Cry Harder, Alpha: Your Luna Is The Lycan Queen Now! Chapter 07

Cry Harder, Alpha: Your Luna Is The Lycan Queen Now! Chapter 07 Fall Of The Alpha’s Pack

AIDEN’S POV

I hold Jasmine off the floor by her throat. Her legs kick wildly in the air.

“Aiden!” she gasps. Her hands claw at my thick wrist. She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to force out her usual, pitiful tears. “Aiden, you’re hurting me! What is wrong with you?”

I stare at her. The sweet, fragile mask she wore for five years makes my stomach turn.

I open my hand, and Jasmine crashes to the floor.

She reaches for my legs at once, looking up at me with wide, innocent eyes.

“Please… I don’t know what she told you, but it’s a lie. Nara is a liar!”

I backhand her across the face.

The slap echoes down the hallway. The maids gasp.

Jasmine flies backward, her lip splitting open against her teeth. Blood spills down her chin. She stares at me in pure, terrified shock.

“You set the ambush,” I roar. My voice shakes with anger. “You made a deal with the rogues. You aimed that silver arrow at my heart, and my mate took it for me.”

Jasmine goes white. “No… no, I saved you! The elders said I saved you!“!

“You killed my mate!” I grab a fistful of her hair and yank her face up to mine. “I threw away my Luna. I drained the only woman who ever truly loved me to keep a filthy, backstabbing traitor warm in my bed.”

“Aiden, please!” She sobs, finally dropping the act. Real fear fills her eyes. “You know I’m fragile! You love me!”

“Guards!”

Two warriors come around the corner and freeze, staring at Jasmine bleeding on the floor.

“Take her to the dungeons,” I order. “Put her in a cell lined with solid silver. If she asks for food, ignore her. Let her rot.”

They drag her away screaming. I do not watch her go. I stumble back into Nara’s empty room and lock the door.

I fall to my knees beside her bed. I bury my face in the pillows and breathe in the last fading trace of her vanilla scent.

Come back to me, please. Nara. Please, come back, and I’ll make everything right.

Please!

The next three days are pure hell.

The pain of the severed bond feels like a gaping, rotting hole in my chest

I cannot sleep. I cannot eat. The moment I close my eyes, the nightmare starts.

I see Nara on the cold floor, coughing black blood, whispering congratulations to the woman who murdered her.

I wake up screaming every time.

My own wolf turns on me. He knows I am the one who killed our mate.

He refuses to shift. He claws at the inside of my ribs to punish me. I spend my days curled on the floor of her room, shaking, going mad.

On the fourth day, the pack begins to collapse.

I am at the oak desk in my study when the treasurer bursts in without knocking.

“Alpha!” He slams an empty ledger down in front of me. “We have no winter rations. The grain shipments stopped coming.”

“Then buy more.” I hold my aching head. “Use the pack funds.”

“There are no pack funds!” he cries. “We have been broke for five years. The Luna was paying the border merchants out of her own pocket to keep us fed. She kept the books. She kept the alliances. Without her signature, the merchants have cut us off.”

I stare at the empty ledger. My hands start to shake.

Before I can speak, Doctor Bramwell runs in. His shirt is soaked in blood, and he is sobbing.

“Alpha, the pups in the clinic are crashing!” he shouts. “The sickness has mutated. They are burning up. We need blood donations now, or they will all be dead by morning.”

“Then find donors!” I stand so fast my chair falls over. “Send the strongest warriors to the clinic. Drain me if you have to.”

“You don’t understand.” Tears run down his old face. “Your blood will not work. The Luna was the only donor.”

The room goes silent.

“What are you talking about?” I whisper.

“Her purebred marrow!” Bramwell points a shaking finger at me. “Her bloodline was the only one strong enough to pull the sickness out of the pups. She gave her blood every single week. She sat in that chair and let me drain her while her own core was rotting, just so the children of this pack could live.”

He drops to his knees on the rug and looks up at me, wrecked.

Is it true. Alpha? Is she really dead? Are our pups doomed?”

I shok into my chair. I cannot breathe.

I am not a powerful Alpha. I am ati incompetent, useless fool wearing a crown that Nara polished for me every single day. I am nothing without her.

The elders file in. They look at the despair on my face.

“The pack will starve,” one says grimly. “The pups will die. We have no money and no medicine.”

“What do I do?” I whisper.

“There is only one place on the continent with the healers and the grain to save us,” the elder says.

I close my eyes. I already know what he is about to say.

“You must go to the Royal Lycan Court, Alpha. You must get on your knees and beg King Valerian for aid.”