When The Moon Hides Her Crown novel Chapter 237

DARIOUS NIGHTBANE

“STOP IT! FUCKING STOP THE NOISE!” I barked at my wolf, slamming my palms against my temples as his growls rattled through my head. I’d been driving nonstop since I’d left the Lupine Academy hours ago; the road blurred beneath the tires.

The moment I handed over Seraphina’s disownment letter, signed, sealed, my wolf had gone feral. He blamed me for everything.

“SHE MADE HER CHOICE! SHE CHOSE THE THRONE OVER ME! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT FROM ME?” I shouted into the empty car, voice raw.

My wolf tore back at me through the mind–link, furious. “HOW DOES THIS MAKE YOU ANY DIFFERENT FROM HER? YOU CHOSE THE PACK OVER OUR OWN DAUGHTER! YOU ABANDONED HER. HOW WILL WE FACE OUR MATE IN THE AFTERLIFE?”

“If we meet our mate in the afterlife, she’ll know why I did it,” I snapped. “Defying the Council and the King would have cost the pack everything. Thousands of lives would be on the line. By cutting ties with Seraphina, I protected them and the pack’s future. I made the right choice. So stop blaming me. Just fuck off.” I forced a mental block, shutting his protests out.

I swerved off the main road and drove hard toward the forest where my pack waited. Head against the headrest, eyes on the dusty track, my breath came ragged. Seraphina’s questions kept echoing in my skull, sharp, accusing, cracking the certainty I’d been clinging to my whole life. My knuckles went white on the wheel. “You will regret not choosing your father forever…”

That was when a mind–link hit like a thunderclap.

“ALPHA!!” my Beta’s voice screamed inside

my

head.

I shot upright. “What–what happened?!”

“We’re under attack!” my Beta blasted back, panic shredding his words. “PACK MEMBERS ARE FALLING! WE CAN’T HOLD THEM BACK, SAVE US!”

The link broke into a torrent of static and fear.

I could not believe my ears. My pack was notorious, a force no one dared challenge. In our history, no one ever set foot inside our borders and walked away. Intruders were killed on the spot. So which pack had the gall to attack us, to terrify my Beta, who also had Alpha blood in his veins?

“WHO ARE THEY? HOW MANY?” I barked, slamming my foot down on the accelerator.

“T–they’re not a pack…” my Beta’s voice trembled over the mind–link, as if he were hidden and speaking through a crack.

“Then they’re rogues?” I demanded.

“N–no…they’re not…he…he is just a man,” he whispered.

I froze. “Just a man? One man attacked our pack? Alone?”

“Yes… he is alone…AAAAAAA-” The mind–link snapped off, leaving static and a cold, stunned silence.

It was not an ordinary scream. It was the scream of pure terror and death.

My wolf went rigid in my head; a chill slithered down my spine. What the hell was happening?

I floored the gas and tore toward the forest where my pack lived. Half a kilometer out, my breath caught. A

Chapter 237 Every Tear Paid in Blood

darkness lay over the trees not shadow or storm, but a strange, impossible vold. Noon had been bright outside but no sunlight penetrated that blackness. The headlights cut through it like knives, but even they seemed to struggle.

As I pulled closer to the packhouse, the dread grew heavier. My Beta had said we were under attack, yet there were no cries, no battle noise, only silence like a graveyard. Then a metallic tang hit me, blood.

I threw the car into park and stumbled out. Everything was dark. The first step sent me sprawling to my knees as my hand struck something soft and wet.

I grabbed it without thinking. It was warm and slick a heart, still beating, slick with blood.

My vision tunneled down from the heart to the body it belonged to. My Beta lay there, gutted. His chest was ripped open. The heart in my hand stuttered and stilled.

Cold sweat pricked my skin as my eyes swept the clearing. Packmates lay strewn across the ground – some torn apart, some posed in ways that made my stomach drop. Blood pooled and glistened in the dim light.

My world narrowed to a single, terrible truth: this was no ordinary attack. Whoever this was alone, and it had slaughtered us with an ease that made my wolf whimper.

1

whatever had done

–

“No…” My body froze, almost like I was paralyzed as I watched my entire empire dissolve into dirt and despair.

Faces were barely recognizable, torn, bloodied, but their horrified eyes told the story of how mercilessly they’d been slaughtered.

I sat there alone, my hands empty.

Then an overwhelming presence filled the clearing. My wolf went rigid inside me, terror locking his howl. Slowly, I lifted my gaze toward that presence. The darkness around us seemed to thin, and there he was: seated on a wooden chair amid the piled bodies, shirtless, blood and gore smeared across him and my pack. He lit a cigarette. His cold violet eyes found me.

He was the one….

“Why–why did you kill my pack?” My voice came out a hoarse whisper.

He leaned forward, smoke curling around him like a reaper’s cloak. “Every tear she shed because of you,” he said slowly, each word a blade, “Has to be paid in blood.”

“What are you talking about?” I managed. “Who–who are you?”

He tilted his head. “Seraphina’s soulmate.”

The words ripped my soul out. “Seraphina’s…soulmate?”

I stared at him, disbelief curdling into something darker. My eyes dropped to his trousers; the gold button bore the Lupine Academy emblem. My breath hitched, Seraphina had found her mate inside the Academy. And now he was here.

I met his gaze. “Did you exterminate my pack for her?”

He stood, regarding me with a look of disgust, as if I were filth. “What’s the point in letting something that doesn’t belong to her remain?” He crossed the clearing toward me. “If my mate can’t have it, then no one

can.”

He stopped in front of me; the wolf in his eyes stepped forward, fierce and deliberate. I crawled back, horror clawing up my throat.

Chapter 237 Every Tear

“You are breathing now only because she would cry if her father died,” he said calmly. “I cannot bear tears in my mate’s eyes. That does not excuse what you’ve done to her emotionally. From now on, you are my enemy. You will spend the rest of your life alone;just as you made her, stripped of refuge, hunted wherever you go. Suicide will not be an option; if you try, both your hands will be chopped off before you can even react. And the day you return to hurt her again will be the last day of your pathetic life.”

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