Chapter 131: Alive and Protected

Author’s POV~

The Crescent Pack House

The great hall of the Crescent Pack house was quiet, but it was not a peaceful quiet. It was the kind of silence that comes before a storm.

Luna Selena stood in the middle of the room with one hand pressed against her chest. Her face had lost all its colour.

Right in front of her, Lucas and Logan stood shoulder to shoulder. Their academy uniforms were a wrinkled mess, and their golden eyes burned with an animalistic fury that threatened to shatter their control.

"What in the actual fuck do you mean, she’s missing?" Selena’s voice shook, cracking on the edge of hysteria.

Lucas let out a harsh, bitter breath, his fists clenching so tight his knuckles turned white. "Chloe is gone, Mother. We looked everywhere. She’s just... gone."

"That is completely impossible!" Selena took a frantic step forward, her eyes wide with disbelief.

"She was always with the two of you! Always! She never went anywhere alone, not for a single second. How does a grown alpha girl just vanish into thin air from the Royal Lycan Academy?"

"We don’t fucking know," Logan snapped back, his voice strained to the breaking point.

"Did you search properly?" Selena’s voice rose, desperate and sharp. "Did you check every single building, every dark hallway, every hidden corner of that place?"

Lucas looked away, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle twitched violently in his cheek.

"That’s the fucked-up part, Mother. Her scent was in her dorm room. It was faint, but it was definitely there. But the second we tried to follow it outside the door... it just stopped."

He shook his head slowly, a dark shadow crossing his face. "It ended into absolute nothingness. There is no trail. There is no direction. It’s like she walked out of that room and evaporated."

"A wolf’s scent doesn’t just vanish," Selena whispered, terror gripping her throat.

"I know," Lucas muttered.

"A true wolf cannot disappear from this earth without leaving a trace of blood or sweat behind."

"I know, Mother," Logan growled, his voice dropping into a dark register. "And that is exactly what is scaring the living hell out of us."

Selena pressed her trembling fingers to her forehead, squeezing her eyes shut.

For the first time in their lives, her sons looked at her and saw raw, unadulterated fear written all over their mother’s face.

Logan couldn’t take it anymore. He slammed his fist down onto a nearby table, his breathing fast, harsh, and ragged.

"I’ll tell you what I fucking think," Logan snarled, his golden eyes flashing a dangerous amber. "I have a gut feeling, and it’s screaming at me right now. I think this is that bitch Adeline’s handiwork. This is all her."

The entire room went dead silent.

Lucas turned his head slowly, staring at his twin brother like he had completely lost his mind. "What did you just say?"

"You heard me clearly, Lucas."

"Logan, what the hell are you even babbling about?" Lucas demanded, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous hiss.

"Adeline? Are you out of your damn mind? She is a pathetic, wolfless defect! She can barely walk across the academy courtyard without tripping over her own feet or getting shoved down by someone. And Chloe is an alpha with real, raw strength. If anyone laid a finger on her, Chloe would have fought back to the death. She isn’t weak. Adeline couldn’t hurt a fly."

"Adeline hurt her already. She is not as innocent as we think she is. You know what she did to me... with a silver knife! And that was a dirty trick!"

"It was still enough to cut an alpha’s wrist, wasn’t it?" Logan snapped. His eyes were burning. "You think a wolfless girl can walk into a room and slice an alpha with silver? Then why couldn’t she do something worse?"

Lucas opened his mouth to argue, but the words caught in his throat. He snapped his mouth shut.

Logan stepped even closer, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "Think about it logically. Chloe was completely fine yesterday. Today, right after everything that went down, she is vanished without a trace. Who benefits the most from this? Who hated her enough to want her wiped off the face of the earth? Adeline targeted Chloe on the very first day we stepped foot inside that academy."

"She has powerful backing, Logan," Lucas said slowly, the gears turning in his head. "Adeline is not strong enough or smart enough to pull this off completely on her own."

"Exactly!" Logan’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. "She isn’t. So what if she didn’t do it alone? What if a lycan helped her make Chloe disappear?"

Lucas stared at his twin, his breath hitching. Little by little, the fierce anger on his face melted away, replaced by something infinitely colder and darker.

"A lycan," Lucas repeated, the word tasting like poison on his tongue.

"Just think about it," Logan pressed on, his voice tight. "Think about who stood right beside her during that bloody hearing. Think about the royals who came crashing in to rescue her."

Luna Selena couldn’t take a single second more of their cryptic madness.

"Stop!" she screamed, throwing her hand up in the air. "Stop talking in these goddamn riddles! What lycan? What hearing? Who the fuck are you two even talking about right now?!"

The twins exchanged a heavy, grim look.

"Mother," Lucas said very carefully, choosing every word like a weapon. "We are talking about Adeline."

Selena stared at him blankly, her mind refusing to compute the name. "Adeline?"

"Yes."

"The orphan girl?" Selena let out a short, hysterical, and deeply confused laugh.

"The wolfless nobody who used to live in the servant quarters of our pack house? Wait a damn minute... wasn’t she supposed to be dead after the two of you publicly rejected her as your fated mate?!"

"No, Mother," Lucas answered quietly, his eyes dark. "She isn’t dead at all."

The manic laugh died instantly in Selena’s throat, choking her.

"What did you just say?"

"Adeline is alive," Logan said, his voice hard as iron. "She has been living right under our noses at the Royal Lycan Academy this entire time. And that isn’t even the worst part of it."

Selena’s face completely drained of whatever blood she had left. "Go on."

"She has the Four Thrones protecting her," Lucas whispered.

Selena’s knees buckled underneath her. She blindly grabbed the high back of a wooden armchair to keep herself from crashing to the floor.

"The... Four Royal Lycan Thrones?" she choked out.

"Yes, Mother. Those four."

"The four royal princes? The ruthless, untouchable sons of the High Concord? Those four?! Are you out of your fucking minds?!"