Soul-Extraction: Reborn as the Luna Queen Chapter 03

Soul-Extraction: Reborn as the Luna Queen Chapter 03

Thunder cracked overhead. The dark clouds above the keep churned.

Wind tore through the ancient trees, pulling a howl from every branch.

Lucien felt it. Something had shifted.

The obsidian beads shattered in his fist.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Stop. Now!”

It was too late.

The soul-extraction seal was already awake inside me, burning through every nerve.

The pain hit like something was skinning my soul from the inside out. I bit down on my tongue hard enough to taste blood and forced myself to stay conscious.

Mira screamed somewhere deep inside me.

“Selene! What are you doing?”

“Why? What’s happening to me? My soul… something’s pulling it out!”

“It hurts! Oh God, it’s so cold!”

“Stop! You’re going to shatter my soul!”

One by one, I ripped away the soul tethers that had bound us together for three years.

“Mira, isn’t this what you always wanted? This body should’ve been yours from the start, right?”

“The Blackwood fortune. Adrian’s love. You’ve always acted like they belonged to you anyway.”

“So take them. They’re all yours now.”

The last tether snapped. My soul tore free of that broken body in one violent lurch.

The last thing I saw before everything went dark was my old body crumpling to the ground.

Adrian and my mom and dad bolted past the ward line.

“Mira!”

“Mira, wake up! What happened?”

“Selene! You psycho. What did you do to her?”

I hovered weightless above them, watching them sob over that body. It almost made me laugh.

They didn’t know yet. The real Selene was already gone.

From here on, Mira was on her own in that body.

A girl with no mooncraft ability, no survival instinct, and nothing but a pretty pout and a victim complex. And now, every ounce of the Blackwood pack’s curse backlash was hers to carry.

The soul-calling seal seized me. My soul dissolved into light, streaking across the sky toward the private wing of the pack hospital in the Lycan capital.

A new body waited for me there. One I’d chosen myself.

The sole heir of the Ashford pack, the oldest and most powerful bloodline in the capital.

Nova Ashford.

Six months ago, someone had sabotaged Nova and shattered a piece of her soul. She’d been asleep ever since.

Alpha Theodore Ashford had come to me in secret, begging me to save her.

I’d already studied Nova’s lunar chart. Born with pure moon-blood, she was a natural vessel for mooncraft and a gifted one at that.

Her body and my soul were almost a perfect match.

I didn’t try to recover her lost soul shard. It had dissolved long ago. There was nothing left to save.

Instead, I’d offered Alpha Theodore a deal.

My soul would take Nova’s place inside her body. In return, I’d root out the enemies hiding in their shadows and guarantee the pack’s safety for a century.

And they’d give me what I needed: a new identity, legitimate and untouchable.

The moment my soul settled into Nova’s body, the heart monitor beside the bed pulsed with steady light.

I opened my eyes. The sunlight hit like a wall, too bright and too real.

“Nova!”

“Oh my God. She’s awake! My baby’s awake!”

Ophelia Ashford launched herself from the bedside chair and pulled me into a crushing hug, sobbing so hard her whole body shook.

Theodore’s eyes were rimmed with red. But when he looked at me, what I saw wasn’t only relief. It was reverence.

He knew. The girl behind these eyes wasn’t his fragile daughter anymore. It was Selene, the most powerful mooncraft wielder the Blackwood pack had ever produced.

I rubbed Ophelia’s back, and when I spoke, my voice came out rough, raw from the transfer, but steady.

“Mom, I’m okay. I’m right here.”

Theodore cleared the room of every healer and every attendant. Then he lowered his head to me.

“Selene.”

“Welcome to your new life.”

I pushed back the covers and crossed to the window.

The sky stretched wide and open beyond the glass. In the reflection was a face I didn’t recognize. Pale. Beautiful.

Stronger than Selene’s body had ever been, with no curse erosion eating it alive from the inside.

“Selene is gone. As of today, she doesn’t exist.”

“I’m just Nova.”

I glanced back at Theodore with the ghost of a smile.

“Theodore, get ready.”

“The Blackwood pack and the Grey pack are about to start unraveling.”

Without me holding the wards, the dark magic and bloodline rot I’d been suppressing for years would tear through the Blackwood pack. There wouldn’t be anything left.

Mira.

Are you ready for that beautiful life you’ve always wanted?