Rejected by the Alpha, Chosen by the Moon

"You are weak. And I allow it."

She laughed, and the chamber laughed with her, its hollow acoustics catching the sound and twisting it into something wrong.

"But weakness isn't the issue," she breathed. Her hand slithered along his lips, tracing the edge of him like a predator admiring prey.

"So long as we stand together… no Elder, no ancient fossil wrapped in power and dust can remove you."

Her fingers dipped between his lips, slow and deliberate, slick with heat and tension. He tasted of ash and unspoken rage.

"You turned them against me," she whispered.

Then, softer, lethal: "Just like your father did."

His father's name, one no one dared speak, hung between them like a corpse on a noose.

Kael's restraint shattered.

The wall cracked. Not from the impact.

From the roar that tore out of him, half fury, half grief, as he slammed her into the stone.

Her cry tore from her throat, sharp and involuntary, echoing before the silence devoured it.

Then, his mouth crashed into hers.

Not a kiss. A claim.

"You think I don't see what you've done?" Kael snarled against her lips, his voice a blade between them. "The elders who turned against us, their families don't just disappear by accident."

Selena's breath hitched not in fear, but in dark satisfaction.

"No," she purred, nails digging into his shoulders. "They disappear by design."

A flicker of something passed through Kael's gaze, not guilt, but recognition. A heartbeat of hesitation. Then, the hardening. He had allowed it. Maybe even ordered it.

"Fear is the only language they understand," she whispered, her lips brushing his like a lover's confession. "And now? They'll remember what happens when they defy us."

His grip tightened. Not in denial. In agreement.

Then, he kissed her again, brutal, possessive, sealing the truth between them like a blood oath.

Again. Again. Unrelenting. His lips bruised hers, desperate, angry, starved, as if he hadn't tasted anything but vengeance for a century.

He kissed her like she was both poison and cure. And she took it, fed it, matched it.

Cloth tore, dress split down her side. The sound was sharp, obscene in the quiet.

The room trembled with them.

"Y…e…s," Selena breathed, her voice caught between a sigh and a growl, cracking like kindling beneath a wildfire. "This… this is how I want them to feel."

The words didn't simply echo in Kael's ears, they possessed him. They slithered into the burning fractures in his soul and gave his rage shape, gave it purpose.

Her claws, once elegant, now savage, dragged down his back, tearing through fabric, through flesh, branding him with trails of fire.

He didn't flinch. He welcomed the pain like an old god awakening to blood rites.

Selena arched beneath him, spine bowing like a drawn blade. A sharp breath escaped her lips, not a moan, not a scream, but something otherworldly.

Like her soul had cracked open and spilled into the room, naked and defiant.

"You are," she gasped, eyes gleaming like twin eclipses, "and must always be the Alpha whose voice breathes life into the bones of the dead."

Every word was a lash across his pride, and a balm to his hunger.

Kael moved with brutal rhythm, each motion a war drum beat against the dark stone.

The chamber bore the scars: claw marks etched into the wall, cracks webbing out from where her spine met stone. Dust trembled from the ceiling.

Shadows flinched from the violence of their union.

He leaned into her closer, deeper, until there was no room left between them, no line separating anger from desire, pain from pleasure, dominance from surrender.

"Yes," she whispered, her voice shaking, aching with both warmth and something else, grief. "I love it… this way."

Blood soaked through the torn remains of Kael's robe, trailing down his spine. Her claws had carved him open, but his mind was far from flesh.

It was lost in her, her scent, her breath, the heat radiating from her skin.

His pace faltered, slowed, not from weakness, but from the weight of something heavier. Something final.

He exhaled sharply, head bowed, as if bracing for the storm after the silence.

She shuddered beneath him.

When he finally drew away, the silence choked them. Thick with sweat, blood, and the bitter truth:

She'd won.

Not just his body.

His rage, sharpened now, a weapon she had forged.

Kael stared at the claw marks raked down his chest. Not wounds. Brands.

And Selena? She was already smiling. Like she'd known how it would end.

Like she'd planned it.

Her claws didn't release him. They tightened, gouging deeper until pale glimmers of raw skin shone through, glowing faintly in the torchlight.

Now," Selena murmured, licking Kael's blood from her claws, "Now, we remind them whose fangs draw blood… and whose venom leaves no graves to mourn."

Then she vanished, leaving Kael alone with the wreckage.

The cracked wall. The blood smeared on stone. The taste of her still on his tongue.

And the creeping certainty: this wasn't passion.

It was a war cry.

Selena's whisper cut through the aftermath: "Send them."

Kael didn't hesitate. A flick of his wrist, and the order spread through the Blackthorn Fangs, his most lethal hunters, dispatched into the night.

Their mission? To hook Lyra's heart on a spike, and mount Ciran's head on the gates.

The night they came, Lyra didn't stir.

Moonlight bled through the window, painting the floor silver. Outside, the wind hissed through the pines, a sound Ciran knew too well.

Assassins.

He was at the door before the first shadow crossed the threshold. At first it seemed to be the movement of the torches, but then, twin daggers gleamed, their runes pulsing like a second heartbeat.

They moved like ghosts.

No insignias.

No war cries.

Just six wolves in nightshade armor, claws dripping wolfsbane.

Selena's elite.

Ciran's lips peeled back in a silent snarl. "You still dare touch her after all that'd happened?"

He didn't wait.

The first died mid-lunge, throat slit. Blood sprayed the walls.

Claws raked his ribs. Fangs grazed his neck. He fought like a demon unleashed, blades carving crimson through the dark.

But their number grew with every strike.

Then, a whistle cut through the fray.

Two archers lurked in the courtyard, bows drawn. Arrows tipped with paralytic wolfsbane, which gleamed bright as the moon's light fell on its tip.

He saw the arrows streaking toward him, but bodies blocked his path. But he didn't pause nor stop, Ciran jumped straight to the direction it was leaning to.

The arrow struck his shoulder, venom searing like liquid fire. His vision blurred instantly. Muscles locked.