Chapter 3 The Alpha King's Vow
The gates groaned open like a beast awakening.
The carriage rolled through, wheels crunching over gravel. Aria pressed closer to the window despite herself, breath catching as the world of the Dark Moon Court unfolded before her.
Black stone buildings rose on either side, their sharp lines softened by curling ivy and silver lanterns. Balconies wrapped around towers like crowns, draped with dark banners marked by the same eclipse sigil she’d seen on the carriage. Wolves patrolled the walls and courtyards—some fully shifted, others half, all watching with unnerving stillness.
No children. No laughter. No drunken singing like at the village tavern.
Just silence and discipline.
A kingdom of shadows.
The carriage slowed to a stop in a wide courtyard. Torches burned in iron sconces, their flames licking at the cold air. A line of warriors waited, ranks perfectly straight, their armor dark and deadly, their expressions carefully blank.
The door opened.
Aria flinched at the sudden rush of cold night air, but the hand that appeared in front of her didn’t belong to a guard.
It was Roman’s.
His black glove caught the lantern light as he held his hand out, palm up—an offer, not a command.
For a heartbeat, she just stared.
Heat prickled under her skin where she imagined his touch would land. Her wolf pushed against her ribs, a strange, aching urgency in its movements.
Mate, it whispered. Ours.
Aria swallowed hard, hating the way the bond tugged at her, the way her fingers trembled as she placed her hand in his.
His grip closed around hers—firm, steady, not cruel. A jolt shot up her arm, like electricity wrapped in moonlight. Roman’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, as if he’d felt it too.
He helped her down.
The warriors’ eyes followed her—not openly hostile, not welcoming either. Curious. Measured.
And something else.
Fear.
Not of her.
Of what she meant.
“Bow,” one of the guards muttered under his breath, but they already had. Not deeply, not the way one would kneel to a queen, but enough that the air shifted around her, thick with an unspoken acknowledgment.
They knew she wasn’t ordinary.
She wished she could be.
Roman released her hand the moment her feet touched the stone, as if he’d held on a second too long already. “You will not be harmed here,” he said quietly, his voice for her alone. “Remember that.”
She wasn’t sure whether it was a reassurance or a warning.
“What am I here, exactly?” she asked, chin lifting despite the tremor in her chest. “A prisoner? A guest? A weapon?”
His eyes met hers, storm-grey in the torchlight. “That depends on you.”
He didn’t give her any more than that.
Of course he didn’t.
He turned away, gesturing for her to follow as he strode toward the wide stairway leading into the central tower. The warriors parted like water before him, every movement precise, drilled, seamless.
Aria followed, her steps echoing on the stone.
As they entered the tower, the heavy doors swung open without a creak. The air inside was cooler, tinged with the faint scents of parchment, steel, and wild herbs. Flickering wall sconces cast warm light over vaulted ceilings and wide corridors lined with dark tapestries depicting wolves under different phases of the moon.
Her gaze caught on one in particular—a woman with silver eyes and a crown of twisted antlers, standing before a burning throne.
A Luna Queen.
Her chest squeezed.
Roman noticed where she was looking, his expression unreadable. “That was Queen Elaria,” he said briefly. “The last Luna of the Eclipse Bloodline before the massacre.”
Aria swallowed. “What happened to her?”
He walked on. “She believed the prophecy could be twisted to save the man she loved,” he said. “Instead, it destroyed them both.”
The words dropped into the silence like stones into deep water.
She didn’t ask more.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
They climbed a short flight of stairs and stopped before a pair of intricately carved wooden doors. Two guards stood on either side, heads bowed. At a nod from Roman, they opened the doors, revealing a wide room lit by a crystal chandelier and softer lamplight.
A private hall. Not a throne room. No crown. No council.
Yet.
“Inside,” Roman said.
Aria hesitated on the threshold. “If I step in,” she murmured, “I won’t be allowed to leave, will I?”
Something like regret flickered behind his eyes. Just for a second.
“You crossed that line the moment you opened your eyes under the Blood Eclipse,” he replied.
It wasn’t the answer she’d wanted.
But it was the truth.
She stepped inside.
The room was… unexpectedly warm. A long table with maps spread out on it, a fireplace crackling softly at one end, shelves lined with books and bottles and neatly arranged reports. A large window dominated one wall, looking out over the dark expanse of the forest they’d just driven through.
Roman entered after her, the doors closing with a soft thud.
For the first time since the forest, they were alone.
Aria stood rigidly in the center of the room, unsure what to do with her hands, her breath, her entire existence. Roman shrugged off his coat with a smooth motion, draping it over the back of a nearby chair.
Without the heavy fabric, he seemed somehow… sharper. Broader shoulders, the dark shirt stretched over solid muscle, the lines of power in his body no longer obscured.
Her treacherous heart stuttered.
She hated that it did.
Roman moved to the table, bracing his hands on its surface as he looked down at the maps, though she had the distinct feeling he wasn’t really seeing them.
“The Council will want to see you,” he said. “Soon.”
Cold slid down her spine. “Council?”
“The heads of the northern packs,” he said. “They don’t trust easily. They trust destiny even less.”
“Then why bring me here?” she demanded, frustration breaking through her fear. “If they’re going to try to kill me the moment they sense what I am—”
“They won’t,” he said sharply.
She flinched.
He closed his eyes briefly, as if reining in something feral.
When he opened them again, his voice was quieter. “They won’t touch you. Not while you’re under my protection.”
She stared at him.
