A Christmas Luna and Her Big Bad Wolf

4

Royal Alpha Roar.

“Get my son out of her filthy, blood-stained hands!”

By sworn aggravation, a command tears from my throat and the nanny grabs my son to safety.

“It’s not what you think—” Morgan’s daughter begins, but her excuses die the moment I close the distance. My wicked hand snaps to her neck like a vice.

She chokes on her own breath.

I squeeze—not with the full force that could end her, not even half of what I’m capable of—but just enough to remind her that I hold the pulse of her fragile life in my bloody hands. My irises have shifted and she begins to feel a cold trepidation. She claws at my hand but I don’t release her. Instead, I press forward, forcing her stumbling feet to follow as I drag her like the insolent trespasser she is.

“You dared to touch my son? Stripped the walls of his mother’s memory? With what authority, you low-born blood? You are nothing. A title you wear only because I allow it, not because you deserve it.” I hiss.

“Roar!”

Linda—my mother voices but I don’t even glance her way. Her heels are clicking like a metronome of disapproval. She’s fresh off a plane from Paris, no doubt flying back into the States once she heard about my bond to this... mistake.

“Have you lost your mind?!”

She demands. “You bonded a new Luna and now you’re trying to kill her on her first day?”

“Let her breathe, Roar!” My second brother, Thor, steps in, prying my hand from her neck. Serayah clutches her throat and coughs as air finally floods back into her lungs.

“What the hell is going on here?” Bruce, the eldest of us, strolls in.

Serayah coughs. I look at her in annoyance and she quickly clamps a hand over her mouth.

“I thought the rumours were a joke! But look at that…she bears an intimate bond mark already?” Rita, Thor’s wife, chimes from the sidelines. They got married only a few months ago.

“Enough!” I say for their bickering is insufferable. I turn and to my own insufferable anger, the nanny is still at the scene with my son.

“Get him out of here, now!” I order.

She disappears like the wind.

“Roar, for the moons’ sake—” my mother tries again, but I raise a hand, silencing her with a look.

“Listen closely, all of you, because I won’t repeat myself.” I snarl, looking at everyone before landing my gaze on her. Serayah. The source of this chaos.

“This girl,” I point to her. “is not Royal Luna. Not in my eyes, not in this house. She is here for one reason and one reason only: to pay for her father’s crime. She will not touch my son. She will not breathe in places that matter to me. She exists here solely as a reminder of what happens when betrayal strikes. And from this moment forward, if any of you see us together—pretend you didn’t.”

My words settle like frost on every surface and then, I turn to Thor. “And neither should you interfere when I’m punishing her.”

“Do you even hear yourself?” A gruff voice comes through. It’s my uncle, Jeremiah—the man who trained me before and after I took over regency according to my father’s wishes. I’ve always regarded him as a father figure, but ever since Quinn’s death, I do not care for advice in this season.

If I were here, this disaster would’ve never happened. Why didn’t anyone inform me before he made such a reckless decision?” Jeremiah directs his question at the family as if I am not Royal Alpha—like I’m not a sovereign on my own. I sneer.

“We weren’t here! Not me, not his brothers—except Mason, his beta, of course. And we all know he’d follow his Alpha into the depths of hell if commanded. But the rest of us? We’ve barely even seen the girl.” My mother scowls at me and then, she lands on Serayah who is trembling and pale as a ghost. She’s shaking like a leaf in a storm, utterly lost in the chaos she’s stumbled into. She doesn’t yet understand that in this house, this family, we’re all pieces on a chessboard. And only the powerful survive. By now, she must know she holds no power here. None.

“Morgan’s daughter? That’s her, isn’t it?” Bruce, my eldest brother shakes his head in disbelief. “You imprison her father, and then the Moon Goddess has the audacity to make her your second chance mate. The irony is almost poetic!”

“There’s nothing poetic about this mess! What rank does she even hold in society? What’s her family’s standing?” Linda blurts.

“You know…” Rita narrows at Serayah, “she looks oddly familiar.”

She takes out her phone and begins to type furiously, tapping against the glass. Then, with a triumphant smirk, she holds her phone up to Serayah.

