When the Luna walked away

Eight months pregnant, I risked my life and unborn child to carry the Moon-flower through the freezing night, believing it would save my mate.

The note had screamed urgency [Deliver it. Now, or he dies.]

But when I reached the clearing, there was no rescue, only three rogues…their eyes gleaming with cruel malice and lust as they scanned my body greedily.

"Poor omega, walked right into our trap. Did you really think your alpha was in danger? "one laughed.

It was then, alarms flared inside my head in panic.

I turned to flee when rough hands pinned me down, sending white searing pain through my swollen belly.

"Let me go! "I screamed. "My mate will kill you-"

The name full of trust died on my lips instantly. As if a sharp lightning had struck my soul, I saw a familiar figure through the trees.

Victoria…my half-sister, naked, straddling a man as lewd moans filled the surroundings.

And tangled in her arms was Alpha Zyan.

My mate who went ‘missing in action’ right before our wedding.

I laid in pain, completely frozen as he kissed her, the child in my belly completely still as if he understood the silence better than I did.

"Alpha…"Victoria purred, voice trembling with feigned innocence as her satisfied eyes met my wide devastated ones across the dark canopy of trees.

"What about sister Lianna? She is your mate."

"Mate? " Zyan laughed like the word disgusted him. "I don’t mate beneath me. That farce of our ‘love’ ended the moment she failed to shift. She is an embarrassment to the Blood Moon Pack."

The moonflower was crushed at that instant.

Every memory of Zyan-our childhood love, this sacred groove where he took my virginity and made me pregnant before marriage, the trials I went through to win his love came crashing down all at once.

"Just because she warmed my bed doesn’t make her a Luna, at most she has to accept the title of my mistress. "

So this is what I was to him.

Not his mate.

Not his wife.

Not even a woman worth protecting.

Just a body that once obeyed.

A rogue’s mocking laughter filled my ears. "A luna? It looks like she is just a slut discarded by the Blood Moon Alpha."

I withered, my body thrashing as they licked my neck lewdly, crushing my belly under their weight.

"Tonight we will make you miscarry your baby and then leave our seed in your belly, when you get pregnant, come to us brothers for protection."

They laughed at my tears as two of them held my hands while another straddled me ready to make me abort the child.

I screamed.

I screamed until my throat burned, until my voice broke apart, until terror scraped me hollow.

"For the sake of all these years please save me Zyan!"

Far away, Zyan’s body froze, his gaze turning towards the darkness as my scream reached him.

"Who is there? "For a heartbeat, his eyes caught movement-a flash of pale skin, the outline of a naked woman desperately struggling under three dirty stray rogues as they muffled her cries.

Victoria’s voice followed rushed.

"Who would come here so late? Probably some rogue female trying to lure alphas for attention."

Zyan hesitated, eyes flicking towards the cries when Victoria’s hand slid up his chest, her voice purring seductively. "Alpha…don’t tell me you pity a whore’s cry in the dark? "

There was a pause before Zyan’s words echoed.

"Whoever wanders here at this hour deserves what’s coming. Let the rogues have her."

At that moment everything stopped-my breath, my heartbeat, the desperate thrashing and my entire world collapsed.

The man I had loved all my life was close enough to end this nightmare.

Instead, he let them break me.

Every sound was a cruel symphony.

My sobs.

Their laughter.

And his silence.

My world shattered as the rogues shoved me down, recording videos as their hands roamed every inch they could reach.

Pain faded into a ringing numbness and at the same moment I was going to be raped, Zyan was having sex with another.

This body no longer felt like mine.

If I stayed inside it, I would shatter.

Through the haze, I heard Victoria’s laughter as she brushed her fingers along Zyan’s chest, her voice lilting like silk dipped in poison.

"Alpha Zyan…"she whispered, smiling faintly. "Will you allow sister Lianna to give birth this time? Didn’t you ask the pack doctor to sterilize her?"

My lips quivered as molten tears trailed down in horror.

"A weak womb breeds weak heirs. It's better if I also abort the child in her womb now.” Zyan’s lips brushed her throat.

"I will never let that thing carry my name, all Lianna can have now is a little place in my heart if she behaves."

Victoria’s eyes glistened with fake tears. "But didn’t sister already lose a child previously, what if she learns the truth and leave you-"

"Leave me? " Zyan laughed, cold as the moonlight. "I am her moon, her everything, she can die but can never leave me.

Even if Lianna knows she must understand that it was for the sake of this pack, that our previous newborn was offered as a sacrifice to the Rogue King."

The air turned to frost around me.

Offered…?

Three years ago, I remembered kneeling on the cold stone floor of the healer’s room, my hands empty, my ears ringing as they told me my child hadn’t survived.

I remembered how I couldn’t cry at first, how the grief sat in my chest like a boulder crushing my heart.

Zyan had held me that night so protectively. ‘Please don’t hurt yourself, Lianna. We will have more children.’

Now, I couldn’t understand how those moments of being loved that felt so real.

How could they all have been fake?

My tears mixed with blood as I laid limp in horror, shock and betrayal. I awaited a death worse than an animal when a dangerous aura of bloodthirst mingled in the air.

In the next second a blur of black shot through the trees.

A massive wolf darker than night itself bared its canines and with a snap-a rogue’s neck was broken, the others were mauled to death.

Hot blood splattered across my chest, dripping down onto the crushed Moonflower.

And then the impossible happened.

The flower began to glow. Pale blue light spread across my trembling hands, the petals pulsing faintly as if alive again.

The dark wolf turned toward me, his fur matted with blood, eyes blazing golden against the shadows as his gaze locked on mine.

Not wild or rogue but ancient.

My lips trembled as I weakly lifted the glowing flower towards my savior. "Y-you’re hurt…"

I pressed the Moonflower weakly to the gash along his chest. "Please…take it…my repayment. "

For a heartbeat, the glow spilled across his fur like moonfire.

When he shifted, I could only stare. The man before me wasn’t like Alpha Zyan.

His presence was heavier, colder, his eyes almost glowing feral and regal under the moonlight.

The moment my lips parted to thank him with my last breath-ruination, betrayal and utter agony burning in my heart, his hand slipped to the back of my neck, drawing me closer.

The kiss was not gentle. It was hungry and unforgiving-my last kiss.

And before the world faded, the last thing I felt was the sharp puncture of fangs sinking deep into my neck.

The ancient wolf marked me his.

And with my last consciousness I took an oath- 'Zyan, Victoria, Pray that I die. for if I lived, I would pay back this humiliation hundredfolds!'