Moonshadow sounded like a sick animal, panting in the dark.
From the narrow gap beside the crooked gate, Luna slipped inside, keeping low, the rough stone scraping her shoulder as she squeezed through. Elia went ahead of her with the ease of long practice, a shadow among shadows.
The courtyard opened like a blackened wound on the other side.
Once, it had been the heart of the pack.
Luna remembered it full: warriors sparring in the dirt at dawn, pups tumbling over each other at dusk, elders on the low benches against the walls, assessing everyone with narrowed eyes.
Now, it was a tangle of movement and stillness that made her skin crawl.
Torches guttered in their brackets, throwing jumpy, nervous light across the packed earth. The familiar training circle was scarred with new grooves—deep claw-marks, gouges from paws that had scrabbled, fallen, dragged.
A few bodies lay where they'd fallen.
Some were covered with rough blankets, shapes too neat to be anything but death.
Others weren't.
Those moved, just barely—shivering, twitching, breath coming in shallow, uneven gasps.
No one rushed to tend them.
There was no time.
Too much else screamed for attention.
"Stay in the shadow of the wall," Elia murmured, barely moving her lips. "They're jumpy. Wolves on their last nerve bite first and think later."
Luna nodded, throat tight.
Her boots made almost no sound as she moved, years of omega practice serving her well now. She hugged the darker line where the courtyard wall met the ground, slipping from torch-shadow to torch-shadow.
From here, half-hidden, she watched.
Wolves ran across the courtyard, some in fur, some in human form, all of them thinner than she remembered. Their movements lacked the easy, wasteful grace they'd had in better days. Every step was efficient now. No energy wasted.
Fear had taught them that.
Internal strife had honed it.
Two young males clashed in the center of the yard, chest to chest, snarls tearing from their throats. They weren't sparring—this was no structured training. Their eyes were wild, their movements sloppy with anger and exhaustion.
"You did this!" one spat, shoving the other hard enough that his back slammed against a post. "You wanted more patrols, more glory—look where that got us!"
"I wasn't the one who dragged her into the storm basin, was I?" the other shot back, lips peeled. "You listened to *Selene.* You thought she'd make you Beta if you backed her lies—"
The name hit Luna's ears like a thrown stone.
Selene.
The she-wolf's scent rode the air still, sharp and cold, like cut metal—fainter than Luna remembered, but unmistakable.
Elia made a low sound in her throat, equal parts disgust and amusement.
"Even when she's not in the room, they rip each other apart over her," she muttered.
"Where is she?" Luna whispered.
"Inside," Elia said. "Where the heat is. Where the walls are thickest. Where she can pretend the cracks are just… drafts."
Luna's hands clenched at her sides.
She forced herself to keep moving, circling the courtyard, keeping to the edges.
She needed to see them.
All of them.
Not just the ones fighting at the bottom.
The balcony that wrapped around the courtyard halfway up the inner wall was occupied. Wolves stood there in loose clusters, watching the chaos below like spectators at some grim sport.
She recognized faces even at a distance.
Elder Kerran, his once-impeccable fur gone patchy, ears more ragged from a recent fight. He'd been the loudest voice calling for "tradition" when Luna had been dragged before the pack.
He gripped the railing so hard now that his knuckles shone pale in the torchlight.
Beside him, Elder Maera, whose silver tongue had always found a way to justify cruelty as "pack order." Her shoulders were hunched, eyes darting nervously to every new crack in the walls.
They weren't shouting orders.
They weren't mediating.
They were just… watching.
Small.
Luna remembered them towering over her, judgment dripping from every word.
Now, their power had shrunk to the size of that balcony, and even there the shadow claws crept.
Fine hairline fissures scored the stone under their feet, mist seeping up in between their toes.
Maera shifted uncomfortably, glancing down.
Kerran didn't move.
He just stared into the yard, his gaze hollow.
A sharp bark rang out from the far side of the courtyard.
"Break it up! Now!"
Luna's head snapped toward the voice before she could stop herself.
Orion.
