Ch. 76..80: A Warrior Luna's Awakening Chapter 76-80
Chapter 76
Freya’s POV
I never sought out trouble. But I was never the kind to fear it either.
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“She’s from the Ashbourne Throne Family’s first line,” Silas said slowly, his gaze unwavering. “And Freya, you and she share the same surname. Surely you don’t think that’s coincidence.”
My breath caught. In The Ashbourne, there was only one Thorne name worth mentioning–our ancestral hall still stood in the city’s golden heart, shadowed by Stormveil Pack’s banners.
“So it seems,” I said coolly, “that fate has a twisted sense of humor.”
Which meant Jocelyn Thorne of the Metropolitan Pack–was my cousin.
I hadn’t yet returned to my bloodline, and already I’d clashed with her.
Silas tilted his head. “You don’t want to ask what ties I have to Jocelyn?”
I’m just a bodyguard.” My words were clipped, final.
In other words, whoever Jocelyn was to him–lover, enemy, ghost–it wasn’t my concern.
I refused to drown in the swamp of another man’s tangled past.
But Silas didn’t stop. His voice lowered, rough like iron scraping steel.
“Her eye… almost ruined by my hand. The orb was spared, but her vision never recovered.”
I froze. Jocelyn had once whispered that Silas cared for nothing but her eyes.
His next words made my pulse spike.
“I was eight years old. My mind–shattered. I remember my hands on her throat. My nails digging… gouging toward her eye until I almost ripped it from her skull.”
A chill raced down my spine. My wolf bristled inside me. I hadn’t expected that.
But outwardly, I kept my face calm. I’d seen enough war, enough carnage in the field with the Iron Fang Recon Unit. My youth had been spent staring into the pits of conflict beyond our borders. Compared to those flames, this truth did not shake
me.
“You’re not afraid?” he pressed, his obsidian eyes catching the low light.
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“I’ve seen worse,” I said simply. “Perhaps that’s why fear doesn’t come easily to me.”
I let my gaze linger on him, my wolf brushing the edges of his aura. “If anything, I think you and Jocelyn are both… tragic.”
His lips quirked, sharp. “So you pity me?”
No one had ever called Silas Whitmor pitiful. He was the cursed Alpha of the Ironclad Coalition. The beast and the sinner.
“You were eight,” I countered, “lost in madness. That’s not a monster. That’s a child carrying the weight of a curse.”
His laugh was low, dangerous. “Careful, little wolf. That kind of sympathy can get you killed. Stay too close to a beast, and one day its teeth might pierce your throat. What if I lose my mind again? Would you fear me tearing out your eyes? Remember, I am not a weak child anymore.”
Nared my teeth in something between a smirk and a challenge. “I’m not Jocelyn. If you ever lose yourself with me. Silas, I won’t scream. I’ll put you down with a single strike, make sure you hurt no one again”
For a moment, genuine surprise flickered across his face. Then hunger. Interest
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Chapter 76
My wolf shivered under his stare.
He thought me intriguing. He thought he would tire of me in three moons.
But I saw the doubt in his eyes now.
When his car rolled to a stop, I realized we’d arrived at a hospital instead of the Coalition’s compound.
“You need your wounds checked,” he said. “At the airport, you took more than one hit.”
I said nothing, only followed. In truth, I had been planning to pick up medicine anyway.
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What I didn’t expect was for Silas to shadow me through the hallways, towering at my side even as I signed in at the clinic.
“Won’t you go back first?” I asked.
His mouth curved, a wolf’s smile. “You’re my shield. Where else would I be but with you?”
I bit back a retort and let him follow.
When my name was called, I stepped into the examination room. After I explained the injuries, the physician gestured at the bed.
“Remove your boots and lie down,” the doctor said. “I need to check your abdomen.”
I bent to unlace them–then hissed when pain tore through my ribs and stomach, remnants of the Capital’s airport skirmish.
The doctor frowned. “In that case, let your husband help you.”
My head snapped up. “Husband?”
The doctor’s eyes flicked to Silas, looming silent beside me.
Heat rushed to my cheeks. “He’s not my husband.”
The physician arched a brow. “Then your mate, surely. Don’t just stand there, Alpha. Your she–wolf is injured. Help her.”
I opened my mouth to protest again, but Silas’s hand was already at my ankle, his touch burning like fire through the leather of my boot.
