Chapter 157 Gaslighting

Chapter 157 Gaslighting


The drive back to the Red moon capital was executed in absolute, silent triumph. When we arrived at the central administrative sector, the contrast between the past and the present was stark enough to make even the vanguard guards stop and stare.

The old Redmoon pack house,the ancient, drafty stone fortress where my parents had been sentenced to death was gone. In its place stood a soaring, multi-tiered glass penthouse complex that served as the central executive headquarters for the Unified Territorial Alliance. It possessed automated security perimeters, climate-controlled council chambers, and massive open terraces that overlooked the glittering lights of the redeveloped valley below.

Rayder hauled Thorne out of the boot of the car, throwing his frail, bound body onto the polished marble floor of the penthouse entrance hall.

Thorne blinked frantically against the brilliant, warm LED lighting of the lobby. His single, milky eye scanned the soaring glass walls, the automated digital directories, and the clean, uniform apparel of the Northern guards who stood at absolute attention. 

A look of profound, historical vertigo crossed his weathered face. The world had completely outgrown him. The territory hadn't dissolved into chaos without his iron fist; it had become an empire of wealth and light.

"What... what is this place?" Thorne hissed, his voice cracking as he tried to lift his head from the marble floor. He looked up at Rayder, then at me, his crooked jaw trembling with a mixture of rage and psychological desperation. "You... you call yourselves Alphas? You call yourselves leaders? You turned our sacred ancestral soil into a human playground! You paved over our history with their wires and their glass!"

"We paved over your graveyards, Thorne," I said, walking slowly around his bound form, my boots clicking sharply against the polished marble. "We gave your people food, medicine, and a future where their children don't have to bleed into a plastic tube to keep a rotted old man alive."

Thorne let out a wet, horrific laugh that bubbled up through the blood in his throat. He rolled over onto his side, his pale eyes fixing on me with a razor-sharp, manipulative intensity. He was a tyrant, and even in his dying moments, his primary weapon was the distortion of the mind.

"You think you’re better than me, Selene?" Thorne whispered, his tone shifting into a smooth, insidious purr that echoed off the glass walls. "Look at what you’ve done to catch me. You hunted my remaining men like dogs. You bound me in silver. You threw me into the trunk of your luxury machine. If you drag me out into that square and execute me today, you are no different than the man who ordered the death of your parents years ago. You become the monster to destroy the monster. If my blood hits that stone, your democracy is a lie! You are just another executioner wearing a cleaner suit!"

The room went completely quiet for three seconds. The guards looked at each other, the lingering psychological weight of Thorne’s old authority causing a brief, tense ripple through the pack link.

I stopped walking. I stood directly over him, looking down at his emaciated, pathetic frame with a look of profound, absolute pity.

"You're trying to twist our brains, Thorne," I said softly, my voice carrying a clear, serene confidence that completely shattered his psychological gambit. "You want me to pull the trigger right here. You want me to play the role of the vengeful princess because that’s the only world you understand. You think the only options are an iron crown or an executioner's axe."

I leaned down, my face inches from his rotted cheek, my golden eyes reflecting the absolute dawn of a new era.

"But I am not going to kill you, Thorne," I whispered. "The government we practice now is democracy. The people are the law. I am not your executioner today. I am just the logistics coordinator."



Instead of the royal, gold-trimmed wooden carriage Thorne had used during his decade of absolute rule, Justin and Elias had prepared a very different kind of transport for the ex-Alpha's final journey through his kingdom.

At the base of the penthouse steps sat a heavily reinforced, completely angular, stainless-steel human Cybertruck. The vehicle was a brutalist piece of modern engineering, its sharp geometric lines and unpainted steel hull looking completely absurd yet terrifyingly functional against the snowy backdrop of the Redmoon capital.

We bound Thorne tightly with high-tensile, reinforced silver wire, securing his frail, emaciated body to a heavy iron chair that had been bolted directly into the open, exposed rear bed of the Cybertruck. He sat there like a pathetic, skeletal scarecrow, completely exposed to the freezing elements and the public view, his tattered rags fluttering in the cold northern wind.

