BloodMoon: Captivated by the Forbidden Lycan Alpha
Chapter 230: RUMBLES AT THE ROYAL GARDEN

Chapter 230: RUMBLES AT THE ROYAL GARDEN

{"Ancient magic breathes in the here and now."}

It started as a hum in my bones as we lay together, resting. At first, I thought it was just the wind again. Bay winds were strange that way, always singing through the cliffs like they knew something we did not. But this was not wind. It was deeper and lower, a slow, insistent thrum that pulsed once through the soles of my feet and stayed there, echoing in my ribs like a second heartbeat. I straightened from the ledge outside our home, half a flatbread still in my hand. Rita looked up immediately, wolf-sense sharp.

"You feel that?"

I did not answer right away. My hand went to the wall beside me, palm flat, and the vibration jumped into my skin like a live wire. Not an earthquake. Not natural. Something old. Something rooted. Then it changed and the shit if in the magic with a lurch in the deep places of the land that only Bay-born shifters could hear. My connection to the earth, the bond passed through my mother’s line, flared wide open.

Rita was already on her feet, her aura flaring with that cold-blue fire unique to Rougarou blood. "Where?"

I turned slowly; my eyes drawn like iron to true north. Beyond the cliff path, past the guardian oaks and the outer wards, I could feel it like someone had driven a spear into the soil, and magic was bleeding up through the veins of the land.

"The Royal Garden," I said quietly.

Rita’s expression darkened. "That is sacred ground. What could shake that?"

"I don’t know," I whispered, "but the ground is roaring.

The garden was not just for beauty, it was where the old magics of the Bay Pack were bound. Spells tied to the first shifter queen’s blood, woven into the soil with bone, salt, and vow. If something had broken through there... it meant a seal had shifted. A pact stirred or something buried long ago had decided it was time to wake. As we jogged down the path, weaving between the fog-wrapped trees, I could feel the pulse growing. Louder. Faster. The earth was not just humming anymore, it was breathing.

Rita stayed close beside me, jaw tight. "Whatever this is, we face it together."

I glanced at her, heart slamming harder than the ground beneath us. "Always."

The garden gates were just ahead now. The carved arch of twisted driftwood and stag antlers stood silent, but even from this distance, I could see the petals of the moon blossoms shuddering. The air smelled wrong like salt and lightning. Like a prophecy that rose. We slowed to a stop as the ground gave one final tremor, and then... stillness.

The barrier gave way as Rita fell into step just behind my shoulder and when we reached the final bend in the path, I caught movement a tall shadow braced near the threshold.

General Mortas and his gaze landed on me, then on Rita, and narrowed.

"Commander Flora. Rita," His voice was deep, measured.

"Why are you in the Royal Garden?" I demanded.

I froze mid-step, Rita beside me, her posture already coiled to respond. "Hold." Mortas’s voice was steel. "You need to know who’s already gone down."

"Gone down... where?" I asked slowly.

He tilted his head toward the spiral staircase beyond the central stone ring, half hidden under flowering vines and shadow. A chamber. Buried deep beneath the Garden, beneath the old spells and older secrets. A place only the royal line, blood-bound advisors, and the earth-touched were ever allowed.

"Your mother," he said, voice quiet now. "Elder Crystal. Beta Spark. And Enforcer Wave. All four of them went below. At first light."

My pulse spiked. "They didn’t tell me."

"They didn’t tell anyone." Mortas’s jaw flexed.

I felt Rita shift beside me, her aura rising like mist off her skin. "That was hours ago."

Mortas nodded grimly. "They haven’t returned."

I looked past him, toward the blooming silvervine and the ancient stones that marked the passage to the chambers. The very air shimmered there warped like heat over sand, but colder somehow.

My voice dropped to a rasp. "And you’re telling us to just wait?"

"I am telling you, "He said firmly, "that I have orders not to let anyone through."

That did not ease the knot forming in my gut.

"You think they provoked something?" Rita asked.

Mortas hesitated. Just for a breath. Then: "they woke something ancient. And now they are trying to speak with it."

I stared at him, tension mounting behind my ribs like a rising tide. "And what if it doesn’t want to talk?"