He descended the steps from the Alpha's hallway in human form, every line of him tense.
He looked… smaller, too.
Not in height or breadth—his body was still powerful, shoulders broad beneath a worn leather vest, dark hair tied back at the nape of his neck—but something about the way he carried himself had changed.
The easy, unconscious confidence was gone.
Every step was tight.
Controlled.
Like a man walking on cracked ice.
Shadow clung to him differently than it had to Kade.
Not as a suffocating shroud.
As a constant, pressing weight.
Faint silver threaded his irises as he scanned the fight, then the walls, then the balcony.
His gaze swept the courtyard.
Skated right over her hiding place.
Her chest flared hot, then went cold.
Even now.
Even like this.
He couldn't see her in the shadows.
The two fighting males flinched at his shout.
One released his grip.
The other, too slow, earned a cuff to the back of his head from a passing she-wolf who'd seen Orion coming first.
"You want to bleed?" she snapped at them. "Take it to the rogues at the border, not your own brothers!"
Her scent hit Luna a heartbeat later.
Rhea.
Once one of the fiercest warriors of Moonshadow's middle ranks, she'd trained under Orion and taken pride in every scar.
Her dark hair was streaked with grey now.
A fresh gash scored her cheek, half-healed and ugly.
She caught Orion's eye, chin lifting, challenge and desperate respect warring in the angle of her jaw.
"Bloodfangs tested the east line again," she called up to him. "They're moving closer—smelled them clear as anything. We can't keep rotating the same five wolves out there. They're going to drop in their tracks."
"So bring the others," a voice purred from the shadows under an archway.
Selene stepped into the torchlight as if she'd been waiting for just this cue.
Luna's breath stopped.
Selene had always been beautiful—sleek, with glossy black hair, high cheekbones, and eyes like shards of ice. She'd worn her looks like armor and weapon both, turning them on when it suited her, sharpening them with jewels and rich fabrics.
Those trappings were gone.
Her hair hung in a looser braid, a few strands out of place.
The fur-lined cloak she wore was worn at the edges, patches re-stitched clumsily in places.
But the set of her mouth, the tilt of her chin—that cruel, casual confidence—remained.
She moved like someone convinced the world would always make space.
"Orion," she said smoothly, gliding toward him across the courtyard. "You keep squeezing the same paws and wonder why they crack. Use the rest. That's *what they're for*."
Her gaze flicked disdainfully over the scattering of omegas clinging to the walls' shadows, clutching baskets, hauling water, moving too fast and too quiet.
It snagged, just for a second, on the space where Luna crouched.
Luna's heart stumbled.
Had she—?
Selene's eyes slid past.
Of course.
Why would she see now what she'd never bothered to see before?
Elia's fingers dug briefly into Luna's arm, a silent warning to stay sheened to the walls.
Orion's jaw flexed.
"I will not send pups and cooks to the line," he said, voice low but carrying. "We're not that desperate."
"Yet," Selene replied blithely.
Her lips curved in a small, sharp smile.
She reached out and brushed a speck of dust from his shoulder as if they were alone in a hall, not standing in a courtyard thick with fear.
"You can't coddle them, *amor*," she said softly, deliberately using the old pet name, sweet-sounding and sour at once. "The weak die first. That's how packs stay strong."
Luna's hands went numb.
Those same words—almost exactly—had been hissed in her ear once, when Selene had pushed her facedown into the snow outside the kitchens.
*The weak die first, runt. Better you than the ones who matter.*
Now she said it to Orion in front of everyone, like a guiding philosophy.
A few of the nearby wolves flinched, eyes darting down.
Others nodded, some subtly, some not.
They'd swallowed this poison for years.
Now it had a shadow to feed on.
Orion's hand snapped up to capture Selene's wrist.
Not gentle.
His fingers dug in hard enough that she winced, a flash of true pain cracking her polished mask.
"Enough," he said, a growl under the word.
Silver glinted brighter in his gaze.