And my wolf… betrayed me with a tremor.
Chapter 77
Freya’s POV
。
ว
D
When I bent down to untie my sneakers, the pain at my ribs shot sharp enough to steal my breath.
“Doctor, he’s not―” I started, but my words froze in my throat.
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Silas Whitmor was already crouched in front of me. The Alpha of the Ironclad Coalition, the man who ruled with steel and fire, was holding my ankle in one hand like it weighed nothing. His other hand moved with precise ease as he worked the knot of my laces free.
“The doctor is right,” he said, voice quiet, edged in iron. “You’re injured. Don’t strain yourself.”
I could only stare, stunned, as he slid my shoe off, then the other.
The Alpha of Ironclad… taking off my shoes? My heart thudded unevenly in my chest. It felt wrong, surreal–like the moon herself had flipped the world upside down.
Before I could recover, he scooped me into his arms.
“What–what are you doing?” My voice came out sharper than I intended, nerves prickling down my spine.
“You want to walk barefoot on hospital floors?” His tone stayed maddeningly calm, as if this was nothing, as if carrying me was a simple necessity.
He laid me gently on the examination cot, careful enough that it sent another confusing twist through my chest. The doctor began his work, prodding bruises, muttering about fractures and resilience, while Silas waited beyond the curtain, expression unreadable.
When it was over, the doctor prescribed medicine and waved us off.
Back in the car, I couldn’t stop glancing at Silas’s hands. Strong, elegant, dangerous–hands made for wielding claws, for tearing throats, for commanding an army. Yet those same hands had just loosened my shoelaces with ridiculous care. And later… tied them back again.
“You really do like my hands, don’t you?” His voice cut the silence, smooth and sudden.
Heat flushed my cheeks, and I coughed to cover it. “I was… just thinking. About earlier. Thank you, for… helping me.”
“You should thank me. I don’t do that for people,” he replied simply.
The car fell quiet again until his low voice came once more. “How do you plan on thanking me?”
I blinked, caught off guard. “Didn’t I just…?”
oward
His gaze flicked toward me, sharp enough to pin me in place. “Or are you the kind who only says thanks with words?”
My lips pressed together. “Then maybe I should return the favor. Take off your shoes. Tie your laces.”
His mouth curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Not necessary. But there is one thing I want. Stop calling me ‘Mr. Whitmor. It’s 100… distant.”
I frowned. The problem was, I wanted distance. “Then… what? Should I call you Alpha?”
“Call me Silas.” His tone left no room for argument. “Three months. Freya. For three months, you’ll be at my side. No need for titles between us.”
exhaled slowly. “Fine. Silas”
“Good.” His lips shaped my name, but softer, lower. “And I’ll call you Freya. Or perhaps… little wolf.”
The sound slid down my spine like claws tracing over skin. I stiffened, forcing my expression flat. Too many people had called me Freya before–my father, my mother, my brother, packmates. But never like this. His voice made it sound like
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Chapter 77
something else entirely: a claim, a warning, a temptation.
I shook it off, burying the strange shiver in my chest.
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By the time the car stopped, I looked up to see a sprawling estate. Whitmor territory. Silas’s stronghold within the city.
“This is my residence when I’m in the Ashbourne,” he explained, leading me inside. “You’ll stay in the room next to mine. Close enough to guard me.”
The halls smelled of polished wood and old steel, tinged faintly with wolf. Servants moved with quiet efficiency, eyes lowered in submission. This was no simple house–it was a den carved in iron.
“You may enter any room you like,” Silas continued as he stopped at a corridor. “Except one. The door at the end of the third floor That one, you will never open.”
I froze. The words slotted into me like a story whispered at the edge of firelight.
A forbidden door. A command wrapped in shadow.
Like something out of an old tale where the monster hides its secrets in a locked room.
And I had just been warned not to look.
Chapter 78
Third Person’s POV
Freya didn’t dwell on things she had no business prying into.
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So when Silas warned her not to touch the room at the end of the third–floor corridor, she nodded without hesitation.
“Understood,” she said calmly, shifting the urn of her parents‘ ashes in her arms. “Anything else I should know?”
“That’s all,” Silas replied. His expression was unreadable, voice clipped with the kind of command that came naturally to an Alpha of the Ironclad Coalition. “Settle your belongings. If you need anything, the steward will see to it.”
