Chapter 10: The Weight of a Crown

I woke to the scent of pine and rain, and the crushing weight of a thousand eyes on my skin.

The pack clearing was filled to bursting. Warriors in battle leathers stood shoulder to shoulder, their faces grim masks of fear and resolve. Elders huddled near the sacred oak, their whispers a frantic buzz. And at the center of it all, standing on the raised dais of the Alpha’s stone, was Kael.

He looked like hell. His usually pristine shirt was untucked and stained with dirt, his jaw dark with stubble. Dark circles bruised the skin beneath his wolf-gold eyes, but they sharpened the moment they found me.

A collective gasp rippled through the crowd.

I looked down. My white gown was gone, replaced by simple, functional clothes—a leather tunic and trousers that were not my own. But that wasn’t what caused the gasp. It was my arms. The black thorns were gone, but the crescents on my wrists were no longer silver. They were bleeding, a slow, viscous black ichor that dripped onto the grass, sizzling where it landed.

*Luna.* Selene’s voice was a thread of pure agony. *He’s inside me. He’s… waking.*

Kael was striding toward me, shoving aside anyone in his path. He stopped a foot away, his chest heaving, his eyes scanning the black residue on my skin with naked terror.

“What did he do to you?” His voice was a ragged growl.

I lifted my chin, meeting his gaze. I felt nothing. A hollow coldness had settled in my chest, a lethal calm that was more terrifying than rage. “He gave me a choice.”

Kael flinched as if I’d struck him. “Luna, listen to me. I know what I did. I know the pain I caused you. The humiliation. The rejection in front of every wolf who swore to protect you.” His voice cracked. “I was a coward. I was so terrified of the prophecy, of losing my pack, that I lost the only thing that ever mattered.”

“You didn’t lose me, Kael,” I said, my voice flat. “You threw me away.”

A low growl of agreement rumbled through the gathered wolves. Heir to the Hollow King, I am. Your fear feeds me.

Kael took a shuddering breath. “The Hollow King is coming. He’s amassed an army of rogues and shadow beasts at our borders. They’ll be here by nightfall. He wants you, Luna. He wants to use your body as a vessel to consume this world. And he will, unless you stop him.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?” I asked, spreading my bleeding arms. “By forgiving the pack that scorned me? By fighting for the Alpha who rejected me?”

“Yes!” he roared, the sound echoing off the mountains. “Yes, Luna! Forgive me! I don’t deserve it, but the pack doesn’t deserve to burn for my sins. They were wrong to follow me. Wrong to shun you. But they are still your people. Your mother’s people.”

He dropped to his knees in the mud before me. The warriors gasped. The elders whispered frantically. An Alpha kneeling was an act of ultimate submission, a display of vulnerability no wolf had ever witnessed.

“I beg you, Luna,” he said, his voice raw and hushed. “Not for me. I will spend the rest of my life atoning for what I did. But fight for them. Fight for the little pups who have no idea what’s coming. Fight for the mothers who will lose their sons. Fight for the memory of your father, who died protecting this land.”

A sharp, searing pain lanced through my chest. The Hollow King’s presence surged, and the ichor on my arms began to writhe, forming grotesque, thorny veins that crawled toward my shoulders.

*Don’t listen,* he hissed, his voice a symphony of malice. *They scorned you. They cheered when you were cast out. Let me take you. Let me make them suffer. Let me give you the power to make them all bow.*

Images flooded my mind. The pack, burning. Kael, broken at my feet. The elders, weeping as their homes turned to ash. It was seductive. It was glorious. It was everything I had secretly wished for in the dark, tear-soaked nights in the forest.

But then another image surfaced. A blurry memory from my childhood. My father, laughing as he lifted me onto his shoulders, his voice warm as he said, *"A true leader doesn't rule with fear, my little moonbeam. She rules with sacrifice."*

The thorny veins stopped crawling.

I looked down at Kael’s tear-streaked face. I saw the fear, the regret, the desperate love he had never had the courage to voice. I saw a broken Alpha, willing to kneel in the dirt for his people.

And I saw the crescent moons on my wrists, bleeding black.

I closed my eyes. The Hollow King’s power was a raging ocean inside me, demanding to be unleashed. But beneath it, buried deep, was a tiny, flickering spark. A silver light. The light of the Moon Goddess.

I wasn’t her. Not fully. But maybe… maybe I could borrow her strength.

I opened my eyes. The black ichor was receding, shrinking back into the crescent moons, which began to glow with a fierce, blinding silver light.

“Get up, Alpha,” I said, my voice no longer hollow, but filled with a quiet, terrible power. “Get your warriors ready.”

Kael’s eyes widened with hope, with awe. “Luna…?”

I turned to face the dark horizon where storm clouds were gathering, unnatural and thick with malice. The ground trembled. A howl, ancient and filled with death, split the air.

“I will fight,” I said, the silver light from my wrists cascading over the pack, making the warriors’ eyes shine with renewed courage. “Not for you. Not for their forgiveness.”

I looked back at Kael, and a single tear traced a path down my cheek. “But for the little moonbeam who believed in a better world.”

Kael rose, his wolf surging to the surface. His eyes glowed gold with fierce, renewed purpose. “Then we fight together. And we win.”

But as he reached for my hand, the silver light in my wrists flickered, sputtered, and died. A cold laugh echoed in my skull, and I felt the Hollow King’s claws sink deep into my soul. My body went rigid, and my voice, when it spoke, was not my own.

“Oh, Alpha,” it crooned, a perfect mimicry of my voice laced with poison. “You should have remembered. A choice only matters… if there is still time to make it.”

And then the world shattered around us.