CHAPTER 48: CHAPTER 48: LET THE HUNT BEGIN

Aeron’s POV~

For a moment, I didn’t understand the words.

She escaped. how?

Two simple syllables shouldn’t have held the power to shatter everything. But they did.

My heart stopped beating. My breath caught. I felt the suffocation clawing at my mind.

The hall, once thick with tension, now turned shallow. Murmurs rippled like a wave through the nobles, a hundred heads swiveling toward the doors. But I couldn’t hear them. Couldn’t see anything but that warrior, panting and trembling, sweat glistening on his brow.

I took a step forward, my voice hoarse. "What did you just say?"

His eyes darted up, wild and frightened. "Selene...she—she escaped. She’s gone, Alpha. Vanished before the guard rotation. We—we don’t know how—"

The rest of his sentence drowned in the sound of something knocking behind my back.

Luca had risen first, knocking over a ceremonial goblet, his face twisted in a snarl. "Gone? What the fuck do you mean she’s gone?"

Kael looked dazed, blinking as if trying to wake from a bad dream. "That’s not possible," he muttered, voice hollow. "She was collared. She couldn’t have—"

Lucian said nothing. His eyes were wide, lips slightly parted, like the air had been sucked from his lungs. But I could see the twitch in his jaw, the barely suppressed rage simmering just under his skin.

The room was spinning. My hands curled into fists at my sides.

She escaped. Without permission or any fear. Like we were nothing. Like our rules—our authority—meant nothing.

How dare she?

I felt it then, my wolf lurching to the surface, a violent surge of fury and disbelief crashing into my chest. My bones ached with the need to shift, to hunt. To find her and remind her exactly where she belongs.

A growl tore from my throat before I could stop it, low and primal. The nobles flinched. Even the warrior dropped to one knee in apology.

"She defied us..." I whispered.

Luca snarled. "I’ll drag her back myself. She doesn’t get to run."

Kael and Lucian were just as shocked as I was, and I could see the rage and disbelief burning behind their gaze. My pulse thundered. I turned toward the doors, the memory of her eyes flashing behind my lids—the hatred, the pain, the way she looked at me like I was already lost.

So this was her answer.

Escape.

A direct rejection of everything we’d built. Everything we claimed to own.

"Seal the gates," I ordered, my voice stern. "Alert every patrol. If she’s beyond the walls, I want the perimeter combed until not even a shadow is left unsearched."

Luca stepped beside me, eyes glowing gold. "And when we find her?"

I didn’t hesitate. "We’re bringing her back." No matter what it takes.

And and the next, his bones were breaking, reshaping, and tearing through his skin. Black fur exploded from his limbs. The pain was welcome as the beast inside finally broke free.

He wasn’t alone. A thunderous cracking filled the hall as his brothers also shifted beside him, each of them trembling with rage too vast for a human form to contain.

Lucian’s transformation was the fastest violent and brutal, his jaws snapping before his paws even hit the ground. Luca’s roar shook the walls, and Kael... Kael didn’t speak. His wolf emerged with eerie silence, like a shadow unfolding across a bloodstained moon.

Their presence darkened the entire temple hall, the towering forms of four black wolves radiating fury. The nobles scattered. Priests fell to their knees in fear. And in the corner of it all, Meriya stared with wide, horrified eyes.

"No!"

The word ripped from Meriya’s throat like a plea. Her silk-clad body lurched forward, arms outstretched as if she could hold back the storm. But the air had already shifted. Something enraged and feral had awakened in the hall.

Meriya’s breath hitched. Her hand dropped uselessly at her side. Her lips trembled. "You can’t go... not for her."

Her voice was small, shrinking further under the weight of silence.

She took a shaky step forward. "I am your Luna," she whispered, eyes darting between them. "You swore it. Before the Moon Goddess, before the court, before every soul in this hall... You promised me. You chose me."

But I didn’t hear her or my brothers. Or worse—we did and simply didn’t care.

Luca didn’t even glance her way. His wolf stood rigid, head raised to the wind, already scenting the trail.

Lucian had always been the gentlest. The most polite. She turned to him, desperation flooding her eyes. "Please, Lucian," she said, her voice cracking like fine porcelain. "Don’t leave me like this. Don’t abandon me."

For a breath, he paused.

And then his head turned slowly toward her. Their eyes met. And what she saw in his was not mercy.

It was hunger. Disgust. Something was wrong, a beast that had seen her laid before him, wrapped in gold and offerings, and decided she wasn’t enough. Not for any of them.

He snarled at her face with disgust.

Meriya flinched, stumbling backward as if struck. Her foot caught on the hem of her gown, and she collapsed onto the cold marble floor. Her crown slipped sideways, clinking against the stone.

She didn’t move to fix it. Didn’t even breathe. Her face had gone deathly pale, her painted lips parted in horror.

It wasn’t just fear now; it was understanding. They were gone.

"I did everything right," she whispered to no one. "I was perfect. I was perfect..."

But none of the wolves looked back.

Not even once.

Behind them, Meriya’s cries echoed through the hollowed silence, unanswered and unwanted. The sound of her desperation was just another ghost swallowed by the night.

They ran...thunderous, furious and filled with the need to bring her back. Black blurs tearing through the grand doors of the hall like wrath sent from the gods themselves. The forest loomed ahead, dark and vast, but there was no fear in their charge. Only purpose.

She had fled. But she was not free.

Tonight, they would hunt her down...