Freya inclined her head in acknowledgment and stepped into the chamber prepared for her.
The room was decadent, far too ornate for her taste. Gilded molding, velvet curtains, and a sweeping carpet in faded crimson gave it the heavy fragrance of a bygone age. The furniture was French–inspired, romantic, almost suffocating in its excess. Freya preferred sharp lines and practicality–nothing like this.
But this wasn’t her home. She was here on obligation, under an arrangement meant to last three months. She could endure anything for three months.
She placed the urm gently on the nightstand, its weight heavier than steel in her arms. Then, pulling out her WolfComm, she called the keepers of the Stormveil ancestral hall.
She had already contacted them back in the Capital, confirming the rites: three days in the Stormveil Primal Hall, then a place in the Ashbourne Legion’s Hall of Martyrs. Still, she wanted to be sure.
The line connected quickly.
“This is Freya Thorne, from the Bloodrnoon pack, which is the fifth branch of Stormveil. I’ve returned to Ashbourne. Tomorrow, I’ll bring my parents‘ ashes to the Stormveil Primal Hall for the three–day vigil, before setting their spirit tablets.”
The voice on the other end was gruff but not unkind. “Understood. Come tomorrow. We’ll prepare for the rite.”
Elsewhere, in the dim corridors of the Stormveil Pack’s main seat, Jocelyn Thorne walked beside her uncle James, Arthur’s seventh cousin, the weary caretaker of the Hall.
“Uncle Jmaes,” she asked smoothly, “who was that on the call?”
“A girl from the fifth branch,” he answered with a sigh. “Freya Thorne. She’ll be bringing Arthur and Myra’s ashes tomorrow.”
Jocelyn’s eyes gleamed with faint amusement. “The fifth branch? The Bloodmoon? I thought they were gone.”
“Nearly,” he said, his voice lined with regret. “Arthur fell with the Iron Fang Recon Unit, Myra never returned from the field. Their son, Eric, gone years ago. All that remains is the daughter.”
Jocelyn tilted her head, lips curving faintly. “Will you be receiving her in person?”
He hesitated. Technically, duty demanded it. But duty was heavy, and the lure of his nightly card game was heavier still.
“I ought to, but…”
“Then allow me,” Jocelyn interrupted, her tone honey–smooth. “I’ve been meaning to take a few friends to see the Stormveil Primal Hall. I’ll greet Freya on your behalf.”
Her uncle chuckled, relieved. “Ah, Jocelyn, always so thoughtful. You’ll save me the trouble.”
She smiled sweetly. But when she lowered her gaze, the warmth in her eyes cooled into steel.
So the outcast returns with ashes in her arms…
Freya Thome. Tomorrow, let’s see how you endure what I arrange for you.
Chapter 78
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That same night, in the Whitmore stronghold, Silas stood alone at the far end of the third–floor corridor.
The air here was colder, as though shadows themselves bent to the Alpha’s presence. On the wall hung an oil painting–two men tall; framed in heavy iron.
The portrait was of a woman, breathtaking in her beauty. She wore a jewel–toned qipao, Whitmore jade glittering on her wrist. Her gaze held both pride and fire, but beneath the paint one could almost sense the desperation that had haunted her
end.
Silas’s jaw tightened. The memory came unbidden.
The jade bracelet, shattered against stone. Her voice, raw and sharp:
“I don’t want the Whitmore heirlooms. I don’t want the Whitmore chains. Let me go! You’re all mad. Every last one of you!”
Later, her beauty had withered, like a rose burned from the inside out. At the end, she had clutched his hand, nails biting deep, words carved into his soul:
“You are his son. You will inherit his madness. That blood runs in you. So listen to me, boy–don’t love. Never love. You are not fit to love. You will destroy everything you touch.”
Silas stood before the portrait, silent, his broad shoulders taut with the echo of a curse that wasn’t of witches, but of bloodline.
And now, Freya Thorne-
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The daughter of the fallen, the last ember of Stormveil’s fifth branch-
was in the room just beyond.
Chapter 79
Silas‘ POV
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“Mother…” My voice was low, rough. “I won’t be like him. I won’t descend into madness. And as you wished, I will never love anyone.”
Love destroyed her. Love turned my father into a monster.
