He Wanted Me As His Second Mate But I’m The Alpha King’s Luna Chapter 08
Elian
I laugh out loud. I can’t help it.
“Have I lost my mind? Give up being Luna Queen to run rogue with you and starve in the woods? Damon Ashford, you have wildly overestimated yourself.”
He shakes his head fast, voice thick.
“Selene, I’ve got a warrior’s training and every skill a mate could want. I’d never let you go hungry. You’re trapped in this stone den, warming the bed of a cold-blooded Alpha King you don’t love — that’s the real suffering. Why cling to a gilded cage? Come with me —”
“Ashford.”
Elian’s voice slides out of the shadows behind him. Flat. Quiet. The whole garden drops ten degrees.
“Trying to steal the Alpha King’s Luna right out from under his fangs. Bold male.”
“You’ve planned your escape down to the last detail. Did you plan for whether your head stays attached to your neck long enough to carry her off?”
Elian’s eyes have gone pure black — Alpha wolf, right at the edge of shifting. His whole face is drawn tight, the way it was the night of the Three Rogue Alpha Rebellion.
Damon shakes his head to toe. But he doesn’t back down. He presses his forehead to the stone.
“My King. Grant it. Let me take her.”
Elian’s fists clench so hard his knuckles crack. The silence stretches for one, two, three heartbeats.
Then he lifts his eyes to mine. His mouth curves in a smile that isn’t a smile at all.
“Luna. Do you need me to grant it too?”
I shake my head and give him a look that says he really should know better.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“There is one male in my heart. One. I want to grow old at your side, watch every moon rise over these palace walls, hunt every hill with you, and fill this palace with pups born of our blood.”
Elian’s face doesn’t move. I lift my paw to the Moon Goddess above.
“I swear on the Goddess herself — one mate, one heart, till my last breath. If I break this oath, may the moon strike me down where I stand.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. He fights the smile down.
“You wouldn’t dare break it.”
Damon’s head snaps up.
This is what I said to him. Word for word. The same oath I swore on my coming-of-age night.
Every syllable is a poisoned claw straight into his ribs.
He starts to laugh. Softly, then louder, tears sliding down his face.
“Selene. You’re only saying that because you’re afraid of him. His fangs. His throne.”
“If it was me sitting on the Alpha throne — you’d say those exact same words to me, wouldn’t you?”
Elian’s eyes flash — one clean flicker of an Alpha’s killing intent.
“Strip away my throne, and I’m still every inch above you.”
He glances at me. His voice softens just slightly.
“But you broke her. And that’s why she’s mine now.”
I can’t see Damon anymore. I can only see Elian.
All those seasons at my father’s pack lodge — I remember him now.
The quiet young heir who came to our pack for training. I only ever gave him a rushed bow and darted off to run the woods. Never once looked him in the face.
But he — he saw me.
The name I haven’t spoken since I was a pup slips out on its own.
“Runt.”
That’s what I called him back then. My childhood nickname for him. The one burned into the tail of that wooden pin.
Elian steps forward. Takes my paw. His palm is faintly damp — the only tell that the Alpha King of the entire wolf realm was.
“Selene. The wild lilies I planted for you last spring are in full bloom. Come see them with me.”
I curl my fingers into his.
“Yes.”
Damon collapses onto the stone. Tears cut tracks through the dust on his face.
Only now does he understand. He has lost me. Not for today. Not for this moon. Forever.
There is no love left in me for him. There isn’t even hatred anymore.
From this moon on, I am the most powerful female in the wolf realm. And I have every scrap of an Alpha King’s undivided heart.