Chapter 218 Putting up a fight
Chapter 218: putting up a fight
Milo pov
Dead and suffocating Silence descended in the hall.
"Selene?? damons sister?"
My brain struggled to link the commander to the only person I know as selene.
For the first time since years I watched Millen's face transform. Shock rippled across her carefully constructed features… this time genuine, unguarded shock… followed immediately by something that looked almost like hurt. Betrayal. As if Selene's defection had cut her deeper than any blade could.
But then that vulnerability vanished like smoke, replaced by rage so cold and terrible it made the execution I had just witnessed look merciful by comparison.
"Impossible," Caroline breathed, her voice once stripped of its usual calculated composure. "Selene would never…she is loyal…yours"
"Apparently not," one of the Alphas muttered, though he kept his voice barely audible.
Millen moved faster than I thought possible. She was across the room in a heartbeat, her hand wrapped around the messenger's throat, lifting him off his knees with inhuman strength.
"Tell me everything," she snarled, her face inches from his, her eyes beginning to glow with her wolf's fury. "Every. Single. Detail. How did this happen? When? Where?"
The messenger choked, clawing at her grip. "The… the northern front. We were winning the war. Almost at the verge of winning, she had him under her sword. Then suddenly…” He gasped as her grip tightened. "Everything changed. She killed Kael first. Ripped out his throat before anyone could react. Then she turned on the others. Those who would not join her, she slaughtered. Those who hesitated, she gave one chance to swear allegiance to Alpha Damon or die."
"And how many took that chance?" Millen's voice was deadly soft now.
"Nearly half the forces, Your Majesty. She… she said things. About you. About what you have become. She called you a tyrant. A monster. Said she would see you dead before another innocent wolf suffered under your rule."
Millen released him so suddenly he crashed to the floor, gasping and clutching his throat. She stood perfectly still for a long moment, her back to the assembled room, her shoulders rigid with barely contained fury.
When she turned back around, her face was a mask of such cold calculation it made my blood freeze.
"How long ago did this happen?"
"Four hours, Your Majesty. I rode as fast as I could…"
"Four hours," Millen repeated softly. "Four hours for the news to reach me. Four hours for my perfect commander…my weapon… to turn traitor and spread poison through my ranks." She laughed, but it was a sound devoid of humor. "How efficient.”
Another messenger burst through the doors, this one even more panicked than the first. "Your Majesty! Army sighted on the northern road! Thousands of soldiers bearing unrighteous alliance colors! They are marching toward the fortress!.”
The throne room erupted into chaos.
Alphas shouting over each other. Council members scrambling for defensive positions. Guards rushing to their posts. The carefully maintained order dissolved into panic as the reality of the situation crashed down on everyone at once.
I tried to make out everything out of the whole chaos. But nothing made sense.
Selene betraying millen? Even killing Alpha kael? And now, D…damon…was coming…”
Millen stood perfectly still at the center of the storm, her face betraying nothing.
But I could see it. Could see the cracks forming in her armor. This was not just a military setback… This was a personal betrayal. Selene had been hers. It had been proof that Millen's methods worked, that fear and power could create absolute loyalty.
And now that loyalty had shattered, revealing it for the illusion it had always been.
"Your Majesty," one of the senior Alphas stepped forward, his voice urgent. "We need to mobilize every available force. If Damon and Selene…”
I could feel his voice crack under fear. The tension has increased a thousand times.
"I know what we need to do," Millen cut him off with icy precision. Her eyes swept across the assembled wolves, calculating, measuring, planning. "Send riders to every outpost. Recall all forces to the fortress. Prepare the defenses. And someone finds out how many of our soldiers are still loyal versus how many might turn the moment Selene offers them a choice."
She turned to Caroline, who had gone pale but still maintained her composure. "You wanted to prove your worth? Here is your chance. Take command of the eastern defenses. Show me you are more reliable than the commander I thought I could trust."
Caroline straightened, a flash of vicious pleasure crossing her face despite the circumstances. "It will be my honor, Your Majesty."
"And you," Millen's gaze landed on me, and what I saw there made my wolf whimper with instinctive terror. This was not the calculating queen anymore. This was something broken and furious and willing to burn the entire world down rather than admit defeat. "You think your mate is coming to rescue you? That Selene's betrayal means you are saved?"
She crossed to me in three long strides, each footfall echoing like a death knell. "Let me show you exactly what I think of rescue attempts."
She grabbed my face with bruising force, her nails digging into my cheeks. "Take him to the medical wing. Prepare him for immediate cesarean extraction. I want that baby rippled out before Damon reaches these walls."
Horror crashed over me like a tidal wave, drowning everything else. "No! It is too early… the baby cannot survive outside… you will kill us both…"
"Then you will die together," Millen said with terrible finality. "If I cannot have a weapon to use against your mate, then I will have a corpse to display on the battlements.”
"Please!" I fought with every ounce of strength I had, pulling against the chains until my wrists bled, until bones ground against iron. "Please, not the baby… take anything else… do anything else…"
But my pleading meant nothing. The guards grabbed me, started dragging me toward a side corridor that led away from the dungeons, toward the medical wing where nightmares were given flesh.
"Millen!" I screamed her name, abandoning all pretense of titles or formality. "Sister, please! I am begging you!"
She did not even look at me. She was already turning away, already issuing orders to her remaining commanders.
I was nothing to her. Just a problem to be solved. A loose end to be tied up before the real battle began.
She was going to take my baby…
As they dragged me from the throne room, I took one last look at Ella's body. At the blood pooling around her. At the price of Millen's mercy.
Something inside me changed at that moment. Something fundamental and irreversible. The part of me that had still hoped for peace, for reconciliation, for anything resembling humanity from my sister… it died with Ella on that cold marble floor.
And in its place, something else began to glow. Something darker. Something that had been growing since I watched Ella die,
Rage.
Pure, incandescent rage that burned away everything else… fear, hope, the instinct to submit that had been bred into me since birth. It all turned to ash in the face of this fury.
My wolf, Lior, roared in my mind with such force it felt like my skull would split open. And that power…that purple energy I had felt in the cave, that had exploded from me in moments of desperation… it chose to answer.
"NO!" The word tore from my throat with physical force.
Purple light erupted from my body like a bomb detonating. The guards holding me flew backward, crashing into stone walls with bone-shattering impact. My chains… thick iron that should have been unbreakable… shattered like glass, the pieces falling around me in a rain of metal shards.
For one perfect moment, I stood free in that corridor, power crackling around me like visible lightning, every nerve in my body singing with energy I did not understand but knew I would use.
The guards scrambled for their weapons. But I did not care. Let them come.
Let all of them come.
Then pain erupted at the base of my skull.
Someone had hit me. Hard.
The power that wanted to explode flickered like dying flames, The world tilted sideways. Sound became distant muffles, like I was underwater. I felt myself falling but could not seem to stop it.
The last thing I saw before darkness claimed me was Aldrich's face, twisted with something that looked almost like regret.
Then nothing.
Only darkness, and the distant, fading echo of Ella's scream remained.