’d rip the heart out of the man he’d once been and crush it in his fist.
After a long, trembling silence, he
straightened, wiped his tear–streaked face with a strange calmness, and turned to Charlotte.
She lay sprawled in blood, intestines coiling across the floor like pale serpents.
He stepped on them, grinding his heel down, drawing a guttural, animalistic scream from her throat. And he smiled.
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“Don’t worry,” he murmured, voice soft as a death knell. “Before Shadowmoon burns to ash… I’ll take good care of you. I’ll make you regret every breath you stole two months ago.”
And he did.
Days bled into nights, nights into weeks, while Rogues swarmed the territory unchecked. The pack crumbled, but Raymond didn’t care.
He spent every waking moment clutching my corpse like a sacred relic, while finding new, inventive ways to peel screams from Charlotte’s throat.
By the time Herbert was dragged in in chains, Charlotte was nothing more than shredded flesh clinging stubbornly to life.
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The curse and the witch’s potion made sure of that–death would not come easily.
Eyes bulging, breath wheezing, Charlotte used what remained of her voice to croak one last question:
“Why?”
She still refused to believe it had all been a
lie.
Herbert looked down at her, his sneer colder than the moonlight spilling across the floor.
“Oh, you poor, stupid wretch…” he said with cruel amusement. “The potion? That part was real. But the bit about needing the Luna’s pup as an ingredient? A lie. You swallowed it whole because you were too blinded by greed to see through it.”
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He crouched beside her mangled body, voice dropping to a whisper sharp as a blade.
“The true child of destiny–the pack’s final hope–was the one in that Luna’s belly. You devoured him, thinking you’d claim his power.”
Herbert’s smile twisted into something feral.
“All you did… was sign your own damnation. And for that…” he chuckled darkly, leaning close to her bloodied ear, “…we owe you our gratitude. Killing the Moon Goddess’s chosen Luna was going to be tricky. But
you…
His voice slithered with mockery.
…you made it so, so easy.”
