Hades' Cursed Luna novel Chapter 67

Hades~

Hades!

I stilled, pausing mid-sentence. It was a single word, my name, sharp and desperate. It rang in my head like a bell.

"Your Majesty?"

I snapped out of it, my brows furrowing. I looked up at Governor Petrov. "Did you hear that?" I asked.

I looked around, everyone else wearing the same confused expression. Even Kael.

"Hear what, Your Majesty?" he asked.

Yet, the echo of the single voice continued to resonate in my head. I had heard it. I looked around at the men seated around the table, all of them apparently unaware of the disturbance.

I pinched my forehead, sighing deeply. I felt a rare migraine coming on. Something was tugging at my chest, as insistent and desperate as the voice.

Cerberus prowled uneasily in my subconscious, roused by the voice. I shook away the dread that settled in my bones.

"As I was saying," I continued, "there is something that could be a thorn in the road with Operation Eclipse. According to the records, her wolf is a pivotal part of why we require her."

"So what is the issue, Your Majesty?" Governor Gallinti asked, leaning forward.

"She does not have a wolf," I revealed.

A stunned silence enveloped the round table.

"That has to be a mistake," the Ambassador muttered, trying and failing to hide the horror from his voice. "She is 23."

"There is no mistake," I replied. "I sensed none when I checked. The wolf’s aura is nonexistent."

"I am sure it is Alpha Darius’ doing. That was why he gave her over willingly," Ambassador Morrison blurted.

"Willingly" was not the word. The pressure I had placed on Silverpine had been immense, even with the pushback. I wanted to show him that I could burn myself if it meant that I could annihilate him.

"He had his other daughter, the cursed twin, executed to protect Silverpine," I continued.

"She was the one that would have been the ruin of his pack. So he neutralized her."

"The theory is that knowing the twins are antitheses of one another, one representing good and the other bad—Alpha Darius’ actions were calculated. He killed the cursed twin as she would be the source of his pack’s doom. With her death, he assumed the threat of ruin had passed, and the blessed twin’s potential became irrelevant to him. So, he stripped her of her wolf to render her powerless before giving her over." It was the only plausible explanation for why the "blessed twin" did not have a wolf at the age of 23.

"He hollowed his own daughter?" the young governor asked.

I raised a brow. "Are you surprised?" I asked. Hollowing was almost the same as dewolfing, but it was a greater type of severance from the individual’s wolf. It was rarely ever reversible.