"Alright, Justin," I said, sliding into the front passenger seat of the steel truck while Rayder took the wheel. "Engage the low-speed parade protocol. Let’s take the King for a drive through his domain."

"With pleasure, Luna," Justin’s voice crackled through the comms as he monitored the route from the penthouse control room. "The route is programmed through the entire central residential sector of the Redmoon pack. Every single street, every marketplace, and every public square. The public address systems are already announcing our coordinates."

The quad-electric motors of the Cybertruck let out a low, futuristic whirr as Rayder pressed the accelerator, the heavy steel machine rolling slowly down the paved avenue that led into the heart of the capital.

At first, the citizens of the Redmoon pack,who were currently walking along the sidewalks, carrying bags of imported groceries or working on the new eco-concrete foundations—didn't notice who was sitting in the back of the strange, angular steel truck. They simply stopped and stared at the luxury vehicle, pointing at its sharp lines and whispering about Elias's latest human import.

But as the truck slowed down to a conversational crawl near the central market square, a group of old clan mothers stopped dead in their tracks. One of them, a woman whose two sons had been lost to Thorne’s extraction laboratories five years ago, squinted her eyes through the clear winter air, her gaze locking onto the emaciated, skeletal face of the old man bound to the iron chair.

She recognized the single, milky eye. She recognized the crooked, rotted jawline that had signed the death warrants of her bloodline.

"It’s him," she whispered, her voice a low, trembling ripple that instantly caught the attention of the surrounding wolves. "It’s Thorne. The tyrant... the monster lives!"

The realization spread through the crowded marketplace like wildfire jumping through dry timber. Within seconds, the silence of the square turned into a deafening, chaotic roar of pure, historical fury. Thousands of Northern wolves rushed to the edges of the pavement, their faces contorted with a mixture of old trauma and explosive, unbridled rage.

But they didn't draw their swords. They didn't fire weapons. They didn't need to.

A young Northern boy, no older than ten, who was standing near a grocery stall, reached into a crate of imported human agricultural products that had arrived that morning. He pulled out a large, pale yellow, slightly bruised egg—an item that had once been an impossible luxury in the starving North—and hurled it with all his might across the street.

SPLAT.

The egg struck Thorne directly in the center of his forehead, the thick, yellow yolk bursting across his weathered skin and dripping down into his single, milky eye.

It was the definitive, historic catalyst.

Within seconds, the air above the central market square was completely filled with a torrential rain of rotten vegetables, stale bread, mud, and thousands of imported human eggs. The citizens Thorne had starved, the mothers he had robbed, and the vanguard soldiers he had betrayed systematically lined the streets, transforming his final royal parade into the most deeply humiliating, farcical moment in the history of the Northern territory.

"For my daughter!" an old man screamed, launching a soft, rotted tomato that exploded against Thorne's emaciated chest, staining his tattered rags in a brilliant, ironic red.

"Eat the human food, you coward!" a young vanguard soldier bellowed, throwing a handful of crushed cabbage directly into the ex-Alpha's face.

Thorne sat bound to the iron chair, his head thrashing wildly from side to side as he tried to escape the unrelenting barrage of public filth. The yolk ran down his crooked nose, his skeletal frame shivering violently not from the cold, but from the absolute, crushing weight of his complete insignificance. He wasn't being executed as a martyr; he wasn't being feared as a dark god. He was being treated like a public nuisance, a ridiculous, pathetic clown covered in breakfast food, paraded through a world that had completely forgotten how to be afraid of him.

"Look at me!" Thorne screamed into the roaring crowd, his voice high-pitched, wet, and completely broken as a piece of stale bread caught him in the jaw. "I am your King! I am the Alpha of the North! I am Thorne!"

But his voice was entirely drowned out by the bright, chaotic laughter of the children who were chasing the Cybertruck down the street, treating his absolute humiliation like a festival game. The tyrant who had ruled through terror had been defeated by the one thing his family's chemical formulas could never suppress: the complete, democratic mockery of a free people.

Rayder kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, a small, quiet smile touching his lips as the stainless-steel truck rolled smoothly through the rain of yolk, guiding the territory out of its long winter and into the bright, unbreakable dawn of the future.