Chapter 11
Charlotte’s wretched screaming finally fell silent.
I didn’t bother looking at her mangled, cursed body. Instead, my gaze shifted to Herbert.
I had no idea what I had done to wrong him so badly that he’d craft such a vicious plan to see me dead.
But then, something I never expected happened.
Herbert dropped to his knees before my lifeless form and bowed three times, his forehead striking the blood–soaked floor.
Before I could even process it, Alpha Raymond’s voice cracked with wild,
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desperate joy.
“Grace…!” His bloodshot eyes glistened as tears spilled down his hollow cheeks. “I knew it–I knew you’d never leave me!”
It was only then that I realized–without understanding how–I had a body again. Flesh. Breath. Movement.
Ignoring the raving madman, I locked eyes with Herbert. My voice was low, cold.
“Why?”
Herbert didn’t flinch. In fact, his weathered face softened as he bowed three more
times.
“The first three,” he said hoarsely, “were from Shadowmoon Pack, to thank you… for every scar, every sacrifice you made to keep them
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safe all these years.”
He knelt lower, his back trembling with pain. “These three… are from me. The night Rogues almost took my life, you were the one who dragged me out of the dirt. You saved me.”
His voice hardened.
“But… my Luna… you had to die.”
Confusion twisted in my gut. Something told me this man–the one who set everything in motion–was the key to why my spirit still lingered.
Herbert stood slowly, spine rigid with conviction, bloodstains soaking through his torn robes.
“Because this world never needed a
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so–called savior chosen by the Moon Goddess,” he said, voice rising like a battle
cry.
Blood splattered the floor as Raymond’s silver blade punched through Herbert’s back.
“What the hell are you saying?!” Raymond snarled, spittle flying. “How dare you hurt my Grace!”
Herbert staggered forward, clutching the gaping wound, yet somehow his voice didn’t falter.
“Werewolves… we’re born to stand. Not to kneel. The moment we kneel… we forget how to rise.”
Steel tore through him again with a wet
shhk.
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Herbert crumpled but still lifted his head, listening to the distant roars outside the pack house–wolves howling, warriors clashing, rebels screaming, “Down with the tyrant! Blood for blood!”
A smile, faint and strangely peaceful, curved Herbert’s cracked lips.
“Shadowmoon should have fallen long ago,” he rasped. “Your Alpha is a tyrant. Your council? Cowards and parasites. The only reason no one fought back… was you.”
Raymond froze.
Herbert’s gaze pierced straight into my soul.
“You were too strong. Too merciful. Wolves believed no change was possible as long as their Luna stood between them and the fire.”
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His breath hitched, but his words burned
hotter than ever.
“With you gone… they finally dared to fight. If you’d lived…” His eyes softened with something like pity. “…you would have condemned them to chains.”
Summoning the last of his strength, Herbert raised his blood–soaked hands to the moonlight spilling through the roof and roared:
“I–Herbert–beg the Moon Goddess to take her daughter home! Never let her return to this filthy, broken world!”
He coughed a flood of crimson, his body convulsing, and then he collapsed.
Dead.
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His blood, still warm, spattered across my face.
Stunned, I stood frozen.
Then, blinding moonlight speared through the shattered ceiling, flooding the chamber in silver fire.
“Now,” whispered an ethereal voice inside my mind, shaking the earth beneath my feet, “do you finally understand?”
Herbert’s last smile flickered in my vision. Outside, wolves shouted for revolution, their roars thundering in my chest.
Memories surfaced–wolves I had saved, lives I had sacrificed, all in the name of a destiny I never questioned.
I finally saw it.
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I was chosen not because I was meant to lead, but because I couldn’t stop myself from saving others. Because I carried too much power, too much mercy. And for that, I was raised to a pedestal no wolf should ever stand on.
At last, I spoke, my voice trembling but certain.
“Yes. I understand.”
The voice was soft, almost sorrowful. “And do you regret it?”
I lowered my gaze to the scars carved across my flesh–some from Raymond’s
cruelty, others from defending Shadowmoon with my own blood.
Regret?
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For him, for the Alpha who betrayed me, I regretted it so much it curdled my stomach.
But for the wolves I saved? For the innocents who prayed for me in secret even when mourning me was forbidden?
Never.
I shook my head.
“I should have asked them what they truly wanted,” I admitted. “I thought they needed a savior, a goddess in wolf’s skin. But maybe all they ever needed… was the chance to fight for themselves. My existence… was the chain that kept them from freedom.”
The voice laughed–not cruelly, but with the joy of a mother seeing her child finally grow.
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“Well said, my dear child. At last… you are
free.”
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