The road to Moonshadow tasted like old ghosts.
Every tree, every bend in the path, whispered fragments of the life Luna had once clawed through to survive. The scent of pine and wild lilac brought back nights curled in cold dens, her stomach gnawing itself hollow while laughter and warmth spilled from the Alpha's hearth—a warmth she was never welcome to share.
Now the laughter was gone.
Silence hung heavy over the forest, thick as fog and twice as suffocating. Even the birds kept to their nests as Luna and her chosen company threaded through the ruins of her old world.
⸻
Caelum walked at her side. He had shed the traveler's cloak for battle leathers, twin blades strapped across his back, his storm-gray eyes alert. Behind them, Vara moved like a wraith, her steps soundless despite the steel that glinted at her hip. Mira came last, her healer's satchel bouncing lightly against her thigh, every herb and rune etched into its fabric a promise of life—or mercy—should the worst come.
They weren't a warband.
They were something quieter, sharper. Wolves walking into memory's teeth.
⸻
"Smell that?" Vara muttered after an hour's silence.
Luna lifted her chin, inhaling.
Not just pine now. Not ash from the fires Selene's ambition had kindled.
Blood.
Old and bitter, tangled with the musk of fear.
"Keep close," Luna said softly.
Her words drifted like smoke into the still air.
⸻
The first body lay near the river crossing.
A male wolf, half-shifted, eyes glassy and throat torn wide. He wore no enemy colors. No foreign crest.
Moonshadow.
Luna knelt beside him.
The wounds weren't from rogues. Not Selene's rebels, either. She'd seen their precision, their flair for cruelty.
This was different.
Rushed. Frenzied.
"Pack killing pack," Caelum said grimly, crouching beside her. "They've turned on each other."
Luna touched the wolf's chest lightly, lips moving in a whisper older than the law of Alpha and bond. A prayer to the Goddess for a soul gone too soon.
Then she stood.
"Come on," she said. "It's worse ahead. I can feel it."
⸻
She wasn't wrong.
The deeper they moved into Moonshadow's territory, the clearer the fracture became.
Empty dens. Torn banners, dangling like nooses from broken trees.
And here and there—bodies.
Not dozens. Not yet. But enough to speak of civil war.
⸻
By the time they reached the eastern ridge—the overlook that had once guarded the heart of the Moonshadow village—night was falling. Shadows stretched long and lean across the hollow below, where the pack's stronghold huddled like a wounded beast.
Luna froze.
This had been her prison once, this circle of stone dens and carved totems. This was where she'd scrubbed floors until her paws bled, where Selene's laughter had sliced her thinner than any blade.
Now it was broken.
Walls scorched. Doors shattered. Fires burned low, like dying hearts. Wolves moved in the gloom, but there were fewer than there should have been. And those who remained wore weariness like chains.
⸻
"Goddess," Mira whispered. "What happened here?"
"Collapse," Vara muttered. "Same as any kingdom when the throne rots."
Caelum's eyes narrowed. "Orion's inside. I can feel it."
Luna didn't answer. Her pulse thudded against her ribs like a war drum.
She wasn't afraid of Orion—not anymore.
She was afraid of what she'd see when she looked into his eyes.
⸻
They moved as shadows through the broken village, avoiding the few sentries who lingered near the main square. The air was heavy with damp smoke and grief, but beneath it throbbed something fouler—an undertone of magic that tasted like rust on her tongue.
"Blood-binding," Mira murmured when they passed a stone carved with runes smeared in crimson. "Someone's been calling old power."
Luna touched the rune. It burned faintly beneath her fingertips.
"Not Selene's work," she said.
"No," Mira agreed softly. "His."
⸻
The Alpha's hall loomed at the center of the ruins, its once-proud spires cracked, its silver doors dulled by soot. Luna climbed the steps slowly, each one a weight pressing against her spine. Memories clawed at her—nights she'd curled in the ashes of this hearth, too hungry to dream.
Now she mounted the dais not as prey, but as storm.
⸻
The doors groaned open beneath her hands.
