Scorned Luna To Alpha Queen
Book Two of the Betrayed Luna to Alpha Queen Series
Can be read as a standalone or after Book One
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"They were supposed to hate me. All four of them. But the Moon Goddess doesn't make mistakes, she just has a twisted sense of humor."
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"Let me die free rather than live as his possession."
Those were Lyralei Ravenwood's last words before she jumped off Widow's Cliff, choosing death over marriage to a monster hiding behind a charming smile.
She should have died.
Instead, she wakes in the camp of the Four Great Alphas..the most powerful, dangerous men in the ancient werewolf world. Men who look at her with resentment. Men who make it clear she's not welcome.
The Moon Goddess sent her to unite them against a rising darkness.
But they don't want unity. They don't want her.
Lyra didn't ask to be sent anywhere. She just wanted to escape a cage.
Now she's trapped with four hostile Alphas who see her as an obligation rather than a person. Who resent every breath she takes. Who make it clear that prophecy or not, she will never command their loyalty.
But something is awakening between them. Something ancient and undeniable.
The Primordial Mate Bond-a force that links one soul to multiple Alphas, pulling them together whether they want it or not.
As shadow wolves attack and an ancient evil rises, Lyra must navigate not just war, but the far more dangerous battlefield of four hearts that were determined to hate her.
Because feelings without trust are torture.
CONTENT WARNING: This book contains mature themes including explicit sexual content, violence, death of major characters, psychological trauma, and morally complex situations. Recommended for readers 18+
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Chapter 4
"A deal?" He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You think you're in a position to negotiate?"
"I think I'm in a position to crush your heir's balls," she replied calmly. "So yes, I think I can negotiate."
Theron made a strangled sound. Whether of pain or humiliation, she couldn't tell.
"What do you want?" Alpha Aldric asked, each word forced through clenched teeth.
"Swear," Lyralei said. "Swear on your honor, in front of everyone here, that you'll give me five minutes to escape. Five minutes before you send anyone after me."
"Five minutes?" He barked a harsh laugh. "You must think me a fool."
She squeezed. Theron cried out, his knees buckling slightly.
"Alright!" Alpha Aldric shouted. "Alright, stop!"
"Swear it," Lyralei insisted. "On your honor. In front of your pack. Five minutes."
She watched him struggle with the words, his jaw working, a vein throbbing in his temple. Finally, he spat out, "One minute. That's all I can promise."
"Five."
"One."
She squeezed again. Theron sobbed.
"Two minutes," Alpha Aldric ground out. "And that's final. I swear it on my honor as Alpha."
It wasn't much. It wasn't nearly enough. But it would have to do.
"Fine," Lyralei said. She looked down at Theron, at this monster who'd haunted her nightmares. "Get on your knees."
He dropped immediately, his legs giving out from pain and relief. Before he could recover and before anyone could move, she pulled her arm back and punched him as hard as she could across the base of his skull.
His head snapped to the side and he collapsed, out cold.
For a heartbeat, nobody moved. The entire pack stood frozen, staring at their unconscious future Alpha sprawled in the dirt.
Then Lyralei straightened, smoothed down her dress, and calmly tore the fabric at knee level so she could actually run. The silk ripped easily, and she kicked the excess material aside.
She looked directly at Alpha Aldric, at the guards, at all the pack members who'd let Theron hurt so many for so long.
Then she flicked him the finger and ran.
She heard the eruption behind her, shouts of outrage and disbelief and fury. But she was already moving, her feet hitting the forest floor, branches whipping past her face as she plunged into the darkness between the trees.
Two minutes. She had two minutes before they came after her.
Her mind raced as she ran, trying to remember the territory layout. She needed to get far enough away that they couldn't track her easily. Needed to find somewhere to hide, or better yet, somewhere to cross into neutral territory where pack law didn't apply.
But then she thought of something else. Something that made her skid to a stop, breathing hard, her heart pounding so loud she could barely hear the sounds of pursuit beginning behind her.
Her manuscript. The last one she'd written. The ending to her story that she'd hidden because Theron had discovered her secret.
It was hidden in the old oak tree near the eastern border. Wrapped in oilcloth and buried in a hollow, protected from the weather. She'd meant to retrieve it and maybe burn it after the wedding, before Theron could find it and use it against her somehow.
Now might be her only chance to save it.
Lyralei changed direction, angling toward the eastern border. It would cost her precious seconds from her two-minute head start. It was foolish and reckless and completely irrational.
