The Alpha's Temptation

Biham rolled the parchment out and began reading it. As he read it, his eyes became wider like a saucer. His face turned red with every line. He looked up and said, "Who could have written this letter to a Nyxer for Lusitania?" The letter wasn't signed. He snapped his gaze towards Sirrah who seemed to shrink in her place.

She clutched the back of a chair as she stared at him with pure fear. "I— I don't know," she squeaked.

"Where is Lusitania?" he asked.

She trembled like a leaf under his scrutinizing gaze. "She left to attend the fire festival yesterday morning and hasn't returned since then."

Rigel had entered the room, and after bowing to all of them, went and sat in the chair opposite to Biham. He had a smirk on his face when Biham was questioning Sirrah.

"And Morava?" he asked in a frosty voice.

Sirrah gulped saliva down her dry throat. "She too hasn't returned."

"I saw her leaving," Rigel interjected.

Sirrah shot him a nervous glance hoping that he would keep quiet.

Biham whipped his head to look at Rigel. His chest rumbled with a dangerous growl. "Where is she?"

Rigel shrugged. "I don't know where she is, but I saw her in a thicket of trees last night with two soldiers." He leaned forward and in a low voice said, "She has done a heinous crime."

Biham's hand clutched the parchment in his hand harder as if that would offer some kind of a support. "And what is that?" he asked, fearing the worst.

Rigel's eyes went from Sirrah to Alrakis and then back to Sirrah. Her hands were visibly shaking now. He averted his gaze and looked back to Biham and said, "She mixed a potent drug in water and tried her best to give it to King Eltanin. However, the king noticed her deed and he forced her to taste it as punishment. The drug had an immediate effect on Morava."

Terror gripped him in a vise-like emotion. Biham froze in his place. To do that to a king was a crime that invited the death penalty. His jaws locked and he couldn't speak further, even if he wanted to. He didn't know what was coming, and he didn't want to hear it, but Rigel was relentless.

"Princess Morava was seen mating with several wolves after that throughout the fire festival," Rigel said with a poker face.

"No!" Biham blurted. His face burned with deep shame.

Rigel tilted his head and said, "You may ask Alpha Alrakis as well. He was a witness to it. However, it doesn't end there."

"Please Prince Rigel," Sirrah snapped in a low voice. "You cannot embarrass us like this."

Rigel poked his tongue in his cheek. "How am I embarrassing you, Luna Sirrah?" he relaxed back in his chair. "And you should be speaking these words to your daughter, Morava, not me." He then spoke again to Biham. "Princess Morava shifted into her wolf and left the fire festival into the darkness of the woods. A soldier from Pegasii, Mizvah went after her."

Biham was shaking with fury. He turned his face to glare at Sirrah, who stepped back a little. Her face was ashen white and her chest was heaving out of nervousness. She didn't know what Biham would do. Even though the letter he clutched in his hand wasn't signed, she knew that he recognized her handwriting. Her crime had come into the limelight and he was going to throw her in the dungeons. The only way to save herself was, "It means that Morava is alive and somewhere in the kingdom of Draka. The moment the effect of the drug wears off , she will come back and apologize to King Eltanin. After all, she is the only heir to the throne now."

"What do you mean by that?" Alrakis said. "How is she the heir to the throne? I thought Princess Lusitania was the real heir."

Sirrah felt like slapping herself for the slip of her tongue. But she had to convey to Biham that even though Lusitania was now taken by the Nyxers, Morava was there as his heir.

"But Lusitania hasn't come back," she replied and before she could understand what was happening to her, her neck was grabbed in a death-like grip. "Biham!" she choked and spluttered. "What are you doing?" She caught his wrist with her hands as tears rolled out of her eyes from the need for air. How could she tell him that it was her who suggested Morava  drug Eltanin.

"I trusted you with Lusitania," he rumbled. "I had asked you to keep her safe, yet this is what you did?" He shoved the letter in front of her eyes.

"I didn't—" she said, but she coughed. Her feet were dangling in the air. "P—please li—"

Biham was out of control. His eyes flickered a winter blue and his wolf wanted to come out and rip her to shreds. "I lost my mate because of you and now I have lost my only true child because of you! You sold her to the Nyxers?"

"What?" Alrakis got up from his place. "This letter was written by Luna Sirrah? Do you mean to say that Sirrah was responsible for the abduction of your daughter?"

"Tsk tsk," Rigel shook his head. "That attracts the death penalty too," he said with a sigh. "Both mother and daughter—" he let out a low whistle as he waved his hand in front of his neck in a slicing motion.

Biham was filled with rage. He threw Sirrah on the floor with so much force that she skidded some ten feet away and her back smashed into the fireplace. She screamed with pain. Biham stomped over to her and grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head back. "Both my daughters are in trouble because of you."

Sirrah was crying. "How can you insult your Luna in front of so many men?"

"You are not my Luna!" he spat. "You forced yourself to be my queen after you rejected your mate!"

If his actions were not enough to embarrass her, that statement rubbed salt in her wounds. He backhanded her and she shrieked with pain. "Because of you my Lusitania is in serious danger. How will I be able to go and retrieve her from Nyxers? You have ruined everything!"

"I did the right thing!" she retorted on an impulse. "I am overjoyed that she is gone. "I hope she never returns!"

"Sirrah!" Biham roared as he raised his hand to slap her again.

"What?" she growled. "You wanted to remove my daughter from the kingdom of Pegasii and put Lusitania there? See what I did to her," she hissed like a viper. "That cunt had been seducing King Eltanin. And look at her now!" She laughed like a mad woman. "She is busy being rutted by the Nyxers. They will use her for breeding."

Biham's hand fell limp to the side.

"Lusitania will never return, Biham! You dared to steal my daughter and I of our privilege. Now look, what have you got yourself into? You have no other choice, but to put Morava on the throne!" Sirrah growled at him. "If you thought  that you could trust me with Lusitania, then that was your greatest mistake. You shouldn't have. I will keep doing everything in my power to keep the position and kingdom I was born for!"