It wasn’t the physical pain of the silver chains biting into his skin that haunted Herod in that mont, it was the echoing finality of his bloodline ending with him. The throne of the North, his legacy, would be left cold and empty. A crown with no head to wear it. Generations of strategy, manipulation, and cold, calculated ambition undone. Reduced to rubble in one night.
Herod looked at the couple moaning in front of him once more.
He could feel the love radiating off them. It was beautiful. Real. So real it made him ache.
Herod’s thoughts turned back. To her. To Edith.
Once upon a ti, he had loved too. Deeply. Madly. They had laughed. Whispered secrets. Danced.
But then she disappeared. Taken from him. And when she vanished, so did the last good thing in him. After that, there was only the void and he filled it with hate. Hate was easier than grief. Hate gave him purpose. But now, faced with this mont, this unbearable intimacy before him, he couldn’t help but wonder if hate had only ever been a crutch for the broken-hearted.
Ava’s soft moan broke through his thoughts.
"Now, Lucas."
Her legs wrapped tightly around him, her body arched in perfect surrender. And Lucas bit down gently into her neck, right beneath the full moon’s glow.
The mating.
Her skin shimred with otherworldly brilliance, glowing. The power surged from her and crashed directly into her mate. Lucas growled as if sothing ancient had awakened inside him. The room vibrated with the force of it.
That power had ant to be his.
That magic, that connection, that goddess-blessed destiny, it was supposed to flow into him. And yet here he was, the deposed king, chained at the foot of a royal bed, forced to watch what might have been.
The goddess, it seed, had a wicked sense of humor.
Lucas roared as climax and magic surged through him simultaneously.
"Fuck!!!!"
Ava chuckled, breathless but beaming, and wrapped her arms tightly around Lucas. "I love you, Alpha Lucas Raventhorn."
"You... rember?"
"I do," she whispered. "I rember everything."
Lucas’s laugh burst out of him. "God, I fucking love you too!" He pulled her into another kiss and for a brief mont, the war outside did not exist. Ti itself held its breath.
"We have to stop the war."
Lucas nodded, his forehead pressed to hers. "Will you do the honors, my Luna?"
She smiled. "It would be my pleasure."
He leaned in, kissed her forehead softly and rose from the bed, muscles still gleaming from passion and power. As he dressed, he turned toward Herod, now stiffly pretending not to be uncomfortable, despite clearly sitting in a puddle of his own broken pride.
Lucas smirked. "Like the view, Your Highness?"
Ava stepped out of the tent slowly, her fingers tugging at the ties of her dress as she adjusted it into place, her skin still tingling from the intimacy that had just sealed her fate and perhaps, saved them all. The night air brushed against her but it wasn’t the wind that sent a shiver down her spine.
It was power.
It pulsed through her veins. It was as if her soul had exhaled and whispered, Finally. She could feel Willow, her wolf stretching inside her mind, no longer quiet, no longer uncertain. They were in sync now. Perfectly fused.
And dear goddess, it felt delicious.
She blinked up at the full moon overhead, her hand drifting instinctively to the fresh mate mark on her neck, still warm, still pulsing. Her fingers brushed it gently, a soft gasp escaping her lips. The mont she touched it, her power flared, as though Lucas’s essence had sewn itself into her bloodstream, stitched into her bones.
"Okay," she whispered, mostly to herself. "That’s hot. Weird. But hot."
Her thoughts flickered to the baby nestled safely within her. Their baby. A grin tugged at her lips, and for one wild second, she wanted to spin, to dance, to scream and cry and collapse into the ground just to let the joy bleed out of her. But there was no ti. Not yet.
There was a war to end.
With reluctant grace, Ava steadied herself and let her feet carry her forward.
The castle gates lood ahead, and what lay beyond them looked like a scene straight out of a rabid fever dream. Wolves. Everywhere. Fur flying, teeth flashing, howls slicing through the air. A sea of snarling chaos. It was impossible to tell who belonged to whom. Northern coats mixed with Eastern bodies. It was a symphony of destruction and it was deafening.
Ava’s breath hitched, not in fear, but in sheer awe at what her people had endured. And what they were still willing to give.
She didn’t hesitate.
Closing her eyes for a mont, she reached deep inside herself, past the adrenaline, past the residual lust, past the maternal instincts and found it. That silver core of power. Her submission ability.
Now, it was an inferno.
The glow burst from her in a silver halo, soft yet blinding. Her skin shimred, her eyes lit, and when she opened her mouth, she didn’t shout. She didn’t need to.
"Enough."
The word didn’t just echo, it resonated. It slid into ears, wrapped around necks and dropped every wolf to the ground.
Wolves from the East were the first to lower their heads, pressing their snouts to the earth in perfect submission. The glow from Ava’s body was unmistakable. She was no longer a whisper in the wind. She was the storm that ca after..
Her power washed over them, commanding not with fear, but reverence. Loyalty.
And Ava? She stood there, hair tousled, cheeks flushed from both power and passion, glowing
She straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and addressed the army.
"The Alpha King has been defeated," Ava announced, her voice rising in a perfect harmony with Willow’s, the dual timbre a powerful echo that filled the courtyard and humd through every living creature within reach. The glow around her dimd slightly, but the authority it left behind still clung to her.
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