Chapter 7: Supreme Luna

The tires screeched against gravel as the car came to an abrupt stop, jolting me out of the numb silence I’d fallen into somewhere along the drive.

“We’re here, wife.” Jason’s voice was quiet, almost gentle, in a way that felt jarring after everything I’d just watched him do. He turned to look at me, something unreadable moving behind his eyes. “Welcome home.”

Wife. The word landed strangely, foreign and impossible all at once. Twelve hours ago I’d been a dead woman drifting through darkness, begging a goddess to let me stay there. Now I was apparently someone’s wife — not the man I’d spent three years planning a life with, but a stranger who’d torn through a cathedral and claimed me like property in front of two hundred witnesses.

From being reborn to being chained to the Supreme Alpha, I thought bitterly, staring out the window at the estate stretching before us. What a joke the Moon Goddess has made of my second chance.

He didn’t wait for me to compose a response. He simply stepped out of the car, circled around to my side, and offered his arm with the same effortless confidence he seemed to bring to everything.

I ignored the arm. He swept me up anyway, one motion, easy as breathing, and started up the wide stone steps toward the mansion before I could even protest properly.

The building rose in front of us, impossibly large, pale stone stretching up into turrets and archways that seemed to belong to some other century entirely, windows glowing warm and gold against the darkening sky.

Manicured hedges lined the drive in perfect symmetry, fountains catching the last light of the afternoon, the whole estate radiating the kind of wealth that didn’t need to announce itself because it simply existed, undeniable, everywhere I looked — in the marble underfoot, in the ivy trained to grow along the walls in careful, deliberate patterns, in the sheer improbable scale of a home built for one family and staffed like a small kingdom.

Supreme Alpha indeed, I thought, my sarcasm the only thing keeping the panic at bay.

“What is all this?” I finally found my voice, squirming slightly in his arms. “Put me down. I can walk.”

He only smiled, that same maddening, knowing smile he’d worn since the cathedral, and kept climbing.

At the top of the steps, a set of towering gold doors waited, easily three times my height, gleaming even in the fading light, engraved with patterns I didn’t have time to fully study.

They swung open before we’d even reached them, some unseen signal apparently passed ahead of us, and beyond them stretched a hall lined with more staff than I’d ever seen assembled in one place — dozens, maybe hundreds, all dressed in matching uniforms, all bowing in perfect unison the moment Jason crossed the threshold, the movement so synchronized it looked almost choreographed.

I stared out at the sea of bowed heads from the safety of his arms, my heart hammering somewhere near my throat, acutely aware of how absurd I must look, still dressed in a torn and windblown wedding gown, still being carried like something fragile through a door I’d never expected to walk through in my life, let alone twice.

Jason cleared his throat, and the sound alone seemed to command the entire hall into deeper silence.

“This is Bella Salford. Supreme Luna.” His voice carried effortlessly across the space, each word landing with absolute authority. “From today, she runs everything in this house. Her word is law, the same as mine. You will lay down your lives for her if it comes to that, and you will get her whatever she needs, whenever she needs it.” He paused, letting the weight of the statement settle over every bowed head in the room. “Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, Supreme Alpha.” The response rose up from the staff in perfect, practiced unison, a chorus of voices that made the hair on my arms stand up.

Every head lifted at once, and dozens of eyes turned toward me, warm and reverent in a way that made absolutely no sense given that I was still, quite literally, being carried like an infant through my new front door.

“Welcome home, Supreme Luna Salford.” An older woman near the front stepped forward slightly, inclining her head. “It’s an honor to serve you.”

I opened my mouth and found absolutely nothing came out. I stared into the faces of a hundred strangers, all of them looking at me like I was something precious and untouchable, all of them apparently prepared to reorganize their entire lives around my word, and I had no idea what to say to any of it.

“At your service,” the maids chorused again, softer this time, almost affectionate.

I stammered something that wasn’t quite words, heat rising in my cheeks, and Jason simply turned and carried me deeper into the mansion without waiting for me to find my footing, literal or otherwise.

The hallway beyond the main entrance stretched impossibly long, lined with portraits and tall windows that let in the last of the evening light, until we reached a set of double doors at the very end.

He pushed them open with one shoulder, still not setting me down, and carried me into what could only be described as a private suite — a bedroom large enough to swallow my entire childhood home twice over, dominated by a bed that looked like it belonged in a palace rather than any house I’d ever imagined living in.

He crossed the room and laid me down gently on the sheets, far more careful than the rest of the day had suggested he was capable of being.

Then he straightened, and our eyes met, the low light of the room catching something gold flickering just beneath the surface of his gaze, and for one suspended moment, neither of us said a single word.