Sold as the Alpha King’s Breeder

Chapter 52: The Rules of Magic

Maeve

Una waved the young girl who had set the tray on the end of my bed away with a smile and followed

her to the door. Una closed it, turning the lock. I felt a wave of adrenaline prickle across my skin at the

sight, fight or flight awakening as the lock clicked into place.

I felt as though I had been ripped apart. My skin ached, if that was even possible. Whatever had

happened in the circle, whatever I had seen, it had disappeared in an instant, and I had woken up in

one of the towers, surrounded by strangers.

The explanation sounded simple. I had invoked the power of the Moon Goddess, something only White

Queens were supposed to be able to do. It had almost killed me. And the ring sitting on my bedside

table was, at least according to Una and Tasia, the only reason I was still alive

“Why?” I whispered, reaching for the ring and turning it over in my hand as I sat back against the white

pillows. Una sighed as she walked to the edge of the bed and began pouring tea into two cups, her

eyes downcast on the task.

*These rocks, all around us. The color of them is significant to our religion. Red, like blood. Like the

blood moon that visits us every hundred years or so. But it’s more than that. It’s scientific. It’s called

Eudialyte. It’s radioactive. It’s messing with whatever…whatever makes us what we are. It makes it

impossible to be wolves inside the valley of Dianny. The eudialyte in the ring protected you somehow.”

“You’re saying this is

biological?”

Una shook her head, not disagreeing, but not agreeing with me either. “I used to think that, before I

became Alpha after my mother. I was always looking for the reasoning for… all of this.” She waved her

hand in a tight circle towards the ceiling. “But I wasn’t gifted with the curses of Lycaon. I couldn’t move

the earth or water in my dreams. I didn’t have the sight, or ability to speak to creatures—” She glanced

down at Duck, who was curled in a ball on a large pillow underneath the window. “But then I became a

mother, and I had Tasia. Suddenly, I had to believe the lore that seemed nothing more than fiction,

passed down and manipulated generation after generation.”

“Tasia went somewhere when she closed her eyes—” ..

“Tasia was able to move the air, so to speak, when she was only a child. It had been generations since

a Dream Dancer had been born into this pack. We didn’t know what to do with her at first. The texts

written from the times when Dream Dancers were aplenty, well, the pages crumble in your hands when

you touch them. She had visions; she could see things no one else could even imagine. But it wasn’t

until she turned twenty-one and came into her powers as a wolf that she was able to hone her powers

and start to use them with intent.”

“I just don’t understand what this has to do with me—” “What we saw in the circle when you…” She

paused, handing me a cup of tea before sitting on the edge of the bed, “You asked something of the

Moon Goddess. I don’t know how. And I know you don’t know why but she answered. She showed

you,”

“Myla wanted to go back. I was thinking of… I was thinking of home. I wanted to go home. I wondered if

I would ever go back after everything that happened.”

“And she showed you,”

“She showed me what would happen if I went back.” My throat tightened around a sob as I spoke, the

image I had suppressed creeping back into my memory, A flash of light. My mother’s body on the

ground while I knelt by her side, my hand clutching hers as she gasped and took one last breath. Then

I was in my wolf form, white fur gleaming in the light of the moon, And I was alone. But chaos was

everywhere; fire, destruction. Another war.

*That’s not how I saw it. I saw it as a warning.” Una set her teacup down, her eyes meeting mine.

“What do you mean?”

Una smoothed out the comforter in a motherly fashion, tucking it around my ankles. “You weren’t

supposed to be able to do that, you know. To call on her. Only White Queens have that power, those

who have already ascended to the throne. You used that power to show you your own path. To see into

a probable future. But she only showed you one outcome. It was meant to be a warning of times to

come, of decisions to be made.”

“I wish you would stop talking in riddles,” I said harshly, feeling overwhelmed and incredibly fatigued. I

took a sip of the tea, watching as a variety of mixed emotions danced across Una’s face.

“There’s no way to lay this all out in a rational way, Maeve. It’s not rational.”

“So, what am I supposed to do now?” My voice was almost childlike as I spoke. Looking back on the

last few weeks, falling for Troy while he was pretending to be Aaron had seemed like the end of the

world. Now, look at where I was.

“The moonstones. The two halves. They have power beyond even what the Moon Goddess herself is

capable of. They came from a lawless time, when our world and the spirit world operated on the same

plane. Whoever has even one of the stones would be able to harness unimaginable power if they knew

how to use it.” She swallowed, looking up at me through her eyelashes. “Troy has, had, the map to

Lycaon Tomb. Where did he get it?”

I shrugged, “A man named Romero.”

“Romero of the Isles?”

“How do you know all of this when you’ve been here the entire time?”

“Seraphine,” Una said matter-of-factly. She rolled her shoulders, crossing one leg over the over.

“Seraphine came to us as a girl. She was on the run, but from what, she never said. She was roughly

twenty years old when she landed on our shores.”

“Seraphine?” I asked, my voice trembling. Seraphine was Gemma’s mother who had disappeared over

roughly fifteen years ago and was presumed dead. She had been a close friend of my mother and had

lived in the village of Winter Forest. She had been a mysterious woman, someone who had secrets

lingering behind their eyes.

“I did mention I knew her, didn’t I?” Una smiled, setting her empty cup back on the tray. “Seraphine

lived among my people for many years. I was just a child when she came, you see. She was close with

my mother, very close. A friend, in fact, in which my mother had very little. Seraphine became the

keeper of the stone–”

“She what? You’re saying one of the moonstones is here—”.

“Was here. But not anymore. Seraphine was leaving us. Lycenna was looking for the stone. It was an

opportunity to have it safely removed, kept somewhere outside of our territory to avoid a war with

Lycenna.”

“What is Lycenna?”

“A pack, much like our own. Descendants of the people Lycaon left behind.” :

“But I thought you said Morrighan used her, what do you even call it? Her Moon Goddess token to try to

stop Lycaon from fleeing and destroyed the mountains,”

“Ah, yes. She did. But she failed to consider the resilience of our kind. Wolves were new, you know.

And the family and friends Lycaon left behind burrowed into the mountains like moles. They still live

there, and they’ve been after the stones for millennia. They believe Lycaon’s stone belongs to them.

Especially Julien, their current Alpha. He’s close to eighty now, by my estimation. He’s been searching

for our stone, and the map, for decades. Seraphine was the only way to get it away from here and keep

our people ignorant of the fact it was gone. We worshiped it, much like your people worship your

stone.”

“Where did Seraphine go when she left Dianny?”

Una shrugged, sadness blurring her features. “We don’t know. She never returned. She left with her

mate”

“Gemma’s father?” I asked, shocked. Gemma had never known her father, only that he had been from

the Isles. He had died before she was born, from what Seraphine had told her. Oh, Gemma, I thought,

my stomach knotting with grief. I missed her. I even missed Ernest. All of this felt so unfair, and so

much my fault.”