This estate, the Whitmor stronghold, had once been her cage. My father locked her here, shackled her spirit until it withered away. She died clawing at the bars, begging to escape. And still, she was buried in Whitmor soil, bound to this house even in death.
My father never recovered. He bled his soul into rage, obsession, and bloodshed. His wolf became feral, unhinged. I remember his eyes–red, fevered, wild–aş he stood before her grave and told me:
“You are ours, boy. Hers and mine. You’ll inherit our curse. When you love, you will burn the world for it. When you’ll be stone, no matter how the weak beg for your mercy. Which ending will you choose, Silas?”
you
don’t,
His laugh still echoes in my ears, a jagged howl that crawls under my skin.
Neither, I swore to myself. Neither.
I turned from the portrait and descended the stairs, my boots silent against the marble. At the second floor, I stopped. Freya had just stepped from her chamber, a pale figure clutching shadows and secrets.
Her scent hit me–wolf, storm, faint ashes of loss. It lingered in the air, a thorn at the edge of my senses.
“Tell me,” I asked suddenly, my voice sharper than intended, “do you think I am capable of loving anyone? Or do you think I will never love at all?”
She blinked, startled, her gaze locking onto mine. There was a flicker in her eyes–wariness, but also something else. Something that made my wolf shift beneath my skin.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked softly.
“Answer me.” My tone left no room for escape. “Will I love? Or will I never love?”
Her lips pressed together before she said, “That isn’t for me to judge. Only you can decide whom you love—or if you love no
one”
My wolf snarled at the evasion, but I pressed, my words colder. “And what about you, Freya? You once loved Caelum Grafton, didn’t you? Yet you cut him away, clean as a blade, when the Lunar Severance Phase came. If it was truly love, wouldn’t you have clawed your way to him no matter the cost?”
Her jaw tightened. “Even if I love someone, if he does not return it, I will leave. Love is not chains. And as for Caelum… whatever I felt for him, it is gone. He is not the one I want to love.”
Something in her voice was unshakable, a quiet fire. My curiosity pricked deeper. “Then what sort of male do love?”
you
want to
Her gaze drifted, softening. “Someone who will walk beside me. Who will never abandon me, no matter what storm we face. Someone who will stay even unto death.”
Her words were foreign to me, alien. Her vision of love was nothing but weakness. And yet, my chest tightened as she spoke, because my mother had never known that kind of bond. My father had never given it.
“I don’t believe such wolves exist.” I muttered.
“My parents were like that,” she said firmly. “Arthur Thorne and Myra–my father and mother. They stood together through everything, even in death. They loved each other truly.” Her eyes glistened with the memory, but her lips curved upward in
the faintest smile.
Her truth cut me, because it stood in perfect defiance of everything I had lived. My parents had been ruin and fire. Hers had
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Chapter 79
been unity and devotion. She and I… opposites in every way.
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That night, after dinner, I returned to my quarters. I had begun unfastening my belt when I heard the door creak open. I froze, turning my head.
Freya.
She had stumbled into my chamber through the adjoining door. The one that connected our rooms. She froze, too, but her eyes caught on the scars etched across my back–ribbons of battles fought, wounds carved by claw and steel.
Oh,” she breathed. She didn’t turn away. She stared.
The silence stretched until my patience snapped. “How long do you intend to stare?” I growled.
Her body jolted. “Ah–sorry!” She turned quickly, her cheeks flushed, but I’d already seen the way her gaze lingered.
I pulled on my shirt with deliberate slowness, letting the fabric cover the map of scars, and crossed the space between us. “I should have warned you. The door connects our rooms. You can keep your side locked if you wish, though I will leave mine open. If danger comes…” My eyes narrowed as I let the words hang. “…you can rush in. Protect me.”
The irony wasn’t lost on either of us.
She coughed awkwardly, her voice flustered. “Of course. Then I’ll go back now.”
But as she moved to slip away, I braced my palm against the door, blocking her path. My eyes pinned hers, unyielding.
“You saw it, didn’t you?” I asked.
She tilted her head, pretending not to understand. “Saw what?”
“My body. The scars.”
She faltered under my stare, the color in her cheeks deepening. For a soldier, she should have been used to seeing bare skin, battered wolves, blood. And yet–her heartbeat told me this was different,
And I realized mine was no calmer.
