Chapter 6 - The Queen’s Demands
Alpha Cassian stood frozen, his mouth opening and closing as his brain scrambled to process the impossible reality standing before him.
The girl he had publicly humiliated, degraded, and cast out into the wilderness to die had returned as something ancient, divine, and infinitely more powerful than any alpha alive.
"L-Lyra?" Cassian stammered, his alpha bravado cracking down the middle like brittle glass. "How... what are you?"
"You called me broken, Cassian," Lyra’s voice rang out. It didn't just carry across the clearing; it echoed in the minds of every single wolf present, a resonant, multi-layered chord that made the Crescent Falls warriors drop to their knees clutching their heads. "You said I had no lineage worth preserving. You said the moon goddess made a mistake."
She took one slow, deliberate step forward across the border stone.
With every step she took, the ground beneath her feet trembled, and the crimson light of the Blood Moon seemed to intensify, focusing its entire celestial beam directly upon her crown of silver thorns.
"You severed the bond between us," Lyra continued, her golden eyes narrowing as she locked onto his terrified gaze. "You thought you were cutting away a weak, useless human girl. You had no idea that my human shell was simply a sealed vessel, holding back a royal bloodline older than your entire pack's history."
Cassian fell hard to his knees.
It wasn't a choice. The sheer, overwhelming pressure of the Silver Frost alpha aura crushed down upon his chest with the weight of a falling mountain. His wolf—the mighty apex predator of Crescent Falls—whimpered pathetically deep within his mind, pressing its belly to the dirt and curling into a ball of absolute submission in the presence of its true sovereign.
Behind him, all fifty Crescent Falls elite warriors hit the dirt simultaneously, their foreheads pressed against the cold stone, unable to lift their heads against the crushing tide of royal magic.
"M-My Queen," Cassian choked out, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as the pressure continued to mount, cracking his ribs from the inside out. "Mercy... I beg for mercy..."
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Lyra stopped just inches away from him, looking down at the kneeling alpha with eyes as cold and indifferent as a winter storm.
"Mercy?" she repeated softly, the sound carrying a dangerous, razor-sharp edge. "You showed no mercy when you stripped my dignity before your pack. You showed no mercy when you left me to die in the freezing wild. Why should I grant you what you so carelessly denied others?"