"Then we’ll hear it scream before we see it rise."

Rita and I sat on the stone ledge near the vine-covered threshold to the Root Chambers. General Mortas stood like a carved sentinel to our left motionless, glaive planted beside him, eyes fixed on the sealed passageway as if he could it open with the weight of his stare.

We had been waiting for hours.

The sun shifted in the sky, cutting strange patterns of gold and shadow through the canopy above. I had stopped checking the time. Even the birds had gone silent.

"They should’ve returned by now," I muttered, trying to keep my voice level.

"They will," Rita said simply, though I could feel the tension humming in her every breath. Her Rougarou magic had coiled tighter the longer we waited, barely restrained, one spark from claw and fang.

I looked at Mortas. "Anything?"

He did not move his head, but his reply was low, certain. "The rootline has not snapped. I would feel it."

"And if they’re trapped?"

"Then they’re still alive."

I blew out a breath and leaned forward, elbows on knees. The ground beneath us had stopped humming, but that was not comfort. It was a pause. Stillness before a deeper stir. And just when I opened my mouth to speak again, the vines shifted. Not violently. Just a slow, smooth draw aside, like wind brushing through water. The magic guarding the entrance shimmered once... and then receded.

I stood so fast my muscles barked in protest and "They’re coming," Mortas said calmly, but his fingers tightened on the haft of his glaive.

Footsteps echoed up the spiral. Slow, deliberate. One set. Then another. A shadow passed beneath the arch. The first figure to emerge was Elder Crystal, face pale but steady, her ceremonial beads swaying with each step. Behind her came Beta Spark, who looked like he had aged a year in a few hours, cloak half-burned, eyes glassy. Then came my brother Enforcer Wave, quiet as always, and the air sizzled around him.

And last—

"Ma," I breathed.

My mother, the Elder of Bay Shifter council emerged from the earth like a storm given shape. Her braids were undone, crown set crooked in one hand, her other hand pressed tight to her chest where a faint red glow still pulsed.

She looked at me and then she spoke up "Flora," she said, voice raw. "You shouldn’t be here."

I stepped forward anyway. "What happened down there?"

We followed them into the shade of the great stone arbour just past the threshold—Rita and I walking in silence, Mortas close behind. Ma did not speak until we reached the bench-circle beneath the elder tree, the one with bark so old it whispered when you sat against it.

She did not sit, though. Neither did I.

"I suppose you deserve the truth," Ma said, voice calm but hollowed by whatever she had just come through.

I crossed my arms. "You think?"

She gave me a look, sharp but tired. "Do not get cheeky. We are barely out of it."

Rita stood beside me, stone-still, but I could feel her readiness to leap between me and any danger, even if that danger wore my mother’s crown.

Ma took a breath and faced the group, Crystal, Spark, Wave, and then me.

"The chambers below the Garden were never just root-beds," she said. "They are the Omega Sanctuary. Built generations ago, when the first wars ended, and the shifter lines were barely held together."

Elder Crystal picked up where Ma paused. "It was a place of healing. Of hiding. Of last resort for those hunted Omegas, outcasts, magic-bearers with unstable gifts."

"Why keep that a secret?" I asked tightly.

"Because power draws attention," Ma said. "Even now. That place is woven with blood and vows. Its magic is protective, but it also... chooses."

My gaze cut to Wave, who stood silent near the base of the arbour. The glow at his collarbone had not faded completely. I could see it now, an ancient rune just beneath the skin, pulsing red gold like magma.

"You took Wave down there," I said slowly. "Because the sanctuary called him?"

Ma nodded once. "It only opened fully when he stepped forward."

I turned to Wave. "And you just... followed the call?"

His voice was low, but steady. "Yes."

Ma added softly, "The sanctuary accepted him. Marked him."

"Marked him for what?" Rita asked, stepping forward now, protective as ever.

"To be its guardian," Ma said.

I stared at her. "You think the sanctuary is waking because of the tremors."

Crystal did. "No, Commander. The tremors did not cause the awakening. They were its first words."

Wave faced all of us and said, "The Sanctuary is sealed for now and it will remain that way as the evil of the world cannot ever know that such a power exists."