An Alpha's Forbidden Mate-Chapter 35: The Black Book

Chapter Thirty Five

In the dim, suffocating interior of her tent, Luna sat cross-legged on a moth-eaten rug, her eyes fixed on the crimson gem cradled in her palm. The stone pulsed with a rhythmic, sickly light that seemed to mock her. It felt heavy, not with physical weight, but with the burden of the secrets it refused to reveal. For hours, she had tried everything her mind could conjure. She had smeared Dylan’s dried blood across its facets; she had shifted her physical form to match his muscular build perfectly; she had even tried to channel her own aura into the stone’s core.

Nothing. The gem remained a cold, unresponsive piece of mineral, its surface as smooth and silent as a grave.

"How the hell does this work?" she hissed, her voice vibrating with a jagged edge of frustration. Her fingers tightened around the stone until her knuckles turned white, the sharp edges of the gem digging into her palm. "How am I supposed to find Klaus with this piece of junk?"

She felt the old, cold rage of the Wolfmort tree bubbling up in her chest—the stagnant ash of her emotions suddenly catching fire. In a fit of sudden, uncharacteristic fury, she slammed the gem against the stone floor.

A sharp, crystalline crack echoed through the tent as the gem shattered into a dozen jagged shards.

Immediately, the atmosphere shifted. A thick, violet smoke erupted from the broken fragments, swirling upward like a living, sentient thing. Luna’s instincts screamed "danger," the hair on her arms standing on end. Before she could retreat or draw her blades, the smoke congealed into the tall, domineering silhouette of a man.

Luna’s eyes widened as she recognized the pale, aristocratic features and the predatory stillness of the figure. It was almost like Klaus but it wasn’t.

It was Elijah, a Vampire Duke of the High Court and the elder brother of Niklaus. So that bastard Dylan lied about the blood, Luna thought, her mind racing at a thousand miles an hour as she struggled to maintain her composure. Who would have thought that breaking the gem was the key? Cunning, arrogant bastard.

Realizing she had mere seconds before the projection stabilized and looked at her, she forced her mana to surge. Her bones lengthened with a wet pop, her skin thickened into a weathered tan, and her aura shifted into the heavy, earthy scent of the man she had butchered. By the time Elijah’s projection turned to face her, he was looking at a perfect replica of Dylan.

"Have you found the boy yet?" Elijah asked. His voice was like velvet pulled over a serrated blade, carrying a weight that seemed to press the very air out of the tent.

Luna’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic rhythm she desperately tried to suppress. What boy? she wondered. She kept her head bowed, her voice dropping into Dylan’s gruff, subservient tone. "No, my lord."

Elijah turned fully, his eyes narrowed in a look of pure, unadulterated disdain. "You werewolves really are useless creatures. I made you a hybrid, allowing you to harness powers from both supernatural races, yet you fail me at every turn. You are a mongrel playing at being a soldier."

Elijah’s projection, a shimmering cloud of translucent white smoke, drifted around Luna with the slow, terrifying grace of a shark circling its prey. "I even forgave you for going behind my back to make a deal with my junior brother, Niklaus. I knew you were hunting Luna for the Astex token to line your own pockets. So. You failed me the first time, and I showed mercy. You failed me the second, and I gave you a warning. Now you’ve failed me a third time. Shouldn’t I just kill you now and be done with it?"

Luna felt the temperature in the tent plummet. She felt the sense of death staring at her, a cold, hollow vacuum that threatened to swallow her whole. She had to gamble, or she was dead before the smoke cleared. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"We haven’t caught the boy yet, my lord," she said, her voice steadying as she leaned into the lie, "but we have... finally found the boy’s trail."

Elijah stopped his circling, the smoke of his form flickering. "Oh? So you have found the boy?"

"Yes," Luna lied, her mind racing to build a scaffold for the deception.

"Where is he?"

Luna’s mind went blank for a microsecond. What was I thinking? I didn’t think this far! She scrambled for an answer that would keep him away but keep him interested. "He is... deep in the forest. He is hiding in the old ruins where the mana is thickest."

Elijah’s eyes flashed a violent, predatory red. "But you said you had covered every inch of this forest weeks ago."

"The brat is cleverer than we anticipated," Luna replied, her Dylan-voice thickening with a feigned, weary annoyance. "He moves between the shadows of the trees in a way that suggests he is being aided by the woods themselves. It looks like we missed a spot, but we are closing in."

Elijah stared at her for a long, agonizing moment, his gaze searching her face for any hint of treachery. "Fine. You have one week to bring the boy to me, or I will come myself. And when I arrive, I will not be looking for a report. I will be looking for your head on a silver platter."

No aura was unleashed, no physical blow was struck, yet the sheer psychological pressure of his presence caused Luna’s focus to waver. Her concentration snapped for a fraction of a second. The transformation began to fracture. Her hands, which were thick and calloused as Dylan’s, began to shrink and pale, turning back into her own skinny, feminine fingers.