But that manuscript was the only thing left in this world that was truly hers. Her words. Her story. Her dreams written down in ink and hope.
She couldn't leave it behind.
The trees thinned slightly as she approached the border area. She could see the old oak tree, massive and ancient, its roots spreading across the forest floor like gnarled fingers. She'd discovered the hollow when she was twelve, had used it as a hiding spot for her journals and stories ever since.
Lyralei dropped to her knees beside the tree, her fingers scrabbling in the hollow. Please be there, please still be there, please...
Her hand closed around the oilcloth package. Relief flooded through her so strongly she almost sobbed. She pulled it out, clutching it to her chest.
Then she heard the howl.
Long and mournful and absolutely terrifying, it echoed through the forest. The hunting howl. Her two minutes were up.
Lyralei shoved the manuscript into the front of her dress where it would stay relatively secure, and ran.
She ran like her parents had taught her, light on her feet, using the shadows and avoiding the obvious paths. She ran like her life depended on it, because it did. She could hear them behind her now, crashing through the undergrowth, their senses so much sharper than hers and their speed so much greater.
She tried every trick she could think of. Doubled back on her trail. Ran through a stream to hide her scent. Climbed a tree and jumped to another to confuse the tracking. But they were trained hunters, and she was one woman running for her life.
They were gaining on her. She could hear them getting closer, could hear individual voices now calling to each other, coordinating their search.
The forest opened up ahead of her and her heart sank. She'd reached Widow's Cliff. The sheer rock face dropped away into darkness, and far below she could hear the rush of the river, churning and violent where it cut through the gorge.
She'd run out of places to go.
Lyralei turned, her back to the cliff edge, as wolves emerged from the tree line. First a few scouts, then more, then a flood of them. Guards and warriors and pack members, all of them forming a semicircle around her, trapping her against the drop.
Then Alpha Aldric himself stepped through the crowd, his face twisted with rage.
"Nowhere left to run," he said, his voice cold and deadly. "You've assaulted my son. Humiliated our pack in front of our guests. Violated every law we hold sacred." He took a step toward her. "I'm going to make an example of you. I'm going to make you beg for death before I grant it."
He smiled, and it was the cruelest expression she'd ever seen. "Maybe I'll let Theron have you first. Let him break you properly before we execute you for treason."
Lyralei looked at him, at the pack surrounding her, at this life that had tried so hard to cage her. The moon hung huge and bright above them, casting silver light across the scene. The night sky was beautiful, scattered with stars that seemed to go on forever.
She'd never get to finish her book now. Never get to see how the story ended. Never know if her heroine found the freedom she'd been searching for.
But at least she'd fought. At least she hadn't gone quietly.
Alpha Aldric took another step toward her, his hand reaching out.
Everything seemed to slow down. She could see every detail with perfect clarity. The rage in his eyes. The anticipation on the faces of the crowd. The edge of the cliff just behind her heels. The manuscript pressed against her chest, the pages of her unfinished story warm against her skin.
Lyralei smiled. It was probably the first genuine smile she'd worn in three years.
"Fuck you," she said clearly.
Then she spread her arms wide, looked up at that beautiful sky one last time, and let herself fall backward into the darkness below.
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7.2
Genevieve woke up choking on her own blood, a fatal gash tearing through her abdomen. The memories of a primitive world crashed into her mind—she had transmigrated into the body of a sadistic beastman Mistress.
But the five powerful beastmen "mates" standing over her hadn't come to her rescue. They had come to watch their tormentor die.
"We should just leave her," Kameron sneered coldly. "The scavengers will clean up the mess."
Gilberto spat in disgust, while Angelo, a silver-scaled snake-man, trembled in pure terror at the sight of her. The original owner had whipped them, humiliated them, and driven another mate to suicide. Now, they were letting her bleed out in the mud, their eyes filled with undisguised loathing and satisfaction.
She was a top-tier apocalyptic survival expert, yet here she was, paying the ultimate price for a stranger's monstrous sins. It was a bitter, unacceptable irony to die helplessly in the dirt while her supposed protectors waited for her corpse to rot.
She refused to accept this ending.
Forcing a chaotic surge of energy through their shared Biological Link, she brought all five men to their knees in agonizing pain, commanding them to carry her back. In the dark cave, without a single scream, she plunged her bare hands into a fire and brutally cauterized her own gaping wound with searing ash. As the beastmen stared in horrified awe at the unbreakable soul now occupying the tyrant's body, Genevieve wiped the blood from her face and began to rewrite her fate.
