The Moon Goddess' Chosen

522 A Delicate Balance... Broken

When the four were settled in, Queen Martha brought refreshments to the table, frowning when no one touched them.

‘What a waste!’ the woman sighed but didn’t complain.

“You’re Madeline’s grandmother, aren’t you? You don’t look old enough to have a granddaughter,” the king sighed.

“Yes, I am her grandmother. I only look younger because I was exposed to a lot of divine energy. Either that or it was the Moon Goddess’s intention to grant me the strength to make it this far,” the woman shrugged, at a loss for an explanation herself.

“Well then, Madeline is out with her friends right now. If you want to meet her, I can have…”

“Our reunion will have to wait a bit longer. There is something more important I need to tell you,” the woman cut him off, “I know Mady. She’s resilient, just like I am… perhaps even more so. But at the moment, what I have to tell you can’t wait,” the woman announced with an edge in her voice.

“Very well then. Tell me everything,” the king settled into his seat, “Your tale must be an interesting one.”

Meeting Beatrice meant a lot of things to the royal. Her presence here meant she’d survived her ordeal against the Rogue King. The details of how she managed such a feat were bound to be interesting.

Madeline would also finally be reunited with her grandmother. It was a miracle that she was here, to begin with.

.....

“You already know that I am the Seeker and probably found out from Madeline that the Rogue King paid us a visit nearly two years ago. On that day, the Rogue King took me captive,” Beatrice began.

“I doubt the Rogue King has any interest in discovering who his mate is,” the king chuckled, but no one laughed with him. ‘I guess I’m not the only one suffocating under this tension,’ he sighed, “Carry on.”

“No, you’re right. The Rogue King didn’t want anything to do with finding his mate… even though I checked without his knowledge. I received two answers… and I’ve never known a man to have more than one mate but that was what I read from him.

Anyway, he wanted me to lead him to the Origin.”

“No one’s allowed to go there,” Davin tensed.

“Yes, I know and I wasn’t trying to take him there. He tricked me and used me to get there…” the grey-eyed woman narrated the events in detail, clearly describing everything concerning the Rogue King’s current ‘situation’ and how he’d gotten himself trapped at the Origin.

This revelation confirmed Micah’s own narration erasing the doubts about the ability that was sealed away by the Moon Goddess’s Chosen. The frightening bit is that this woman’s message was coming nearly two years too late.

Any number of things could have happened in that time. There was no telling what the rogue king could have achieved during that time that they didn’t know of this.

Actually, there was…

Micah had explained it all to them. If he was right, then the Rogue King had not slowed down in his plans to turn the humans into werewolves, considering there was some way he’d found around his handicap of a prison.

And if that was the case, a large number of humans in the Great Arena were bound to be cursed by his bite.

Additionally, Beatrice had mentioned the Rogue King’s orders to the rest of the rogues which explained why the Flush-out plan had never worked in the first place.

There were no rogues in no man’s land. Most of them had already blended in with the general population, concealing their killing intent and malicious auras to blend in as genuine citizens… lying in wait. Hiding in plain sight.

Their numbers were impossible to discern… What they could guess though, was that the time to strike was close… too close.

Cutting off communications was only the beginning.

“We need to separate the humans from the werewolves. That way, we can…” as if sensing the king’s tension, the lights went off.

Davin looked up at the chandelier that no longer illuminated the room. The only light that filled the Royal Suite was the light of the evening sun that filtered in through the glass panes on one side of the living room.

King Davin stood and walked to the glass pane, staring down at the forested battlegrounds that had been prepared for the second stage of the games. This was one of the best views of the competition.

“A power outage at this time. That’s odd,” Micah wondered, getting up from his seat.

The first sign of panic seeped through the mind link.

At once, Davin’s mind soared through the mind link, invading the privacy of all the panicking pack members, picking information from their senses and filtering it into his mind to come up with the more or less perfect image of the situation.

Queen Martha noticed what her husband was doing at once and rushed over to him, “Honey, we shouldn’t…”

Queen Martha stopped speaking when the king raised a hand to stop her.

“I’ll break the rules if it means saving the lives of our people,” the king replied, finally gathering enough information. The queen nodded and allowed her husband to continue gathering information from the pack. As soon as he’d caught on to what was happening, Davin tensed, “I don’t believe it.”

“What is it?” Martha asked, anxiety filling her tone.

