Chapter 8 Blood and Broken Crowns
The silver blade sliced through my ribs before I even saw it coming. Pain exploded across my side, white-hot and vicious. I stumbled backward, my hand coming away slick with blood. So much blood.
Renna smiled, twirling the dagger between her fingers like it was a toy. "Oops. Did I cut too deep? My mistake."
"You're insane," Maya gasped, pressing her hands against my wound. Her palms came away crimson.
"No, darling. I'm practical." Renna's eyes were cold, empty. "Queens who don't know they're queens can have accidents. Tragic, really. The lost heir, found just moments before bleeding out in a garden."
I tried to stand straight, but the world was spinning. The scent of my own blood filled the air, metallic and wrong. Around us, I could hear growls, the guards shifting, responding to the smell of royal blood being spilled.
"You can't kill her," Ryder said, his voice deadly quiet. "Not now, not when the Council…"
"The Council will find a body and a very sad story," Renna interrupted. "Poor Sienna, driven mad by rejection, attacked the Luna in a jealous rage. I defended myself, naturally. What choice did I have?"
She raised the blade again, but this time Ryder moved. Fast. He grabbed her wrist, twisting until she dropped the dagger with a cry of pain.
"That's enough."
But Renna just laughed. "Oh, my darling husband. Still trying to be the hero? Even when it means exposing yourself completely?"
She looked directly at the guards, her voice carrying across the garden. "Tell me, gentlemen, what happens to an Alpha who can't shift? Who screams in agony every full moon instead of embracing his wolf?"
Ryder's face went ashen. "Renna, don't…"
"What happens to a leader who's more monster than man? Who transforms into something... else?"
The guards were listening now, their expressions changing from confusion to horror to disgust. I could see it in their faces, the moment they stopped seeing their Alpha and started seeing prey.
"You want to know what your precious leader becomes?" Renna's voice was silk and poison. "Show them, Ryder. Show them what the curse really did to you."
"What curse?" one of the guards demanded. "Alpha, what is she talking about?"
Ryder's hands were shaking. "It's not... I can control it."
"Can you?" Renna pulled a small vial from her pocket. The liquid inside was dark, almost black. "Because this is concentrated wolfsbane extract. Just a few drops in your morning coffee for the past month. Tell me, have you been feeling... different? More volatile? Less in control?"
My blood went cold. "You've been poisoning him?"
"Poisoning is such an ugly word. I prefer 'accelerating the inevitable.' The curse was already eating him alive. I just... sped up the process."
Ryder doubled over suddenly, his face contorting in agony. "No. Not now. Not here."
"Oh, but this is perfect timing," Renna cooed. "Look, everyone. Look at your Alpha."
The change started in his eyes. They went from silver to black to something that wasn't quite either. His body began to convulse, muscles rippling under his skin like there were things moving beneath it. Things that I wanted out.
"He doesn't become a wolf," Renna announced to the horrified crowd that was gathering. "The curse broke that part of him. Now he becomes something else. Something that hungers for more than just meat."
A sound came from Ryder's throat, part howl, part scream, part something that no human vocal cords should be able to make. His spine arched unnaturally, and I heard bones crack.
"He feeds on pain now," Renna continued conversationally, as if she was discussing the weather. "On fear. On the life force of others. That's why he could never touch you properly, Sienna. One moment of lost control and he would have drained you dry."
I tried to reach for him, but Maya held me back. "Don't," she whispered. "She's right. Look at him."
Ryder's transformation was nothing like the elegant shift of a normal werewolf. This was violent, wrong. His bones elongated at sickening angles. His skin stretched and tore, revealing something underneath that was neither human nor wolf.
Something that had too many teeth.
"The Council will be here soon," Zane said, his voice tight with fear. "They'll see this. They'll know."
"Exactly." Renna picked up the dagger again. "They'll see a cursed monster who lost control and killed his own people. Starting with the girl who threatened his mate."
She lunged at me again, but this time something intercepted her.
Maya intercepted her before she could get to me. The blade went into her stomach instead of my heart. She gasped, her eyes wide with shock and pain.
"Maya!" I caught her as she fell, her blood mixing with mine on the grass. "Why did you…"
"Because..." she coughed, specks of red on her lips. "Because queens... need protecting."
"No, no, no." I pressed my hands against her wound, but it was so deep, so wide. "You're going to be fine. You hear me? You're going to be fine."
But even as I said it, I could see the light fading from her eyes. The girl who'd shown me kindness in the darkness, who'd brought me bread and hope and truth, was dying in my arms.
And above us, Ryder's transformation was reaching its peak. The thing he was becoming let out a roar that shattered every window in the mansion. Several of the guards screamed and fled.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Renna said, wiping Maya's blood from her blade. "My plan is coming together perfectly. The Council will arrive to find a massacre. The cursed Alpha will be put down like the rabid dog he's become. And I'll be the sole survivor, the brave Luna who tried to save everyone."
