I CLAIMED THE DISCARDED LUNA

Chapter 7: The High Ridge Bunker

Steel clashed against steel, ringing out through the freezing gorge as snow whipped into Kaelen’s eyes.

The narrow path left no room for wide cavalry sweeps. Kaelen’s five royal vanguard guards were cut off thirty yards back, their horses trapped in a bottleneck against three attackers, while Kaelen and Seraphina fought shoulder-to-shoulder against the rest.

A heavy broadsword swung low toward Seraphina’s horse. Kaelen drove his stallion forward, taking the blow on his iron shoulder guard with a violent CLANG that rattled his teeth. In the same breath, Seraphina ducked under the attacker’s guard, her silver dagger piercing the gap in his neck armor. The warrior collapsed into the snow, his blood steaming on the black rock.

"Back to back!" Kaelen barked, pulling his horse tight against hers.

"I have the cliff face!" Seraphina called back. She drew a small iron flask from her saddlebag, lit the short wick off her horse's oil lantern, and hurled it high against the overhang above the remaining three attackers.

BOOM.

The explosive charge cracked the frozen overhang. A massive shelf of ice and rock cascaded down, burying the ambushers under three feet of snow and cutting off the pass.

Silence fell over the gorge, save for the howling wind and the heavy, ragged breathing of Kaelen and their horses. Kaelen’s crimson eyes scanned the pass, his chest heaving as he reined in his Alpha aura.

Behind them, three of Kaelen's five vanguard guards had survived, though one held a bleeding shoulder and two horses had been lost to the initial crossbow volley.

"Report!" Kaelen commanded, dismounting into the thigh-deep snow.

"Three attackers down, Sire," his captain reported, binding his bleeding arm with a strip of wool. "The rest are buried under the rockslide. But these aren't border mercenaries. Look at the armor under their surcoats."

Kaelen strode over to the fallen leader Seraphina had struck down. He hauled the man up by his collar and tore open his tunic.

Seraphina dismounted, stepping beside him. She leaned down, her eyes widening as she spotted a heavy iron badge pinned to the dead man's leather vest.

It wasn't Vane’s private seal. It was the official crest of the Royal Crown Guard—Kaelen’s own elite division from the central capital.

Kaelen froze, his fingers tightening around the cold iron badge until his claws cut through his leather gloves.

"They aren't Vane’s men," Seraphina whispered, her voice carrying a chilling weight in the quiet pass. "Vane commands the Northern Ridge division. The Royal Crown Guard answers exclusively to the High Council of Dukes in your capital."

Kaelen felt a cold, dark realization sever his previous assumptions. Vane hadn't ambushed them to hide his own guilt. Someone in Kaelen’s central capital had dispatched Crown Guards to intercept Kaelen and Seraphina before they reached High Ridge.

Vane wasn't building a private army to overthrow Kaelen. Vane was building a hidden garrison at High Ridge to protect the northern border from a treasonous coup brewing inside Kaelen’s own capital council.

"Vane isn't the traitor," Kaelen said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low rumble. "He’s the only one who realized the capital was compromised."

"And by arresting him at the Sunrise Council," Seraphina added, her violet eyes locking onto his with sharp intensity, "you unwittingly played directly into the capital conspirators' hands. They wanted Vane off the board."

Kaelen looked up at the towering white ridge above them. "Captain! Patch the wounded and secure the horses. We reach the bunker on foot."

Ten minutes later, Kaelen and Seraphina crested the frozen ledge. Hidden inside the hollowed-out cavern of High Ridge sat an underground fortress, completely invisible from the main pass.

Kaelen approached the massive iron-reinforced doors, drawing his signet ring and pressing it into the lock mechanism. The heavy gears groaned, and the doors swung inward.

Inside, the bunker was quiet. But it wasn't an army barracks.

Row after row of wooden crates filled the subterranean hall, stacked ten feet high. Kaelen drew his dagger, wedging open the nearest crate.

Instead of swords or siege iron, the crate was packed with sealed glass vials filled with a glowing, pale blue liquid.

Seraphina stepped up beside him, reaching out to gently tilt one of the vials into the torchlight. Her breath caught in her throat.

"Wolfsbane extract," she whispered, her eyes wide with shock. "Refined to a concentrated poison. Kaelen... there’s enough liquid wolfsbane in this room to paralyze every Alpha in the Northern Coalition."

Kaelen stared down at the glowing blue glass, his jaw clenching as the full scope of the conspiracy laid itself bare before them.

"Vane wasn't building an army," Kaelen growled, his hand coming down heavily on the edge of the crate beside her. "He was stockpiling the counter-weapon. The capital isn't planning a war, Seraphina. They're planning an assassination."