The Lunar Curse: A Second Chance With Alpha Draven - Chapter 405

Chapter 405: The War (VI)
(Third Person).

In that agonizing moment, Meredith felt the surge before she saw it—the old power coiling under her skin, a heat that was not the lab’s fire but something ancestral and furious.

It rushed through her limbs and centred in her chest, a tide that sharpened every sense. Her fear cleaved into a single, hard blade of purpose.

With a sound like a breaking tree, she moved. The five soldiers fell inward to the sweep of her sword—not as a bloody mess, but as one immaculate, devastating motion that left them disarmed and incapacitated within a breath.

She had not thought the strike through; it had come through her as inevitability. For a second, the corridor held only the hiss of breathing and the settling of dust.

Then, she turned and ran to the nearest cluster of warriors. Two lay motionless where they had fallen, bullets having found flesh before hands could reach them.

Meredith’s breath hitched; something inside her snapped like a taut wire. She dropped the sword, anything that let her be nothing but human at that instant, and fell to the one nearest, hands moving with a healer’s reflex despite the blood and her own shock.

“No—no, hold on,” she whispered, pressing fingers to a bleeding shoulder, kneeling on the cold concrete as if the heat of the lab could not touch the ice in her chest.

A second corpse lay a few feet away; the warrior’s face was already slack, eyes vacant under the harsh light.

A soldier, the last three of them still alive, staggered forward, rifle raised, their faces a mask of fury and fear.

He rasped something like a curse and fired. The shot cracked; Meredith felt the sting as the bullet found her. Pain exploded across her side instantly.

For a second, the world tilted. She tasted metal in her mouth and the scent of smoke and old grief.

But then, she twisted, rising through the white-hot shock, and stared at the three men blinking at their guns as if nothing had happened to them.

Around her, the wounded groaned; the remaining warriors braced, wounded but alive.

Her voice, when it came, was not pleading. It trembled with the grief and the red-hot fury that had been built into her these last hours.

“Today,” she said, each word a strike, “I will have your souls.”

Without waiting for a second, she hauled herself to her feet. Valmora hummed under her skin like a promise. A

round them, the lab collapsed into thunder—screams, the roar of the fire, the distant hammer of boots.

Meredith planted her feet, every tendon clenched, and advanced. The three soldiers aimed again, but they no longer felt like the end of anything; they were merely the next thing she had to pass.

The first lurch of her forward motion blurred the corridor into a flash of steel and movement.

The next second, the scene fractured into the sound of orders, the thud of bodies, and the single, terrible clarity of what had to be done.

—

The marble floors trembled under the weight of panic. Smoke, gunfire, and the sharp metallic tang of blood filled the air.

Draven’s hand clamped around Brackham’s collar, dragging the struggling man out of his shattered office and into the burning corridor.

The once-polished halls of the government house now echoed with screams, gunshots, and the inhuman snarls of vampires.

Brackham stumbled and fell to his knees, gasping. “Draven—Draven, wait—!” he wheezed, trying to pry the Alpha’s hand away.

Draven ignored him. His expression was carved from stone, his eyes blazing with restrained fury.

He hauled the mayor upright again, forcing him forward through the chaos. Jeffery followed behind them, claws half-bared, keeping a wary watch for incoming threats.

All around them, chaos reigned. Vampires darted through the halls, overpowering human soldiers. A body slammed into the far wall and slid down, leaving a trail of blood.

The chandelier above had long since fallen, glass crunching underfoot.

Draven finally stopped at the edge of the grand lobby, where the fighting was fiercest. His grip shifted, and he shoved Brackham hard against a cracked marble pillar.

The mayor hit it with a grunt, barely keeping his balance.

Draven’s voice was cold and calm, the kind of calm that promised destruction.

“You wanted this war,” he said, his tone quiet enough that only Brackham could hear. “You built it with your own hands. Look around you, Mayor. This is your masterpiece.”

Brackham’s eyes darted wildly over the burning hall. “No—no, this isn’t—this wasn’t supposed to happen! You said you would protect us—”

“I said I would drive the vampires away,” Draven cut him off sharply. “But it’s your actions that brought them here again. You captured one of their own—their leader, Brackham.”

The mayor froze. His mouth opened, but no sound came. He paled even more, realizing what Draven meant.

“That can’t be true,” he whispered, shaking his head. “That can’t. But you brought him—”

Draven stepped closer until their faces were inches apart. “You thought you could play god,” he said, his voice low and dangerous.

“You burned forests, spilt blood, and experimented on my people. You even considered using vampires as your next weapon. Now, your weapons have come to collect their debt.”

Brackham swallowed hard, trembling as gunfire echoed closer. “Then—then help me, Draven,” he stammered. “We can still fix this—save the city—”

Jeffery scoffed behind them. “Save it? You already buried it.”

Draven’s lips curved in something between a smirk and a snarl. “Save it?” he repeated. “No, Brackham. This city is your punishment.”

He slammed his fist into the pillar beside Brackham’s head, hard enough to crack the marble. The mayor flinched violently.

“You will live long enough to watch it burn,” Draven said, voice deep and steady. “That’s mercy enough.”

Brackham shook his head in disbelief, the fear finally cracking him open. “You—You’re not going to kill me?”

Draven’s eyes burned like coals. “No,” he said simply. “Death is too kind for men like you.”

Then, with a sudden, violent jerk, he released Brackham’s collar only to drive his fist hard into his stomach.

Brackham doubled over, gasping, blood spilling from his mouth. Another punch caught him in the jaw, snapping his head sideways.

He fell to the ground, wheezing and half-conscious.