“You’re in this i********: picture with Queen, aren’t you?”

Serayah blinks and continues to be pale.

Before she can say a word, I snatch it from Rita and stare at it myself. The screen displays Quinn’s social media page, the date stamped 2019—the year she graduated from college, a bit before she became Royal Luna. I’ve seen this photo before but I never paid attention to the other person in it.

I glance at Serayah’s face, then back at the phone. My heart ticks.

“Why are you in this picture?”

Oh, neptunes! I pray she knows that there is venom in my voice.

Serayah stammers, avoiding my eyes like a coward. “Quinn—Quinn…she and I…”

“She and you what!?”

“Give me a damn answer!”

“She—she—she and I.” she jumps and stutters again. I feel my pulse pounding in my temple.

I run a hand over my face, seething. “Can you not manage an intelligent sentence?”

“You’re scaring her, Roar!”

Thor steps between us again, his protective stance is only infuriating me.

"Get out from between us!”

This time, I pray he is the one that senses the venom in my voice!

"If you continue to talk to her like this—"

“Thor, she is his mate. Just stay out of their argument.” his wife interjects.

“Thor, stay out of it! My assistant told me she’s a phytotherapist, so clearly, she’s intelligent. And she agreed to be mated to Roar, did she not?” Linda, my dearest mother makes a point.

“All of you—” My uncle attempts to intervene but I’ve heard enough.

I lunge forward, grabbing Serayah with one hand. She’s so light it feels like lifting an empty doll and whether she stumbles or not is of no concern to me. Her weight—or lack of it—is the least of my problems.

Ignoring the gasps and murmurs of my family behind me, I drag her away from their chatter, their judgment and their meddling. My strides are long as I pull her toward one of the empty walls where Quinn’s pictures used to hang. The starkness of it, the absence of her, is an insult that burns anew.

I stop and shove her back against the wall—not enough to hurt her, but enough to make her stay in place.

“Who are you to Quinn?” I demand in calm.

From her tear-streaked, reddened eyes—a kind of anguish that might move a softer soul pours out, but not me. No matter how many, her tears are unremarkable, her trembling lips is nothing but a futile attempt at mercy. Yet, when those tears touch the curve of her lips, something in my core tightens—a sensation I loathe, one I will bury with cold resolve.

“She was... she was…”

Her hands shake as if her body itself is rejecting the words she needs to say. She takes forever, stumbling over every syllable, and my patience—what little there is of it—snaps.

I slam my fist into the wall next to her—a thunderous crack. She flinches, eyes shut in a pathetic attempt to shield herself from me.

“Friend. She was my... my best friend!”

She squeals softly, a sound that pulls at the cursed bond tethered inside me, tightening like a noose. But I lock it down. Had I never marked her, Perilous wouldn’t be so damn alert to her every noise, her every breath.

“Quinn never spoke about a Serayah to me! Why are you lying?”

“I—I’m not ly—lying,” she stammers, sniffing through her tears. She can’t even bring herself to look at me.

“Not lying?” I growl. “Then explain this to me. If there’s even a shred of truth to what you’re saying, why—why would you, her so-called best friend, be so quick to pull down her pictures from the wall of her husband’s castle!?”

Her head snaps up.

“I didn’t mean to…” she pleads. “I swear, I didn’t mean—”

“Riva!” I roar, stepping back from the suffocating closeness between Serayah and me.

“Royal Alpha Roar…” Serayah’s voice comes soft and timid, as she wipes at her cheeks. She’s trying to say something, something that won’t wash off the fact that she is a terrible person, just like her damn father who doesn’t take responsibility for Quinn’s death.

“She is to fix every single piece of Quinn’s back on these walls. One after the other,” I command.

“But… there are at least one hundred and fifty pictures in this hall alone, sir.” Riva dares to comment.

I turn to her and she steps back instinctively.

“Are you f*****g stupid?” I hiss.

“Yes, sir.” Riva immediately bows her head.

“She is to receive no help from the housekeepers. None.” I shift my focus to Serayah, letting the frost in my eyes meet her teary gaze.

“And when you’re done, you report back to me.”