9.3
My father ordered me to marry into the cursed Vaughn family.
Their heirs were rumored to die young from a mysterious genetic agony. My sister Kayden laughed, saying she wasn't going to waste her youth planning a funeral. So, I became the sacrificial lamb.
When I refused, my father slammed his hand on the table and threatened to throw my dead mother's ashes into the city dump.
"You are a struggling actress with no money and no power. You have no choice," he told me coldly.
To make matters worse, my own agent drugged my drink at a business dinner, trying to sell my body to a sleazy investor just to secure project funding.
I was completely cornered, suffocating under the weight of their cruelty. I couldn't understand how my own flesh and blood could be so vicious, treating me like a worthless pawn to be traded and discarded.
But none of them knew that while escaping the drug-laced dinner, I crashed directly into the terrifying Vaughn heir, Algot.
When his glowing crimson eyes locked onto me during a violent episode of his cursed pain, we discovered an impossible truth: my physical touch was the only cure for his agony.
Looking at the dark bruises he accidentally left on my neck, I chose not to run. Instead, I pulled out the private business card he gave me and dialed his number.
"You need me," I whispered to the dangerous billionaire. "And I am going to use you to destroy them all."
7.2
Azura Briggs was just a broke college student working freezing valet shifts to pay her adoptive mother's crushing medical debt.
Her desperate life shattered the night a bulletproof Maybach violently cornered her in an alley, and a ruthless billionaire kidnapped her by mistake.
After a harrowing escape, Azura was forced to take a humiliating "plus-one" gig at a high-end gala just to survive. But her date turned out to be the billionaire's arrogant nephew, who promptly abandoned her to the wolves. Cornered by a sleazy executive and his psychotic wife, Azura was publicly slapped, her dress torn, and left bleeding on the floor while hundreds of elites watched in disgust.
Just as she prepared to fight to the death, the crowd violently parted. Hunter Mcintosh, the terrifying man who had kidnapped her days ago, dropped to his knees in the broken glass and wrapped his bespoke jacket around her trembling shoulders.
Azura was completely paralyzed. Why was the monster who threatened her life now destroying billionaires just to protect her?
But the illusion of safety didn't last. Trapped in his Maybach hours later, Hunter threw a draconian employment contract at her feet.
"Sign it, and her care is covered. Forever."
He knew exactly how to break her. He was offering to pay off her mother's debt, but only if she signed her life away to become his personal assistant. With no other way out, Azura picked up the heavy pen.
8.7
I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella.
Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark.
But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved.
Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies.
When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel.
While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest.
The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella.
He ordered my father to punish me.
I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth.
That night, the love in my heart finally died.
On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape-the only proof that I was Seven.
Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney.
By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.
7.3
Seven years ago, my fiancé, Don Dante Moretti, sent me to prison to take the fall for my adopted sister, Chiara. He called it a gift-a way to protect me from a worse fate.
Today, he picked me up from prison only to abandon me at my family's estate. His reason? Chiara was having another one of her "episodes."
My parents then informed me I'd be staying in the third-floor storage room, so as not to disturb the fragile girl who stole my life.
They celebrated her "recovery" with a lavish dinner party, while I was treated like a ghost. When I refused to join, my mother hissed that I was ungrateful, and my father called me jealous.
They assumed I couldn't understand their venomous whispers. But prison was my university. I learned Spanish. I understood every word.
It was then I realized I wasn't just a sacrifice; I was disposable. The love I once felt for all of them had turned to ash.
That night, in the dusty storage room, I logged onto an encrypted channel I'd set up years ago. A single message was waiting: "The offer stands. Do you accept?" My hands, scarred and steady, typed back, "I accept."
8.9
The mangled car teetered on the cliff's edge, my leg crushed, gasoline fumes thick in the air. My husband, Holden, stood safe on the highway, directing the rescue – but not for me. He was saving her, the woman in the passenger seat, leaving me and our unborn child to the ocean below.
I woke trapped in the crushed Maybach, leg pinned. The cliff loomed; the driver's seat was empty.
Holden, safe outside, directed paramedics past me to Giana, his "most valuable asset," ordering her rescue first.
I watched him comfort Giana, oblivious, as the car slid. My baby barely viable. Holden offered a black card for silence; Giana gloated.
Ten years of devotion, a cruel lie. Rage fueled me: how could he abandon his wife and child?
I swore a venomous oath: never again an accessory. I flicked his card away, shielded my pregnancy, and promised my baby escape.