She raised the dagger one more time, aiming for my heart.
But something was happening inside me. The royal blood Maya had spoken of, my wolf that had been dormant for so long, it was all waking up at once. Power coursed through my veins like liquid fire.
When Renna's blade came down, I caught it with my bare hand. The silver burned, hissed against my palm, but I held on. Blood ran down my arm, but I didn't let go.
"Impossible," Renna breathed. "You're not strong enough…"
"I'm a queen," I said, my voice echoing with power that came from somewhere deep and ancient. "And you just made a very big mistake."
I crushed the blade in my grip, the metal crumbling like paper. Renna stumbled backward, terror replacing the cold calculation in her eyes.
But before I could do anything else, before I could make her pay for Maya's blood, for Ryder's torture, for everything she'd done, the mansion doors burst open.
The Council had arrived. Seven of the most powerful Alphas in the territory stood in the doorway, their faces grim. They took in the scene, the blood, the dying girl in my arms, the monster that Ryder had become, the crushed blade at my feet.
"What is the meaning of this?" the lead Alpha demanded.
Renna immediately dropped to her knees, tears streaming down her face. "Thank the goddess you're here! She's gone mad! First she seduced my mate, then she attacked me, and when he tried to stop her, she somehow triggered his curse…"
"Lies," I snarled, but my voice was weak from blood loss.
"Look at her!" Renna pointed at me with a shaking hand. "Covered in blood, holding that poor girl's body. She's a monster!"
The Council Alphas exchanged glances. I could see doubt in their faces, confusion. All they saw was what Renna wanted them to see, a blood-soaked servant girl and a story that made perfect sense.
And behind them, Ryder's cursed form let out another inhuman shriek.
One of the Alphas drew his weapon. "Step away from the creature."
"No!" I struggled to my feet, still holding Maya's still form. "You don't understand. She's the one…"
"She's dangerous," Renna sobbed. "Please, you have to stop her before she kills again."
The Alpha raised his gun, loaded with silver bullets, but that's when I realized it. He was not aiming at Ryder. He was aiming at me.
"Wait," a new voice called from behind the Council.
An old man pushed through their ranks, clutching a briefcase and breathing hard. Harvey, the lawyer. But he looked like he'd been through hell, his clothes were singed, his face was bruised.
"Stop," he gasped. "You're making a terrible mistake. That girl... she's not the killer."
"Harvey," Renna's voice was sharp with panic. "How lovely that you survived the fire."
"Barely." His eyes were hard as flint. "Thanks to your assassins."
The Council leader frowned. "What are you talking about?"
Harvey opened his briefcase with shaking hands. "I have evidence. Documents. Proof that Luna Renna orchestrated everything. The fake marriage contracts, the poisoning, the frame job. All of it."
"Those are forgeries!" Renna shrieked.
"Are they?" Harvey pulled out a recording device. "Then explain this."
He pressed play.
Renna's voice filled the air, clear as day: "The real threat was always you... Did you think I didn't know about the curse?... I've been poisoning him for months... She'll die, and everyone will think she went mad..."
The Council Alphas went silent. Their weapons turned toward Renna.
But she just smiled that terrible, empty smile.
"You think you've won?" she whispered, her eyes never leaving mine. "Do you think this changes anything? I may be exposed, but I'm not done. Not even close."
She reached into her dress and pulled out a small device, a trigger of some kind.
"You see, I've had contingency plans for months. Explosives throughout the mansion. If I can't have my perfect ending..." Her finger hovered over the button. "Then no one gets a happy ending."
The Council Alphas raised their weapons, but Renna was already backing toward the edge of the garden, toward the woods beyond.
"Try to shoot me and I will detonate everything. The mansion, the servants still inside, all of it. Your choice, gentlemen. Let me walk away, or watch dozens of innocents burn."
She was at the tree line now, her smile vicious in the moonlight.
"This isn't over, Your Majesty," she called to me. "I know what you are now. And I know how to hurt you. Next time, I'll be ready."
And then she vanished into the darkness, leaving behind only her laughter and the promise of worse things to come.
In the silence that followed, Ryder's cursed form threw back its head and howled, a sound of such anguish that it seemed to tear the very air apart.
The lead Alpha looked at me, his expression grave. "Lady Sienna... Your Majesty... we have much to discuss."
But I barely heard him. I was staring at Maya's peaceful face, at Ryder's tortured form, at the darkness where Renna had disappeared.
I was a queen, apparently. A queen born from betrayal, crowned in blood, with an enemy who knew exactly how to destroy me still running free.
The game was far from over. And next time, I'd be ready too.