“First shifts… Random humans are shifting. It doesn’t make any sense and there is no order to it that I can find… but that’s what is happening,” the king explained, his eyes snapping open with a flash of blue.

“What now?” Micah asked, leaning deeper into the sofa. Had he come too late to warn them? He’d followed his gut instincts, bringing this matter to the only person he judged to be best suited to handle a situation like this one.

Could the hunters have done a better job compared to the King? Or had he made the right choice in telling him? If he had made the right choice, just how many people would still die from the resulting carnage?

No, Micah was sure he’d made the right choice. In the short seconds that had followed the blackout, the king had been able to discern the situation happening all over the Great Arena and come up with an answer.

This feat alone would have taken every hunter working together as a disjointed whole to gather information… and there was a high chance many would have died by the time they realised what was happening around them.

What was more… they could have ended up adding to the chaos themselves.

‘First shifts, huh…’

King Davin’s mind was rushing through a series of facts and possible courses of action, searching for a way out of this situation before the first human completed their First Shift.

Because the power was off, several parts of the Great Arena had been thrown into a veil of darkness regardless of the evening sun that still sent its golden rays through the windows.

As a result of the ensuing darkness, calming the shifting humans was next to impossible at this point. The screams let loose by those in pain didn’t help the situation either. Medical personnel were at a loss in this situation and the wolves that could help were mostly frozen in fear by what was happening.

That meant the shifting humans would eventually complete the transformation and, considering their current chaotic environments, succumb to the primal violent urges of their newly manifested wolf counterparts.

Rogues had come to be known as the most dangerous creatures in the world. They were trained to kill and wouldn’t let a civilian live the moment they saw them.

However, coming in second was something much closer to common society. A newly shifted werewolf whose human side had fallen unconscious during the painful transformation. The werewolf that resulted was a disoriented irrational creature that could tear through anyone and everything that walked and breathed near it.

That said, werewolves weren’t allowed into society until the First Shift was complete and the werewolf had learnt to control their impulsive animal sides.

So far, this system had been working well and the world was at peace. For a long time, humans had even forgotten such a thing existed.

And it was because the system had been working so well that few people knew how to deal with werewolves that had just shifted.

King Davin had limited options.

“RANDOM HUMANS ARE GOING THROUGH THEIR FIRST SHIFTS. THERE IS NO TIME TO EXPLAIN AS THE DETAILS ARE NOT CLEAR. WHAT IS CLEAR IS THE DANGER THEY POSE TO THE WHOLE OF THE GREAT ARENA.

WEREWOLVES ARE TO BE SEPARATED FROM HUMANS. SHIFTING HUMANS ARE TO BE LOCKED ON DESIGNATED FLOORS THAT WILL BE SMOKED WITH SLEEPING AGENTS. THESE ORDERS ARE TO BE CARRIED OUT IMMEDIATELY,” the king’s voice thundered over the mind link, stunning any and all werewolves that heard it.

Convincing them of this was not at all hard as nearly every werewolf in the colossal coliseum heard at least one scream before the king’s voice relayed these orders.

Along with his message came images of humans going through the painful First Shift.

There was a brief pause before the voice of another royal rang through the mind link, declaring these new orders law to everyone.

“YOU HEARD THE KING. LET’S GET TO WORK,” Cole’s voice was calmer than King Davin’s but it had both the effect of calming the panicking werewolves and strengthening Sirius King’s orders.

Davin tuned out of the mind link and staggered backwards into his wife’s arms. Exhaustion began taking a hold of his body as the backlash of a wide-range broadcast like that came rushing back to him.

His extremities were feeling numb as well, as though he’d only returned to his body and forgotten what it felt like.

This was the first time he was making a communication this wide and through the minds of all the werewolves in the vicinity. The King shook off his exhaustion and relayed his orders to Micah, cluing the hunters in as well.

There was no telling just how well his orders could or would be carried out. Any number of things could go wrong in the vast coliseum.

Were his orders the right course of action? Would they solve the current problem? Had he perhaps left out something absolutely vital? The King had no way of knowing the results of his actions but he knew the results of keeping quiet would be a widespread massacre.

The one thing he could control, however, was what he could do about it. King Davin, having given his orders, joined his people in trying to curb the chaos that took the Great Arena by storm.

In the next few minutes, the Great Arena was completely bathed in a terror of screams and growls as a convoluted mess of wolves, humans and werewolves crashed together in a struggle to create and destroy the delicate peace that was.

…and death followed.