Chapter 80
Freya’s POV
I froze in place, breath catching in my throat.
It must have been the shock. Nothing else could explain it.
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Because I never expected Silas Whitmor’s back–Alpha of the Ironclad Coalition, heir of the feared Whitmore bloodline–to be carved over with scars.
Not the kind of marks a warrior earns in battle with rogues. These weren’t badges of honor. They were cruel, deliberate. They reeked of punishment. Of abuse.
Abuse?
The lines weren’t fresh. Some were years old, healed but jagged, layered one over another. Scars that could only have come from his youth. From when he was still a child.
My stomach twisted, fury knotting inside me. Who would dare? Who would do this to a pup?
The words escaped before I could stop them.
“Those scars on your back… who did that to you?!”
His gaze flicked toward me, unreadable, voice low and cold.
“So you really did see them.” He didn’t answer my question. Instead, his lips curled faintly. “But are you actually angry, Freya? Angry because of the marks carved into my flesh?”
His calmness jarred me back. My heartbeat steadied. Why was I angry? If he had been beaten, the one responsible was surely long gone–or already dealt with. Silas wasn’t some powerless pup anymore. He was Alpha. The predator no one dared to
touch.
I exhaled slowly. “A little angry, yes. But it’s your past, your scars. It’s not my place to pry. I overstepped.”
His lashes flickered once. Then his hand slid off the doorframe, releasing me. “Go back to your room.”
I obeyed, retreating across the threshold into my chamber. I shut the adjoining door softly behind me.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about his back. About the whip–marks carved deep into his flesh. The stories whispered in Bloodmoon Pack about the Whitmore line came back to me. Silas’s father, brutal and unhinged, obsessed with a mate who never returned his love. I’d thought those tales exaggerated. Now I wasn’t so sure.
He could have burned those scars away with SkyVex dermal tech. He hadn’t. He’d kept them, carried them like a weapon etched into his skin. A yow to never be powerless again.
That night, I lay awake staring at the ceiling, restless. Tomorrow, I would have to walk into the Stormveil Primal Hall. My family’s sacred ground. My grandfather had given his life protecting it, and his spirit still lingered there. My parents‘ tablets were enshrined in its heart.
I remembered the last time, when I was younger, walking between my father Arthur and my mother Myra as we carried offerings. Eric, my brother, had been by my side. This time, I would go alone.
But someday… when I find Eric again, we’ll go together. We’ll kneel before our ancestors, before my parents‘ spirits, and they’ll see we endured.
My thoughts shattered as a muffled cry tore through the wall.
Ibolted upright. It came from the other side–Silas’s room.
Heart pounding, I shoved open the connecting door and stepped inside.
Darkness swallowed the space, but my wolf sight cut through the shadows. On the bed, Silas lay writhing, face twisted in pain.
Chapter 80
His chest heaved, sweat darkening the sheets. His mouth moved, broken words spilling out.
“Pain… gods, it hurts… stop–please, stop… I’ll obey, I’ll be good… obedient…”
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The sound pierced me. I froze, disbelieving. This was Silas. The man whose very presence cowed entire packs. And yet here he was, begging in his sleep, voice cracked like a child’s.
The scars. The abuse. My gut twisted.
“Silas!” I whispered sharply, stepping to his side.
He didn’t wake. His body thrashed once, then stilled, lips trembling as he choked out another broken plea.
I reached for him. hand hovering, then brushing against his damp cheek.
Suddenly his grip snapped around my wrist, faster than thought, crushing tight. I gasped, startled by his reflex.
But his eyes stayed closed. His voice–raw, shattered–fell into the space between us.
“Don’t leave me….*
My throat closed. The predator was gone; in his place was someone unbearably fragile.
I didn’t pull away. I let him hold me. Slowly, the tension bled from his frame. His breathing steadied. The nightmare receded.
With
my free hand, I reached for a tissue on the bedside table and gently wiped the sweat from his brow.
I had thought of Silas as a man carved of ice and steel, a void where warmth could not exist. Yet now… he looked breakable. Like a pup in need of shelter.
Minutes passed. His features smoothed, and at last, he sank into a deep, steady sleep.
I glanced down at my wrist, still trapped in his hand. I tried to ease it free-
And stopped, staring at his sleeping face.
My chest ached in a way I didn’t want to name.