Cry Harder, Alpha: Your Luna Is The Lycan Queen Now! Chapter 09

Cry Harder, Alpha: Your Luna Is The Lycan Queen Now! Chapter 09 Cry Harder, Alpha

NARA’S POV

Aiden crawls into my throne room on his hands and knees.

His clothes are torn. His face is hollow and grey.

He looks like a beggar who has not eaten in a week, and he keeps his face pressed to the cold floor so he does not have to look up at the royals he has come to grovel to.

“My King. My Queen.” His voice is ridden with shame. “Please. My pack is starving. The pups are dying of/ the winter sickness. I beg you. I need food. Healers. Anything. I will do anything.”

I look down at the man kneeling in the dirt at the foot of my throne.

“You look absolutely pathetic, Aiden. But I am fairly certain you can cry a little harder than that.”

He freezes.

He knows that voice. He heard it beg him for five years. Slowly, he lifts his head.

He sees me on the golden throne. There is a crown of white diamonds in my hair and silk around my feet. and my aura burns so bright the guards keep their eyes down.

I am not sick. I am not dying.

In fact, I am not dead at all.

I look like something out of a story his mother once told him to keep him behaving.

His jaw drops. “N–Nara?”

I watch his broken mind try to understand what’s going on. Then he smiles. It is a wild, desperate, hopeful smile, and it turns my stomach.

“You’re alive.” He laughs, and it carries so much joy, so much hope. “I knew it. I knew you were too stubborn to die. You did all of this to teach me a lesson, didn’t you? Well, it worked, mate. It worked.” He drags himself a step closer on his knees. “I punished them for you. I threw Jasmine in the dungeons the second I read your letter. I am ready now. Come home. I will be a good husband. I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you, I swear it.”

Before he can crawl another inch, Valerian moves.

He rises from his own throne beside mine and kneels down in front of me, at my feet, the King of the whole continent on one knee while a beggar watches.

He takes my hand, turns it over, and presses a slow kiss into my palm.

“You have not eaten since this morning, my soul.” He says it as though there is no one else in the room, because to him there is not. He reaches up and tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear, his thumb

tracing my cheek as though I am made of something rare. “You are pale. Let me have them bring the

ney pears you like. And a fur. Your feet are cold.”

My face warms. I lean into his hand before I can stop myself.

He smiles at that, slow and private, and brushes his lips over my knuckles again.

“Or,” he murmurs, still not once glancing at the man on the floor, “say the word. Just one word, my love. and I will gut this pig with my claws so my queen can rest in peace.”

Aiden goes red. Then purple. I watch five years of Alpha pride catch fire behind his eyes.

He threw me away like spoiled meat. He handed my cure to the woman who tried to kill him.

And now he is on his knees in torn clothes, watching the most powerful man alive kneel at my feet and beg me to eat a honey pear, watching me blush like a girl under another man’s hands.

“Get away from her!” Aiden lurches up onto his knees and stabs a shaking finger at Valerian. “She is MY mate! I marked her first! I invoke the ancient Rite of Challenge. Here. Now. I will fight you to the death for her, King or no King!”