It was there again. That thin thread of something she couldn’t quite name, buried beneath his control.
“Why?” she whispered. “You don’t even want me here. I can feel it. You’re… angry that I exist.”
His jaw flexed. “I’m not angry that you exist.”
He looked away, gaze sliding toward the window, toward the red-tinged moon hanging low over the treetops.
“I am angry,” he said slowly, “that the moon chose now to wake you.”
Aria’s heart twisted. “Because of the prophecy?”
“Because of everything,” he muttered.
An impulse stirred in her.
“Tell me,” she said quietly. “What does it say? This prophecy people keep blaming me for.”
Roman’s fingers tightened on the edge of the table. The lamplight carved shadows into the strong planes of his face, making him look even more like a carved statue brought reluctantly to life.
“Not now,” he said.
“When?” Her voice rose, raw. “When the Council decides if I’m useful enough to live? When the prophecy decides I’ve done my part?”
“Aria.” Her name in his mouth was a command and a plea all at once. “If I feed you every horror story at once, you’ll drown before you grow gills.”
She blinked. His metaphor caught her off guard, softening something that had been clenched too tight inside her chest.
He exhaled slowly.
“I will tell you,” he said. “Piece by piece. For now, all you need to understand is this: there are many who would kill for the power in your blood. There are others who would kill to ensure that power never wakes.”
“And you?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper. “Which are you?”
His gaze found hers.
The mate-bond flared between them, hot and bright, every breath suddenly too loud, the silence between heartbeats filled with electricity. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t sweet. It was a collision of two storms that had spent their entire lives trying not to exist.
“I am the one,” Roman said softly, “who will make sure neither of those things happen.”
She swallowed. “That sounds a lot like another kind of prison.”
He gave a humorless phantom of a smile. “Better a living prison than a grave.”
She hated that a part of her understood.
A knock shattered the thickening tension between them.
Roman straightened, his face shuttering as the door cracked open. A man stepped in—tall, dark-haired, eyes a lighter grey than Roman’s, with a network of faint scars tracing his left cheek.
“Your Majesty,” he said, bowing his head. His gaze flicked to Aria for a fraction of a second, assessing, weighing, but he said nothing about her.
“Kael,” Roman acknowledged. “Report.”
“The Council has convened,” Kael said. “They heard the bells. They know the Blood Eclipse marked something.” His eyes slid to Aria again, just briefly. “They’re demanding an audience.”
“Of course they are,” Roman muttered.
Aria’s palms went slick. “They… know I’m here?”
Kael didn’t answer her directly. Protocol, she realised.
“She is under my protection,” Roman said, his voice turning cold iron. “Make that clear to anyone with a blade and more fear than sense.”
Kael’s gaze sharpened. He bowed again, deeper this time. “Yes, Alpha.”
He turned to leave.
“Wait.” Roman’s voice stopped him. “Prepare the West Wing guest chambers. Have a guard posted at her door. No one enters without my explicit order.”
Aria stared. “Guest chambers?”
Roman didn’t look at her. “You are not going to a cell, Aria.”
Her throat felt too tight for words.
Kael hesitated at the door. “And the Council, my king? What should I tell them?”
Roman’s shoulders squared. When he spoke, his words were slow, deliberate. A vow forming in the air.
“Tell them,” he said, “that the Lost Luna has been found. That she belongs to the North now. And that any hand raised against her will be treated as treason against the crown.”
The room seemed to inhale.
Even Kael’s composure slipped for a heartbeat. His eyes flicked between Roman and Aria, understanding sparking behind them.
“Yes, Alpha King,” he said quietly. “I’ll inform them.”
The door closed behind him.
Silence flooded back in.
Aria stared at Roman’s back, her mind spinning. “You just threatened your own Council for me.”
He didn’t turn around. “I warned them,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”
“Why?” she pressed. “You don’t want a mate. You don’t want a prophecy. You don’t want me here. And yet you just—”
His hands clenched at his sides.
Slowly, he turned to face her.
“I made a vow once,” he said quietly. Gone was the detached Alpha King. For a brief, fragile moment, he seemed almost human. “On the night they burned the last Luna, I swore that if the moon ever tried to use another one as its sacrificial lamb… I would stand between her and the fire.”
Her breath hitched.
“Even if it kills you?” she asked.
His lips curved in a shadow of a grim smile. “Especially if it kills me.”
The room tilted.
Her wolf pushed forward, drawn to the crack in his armor, to the rawness he clearly didn’t mean to show her. The bond between them pulsed again, stronger this time, filled with something dark and aching that wasn’t quite hatred and wasn’t anywhere close to love.
“You don’t even know me,” Aria whispered.
Roman’s eyes held hers, unblinking. “I don’t need to know you to keep you alive.”
He stepped back, closing the distance he’d opened with his vulnerability. The Alpha King returned, cold and controlled.
“Rest,” he said. “Eat. Tomorrow, you face the Council.”
Her stomach turned to ice. “Alone?”
His gaze hardened. “You are never alone here, whether you want to be or not.”
He moved toward the door, then paused with his hand on the handle.
Without looking back, he spoke one last time.
“And Aria—” His voice dropped, roughened. “No matter what they say tomorrow, no matter what they call you… remember this: you are under my protection. And I do not break my vows.”
The door opened.
He left her standing in the center of the room—heart racing, veins glowing faintly silver under her skin—wrapped in the echo of a promise she hadn’t asked for…
And wasn’t sure she trusted.
But tomorrow, the Council would judge her.
And destiny, it seemed, was just getting started.