Chapter3

The heavy thud of my sheepskin boots echoed against the white stone steps of the Full Moon Altar. I gathered the heavy, cascading layers of my wedding gown in one hand. A black lace eyepatch was bound tightly over my left eye, leaving my right eye to sweep coldly over the crowd below. Every werewolf noble in attendance had their gaze locked on me, their eyes gleaming with the ravenous greed of predators.

Angela stood less than two paces away. Playing the role of the grand ceremony’s "witness," she was draped in a gown that outshone even mine—the bride's—today. She leaned in, feigning to adjust my veil as her breath brushed my ear.

"The gown is stunning. Such a pity. Did you honestly believe Lucian could ever care for a lowly witch?"

I didn't flinch. I merely shot her a sidelong glance. Beneath the billowing lace of my right sleeve, my fingers were locked in a death grip around a glass vial. It was supposed to be the "Ancestral Holy Water" the High Priest had entrusted to me last night. Now, however, it was filled to the brim with a custom witch's brew—heavily laced with high-purity, pulverized silver.

"Angela," I murmured, keeping my voice dangerously low. "You’d best step back, or you're going to get splattered with blood."

She froze, clearly failing to grasp my meaning.

The ceremonial horns blared.

Lucian stood at the dead center of the altar. He wore a dark gold ceremonial suit embroidered with the ancient wolf crest, and those amber eyes of his had already slipped into that sickeningly perfect illusion of deep devotion.

The Grand Elder raised his bone staff, slamming it against the stone slabs.

"Selene, do you pledge your truth and your bloodline to the mantle of the Wolf Clan's Luna, swearing eternal loyalty to our King, Lucian?"

Lucian extended his right hand toward me.

"Come here, my Luna."

I stared at those long, powerful fingers. In my past life, it was this exact hand that had brutally ripped open my stomach and tossed my unborn pup into the roaring brazier.

I whipped back my long sleeve and popped the cork off the glass vial. Catching Lucian completely off guard, I violently hurled the liquid squarely into his sickeningly affectionate face!

"Agghhh—!"

A bloodcurdling shriek instantly ripped through the Full Moon Festival.

As the pure silver powder made contact with his werewolf flesh, an immediate and horrific corrosive reaction triggered.

"My eyes!"

Lucian clamped his hands over his sizzling, blistering face in sheer agony. Down below, the aristocrats erupted into gasps of absolute disbelief.

I stepped back, fiercely kicking over the sacred brazier at my feet before tearing the amplifying bone staff straight from the Grand Elder's hands.

"Lucian! To secure your throne, you personally ordered my parents to be assassinated with a rare poison! You only proposed to me to force me into brewing the Daylight Elixir, and to drain my blood to feed the bitch standing right behind you!"

I pointed dead at Angela, who was now trembling on the stone floor, ruthlessly shredding his carefully crafted facade. "A coward who rules through poison and marriage fraud doesn't deserve my submission! I stand before you today to publicly sever this union. From this moment on, it is an endless, blood-soaked war between the Witch Coven and the Wolf Clan!"

The crowd descended into absolute uproar. The elders exchanged shocked, frantic whispers, and the gazes fixing upon Lucian began to harden with the bitter anger of the deceived.

"Seize that venomous witch! Kill her!" the Grand Elder bellowed in a blind rage.

Lucian gasped, drawing a ragged breath through the blinding pain. On his once-handsome face, his single intact right eye boiled with a toxic, venomous fury. He looked ready to swallow me alive.

"Selene!" he roared recklessly, his body violently shifting as lethal wolf claws burst from his fingertips. "I'll tear you to shreds!"

He launched himself forward with explosive force, rushing me like a rabid beast. His talons aimed straight for my throat.

Just a fraction of a second before the tips of his claws could graze my nose—

The sky went completely black.

The brilliant glow of the full moon was instantly swallowed by a suffocating shadow.