“A curse! In your blood!” the rogue shrieked, his eyes wide with feral madness. “Your mother hid the truth! The secret she died with!” The words sliced through the forest’s silence, sharp and venomous. My Royal Guard escort froze, their hands tightening on their silver blades, their eyes flicking to me for a command. For a split second, a cold dread snaked around my heart. A secret my mother kept? The woman who was a ghost in my own memory? I crushed the feeling. I crushed it under the heel of my newfound power, burying it deep beneath layers of ice. Weakness was a luxury I could no longer afford. It was the disease that had almost gotten me killed. My gaze, hard as granite, met the traitor’s. He was one of the three. One of the pack warriors who had held me down for Chloe, his face twisted in a smug grin as they left me for dead. Now, that smugness was gone, replaced by a desperate, sputtering terror. “He’s lying to save his own skin,” I said, my voice cutting through the tension. It was a tone I barely recognized as my own—cold, devoid of pity, absolute. “End it.” The captain of the Guard, a grizzled Lycan named Vorlag, nodded once. He didn’t question. He didn’t hesitate. He simply obeyed. One swift, brutal motion, and the rogue’s warning was silenced forever, his head hitting the forest floor with a dull thud. The other two traitors whimpered, scrambling backward in the dirt like pathetic insects. They had been wolves of the Silver Moon pack. Now they were just rogues, their pack bond severed, their Alpha’s protection gone. They had nothing. “Justice is not a debate,” I stated, my eyes sweeping over the remaining two. “It is a sentence. You hunted me as prey. Now you will die as such.” There were no more screams. No more pleas. Only the grim, wet sounds of justice being served. When it was over, I stood in the clearing, the scent of rogue blood thick in the air. It didn’t sicken me. It felt… clean. A debt paid. “Your Highness,” Vorlag rumbled, his head bowed. “Your orders?” “Leave me,” I commanded. “Secure the perimeter. I need a moment.” Without a word, the elite Lycan warriors melted back into the shadows of the forest they now answered to. My forest. It was strange to stand here, on the very land where I had been hunted, and feel no fear. I was no longer the girl who ran. I was the wolf who had come back to claim her territory. I walked towards the river, the water whispering over smooth stones. This was where Logan and I used to meet, back when the mate bond was a fragile, shimmering thread between us. Back when I was a fool who believed in fated love and the promises of a future Alpha. The memory brought a bitter taste to my mouth. It was a ghost of a life that no longer belonged to me. I was Ayla of the Royal Lycan Court now. The fated mate of the King. These woods were just dirt and trees. A twig snapped behind me. A familiar scent hit my nose—pine, ambition, and the sour stench of regret. “Ayla.” I didn’t have to turn to know who it was. Logan. My former mate. The Alpha-in-waiting who had cast me aside like trash. Slowly, I turned. He looked terrible. The confident, arrogant swagger was gone. Dark circles ringed his eyes, his clothes were disheveled, and his Alpha aura, once so bright and commanding, felt muted and weak. He looked like a man drowning. “You have no right to be here, Logan,” I said, my voice flat. “Please,” he rasped, taking a clumsy step forward. His eyes, the same blue I once dreamed of, were filled with a desperate, pleading light. “I had to see you.” I laughed. The sound was sharp, brittle. “Why? Did you miss throwing me to the wolves? Or did you just want a front-row seat to watch me clean up your pack’s messes?” His face crumpled. To my utter shock, his knees buckled and he fell to the ground before me. The future Alpha of the Silver Moon pack, kneeling in the dirt. He reached out a trembling hand, not daring to touch me. “I was wrong,” he choked out, tears openly streaming down his face. “Ayla, I was a fool. A blind, arrogant fool. Chloe… she twisted everything. She manipulated me. But it’s no excuse. I rejected you. I broke the most sacred gift the Goddess gave us.” I watched him, my heart a frozen stone in my chest. Where was this pathetic, weeping man when I was being beaten? When I was bleeding out, alone in the woods? Where was he when Chloe was plotting my murder? “The pack is falling apart,” he continued, his voice cracking. “Since you left… since Chloe… it’s chaos. The elders are fighting my father. Our warriors are losing faith. We need you. I need you.” He shuffled closer on his knees, his desperation a tangible force. “Ayla, the Moon Goddess made us for each other! You’re my mate! Please, come back. We can fix this. We can rule together. I’ll make it right, I swear it.” My mate. The words were an insult. He spoke of the Moon Goddess as if he hadn’t spat on her gift in front of our entire pack. He spoke of ruling together as if he hadn’t tried to discard me for a weaker, more convenient she-wolf. I took a slow, deliberate step forward. He looked up, a flicker of hope in his tear-filled eyes. I raised my foot, clad in a sturdy leather boot, and placed it directly on the back of his outstretched hand, pinning it to the cold, damp earth. He gasped in pain and surprise. I pressed down, slowly grinding my heel into his knuckles. Bone grated against stone. “Let me teach you something about the Moon Goddess, Logan,” I purred, my voice dropping to a deadly whisper. I leaned down, my face inches from his. He could see the absolute absence of pity in my eyes. “She doesn’t reward weakness. She doesn’t bless cowards.” His breath hitched, a sob catching in his throat. “The Moon Goddess gave me to a King,” I sneered, applying more pressure until I felt a distinct crack from his hand, “because you were too weak to hold a Queen.” I pulled my foot back. He cradled his mangled hand, his entire body shaking with pain and humiliation. The bond between us, the one he had fractured, felt like a dead thing now. An empty void. “It’s over,” I said, turning my back on him. “You made your choice. Now live with it.” I started to walk away, the crunch of my boots on the leaves the only sound. “Wait!” he screamed, his voice raw with agony and something else… fear. “The curse! The rogue wasn’t lying!” I froze, my back still to him. “My father knows about it! He knows about your bloodline!” Logan scrambled to his feet, stumbling towards me. “He said it’s why your mother ran, why she hid you in our pack!” I remained perfectly still, every muscle in my body tightening. “It’s not a gift, Ayla!” he cried, his voice frantic and wild. “He says the Silver Blood is a cage, and only a Silver Moon Alpha has the key to lock it!”

Logan's Desperate Begging