The hall inside was dim, lit only by the guttering flames of blackened torches. The great fire pit lay cold. The banners were gone.
And on the throne that had once gleamed like moonlight—
Orion sat in ruin.
⸻
He looked nothing like the Alpha who had shattered her once.
His hair hung loose, matted with sweat and soot. His jaw was shadowed with weeks of neglect. His golden eyes—once bright with pride—burned dull amber now, fevered at the edges like a beast too long chained.
When he saw her, something flickered there.
Not anger.
Not relief.
Something rawer.
⸻
"Luna." His voice was a rasp, rough as gravel.
She stepped forward, each footfall echoing in the hollow silence.
"You've… changed," he said.
"So have you," she replied, her tone even.
He laughed once—low, broken. "You left me with ghosts."
"You gave me no choice."
"Didn't I?" His eyes sharpened, catching faint firelight. "I gave you freedom. Isn't that what you wanted?"
"You gave me exile," she said coldly. "You gave me scars."
"I gave you survival," he snarled. "And look at you now. Power-drunk. Wrapped in the Goddess's favor while my world rots."
⸻
She stared at him.
"You did this," she said softly. "Not Selene. Not me. You."
Something inside him twisted at that—she saw it in the tightening of his jaw, the sudden flare of his nostrils.
"Do you think I wanted this?" he growled. "Do you think I wanted war tearing through my pack? Elders whispering of omens? Wolves questioning the Alpha line because the Goddess bound me to—"
He cut himself off, breath shuddering.
"To someone like me," Luna finished for him.
His gaze snapped to hers.
And for a heartbeat, she saw the truth.
The rage wasn't for her.
It was for himself.
⸻
"I should have claimed you," he whispered hoarsely. "The night the bond burned in my blood—I should have taken you, Luna, and damned the world for its judgment."
The words struck like a blade—but not because they hurt.
Because they came too late.
Luna's voice was steady when she said, "You don't get to want me now."
⸻
The silence that followed was brittle.
Then—movement at the edge of the hall.
A shadow slipping from behind the broken pillars.
Another.
Another.
Until the throne room wasn't empty, but ringed with wolves, their eyes glinting red in the firelight.
Caelum hissed behind her. Vara's blade whispered from its sheath.
Orion rose from the throne, slow and deliberate, and when the light caught his hands, Luna saw the truth Mira had warned her of:
Runes carved into his skin.
Old magic pulsing in each line like veins of fire.
⸻
"You came back to save us," he said softly. "But it's too late for saving, Luna."
He spread his arms, a mad king in a hall of ash.
"Moonshadow doesn't need salvation."
His smile was sharp enough to bleed.
"It needs a crown."
And then he shifted.
⸻
It wasn't a shift like any Luna had seen.
Not the clean rip of bone into fur, not the silver grace of the wolf beneath the skin.
This was jagged. Wrong. Flesh splitting under the weight of power it was never meant to hold.
When it was done, what stood before her was no Alpha.
It was something older.
Something cursed.
⸻
And it wanted her blood.
⸻
The hall erupted. Wolves lunged from the shadows, snarls ripping through the air like war drums. Steel clashed. Magic cracked.
And Luna—Luna called the storm.
⸻
Fire roared from her palms, hurling back the first wave as Caelum tore through the second with a blur of steel. Vara met the third head-on, a snarl ripping her throat as she split armor from shoulder to spine. Mira darted between them, weaving spells and salves like threads of salvation.
And through it all—
Orion came for her.
Not as Alpha.
Not as man.
But as a monster wearing both skins.
⸻
Luna met him mid-strike, her power colliding with his like thunder kissing the earth. Flame and silver light twisted, screaming into the void. The floor cracked beneath their feet. Pillars shuddered.
And in the clash of storm and ruin, Luna saw the truth blazing in his eyes:
He didn't want to kill her.
He wanted to own her.
Chain her power to his curse.
Make her the jewel in his broken crown.
⸻
But Luna was no jewel.
She was the blade.
And tonight, she would cut the last thread binding her to the past.