Chapter 332
Chapter 333
Luén’s POV
It was never meant to be easy for something like us to exist.
Finished
A daughter born of a pureblood Alpha King and a Dark Fae was not a blessing in Lunareth-it was an omen. The elders never said it outright in Father’s presence, but their whispers carried through the halls like rot.
Monster.
Our mother was the only one who never looked at us that way. Her hands were always warm, her voice soft with a kind of love that asked for nothing in return. But she was gone before we could even understand what it meant to be safe. Four years old-and already, we were alone.
Father did what kings do. He ruled. He protected his throne. And to protect it, he tried to fix us.
Every rumor about his “tainted” heir was a threat to his crown, and so he sought to carve the impurity out of us.
Rituals.
Endless, brutal rituals.
He summoned seers, witches, and mind-walkers-strangers who reeked of incense and iron-to cleanse what they called the darkness within us. They bound our necks and wrists in silver chains that burned against our skin, forced power into our veins until it felt like our bones would splinter apart.
We screamed. We always screamed.
But it never mattered.
They did not see a pup.
Only something to be corrected.
Something to be contained.
And in the end… it worked.
By the time we turned thirteen, the court saw only what Father wanted them to see. The whispers quieted, and the fear dulled into something manageable.
They gave us a new name that day.
A royal name.
Princess Lysara of Lunareth Kingdom.
And just like that… I disappeared.
I sank beneath the surface of our shared soul, watching in silence as Lysara stepped forward—graceful, obedient, everything they had ever demanded. The perfect princess. The untainted heir.
While I remained in the dark.
Watching.
Waiting.
It was that same year Father brought the orphaned pup of one of his fallen guards into the palace.
Carmen.
She arrived with bright eyes and a sweet smile, all innocence and gratitude. Lysara welcomed her without hesitation, blind as always to what lay beneath.
But I saw it.
The hunger.
It coiled inside Carmen like a starving wolf-sharp, patient, waiting for its moment. Lysara would never notice. So I did what she wouldn’t.
I reminded Carmen of her place.
There were moments when I forced my way to the surface, seizing control of our body when Lysara’s mercy became weakness. I made certain Carmen saw the truth laid bare. What we actually are, what she will never
I broke her.
Bit by bit.
Her little fox pet was the first to die-its fragile neck snapping beneath our hands. Then her nanny. Then Carmen herself, over and over again, until her fear tasted sweet on our tongue.
Lysara should have been grateful.
I was protecting us.
We grew up within the same walls after that, but there was never/equality between us. I was the Crown Princess of Lunareth, while Carmen was just a stray taken in out of pity. Her eyes would linger too long on us, filled with something between dread and hatred.
She never forgot it.
And neither did I.
Everything was unfolding exactly as I intended.
I would take the throne. I would rule Lunareth. Untouched. Unchallenged.
Until fate intervened.
We met him when we were nineteen.
Ezrael.
The Commander of the Lycan war-clans.
A warrior forged in blood and winter.
It was Lysara he saw first-the golden princess who saved those helpless pups and stood radiant against monsters. It was her kindness that caught his eye. Her softness. Her light.
But that wasn’t the whole story.
Because the second time we met him…
On that frozen night, beneath a sky heavy with snow and shadow-
It was I who dragged him back from the edge of death.
Me who kept his heart beating.
Me who stood between him and oblivion.
And just like Lysara, I fell for him too.
I felt it take root in my heart during those fleeting moments they shared-a fragile, forbidden love between two wolves born of rival clans that had never known peace.
It was brief… painfully brief.
Because in the end, Lysara and I died by Carmen’s betrayal.
A trap so carefully laid that even now I can still taste the bitterness of it, we could have fled, the path had been right there before us, but Lysara insisted on staying, insisted on saving those servants who would have abandoned us without a second thought.
And that weakness-her softness-cost us everything.
Yet death did not keep us, and when we were reborn beneath the silent gaze of the Moon Goddess, I believed fate had finally corrected itself.
I was certain things would unfold as they should. The moment Lysara, or Lylah, or whatever name she wears now, failed to enter the Academy of Lunar Grace, I felt it. The fracture. The quiet unraveling of her spirit.
I thought she would do what she had always done-retreat into herself, disappear into Blackfang, become someone insignificant… someone who would never cross paths with Ezrael again.
It was only natural. She had always been the more fragile one after all. And so I believed that this life would finally belong to me.
But I was wrong.
She did not shatter. She did not fade. She did not make herself lesser. Instead, she became something I had never witnessed-unafraid, alight with a fire that refused to be dimmed, impossible to overlook.
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Chapter 333
And for the first time, something unfamiliar crept beneath my skin.
Uncertainty.
It seems this life will not follow the path I once knew. And that means only one thing-
I will have to be far more careful.
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Finished
The Betrayed Princess Rising
George Orwell