Thalia's POV
I was too stunned to speak, and move.
My heart sunk the moment I saw his face and I almost lost control over the muscles in my face.
This nearly had my face twitching in shock and fear of the man that had taken me to hell from the day that he had made me his Luna.
And even when I had ran away from him, and successfully managed to get away from him and find a new home, like a shadow, he refused to leave me alone.
"What...." I tried muttering, but my lips froze, refusing to let another word out of my mouth.
I couldn't believe my eyes, to the point where I even started to question that particular day from the beginning.
'All of this could be a dream.' I tried convincing myself, seeing that nothing made sense the entire day.
I mean, when did I think that I could actually win the Luna tournament and become Alpha Kade's Luna?
As this was the thought that came to my mind, I was starting to see just how unnatural the day had been.
Going against daughters of prominent figures in the werewolf world and also the daughters of powerful Alphas, there was absolutely no way for me to win.
Thinking about it more,I even realized that the judges would have to have lost their minds to have selected me as Kade's Luna.
I didn't have a wolf, and that by default technically knocked me out of the competition. The only reason that I wasn't disqualified was probably because they hadn't said that they need contestants who had wolves.
'I have to be dreaming.' I said to myself.
However, no matter how much I tried to stir myself awake, nothing was happening.
The more I did and nothing happened, the more I was getting anxious.
I even thought about slapping myself awake.
But just as I was about to do that, the figure of my former Alpha said to me,
"You're not dreaming. It's all real."
This was enough to send me into a spiral, because what do you mean that he could read my thoughts?
I stared up at him with shock in my eyes and fear.
In my head, I was already thinking of how he was able to read my thoughts and know what I was thinking about.
That man was never going to let me live in peace.
Before I could even think of whether to ask him how he knew what was going through my mind, he went ahead and spoke again.
"I can see it in your face. The fear and shock as you wonder whether you are dreaming right now.
I mean, you tried so hard to get away from me for all those years, and you finally did.
Yet despite being able to finally pull it off, I still found my way to you."
He was accurate. So damn accurate that I was even starting to question my sanity.
I was getting to a mental state where I was thinking of starting to look around and find the hidden cameras.
The accuracy of his words were enough to get me to believe that I was in some sort of prank show where they preyed on a victim's mentality.
"You aren't dreaming my wolfless pup." He said to me, as he looked over to the side and the direction where Alpha Kade was.
I immediately cocked my head in that direction, and as I would expect, Kade was still talking to the elders, together with Cassian, as if everything was okay.
No one around me seemed to notice the monster that was standing right in front of me, as they just passed without paying so much attention to us.
Apart from the several stares that Ronan was getting from some of the defeated contestants, some ladies and even some men who seemed to recognize who he was, none of them seemed to understand what was going on.
And how could they?
If anything, some of them would only know that I used to be in Ronan's pack, and nothing more.
They wouldn't know the hell that the man had put me through for me to try and run away.
The history that was shared between the two of us, was one that I would have traded to live the life of a slug if asked to relive it.
So,apart from the few people that was passing behind him and staring for a short while, no one was coming to save me.
Reality was sinking in on me, as I was coming to terms with how it wasn't a dream, just like Alpha Ronan had said.
"If I'm not dreaming, then it means that I've finally managed to get away from you once and for all." I said to him, realizing that for the first time in my life, I could bare my teeth at him and there was nothing that he could do.
Noticing that he almost raised his hand at me, made me flinch, before I remembered that he couldn't lay a finger on me.
Well, that's what I wanted to believe had come as one of the perks of no longer being his Luna.
And yes, I was also coming to terms with the actual reality that the judges in the Luna trials had actually settled for me.
A wolfless wolf, who had no royal blood in my veins and anything special about me.
Yes. They picked me to be the Luna to one of the biggest, if not the biggest, Alpha's on the land.
With this in mind, I immediately thought of how Ronan could no longer lay his hands on me, or even raise his voice to me.
"Do it!" I dared him, taunting him to think about it.
Watching Ronan fight the urge of hitting me since it would be accompanied by its fair share of consequences, was a sigh that I didn't know I needed to see.
"So, you really think you've survived me?" He asked me, sounding like a bitter ex who couldn't believe that they had been dumped.
I mean, I took a leap of faith by joining the Luna trials, knowing that if I was going to fail, there was no home for me to go back to.
And the result of that was that I had found a new home for me, and had nearly all wolf packs under my feet.
"I have, and there's nothing you can do about it. I always told you that one day, I'll find a way out of your grip, and you're looking at it happen, right in front of you." I answered him confidently.
Ronan smirked, despite how much I could see it was bothering him.
If anything, I knew that he was regretting ever letting me get the chance to speak to anyone.
If he had been able to seclude me, he would have probably have succeeded in keeping me under him for as long as he wanted.
"Enjoy this victory while it lasts. You may have escaped me, but you might as well have thrown yourself into the purgatory of your own making." He commented.
Instinctively, I raised a brow to him, curious to know what he meant by that.
"You really don't see it. I am the best that you can get. Hate me or love me, but even you know that all of this, is about to become your hell as well."
I immediately rolled my eyes when those words left his lips.
Talk about delusional and denial creeping in on an entire Alpha just because he lost his plaything.
"Can you even hear yourself speak?" I asked him, unsure if he was just blind to reality or that he was immune to his own bullshit.
"You're telling me that I should cherish the suffering that you put me through because it's about to get a whole lot worse with Alpha Kade?" I asked him rhetorically.
"You know it yourself." He tried reasoning.
"I would rather go through hell ten times worse than what I went through with you, as long as it's not you in the picture.
If life in the Obsidian Howl Pack is as bad as you're trying to paint it to be, I'll find a way out.
Just like I did with you." I declared.
I could see it, he was in absolute shock when he realized that the biggest reason for me finding a way away from his pack, was because I didn't want to spend anymore time around him.
He was what I was running away from, not the treatment.
"You'll have absolutely nowhere else to go if you run away from here, but I'm sure you already know that." He tried scaring me.
He might have been right about that, but he didn't seem to comprehend that once I had decided on doing something, whether it was possible or not, I was going to achieve it.
"Ronan....all I need is the right motivation and nothing will be impossible for me to navigate.
Let's not forget that at some point, you also thought that I would never find a way out of the Shadowmoon Pack. Yet, here we are."
As I said that, my eyes scanned the people around me.
Looking around,I felt a cold chill run down my spine, and the feeling that someone was staring at me so intensely that I could literally feel his aura before I could even see him.