BloodMoon: Captivated by the Forbidden Lycan Alpha
Chapter 278: THE MOUNTAINS FIRST TEST

Chapter 278: THE MOUNTAINS FIRST TEST

{ "Mountains teach that not everything in life is easy. The steepest paths lead to the most breathtaking views."}

The climb was not just steep; it was sacred. By the time we reached the high ledge, the sun had dipped low behind the peaks. Fog pooled in the valleys below, thick as breath from a beast’s lungs. I could feel the mountain’s pulse in my bones, the land remembering me, whispering its judgment even before the Elders spoke. Elle stood beside me, calm and unwavering. She had not flinched once during the climb. Her boots had moved over the crumbling stone like they belonged here.

The high ring carved into stone before written history waited at the peak’s edge. A flat, circular platform etched with ancestral markings, flanked by five standing stones, each carved with the marks of a bloodline that had once answered to me.

We stepped into the ring, and the Elders of the Rogourau clan stood tall. Five of them, cloaked in robes of hide and woven bark, faces half-shadowed by hoods, eyes glowing faintly with shifting hues silver, gold, crimson, and storm grey. Shifters who had long since abandoned permanent form, speaking now as voices of the mountain itself. The eldest among them, a male with a jagged scar down his chin and a voice like stone cracking under pressure, stepped forward.

"Rou Rogourau," he said, and the mountain rumbled under my name. "Your brother Rolan returned before you and reported that you had handed him the mantle.

I inclined my head. "Yes, Elder Dros."

"You claim the right to bind your soul to an outsider. A female not of the blood, is this why you do this? Remember the past and answer carefully."

"She is not of our blood," I said. "But she is worthy."

Elle’s hand brushed against mine, and another Elder stepped forward, this one tall and reed-thin, with eyes of pale, blind frost. "Then let her prove it."

Dros raised his hand, and the wind around the circle stopped, and the air stilled.

Then came the voice not from the Elders, but from the Rou stones themselves.

"Let the mate face the First Test, the Trial of Memory. Let her walk the Path of the Beast and survive what he has forgotten."

My stomach tightened, and I cursed, knowing well what this was, and I hated it.

Elle did not hesitate. "What do I need to do?"

The frost-eyed Elder stepped closer. "You will walk the path Rou walked before he was alpha. Before he bled the crown into his bones. Before he chose exile. You will walk his pain, his fury, and his shame. And if you do not break, the mountain will speak."

"And if she does break?" I growled.

"Then she was never meant to stand beside you," Dros said simply.

Elle stepped forward. "I accept."

I turned to her. "You don’t have to prove yourself to them."

Her eyes flicked up to meet mine, fierce, steady, shining with something far more dangerous than defiance.

"I’m not doing this for them," she said. "I’m doing it for us."

The Elders began to chant and then the wind coiled around Elle’s form. Symbols beneath her feet lit with deep crimson, pulsing like a second heartbeat. A rift opened in the stone —not a door, not a tunnel. A memory made real.

She stepped into it and vanished. My claws had half-shifted before I could stop them. My beast did not like this. It wanted her back, but the mountain was watching. I stood still and I waited to see if the woman I loved could survive the pain I once became. She was inside me, my past, my blood, the madness I had buried deep enough that even the Elders had once warned me not to remember it too clearly.

The Trial of Memory did not just show you pain. It made you live it, and that meant she would see it all. The boy I had been. Wild. Broken. Raised by steel and rage, not care. The first blood I ever spilled was not in defence, but because I had wanted to see what it would feel like to be feared. The challenge that made me Alpha, when I had torn my own brother’s throat out because the clan demanded dominance over mercy. The fear was when I lost my wife and then my lover. The way the Bay Shifter pack had planned against us, I had to hide the clan away in the mountains. Elle would see that man, that beast, and the failure.

Would she understand it was not who I was anymore? Would she believe it? The Elders said nothing. They simply stood in their stone-breathing silence, ancient and unmoved. Watching me as much as they were watching her, and my gaze was on the glowing outline of the rift where Elle had disappeared. I could still smell her on the air. Still hear the echo of her voice in my chest, and she had chosen this. Chosen me, even knowing I was older and lived such a life.

I was not afraid she would fail; I was afraid she would see the truth and decide she did not want it. I dropped to one knee beside the outer edge of the circle, pressing my palm to the stone. Closed my eyes and pushed into our mating bond and whispered Come back to me, Elle. Come back with your fire. Do not let the worst of me scare you away.

