The Incredible Queen Luna (Reading Sample)

Chapter 1

This is a short reading sample for the book The Incredible Queen Luna.

The completed book is available for you to read free on A.m.a.z.o.n K.U or to purchase for 4.99 $ if you are not a K.U member.

Before you read it, please keep in mind: This is a nontypical werewolf book where the female lead is 25, and the male lead is 18. The female lead is an independent character. She will NOT devote her life to please the male lead, but explore her own growth. Do NOT read this book if you cannot accept such a conception. Thank you for your cooperation.

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Not until the abrupt pain had suddenly numbed all her senses did Leona realize what had just happened to her.

A sword, silver, sharp, and cold, had run through her heart from her back. And in front of her stood her husband, Austin, smiling at her, in his glorious uniform for the kingdom’s coronation tonight, holding a glass of red wine in his left hand.

The moon was really bright outside. Everything in the sitting room could be seen clearly though without lights.

Just a second ago, he walked up to her at the cold fireplace with that glass of red wine, and said, “You are being paranoid, dear. Nobody is plotting anything behind your back. Here, have a drink.”

Leona sighed and reached out for the wine. That’s when that sword suddenly pierced through her.

Her body went paralyzed before she reached the wine. Hand fixed in the air. Disbelief and astonishment abruptly grabbed her. She stared at her husband, dumbfounded, and wasn’t able to understand.

“Aye, aye, it seems like you won’t need it, anyway.” He just smiled at her and then lifted that crystal glass to his curled lips.

Her blood spurted across his chiseled face. It slowly dripped to his mouth corner. Austin didn’t let himself be bothered by that. He just drank it smoothly, along with that glass of red wine.

Leona could just hear the torrent of her blood running out of her heart. It took her some time to come to the fact that her husband had just murdered her. Or, he had been planning it all the time. She was just too blind to see it.

“Why?”

She tried to ask, but the vitality inside her had already been drained dry. Her body fell straight onto the floor. She didn’t even feel the tiniest pain when her face smashed on the carpet.

The sword was pulled out from her back along with her falling under the gravity effect. Leona felt an empty hole in her heart, shivering as her body turned cold. The red carpet beneath her was soaked to deep crimson, making her feel both slimy and wet. She was supposed to heal from wounds like that. But it didn’t happen. Leona then knew that the sword was poisoned elaborately. This was the end of her. There was nothing she could do with it.

“That was fast,” she heard Austin commenting rather unpleasantly above her head. “I was expecting to have a small talk with her.”

It was strange. Even though she was already dead, she could still hear him.

She then heard another man in the room reply to Austin. The man who had just pierced her with that sword, and the one she didn’t even realize existed in the room. His voice was dry. “You’ve gotten what you wanted,” he said.

Leona recognized that voice. It was the man she trusted most, her best friend, best assistant, and her Beta, Felix, a werecat she once rescued from the slave camp.

He had been following her since she was 14. That was 11 years of trust and reliance, and now it all went to nothing.

She felt bitterness filling her broken heart, not even sadness or anger.

Austin kicked her shoulder and flipped her over. Leona surprisingly found that she still held her visions. The carved ceiling of the luxurious sitting room, the cold moonlight which was sad but bright, Austin’s snooty face with a satisfied smile, and Felix’s remorseful eyes were all reflected at the bottom of her sight. For a moment, Leona even thought that she was still alive.

But her pupils had dilated. Her breath had disappeared. There were no heartbeats inside her body anymore. She was definitely dead. And Austin knew that.

“Get rid of her body and come to the ceremony,” he ordered in an exceptionally cruel tone, placing his hand on Felix’s shoulder. “It won’t be a whole ceremony without the Queen’s best hand.”

Felix replied to him with nothing, just kept his head lowered. Eyes fixed on her. Austin then patted his shoulder and went out of the sitting room. He needed to clean Leona’s blood off his face before the ceremony started. His footsteps soon disappeared. Leona saw Felix kneel beside her. He stared at her bloodless face with his sad eyes and then reached his hand into his pocket.

Leona saw him taking out a small crystal bottle with a kind of dark green potion inside. He held the bottle up above her head, unscrewed the lid. And then, he tilted it a bit and poured the potion on her.

Leona felt something cold drip onto her cheek first, and then, the piercing pain made her bones shiver. She couldn’t really tell if she was feeling it psychically or purely mentally because she was already dead. But she didn't even move her eyelashes when the potion crawled under her skin.

