Chapter 1

Alpha King Caius Acevedo carried the strongest wolf bloodline in all the North, and yet he could not father an heir.

For ten full years, the royal house chose the healthiest, most fertile young she-wolves from every territory and sent them into Silvermoon Keep.

Not one of them could conceive his child.

Until I appeared.

In the second month after I joined with Caius, I was found to be carrying a royal bloodline blessed by the twin moons.

It was his only heir.

Caius was beside himself with joy. That very day, before the Council of Elders, he revealed our mate mark and named me Luna Queen of the North.

He treated me and the child in my womb as something more precious than his own life.

The physician assigned to examine me let his hand linger just a moment too long against my belly, and for that Caius stripped him of his wolf power with his own hands and drove him, along with his entire family, out of the North.

To protect this hard-won child, Caius settled me in Moonshadow Hall, in the deepest heart of Silvermoon Keep.

Twelve royal guards watched over it day and night.

Beyond the handmaids he chose himself, no one was allowed near.

But in the eighth month of my pregnancy, Caius led the wolf armies south to put down a rebellion.

On the second day after he left, Selena, newly risen in his favor, stormed into Moonshadow Hall with a group at her back.

She was the sister of the Western general, the woman Caius had brought home after settling the conflict along the border.

With her beauty, her family's power, and the authority Caius had left her before he rode out, she carried herself as though she were the true mistress of Silvermoon Keep.

But she did not know who I was.

To her I was only a lowly she-wolf, cast off by the Alpha King and hidden away in a side hall.

"A discarded plaything, and you dare to seduce a royal guard and get yourself pregnant with some mongrel of unknown blood?"

Selena seized me by the hair and forced my face up.

Her eyes burned with a bright, vicious excitement.

"Today, I'll show the whole pack what it means to betray the Alpha King."

She ordered them to cut off my long hair, tore away the silver robe that marked my station as Luna, and dragged me toward the dungeon where traitors were kept.

She meant to punish me before every lowborn wolf.

And at the end, she even pressed a silver blade to my high, swollen belly.

She said she would cut out this "unclean mongrel" with her own hands and present it to Caius to earn his favor.

But she did not know—

The one she wanted to kill was the sole heir the entire North had waited ten years for.

And that lowly she-wolf she claimed the Alpha King had cast aside was the very Luna Queen Caius had publicly sworn, on his own life, to protect.

——

Once my pregnancy reached the eighth month, my body grew heavier and heavier.

The child in my womb had inherited Caius's powerful bloodline, and even unborn, it could already release a faint royal pressure.

Ordinary handmaids could not stay by my side for long.

Even the high-ranking wolves who guarded Moonshadow Hall would instinctively bow their heads when they came too close, forced down by that bloodline pressure.

That afternoon, I had just lain down when a shrill clamor broke out beyond the hall.

"A she-wolf hidden inside Silvermoon Keep, carrying on with a guard?"

"She didn't just betray the Alpha King, she dared to get pregnant with that man's mongrel. She's spitting in the face of the entire royal house!"

"Miss Selena, His Majesty Caius entrusted the running of Silvermoon Keep to you. A filthy traitor like this can't be let off easily."

"That's right, she has to be punished in public. It's the only way to warn the she-wolves who forget their place!"

Moonshadow Hall sat in the deepest reaches of Silvermoon Keep, where on ordinary days the only sound was the wind moving through the pines.

The sudden uproar left my head throbbing.

The child in my womb seemed to feel my discomfort too, shifting a few times, restless.

I opened my eyes and, one hand braced on the edge of the bed, slowly pushed myself upright.

"Elena Clark, what's happening out there?"

Elena, my personal maid, hurried to the window.

She tilted her head to listen for a moment, and something strange crossed her face.

"Forgive me, Luna. They're saying there's a woman in Silvermoon Keep who's been carrying on with a royal guard and has fallen pregnant. Miss Selena has brought several of the other noble ladies to punish her herself."

I frowned.

Caius ruled the twelve wolf territories of the North, and Silvermoon Keep was not only the seat of the royal house but the very center of the North's power.

Any scandal touching a royal guard would shake the pack's standing.

Though I had kept to Moonshadow Hall to rest through my pregnancy and rarely meddled in territorial affairs, I could not simply stand by and let this unfold.

More than that, before he left, Caius had held my hand and told me again and again.

If anything unusual happened in Silvermoon Keep, my authority to act stood above everyone else's.

I threw back the blanket and, with Elena's support, got to my feet.

"Take me to see."

But no sooner had I reached the doorway than the shut doors of the hall were kicked open from the outside.

A thunderous crash.

More than a dozen strange women poured into Moonshadow Hall.

The woman at the front wore a fiery red gown, her golden-brown curls spilling over her shoulders, a wolf-fang necklace marking her as Western nobility at her throat.

Her gaze rested on my face for a moment, then dropped to my swollen belly.

Thick hostility rolled off her all at once.

Before I could get a word out, she was already rushing at me.

Crack—

Her palm struck my face, hard.

My head snapped to one side, a sharp ringing bursting to life in my ears.

"So it really is you!"

Selena jabbed a finger at my belly and snarled:

"A lowly she-wolf shut away in a side hall, and you dared go behind the Alpha King's back, seduce his guard, and get yourself pregnant with a mongrel?"

"Today, I'll teach you exactly what it costs to betray the royal house!"

The sudden slap froze me where I stood.

Elena's eyes went wide with shock.

Since I had been named Luna Queen, no one in the entire North had dared touch me like this.

And no one had dared run wild in Moonshadow Hall.

"Do you have any idea what you're doing?"

My voice had gone cold.

The noble ladies behind Selena broke into sneering laughter at once.

"She actually dares to question Miss Selena?"

"You don't carry the Alpha King's openly claimed scent, and there are only a few male guards outside your hall. Short of sleeping with a guard, how else could you have gotten pregnant?"

"Look at her, putting on such airs. Anyone who didn't know better would think she was the Luna of Silvermoon Keep."

"A she-wolf who betrays her mate like this ought to be driven into the wastelands and left to whatever the mindless strays there want to do with her!"

Their venomous words fell one after another.

And at last I understood. The woman they spoke of, the one carrying on with a guard, pregnant with a mongrel, was me.