Elijah, who had begun to dissipate into smoke, paused. He sensed the sudden ripple in the aura—the shift from the heavy scent of a hybrid to the sharp, cold ozone of the Raven.

"What are you hiding?" he asked, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper as his eyes fixed on her retreating hands.

"Nothing, my lord," Luna grunted, her voice cracking as she fought to pull the Dylan-mask back over her soul.

"Bring out your hands. Now."

The area became deathly tense. The only sound was the distant howl of a wolf and the crackle of the fire outside. Luna took a deep, silent breath, forcing every ounce of her will and the dark power of the Wolfmort tree into the shift. She slowly brought her hands forward from behind her back, her heart stopping in her chest.

For a heartbeat, they were hers—pale and slender. Then, with a sickening, wet pop of shifting bone and stretching sinew, they expanded back into Dylan’s heavy, scarred paws.

Elijah moved his projection closer, his spectral eyes inches from her face. He checked her properly, circling her one last time with the meticulousness of a jeweler inspecting a flawed diamond. Finding no further discrepancy, he let out a huff of bored contempt. His projection faded into a cloudy white smoke and vanished, leaving the tent empty.

Luna collapsed to her knees, her lungs burning as she gasped for air, the Dylan-transformation melting away like wax in a furnace. "Now that... that was intense," she whispered, her forehead resting against the cold stone floor.

She stayed there for a few minutes, allowing her heartbeat to slow. She had been close—too close. The vampires were playing a game she didn’t fully understand yet, and there was a "boy" at the center of it. Could it be Tom? Or was there another player on the board?

She stood up, shaking off the lingering cold of Elijah’s presence, and stepped out of her tent. The night air was crisp and smelled of pine and damp earth. In the clearing, Magnus was overseeing the midnight training of the younger warriors, the clash of their wooden practice swords echoing through the trees. He looked up, saw her, and immediately ran to her side.

"What can I do for you, Chieftess?" Magnus asked, bowing low.

"Where is Amelia?"

"She is still in her tent, recuperating," Magnus replied, his expression darkening with concern. "Turns out the technique she unleashed greatly weakened her. Her marrow hasn’t fully recovered from the output. It has been days, and she still struggles to stand for long."

Luna frowned. She hadn’t realized the price of the "Old Ways" was so steep. If the techniques were that taxing, they were a double-edged sword. She turned her gaze to Magnus, her eyes hard.

"Magnus, I need you to do something in secret. This stays between us. I want you to take a few of your most trusted warriors and head to my old house in the human territory. Do not engage anyone. Watch it from the shadows. If anyone comes by—especially a young man capture him and bring him here. Gently."

If Tom is still alive, he might come back home, she thought. I don’t need my brother getting caught by Elijah or Niklaus before I can get to him.

"Yes, Chieftess Raven," Magnus bowed, his white hair shimmering in the moonlight. He gathered his team and vanished into the brush without another word.

Luna looked up at the dark, overcast sky, the weight of the week-long deadline Elijah had given her pressing down. "Dylan... I guess you never expected me to still win," she laughed softly, the sound devoid of any real joy

,–––––·

Far beyond the mortal veil, separated by layers of ancient magic and blood-debt, lay the Hell Realm. It was the ancestral seat of the Vampire Lords, a world of eternal twilight where the sun never rose and the sky remained the color of a fresh, dark bruise.

Crumbling gothic architecture rose from fields of grey ash, and the air tasted perpetually of copper and old dust. The screams of captured supernaturals and unfortunate humans provided a constant, macabre symphony that the residents found soothing.

In the center of this nightmare stood a spire of black obsidian so tall it pierced the dark clouds. Inside the grand hall, the walls were lined with the skulls of fallen kings. Elijah stood with his head bowed, his usual arrogance replaced by a stiff, formal reverence. Beside him, Niklaus and four other powerful progenitor vampires—Carmilla, Diablo, Arman, and Kain—knelt in total submission on the cold marble floor.

Each of them was a legend of slaughter in their own right, yet here, they were merely children waiting for a father’s word.

Before them sat an empty throne. It was a terrifying seat, fused from pure gold and bleached human bone, radiating an aura of such ancient malice that it made the vampires’ skin crawl. Suddenly, a thick, blood-red smoke began to billow from the seat, swirling into a vortex that filled the entire palace with a suffocating pressure. No one was visible, but the very stones of the hall seemed to vibrate with a voice that sounded like falling earth.

"I have made my decision," the voice boomed, ancient and cold. "The balance of the realms is shifting. The Astex realm is opening its gates once more. Whoever brings me the Black Book hidden within those realms will inherit my throne. I care not for your squabbles or your petty alliances."

The smoke flared, turning the room a violent shade of crimson.

"So... fight. Kill each other if you must. But bring me the book, or do not return at all."

"Yes, Father," the six vampires replied in a chilling, perfect chorus that echoed through the hollow halls of the spire.

The smoke vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving the hall in a heavy, pregnant silence. The six predators rose slowly, their eyes darting to one another. The race for the Black Book had begun, and the world of the living was about to become their hunting ground