Soul-Extraction: Reborn as the Luna Queen Chapter 02

Soul-Extraction: Reborn as the Luna Queen Chapter 02

The next morning, I was up before dawn.

I went to the keep gates alone, wearing only a thin, plain white dress.

The late-autumn wind sliced across my face.

The black stone around the keep grounds was stained with faded, dark-red marks. Years of ancient moon wards had left them there.

I didn’t hesitate. I knelt.

The second my knees hit the stone, cold stabbed through me, straight into my bones, my lungs, my gut.

I bit down hard and swallowed the scream.

A figure watched from the second-floor terrace, tall, still, and unhurried.

Lucien rolled a strand of obsidian beads between his fingers. He looked down at me the way you’d look at an insect.

“Selene.”

“You smashed my royal soul-sealing relic, and you think kneeling makes us even?”

His voice was low, almost lazy, but the lycan pressure behind it pressed the air from my chest.

I lifted my chin and looked him in the eye.

“The Blackwood pack failed to keep order and offended you, my King.”

“I’ll kneel here until you are satisfied, my King.”

Lucien’s lip barely curled.

“You plan to just kneel?”

“That rigid CEO act of yours is really starting to bore me.”

“What happened to the woman sobbing, ‘I didn’t mean to,’ while she smashed my relic last night?”

I lowered my eyes before he could see what was really there.

“That was me.”

“I had too much to drink. I wasn’t thinking straight. I ask for your forgiveness, my King.”

A black SUV pulled up nearby.

Adrian and my mom and dad climbed out.

They weren’t here for me. They stayed behind the ward line and watched.

“Selene, straighten up. You look pathetic.”

My dad kept his voice low, but every word dripped with warning.

My mom nervously tugged at Adrian’s sleeve.

“Adrian, the ward’s energy is too intense. What if it hurts Mira’s body when she wakes up?”

Adrian’s eyes locked on my back, his jaw clenched tight.

“Selene, hurry up and beg. If anything happens to Mira’s body because of you, I swear I’ll make you pay.”

I heard every word. They weren’t even hiding the favoritism anymore.

And I felt nothing.

The curse energy from the wards kept building.

My lips had gone purple. A thin sheen of cold sweat broke across my forehead.

But I didn’t call on my wolf aura. Didn’t touch the mooncraft coiled inside me.

Instead, I opened my soul core completely and let the lethal lunar energy flood in.

This was exactly what I needed, power brutal enough to tear a soul apart.

“My King, she doesn’t look like she can take much more.”

The royal guard’s voice was low, cautious.

Lucien’s fingers stilled on the moon beads. His eyes narrowed.

“Selene is the strongest mooncraft talent the Blackwood pack has seen in a century.”

“A little curse energy like this shouldn’t even make her flinch.”

“She’s not even shielding herself? Is she trying to make me feel guilty?”

He scoffed and flicked his wrist. A lash of raw Lycan power cracked through the air.

A blast of warded water, icy and charged with runes, crashed over me.

The cold blinded me. Silver runes crackling through the water tore straight through my defenses.

Blood surged up my throat. I coughed it out, bright red against the black stone.

Adrian didn’t flinch. He shouted from behind the ward line.

“Selene, quit the act. Grovel.”

“If you ruin this body, how is Mira supposed to look good tonight?”

I ignored him.

But the blood was my cover. While they watched me choke, I dragged my finger through it and traced a rune onto the stone.

The soul-calling seal snapped into place.

I closed my eyes and reached for Mira’s soul, that fragile little thing curled deep inside me.

She was buried deep in my consciousness, shivering, feeding on my life force to keep herself intact.

“Selene, it’s so cold…”

“Hurry up and make that awful Alpha King forgive us.”

“I still have a concert with Adrian tonight. Don’t ruin my legs with all this kneeling.”

Mira’s voice rang through my head, light, whiny, and entitled, as if this were somehow my fault.

A slow, cold smile pulled at my lips.

“Okay, Mira.”

“I’ll give you the body. All of it. Right now.”

My fingers traced a final, vicious witch’s mark, and I slammed my palm down onto the blood rune.