When The Moon Hides Her Crown novel Chapter 227

**He Promised to Give Me the World, Yet the Price Was My Soul by Caden Blake 227**

Time seemed to stretch infinitely between us as those words slipped from her lips, hanging in the air like a fragile thread.

Her amber gaze pierced through me, freezing me in my tracks, rendering me unable to take even a single step closer. It was reminiscent of that fateful night… the very night she had made me vow to always heed her words, to listen to her without question.

And if I failed in that promise, she had warned me, she would come to despise me.

A violent tremor coursed through my heart, as if my wolf was thrashing against the confines of my chest, ensnared by her whispers, by those trembling, soulful eyes. It felt as if she had foreseen this very moment, the day when her truth would be laid bare, and she would recoil from the thought of anyone discovering that I had known her secret all along. I had come to Lupine Academy for reasons far removed from her own, and she was determined not to drag me down into her turmoil.

“SETH DARVEN WAS A WOMAN IN DISGUISE?!” an Alpha’s voice thundered, breaking the tense silence.

All the Alpha instructors, including Alpha Gideon, sprang from their seats, their eyes wide with disbelief, fixated on Seraphina as if she were a ghost materializing before them.

“HOW COULD A SHE-WOLF ENTER AN ALL-BOYS ACADEMY?!” another voice growled, laced with contempt.

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!” Voices erupted one after another, the Grand Hall descending into chaos. Accusatory glances turned toward her, sharp and cutting like daggers, each one aimed to wound.

My wolf simmered with fury, his deep growl reverberating through my chest as I shifted my gaze to the raised platform, where the Head of the Council sat.

He was already looking directly at me.

Gone was the mask of restraint, the facade of politeness, the kind smile I had imagined. What remained was the raw, unfiltered essence of who he truly was.

I had never encountered a member of the King’s Council before, nor had I ever wished to. In my eyes, they were nothing more than a pack of useless old dogs, clinging to their power. Yet, the whispers that circulated about them were like poison, infecting every pack with fear: predatory, merciless. When the Council set its sights on a pack, doom was sure to follow. Their name was shrouded in dread, and the rumors surrounding the new Council Head were the most terrifying of all.

They called him a phantom. No one outside the Council knew his true name. All that was said was that a young Alpha had seized the Council’s throne at a mere twenty-two or twenty-three, and since then, his movements had been shrouded in mystery. As I studied him now, I realized his bloodline traced back to the Hart surname, connected to the Deathclaw Pack. The Harts were as closely entwined with the Alpha King as bloodlines could be.

I had never anticipated that a Council member would be hiding in plain sight at the Academy, masquerading as just another high-ranking Alpha. The fact that he retained his family name and lived here, unnoticed and unremarkable, spoke volumes of his audacity.

As I continued to gaze at him, Mace’s ominous words about the former Council Head echoed in my mind. Alpha Magnus, a figure some labeled a living monster, had once cast his eight-year-old son into a forest teeming with wild beasts for an entire month. His reasoning had been chillingly simple: “The one who sits on my throne must be the only beast of this forest.”

When the forest was finally opened a month later, every beast lay dead, and the sole survivor was Finn, standing amidst the carnage, bloodied but unbroken, having slaughtered them all. Magnus’ cruelty had been monstrous, and Finn had emerged as the storm that answered it.

That monster I had always sensed lurking beneath the calm exterior of the new Council Head was now laid bare in how he treated Seraphina. My fists clenched tightly until my knuckles ached; my hands instinctively shifted, half-transforming before I could rein them in. He had been here to expose her from the very beginning, yet he had maintained the guise of a friend, only to betray her in the most despicable manner. I loathed backstabbers more than almost anything else; they deserved no mercy.

But before my wolf could fully seize control—

“SERAPHINA NIGHTBANE?!” Elder Milton’s voice boomed across the hall, a thunderous declaration that sent shockwaves through my body.

My mind went blank, a void filled with chaos.

Just hearing that voice was enough to ignite a furious fire in my veins.

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