The rift’s glow began to fade, and like a heartbeat returning to rest. I stood slowly. Every muscle in my body coiled with a single question. Elle stepped out of the memory path barefoot, her armor dirtied with soot and blood that was not real, or it was. Her braid had come undone, hair tangled around her face. Her eyes burned with knowing now.

She had seen everything, my worst days, my lowest acts. The beast in me that had once craved war for war’s sake. The part of me that had stood over the bodies of my kin and felt nothing.

She looked right at me, and I held still, waiting for her, and then she crossed the space between us without a word, without hesitation, and threw her arms around me. The breath left my chest in a rush, and I caught her on instinct, arms locking around her like the world had just tried to take her and failed. Her face pressed into my neck, and her hands gripped the back of my cloak like she was anchoring herself to something real. She pulled back and brushed a hand along my jaw, her fingers trembling slightly. "I would still choose you," she whispered. "Every version. Every path. I would walk them all with you."

I did not realize I was shaking until she stilled me with that touch, and behind us, the elders, one by one, stepped forward, their palms raised. The air filled with the sound of low, harmonic tones, not the language, nor music.

Elder Dros’s voice rumbled like rock breaking free from ice.

"She has seen your shadow, Rou Rogourau... and she did not turn away."

"She is not afraid," said another.

"She is fire and storm," said a third. "She walks with your truth, and that is strength."

"She is his mate," Dros finished. "And worthy of the bloodline."

The circle’s stones lit with soft, pulsing crimson, and they felt alive.

Elle turned slightly toward the Elders but did not leave my arms. "And he is worthy of me," she said quietly, and the Elders all nodded in silent agreement.

"Now we move to the ceremony of flames, "Dros Announced.

An hour later, we had moved to the core of the Rogourau shifter mountain base as the ceremonial flames had been lit. Five of them, one for each pillar of the old blood: Strength, Memory, Wild, Mercy, and Fire. Each flame danced in its hue. One silver. One crimson. One blue. One gold. One green. They surrounded us in a perfect circle, casting our shadows in five directions, a sign of balance. A sign that the mountain approved of me and my mate. Elle stood across from me now, cleaned and changed into ceremonial garb, a sleeveless robe of storm-grey leather and bone-threaded trim, gifted to her by the Elders. Her hair was braided back tightly, her blade sheathed at her side.

She looked like she belonged here, and I stood bare-chested, the mark of my lineage painted across my chest and shoulders in ash and ochre. My heart beat slowly but hard. Every breath tasted like earth and smoke.

Elder Dros stepped between us, a carved staff in one hand. His eyes burned like coals under his hood.

"Rou Rogourau," he said, voice echoing across stone and sky. "Do you stand here of your own will?"

"I do."

"Do you claim this mate as your equal, your soul-match, your storm?"

"I do."

"And will you guard her with your blood, your beast, and your bond until the mountains fall, and your bones return to dust?"

"I will."

He turned to Elle. "Commander Elle of Bay Pack. Do you stand here freely?"

"I do."

"Do you claim Rou Rogourau as your bonded, your wild, your root?"

"I do."

"And will you walk beside him in battle and stillness, in fury and in peace with eyes open, even when the path turns dark?"

"I will."

Dros raised both hands to the sky. "Then let the mountain mark you."

The air grew heavy, and the Rogourau magic, ancient and raw, rolled down the slopes like thunder held in breath. The ground beneath our feet hummed, and then from the flames came a single tendril of silver fire, slow and deliberate. It danced between us and then split, half coiled around my wrist and half around hers. It burned not painfully. But deeply. As if carving itself into soul and sinew, not skin, and then the flames receded, and the Elders stepped back.

And Dros said, solemn and proud: "You are now mated by blood and bound by spirit. You are no longer two but one.

I reached for Elle, and she met me halfway. When our foreheads touched, I felt her breath. The mountain shifted not physically, but spiritually, and it opened to me. Like a door long sealed had cracked wide, and the heartbeat of every guardian before me now drummed in my ears.

Dros stepped forward one last time. "Kneel, Rou Rogourau." I did, and he continued, "You have joined the Elders of the Rogourau mountain." He placed his palm on my head." "By the old names and the deep vows, you are now Guardian of the Rogourau Peaks, the keeper of our secrets and voice of the Mountains."

I rose, and Elle stood at my side. I roared, and it echoed in the mountain as I revelled in the acceptance.