THE ALPHA’S DAUGHTER 58_When The Moon Hides Her Crown

Chapter 58 The re That Burned

 SERAPHINA

 “The forest seems different,” I murmured, slowing my steps as my gaze lifted to the towering trees above. They were older here–twisted, dark, their thick branches tangled like ws grasping at the sky. Within half an hour, we had stepped into unfamiliar woods. The air held a different kind of dread. far more unsettling than the vampire cave we’d left behind. 

 “The ground is too.” Ronan muttered, scuffing his boot against the earth. “It was red before. Now it’s ck,“

 1 crouched, curiosity tugging at me. “What is this red stuff anyway-

 I reached down to touch it, but Asher caught my hand just before my fingers met the soil.

 You’re hurt!”

 I blinked, then looked at the back of my hand. The skin was scraped, the surface raw where the flesh had peeled away.

 “Yeah… but I’m fine,” I said with a small shrug and a smile.

 “No, you’re not. The skin’s practically burned off,” Asher’s voice turned irritated as he gently wiped the dirt from the wound. “I should’ve been more careful when we were rolling on the ground earlier.”

 As he said that, I suddenly felt a chill crawl down my spine–a pair of eyes boring into the side of my face.

 I turned, pulse stuttering, only to find Ronan ring at me, eyes dark with something untamed. His wolf burned just beneath the surface of his gaze, and the intensity of it made my heart falter.

 What was that look?

 “Did you say you rolled on the ground together?” Ronan’s voice was deceptively calm, but his expression betrayed him- tight–jawed and unreadable.

 Still focused on cleaning my wound, Asher casually replied, “Yeah, to mask our scents from the vampires. I guess I didn’t hug Seth tightly enough if he still got scratched like this.”

 The words seemed to detonate in the air.

 Ronan’s entire aura changed. Lethal. Electric. Possessive. The edges of his smile curled upward in a way that sent a shiver through me, not the good kind. The warning kind.

 “Hug?” Ronan repeated, as if testing the word on his tongue–and finding it foul.

 “Yeah,” Asher said, looking up at me. “Seth, are you hurt anywhere else?”

 I quickly shook my head and pulled my hand from his, forcing a polite smile. “Really. In fine.”

 But I could feel the tension thickening around us. I could feel Ronan’s fury, cloaked in a smile that felt sharper than a dagger.

 “Check again,” he said, voice deceptively light. “You might have more injuries…from when you were being rolled and hugged.”

 His smile was bone–deep unsettling, and for reasons I couldn’t exin, it sent a jolt of panic through my chest. Why did he look at me like that? Like I had betrayed him. Like I’d done something unforgivable.

 Was he seriously acting as though I’d cheated?

 I blinked, caught between disbelief and confusion.

 Asher, oblivious to the storm brewing behind him, added without thinking. “There were those sharp stones along the wall when we were squeezed in. I think you hurt your side-

 “Asher!” Linterrupted, a little too loudly.

 He blinked, startled, “What?”

 I darted a nce at Ronan, his expression had plunged into a depth of darkness that couldn’t be described in words, Eyes

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 Chapter 58 The re That Burned

 stormy. Aura zing. Dangerous.

 “There was a spider.” 1 said quickly, forcing a smile as I brushed at Asher’s shoulder. “On you, but it’s gone now.”

 Without waiting for a response, I turned and marched ahead at lightning speed.

 ‘s go. We don’t have time to waste.”

 “Let’s

 I didn’t look back.

 But I could feel him behind me.

 His gaze slicing down my spine. His aura was like sharpened steel.

 What the hell was wrong with that man?

 After some time the forest thickened around us.

 +8 Pearls

 The sunset light dimmed under a canopy of ancient trees, and even the wind seemed to hush. With every step we took deeper into the unknown, the air grew colder, heavier–like the earth itself was warning us to turn back.

 “We should’ve found them by now,” Asher muttered beside me.

 Ronan said nothing. He walked ahead of us, silent as a shadow, but every line of his body was taut–predator–tensed. His asionally twitched, his ears flicking to catch even the smallest of sounds.

 And then… we saw them.

 s nose

 We all fr

 froze. “This is a mess,” I murmured under my breath, finding myself surrounded by not one but dozens of skulls. Hung from trees with thorny ropes. Some cracked and hollowed. Others grinning with rotted teeth, split at the jaw as if they’d been torn in half. Not all were wolves,

 A few were massive.

 Too massive to be natural.

 “What the hell is this ce?” I breathed, heart pounding-

 No one answered.

 We didn’t speak as we crept further, Ronan lifted a hand and crouched, motioning for us to do the same. The undergrowth gave way to a strange clearing ahead–a ring of crude huts, made from dried bark, bones, and animal hide.

 And beyond them, the stench hit us.

 Blood, Sweat Rot. Something raw and primal that made my wolf recoil.

 “We are definitely someone else’s territory,” Asher cursed softly under his breath as we slithered into position behind a dense wall of shrubs and saw the source of it

 “There are wolves,” I softly stated.

 “But not like us. Ronan added. We looked at each other once before looking ahead. 

 They were tall, skeletal, twisted in posture–teral and wrong. Their eyes gleamed in unnatural colors, some yellow, some a sickly white. Their fur was patchy, matted with old blood. They spoke in a dialect I’d never heard, guttural and clipped, {most like growls strung together into anguage.

 “What are they cheering for?” Asher murmured as we all curiously nced to the other side.

 Dozens of them, surrounding a circle of hard–packed dirt, where a brutal fight raged between two wolves. One ck. One gray Snails chord across the clearing as they collided, mming into each other with enough force to snap bone. The gray 

 run, but the ck one pounced.

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 Chapter 58 The re That Burned

 What happened next stole my breath.

 +8 Pearls

 The ck wolf tore into the other’s throat…and didn’t stop.

 He ripped it open with his teeth and started to eat. Right there. In front of everyone. As if this was nothing unusual.

 The crowd howled their approval. Some mmed fists against the ground. Othersughed. One even threw what looked like a severed an into the ring. 

 My mouth went dry.

 “They’re… eating each other,” Asher whispered, horrified.

 “These aren’t rogues,” Ronan muttered lowly, “They’re something else. Something weird, a kind of us that does not know that we also exist just like we did not know they existed.”

 “Flesh–eaters…” I said, the word barely left my lips as my eyes widened like an owl when I saw the other side of clearing. A figure tied on a massive stake. “Finn!”

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THE ALPHA’S DAUGHTER 58