Filed to story: When The Moon Hides Crown
Where are you?
I tried not to fidget. Not to pace. But time was slipping away, and so were his chances.
Then it happened.
Someone brushed past me.
Fast. Intentional.
I looked up, but the person was already gone, swallowed into the crowd.
A folded scrap of paper now sat in my hand.
I secretly unfolded it.
One sentence. Scrawled in sharp, uneven ink.
“You sent your friend to die here in your place? I thought so highly ofyou, Seth Darven. Now he is here and ready to die for you. thave to admit that’s true friendship.”
My heart plummeted to my feet.
It seemed someone had asked me and laid a trap for me but Finn…he went in my place.
SERAPHINA
My breath caught as I reread the note, the words blurring slightly from the way my hands trembled.
“Finn…” Panic gripped me like a vice. The memory of Finn being attacked and wounded last night crossed my mind.
1 spun around, scanning the crowd-wildly this time.
Where were Reed and Cassius?
They were always lingering somewhere nearby. Shadowing me since the start of the trials. Watching. Whispering. Waiting.
But now?
Gone.
I didn’t like the coincidence. And it obviously was not one!
And then-bam-I slammed right into a wall of muscle as soon as l spun around again.
I stumbled back, and strong hands steadied me. “Hey, careful.”
I glanced up to find Alpha Asher standing there. Obviously lazing around since he was among the top three in the hierarchy and he also had one of those luxurious rooms.
He looked down at the note that had slipped from my fingers and now lay open between us on the ground. He bent to pick it up, casually brushing the dust off as he read.
A dry chuckle escaped his lips. “Well,” he murmured, folding it with unsettling calm, “this was bound to happen.”I blinked up at him. “What was bound to happen?”
He slid the note back into my hand, eyes unreadable. “Being friends with a newbie Alpha… a tiny one, no less, who was supposed to be weak and easy to ignore or bullied-but instead, turned out to be a savage little thing who beat every ass that’s shoved in his way.”
His gaze drifted toward the combat ring, where another brutal fight ended with blood on the dirt.
Then he looked back at me, one brow arched. “That kind of Alpha doesn’t just earn respect,” he said, meaning it was all about me. “That Alpha earns enemies. And being your friend? That just painted a target on your friends’ back.”
My chest constricted. Why had I not realized it before? Finn had been Living a quiet life but since he became my friend and we started to hang out together he started being bullied more and more. It was all because of me.
I clenched my fists and then I strode past Alpha Asher and ran toward the Academy building without another word.
I didn’t see the way the atmosphere around the had field subtly shifted.
But Ronan did.
He watched me sprint from the combat grounds with sharp, narrowed eyes.
He’d been watching me all along, his attention never straying.
But this…this was different.
There was a weight to my retreat, a desperation in my posture, he noticed it all and once his eyes met Asher’s, his jaw clenched.
Ronan’s gaze slid toward Dante-still calmly standing at the far end ofthe field, arms folded, eyes pinned to my back-it all clicked.
Ronan’s eyes met his across the distance.
Something unspoken passed between them before Dante smiled and walked away as well.
I burst through the door to the men’s restrooms.
“Finn?” I called, heart racing.
The room echoed with silence-stalls empty, lights flickering faintly.
No sign of him. Not even the scent of his cologne.
Phina growled in my mind, “He hadn’t come here.”
I turned and sprinted out, checking every hallway, every stairwell, even the supply rooms along the east wing. Nothing. No trail. No sound. Not a single trace of him.
Where the hell are you?” I whispered under my breath, panic clawing tighter with each passing second.
When I rounded the main corridor near the dorm wings, I met with Asher.
“Why are you here?”
He sighed and asked instead of replying to my question, “Still can’t find your friend?”
I shook my head, chest heaving. “He’s not in the Academy. I’ve looked everywhere. Every floor, every wing -he’s just gone.”
Asher’s jaw tightened slightly. “That’s because he’s most likely not inside the building.”
“What do you mean?””There are too many eyes in here,” he said simply. “Instructors. Dorm assistants. Patrol wolves. If someone wanted to hurt him, they wouldn’t do it where there was this much surveillance.”