SHE WAS ORDERED TO STAND BEHIND THE NEW LUNA’S THRONE — THEN ONE TOUCH EXPOSED A SECRET HIDDEN FOR 5 YEARS 🌙

Rowan’s breath caught in her throat. "Marcus?"

Draven’s eyes narrowed into terrifying slits of pure gold. "You."

Beta Marcus smiled—a cold, twisted sneer that erased every trace of the loyal soldier he had pretended to be for a decade.

"Did you really think Lord Vance acted alone, Your Majesty?" Marcus scoffed, drawing a black-runed broadsword that hummed with necromantic magic. "Vance was a greedy fool, but he had resources. I was the one who ensured the shadow assassins got into the tower. I was the one who helped forge Seraphina’s lineage papers."

"Why?" Draven growled, stepping slowly between Marcus and Rowan, his wolf aura surging to life in a deafening roar that shook pebbles from the cave ceiling. "I trusted you with my life. I gave you the second highest rank in the realm."

"And I served as your shadow!" Marcus snarled, his face contorting with years of buried envy. "I bled on the borders while you sat on your father's throne! When the True Luna’s marks appeared five years ago, Vance and I realized we could control the kingdom through Seraphina. But then she ruined everything!" He pointed his bleeding sword toward Rowan.

"The Syndicate offered me what you never would," Marcus continued, as the rogue Alphas behind him drew their weapons. "An empire. Once the King and his false Luna die in these mountains, I shall return to the capital as Regent!"

"You will die in this cave," Draven promised, his voice devoid of human warmth.

With a deafening howl, Draven transformed.

His body expanded, bones snapping and reforming in a terrifying display of raw power, transforming into a massive, jet-black dire wolf with blazing golden eyes. The King of the Silver Peak charged.

The cavern exploded into chaotic violence.

Draven tore through the Syndicate rogues like a storm of claws and fangs, his massive jaws snapping bone and throwing armored men across the stone floor.

Rowan didn't stand idle. As two rogues lunged at her with spear blades, she channeled the silver magic within her blood. She swept her hands upward, creating a blinding wall of lunar fire that incinerated their weapons and threw them back out into the freezing storm.

Marcus, however, was a seasoned war veteran. He dodged Draven’s lethal strike and thrust his black-runed blade deep into the black wolf’s flank.

Draven let out a pained roar, falling to his side as black, poisonous smoke billowed from the wound. The blade was laced with wolfsbane and shadow-curse.

"Draven!" Rowan screamed.

Marcus stood over the wounded King, raising his blade for a execution strike. "The King is dead. Long live the—"

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My daughter dumped her wedding cake over my head and called me a burden—...

$I stepped down from a classified military transport and headed directly to the ICU, where my wife was lying with twenty-seven broken bones and a fractured skull. Outside her hospital room, her mother and six sisters stood smiling as though they were waiting for lunch to arrive. The detective assigned to her case leaned in and whispered, "Captain, this family practically controls the entire county." I stared through the glass at my wife's bruised and swollen face before answering, "Good. Because my authority extends far beyond this county."$