It was acid, a very strong kind. Leona knew it from the greasy noise that occurred when it burned through her flesh. The scorched odor generated along it soon permeated the air. Leona had never thought that one day she would emit that kind of smell. And she surely had never expected her husband could be so meticulous with murder.

They were destroying her body so that no one could ever know that she was already dead. That was to say, no one would ever find that she was murdered by the one she shared her bed with. And no one could ever get revenge for her by convicting their crime.

How cruel. And how shrewd.

Leona had always known Austin had ambitions. She just never thought he would go so far to achieve it.

The stinky odor emitted from her scorched skin almost choked her. Leona sighed, trying to close her eyes, but couldn’t. She didn’t even have much strength left to feel rage or sad.

But Felix stopped pouring the potion after the initial drop. He froze his motions and stared at her.

Leona was an extremely beautiful woman, with snow-like long hair and a pair of fascinating purple eyes. She died with her eyes wide open. But from his position, she looked so serene in that gesture, as if a splendid sculpture. That drop of potion had imprinted a horrible scar on her left cheek from underneath her cheekbone to her ear. It was supposed to disfigure her to be the most hideous monster, but somehow it made her even more beautiful, and sad under the moonlight.

Felix sighed. He put that potion away and took off his coat to cover her face.

Their plan was scrupulous. It was necessary for him to destroy her body so no one would find out their crime. But Felix had just found that he couldn't do it.

Leona was once the light of his life. 11 years ago, when he was left in that stinky cage in the fighting pit, waiting to rot, it was she who kindly offered her hand to him.

During the past years, they worked, fought, and went to the battlefields together. There were countless happy memories between them, though nothing romantic. Leona was the best warrior in the kingdom and the most valuable princess. He was just a lousy werecat. She had never treated him more than a trustworthy friend, an excellent co-worker. But he had never stopped loving her. Though, in the end, he chose to kill her...

Felix sighed, and quickly swept those messy thoughts off his mind. He then pulled up the hand-knitted carpet beside the fireplace to wrap Leona’s dead body inside.

Leona’s blood had already run dry. No need to worry about leaving traces behind. Felix carried that roll of carpet on his shoulder, then went out from the side door.

He lived in the castle as Leona’s closest assistant, knowing every secret path here. He took a covert stair and went down to the kingdom’s garden behind the castle. At the exit of it, two gardeners were waiting to dispose of whatever was left of Leona for him.

Leona didn’t know about Felix’s plan. But she figured out he was going to bury or burn her.

When she was wrapped inside that carpet, her vision was blocked. The bloody redness was the only thing she could see. Still, she heard the cheering from the main hall getting louder and louder. It was her warriors and her people calling her name passionately as congratulations on her upcoming coronation.

Tonight, she was supposed to take over the kingdom officially and be the newly crowned Supreme Queen.

Now she was dead, or, disappeared more specifically. The kingdom’s throne would fall to Austin. And he, a normal human she once married, would become the sole king of this broad supernatural territory.

How ambitious, and how impressive.

Leona wondered if Austin had been planning all of these before they even met.

The path led to the backdoor of the garden was paved with polished slabstone with blooming flowers on both sides. Leona was never a fan of flowers. She was more of a sword and gun person. But tonight, when Felix carried her through the path to her final end, she felt glad to have flowers accompany her.

She had seen enough betrayals and hate in her life, and there was no way Felix would give her a proper funeral. It was nice to know that at the last moment of her life, there was something beautiful beside her.

The backdoor of the garden was just a length of white fence which was recently painted. Outside it in the woods stood two middle-aged men waiting beside their old pickup truck.

About half an hour ago, Felix called them and said a maid of the future Queen died of illness. It would bring bad luck to the Queen’s coronation. He needed them to bury the maid’s dead body without anyone noticing it.

“Don’t look at her face.” After placing that roll of carpet onto the truck, the Beta of the Kingdom warned them. “She died of a contagious illness. It will kill you both.”

The two middle-aged gardeners nodded their heads. The taller one asked Felix with the humblest tone and respect, “Where do you want us to bury her, Sir?”

Felix fixed his eyes on the red carpet. He couldn't find a proper answer.

“Wherever it’s suitable,” he said after a while, then stressed, “just don’t let anyone know she came from the castle.”

“And the tombstone, Sir,” the taller gardener asked again. “What name would you like us to put on it?”

Felix fell into another dead silence before he finally shifted his gaze from that carpet and answered, “Just draw her a lion. She had made as much contribution to the kingdom as the Queen.”