The Feral Alpha's Captive-Chapter 47: The Luna’s Confession

DRAVEN

A day ago...

"Desperation is so beautiful on you, Poppy." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Poppy?

Morgana ashened, her jaw clenching.

"Watch yourself, High Alpha," she spoke his title like a fucking curse.

His sharp smile only widened.

"So we need your daughter back—dead or alive—but not with the Hell Hound. We have caused her pain, tried manipulating the Hell Hound himself. It is time we reached out to Althea using the Vargan mother and son."

The door slammed open, and I almost jumped out of my skin with fright as my wife walked in.

I forced myself to soften. "Circe, dear," I swallowed my annoyance like bitter bile.

Her azure eyes flew to me, love shimmering there like always, but there was wariness about her. It permeated the air like fumes. "We have a visitor."

"We will take care of that. You should have told one of the Gammas to send him here instead of stressing yourself."

A muscle in her jaw jumped; something flared wild, burning in her gaze even as her lips curled into a smile. "I—"

I was not the only one who read the oddness of her attitude because her mother interrupted.

"Cee," Morgana had her daughter in her arms within a phantom of a moment. "What is wrong?" she whispered into her hair.

It would always be jarring and unnerving watching Morgana openly love Circe like she would not kick Althy into a pit of venomous snakes.

I could never wrap my mind around it.

Only Morgana knew why.

My eyes shifted to where the High Alpha stood wordlessly, watching with a knowing quirk curling his lips.

The bastard was always amused.

It was Circe who pulled away first and took steps back until she was facing all of us.

There was definitely something.

"Circe—"

"You cannot meet the visitor," she announced.

My confusion was shared as I exchanged looks with the others.

We looked back at her. "What are you talking about?" I asked, taking a step toward her.

She took one step back, her eyes snapping to me, smoldering with... hurt. "You speak in your sleep, Draven."

I halted, dread wedging itself into my bones. "What?"

Her eyes did not stray as they turned slowly to pools of my reckoning. "You have never spoken my name as you thrash in our bed," her eyes flared brighter with pain that resembled wrath. "It is always hers. Althea."

Morgana sucked in a breath, and I knew my ruin would be coming earlier than I had prayed for.

"Circe..."

But she raised her hand—raised her hand—to silence me with a sharp hiss.

She dared.

Rage detonated in my chest, white-hot and blinding.

"Know your place," I snarled, stepping toward her with enough force that she flinched. Good. "You are my Luna. My wife. You have no right—no right—to speak to me like this. To question me. To—"

"To what?" Her voice cracked, but she held her ground, tears streaming down her face as she stared at me like I’d struck her. "To notice? To exist while you pine for my sister?"

"Circe—" Morgana moved toward her daughter, arms outstretched.

The slap came so fast I didn’t see it coming.

One moment Morgana was reaching for Circe.

The next, my head snapped to the side with a crack that echoed through the room, and my mouth filled with blood—hot, coppery, choking—as my teeth tore through the lining of my cheek.

I staggered, hand flying to my face, staring at Morgana in shock.

She’d hit me.

The High Gamma had just struck an Alpha.

Her eyes were blazing, wild with fury I’d never seen directed at me before.

"You will not speak to my daughter that way," she hissed, her voice low and lethal.

But before she could reach Circe, before she could pull her into another embrace, Circe stepped back.

"Don’t."

The word was quiet. Calm. Devastating.

Morgana froze.

"Don’t touch me."

"Cee—"

"Don’t."

And then—impossibly—the High Alpha laughed.

Not a chuckle. Not a snort.

A full, delighted laugh that filled the room like poison gas, making my skin crawl and my wolf bristle with the overwhelming urge to run.

He clapped his hands together, slow and mocking, his void-black eyes gleaming with something that might have been glee.

"Oh, this is delicious," he purred, his smile stretching wider than should have been possible. "This is getting so interesting."

Circe turned to him, and I expected fear—everyone feared the High Alpha—but instead, her smile was cold. Sharp. Wrong.

Not humor.

Not even complete pain.

Betrayal.

Tinged with incredulity. Anger. Something brittle and breaking.

She looked at her mother.

Morgana, for the first time since I’d known her, looked uncertain.

"Even you, Mother," Circe said softly, and the words landed like blows. "Even you have betrayed me."

"Cee, I—"

"Am I not the Luna you always said I deserved to be?" Circe’s voice rose, trembling with rage and grief. "The one you groomed? The one you made? The one you told would have everything Althea never could?"

Morgana’s face went pale.

"And yet," Circe continued, her smile widening into something jagged and vicious, "you shove me outside the room where you make your plans. Where you scheme and plot and whisper about your runaway daughter. Where you discuss her like she’s the only one who matters."

"That’s not—"

"My husband," Circe’s voice cracked as she gestured toward me, "comes to our bedroom every night. Short-tempered. Angry. Dragging his hands through his hair like a madman. And when he finally sleeps?"

Her eyes locked on mine, and I felt something inside me wither under that gaze.

"He moans her name," she whispered. "He speaks her name like a prayer. He rants in his sleep about plans—failed plans to get her back. To find her. To bring her home."

The room was silent except for the sound of her breathing—ragged, uneven, breaking.

"Do you think me deaf?" she asked, looking between her mother and me. "Do you think me dumb? A fool?"

No one answered.

"I have stood by," Circe said, her voice steadying into something cold and deadly, "while you tortured my sister. While you broke her. While you destroyed her piece by piece for a crime I helped you frame her for."

Morgana sucked in a breath.

My stomach dropped.

"I helped you," Circe repeated, and now there were no tears—just fury. "I lied about being pregnant. I let you frame her for murdering a baby that never existed. I stood there and watched while you tore her apart."

Her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

"And I told myself it was for the best. That she was weak. That she was omega trash who didn’t deserve what I had. That I was better."

My world’s color lost all hue as the confession hit like a club.

She had lied?

There had been no baby?

Althea had been telling the truth?

I hurt her...

She laughed—a broken, bitter sound.

"But you never stopped, did you? You never stopped wanting her. Needing her. Obsessing over her."

Her eyes found mine again.

"You rejected her," she said softly. "You married me. You made me Luna. You put a crown on my head and your mark on my neck and told me I was everything you wanted."

Her voice dropped to a whisper.

"But you dream of her."

I opened my mouth—to deny, to explain, to something—but nothing came out.

Because she was right.

She was right, and I couldn’t find a single word to make it a lie.

"And you, Mother," Circe turned back to Morgana, her smile gone now, replaced by something raw and aching. "You used me. You used me to hurt her, and then you used me to control him, and now—now you don’t even bother to pretend I matter."

"You do matter—"

"Then why," Circe’s voice broke, "why am I always the one left outside the door?"

Silence.

Thick. Suffocating. Damning.

The High Alpha was still smiling, watching the carnage unfold like it was the most entertaining thing he’d seen in centuries.

"So," Circe said, straightening her spine, wiping the tears from her face with the back of her hand. "No. You will not be meeting with our visitor. Because our visitor is mine."

She looked at each of us in turn—her mother, me, the High Alpha.

"And I’m done letting you use me."

She turned and walked toward the door.

"Circe—" I started, fury and panic warring in my chest.

She paused, hand on the doorframe, and looked back over her shoulder.

"By the way," she said, her voice calm now, almost conversational. "The visitor is a messenger from the Hell Hound’s clan."

My blood turned to ice.

"They have a proposal," she continued. "About Althea."

Morgana went rigid.

"And I’ve already accepted it."

The door slammed shut behind her.

And for the first time since I’d met her, I realized—

Circe had never been the fool.

We had.