Hades' Cursed Luna novel Chapter 42

Hades~

I left her to sleep after her pheromones went down and left her room. I made my way back to my room and took a shower. Still dripping with water, I shuffled toward the painting on my wall. I paused there for a bit, just looking at it.

I reached out and touched the moon painted in. I pressed the hidden button beneath the moon, hearing the soft click as the mechanism released. The painting swung open, revealing the entrance to the room I kept hidden from everyone.

I stepped inside, the familiar scent of old canvas and oil paint greeting me like an old friend. Moonlight seeped through the narrow window, casting silvery beams across the space. Easels were scattered around, each covered with dusty tarps, forgotten remnants of a time when I used to create.

I ran a hand over one of the covered frames, feeling the rough fabric beneath my fingers. For a moment, I just stood there, surrounded by ghosts of what used to be, before everything changed.

It was strange coming back here, a room filled with memories I wasn’t sure I could endure. But I couldn’t stay away either. Not tonight.

"Your eyes are like stormy seas."

Her voice rang through my head like a distant bell, soft yet unrelenting. I clenched my jaw, fighting the pull of the memory. The day she gave me the painting that now stood guard over this place, I had felt something then. Something I hadn’t allowed myself to feel in a long time.

I turned my gaze to the covered easels again. Her paintings were her eyes now that she was gone, and I could not bear the weight of her gaze. Like a coward, I covered them up. I wasn’t worthy of it then, and I sure as hell wasn’t worthy of it now.

Her presence lingered in this room, trapped between the layers of paint and forgotten canvases. Every brushstroke, every line, was a reminder of what I lost, of what I had let get destroyed. I closed my eyes, pushing away the thought that I had no right to mourn her. Not until I brought retribution on all those responsible. All those responsible for the deaths that day. The people who sent the beast. Or at least the man: Darius Valmont. I would tear down his pack until it was nothing but dust. There would be no escape for him, or his family, or his council.

Every heinous deed would be paid for tenfold. There were no innocents among them, not anymore. Not the children, not the mothers— even the unborn would perish for the sins of their king. The Lycans had been too lenient for centuries, but now I was king, and things would change. There would be no more hostility between Lycans and werewolves because werewolves would simply cease to exist.