For a heartbeat, Luna thought he might toss Selene's hand away, might snarl in front of the whole pack, might *finally* reject the rot at his side.
Then his grip loosened.
He released her slowly.
Selene's lashes swept down, hiding whatever raced through her eyes.
When she looked up again, her smile was smaller.
Sharper.
She tilted her head, voice low and coaxing.
"You're tired," she murmured. "We're all tired. Let me help, Orion. Let me do what wolves like *us* do best. Make hard choices. The Goddess chose you for strength, not softness."
Her gaze flicked, almost lazily, toward the cowering omegas and the pups clustered near the hall doors.
Some of those pups had grown into lanky teenagers since Luna had left.
Others were new faces, tiny and thin, eyes too big in their gaunt little faces.
Their mothers stood in front of them, shoulders hunched, as if their bodies alone could stop shadow.
Luna's throat constricted.
She saw herself in every hunched line.
The smallest.
The weakest.
The expendable.
One of the older omegas stumbled then, dropping the bucket she carried.
Water sloshed over her bare feet, freezing almost instantly on the cold stone.
A murmur rippled through the onlookers on the balcony.
Maera's mouth pursed in disgust.
"Look at that," Selene said softly, almost pitying. "Can't even carry a bucket when it matters. How many more like her do we need? How many meals do we waste feeding mouths that can't lift a claw to help us?"
Luna's stomach knotted.
Heat roared under her skin.
Her stormgift snarled, eager to leap.
Elia's grip tightened painfully, warning.
Not yet.
Orion looked from the spilled water to the shivering omega.
His jaw clenched.
Luna could see the war in his eyes even at a distance.
He'd never been cruel to the omegas, not like some Alphas she'd heard of. He'd looked through them, mostly. Used their labor. Took their silence as given.
Selene wanted him to see weapons or waste.
Nothing in between.
He opened his mouth.
Luna held her breath.
"Leave her," he said finally, voice flat, oddly dead. "We have bigger problems than spilled water."
Selene's eyes glittered.
Triumph.
She stepped closer, close enough to lower her head and rest her forehead against his shoulder, a mockery of intimacy.
"There he is," she purred, too low for most to hear.
Luna heard.
Her teeth ground.
Orion's hand rose, hesitated, then settled on Selene's back briefly.
Like muscle memory.
Like a habit.
He looked over her head at the pack.
At the wolves still fighting on the far side of the yard.
At the elders on the balcony.
At the final crack that had torn open in the wall moments before.
His face was hard.
Older.
Haunted.
Whatever guilt he carried, he kept buried under duty and denial.
Luna remembered standing in this very yard, his voice carrying over her head as he announced her rejection.
His words sharp.
Final.
She'd fled with her heart in tatters.
He'd stayed.
He was paying for that choice now, inch by inch.
So were they all.
A thin, high wail pulled her attention from the center of the yard.
Near one of the inner hall doors, a pup had collapsed.
A little girl—six, maybe seven moons—lay on the stone, tiny body curled around herself, eyes wide and sightless.
Shadow-mist clung to her like a shroud.
Her mother knelt over her, hands fluttering uselessly, as if afraid to touch.
"Lina," the woman whispered, horror-struck. "Lina, baby, please—"
The pup did not respond.
Her chest rose and fell, shallow.
Her eyes did not blink.
Luna's heart lurched into her throat.
Everything in her recoiled.
Memory layered vision: that same hallway, different pup, different day—in her dream from the wind. The way the mist had licked at small legs. The way eyes had glazed.
Her healer-thread strained in her chest, screaming to move.
Elia felt it.
She stepped in front of Luna, blocking her just as Luna's body jerked toward the doorway.
"Not yet," she hissed. "You rush that now, in front of all of them, and they'll tear you apart before you get within reach."
"I can't—" Luna's voice broke. "She's—"
"I know," Elia said, pain flaring briefly on her lined face. "There are three more like her inside that I just left. One more or less won't tip this battle. The *pack's* eyes will."
On cue, Maera's voice rang from the balcony.
"We cannot care for them all!" she cried, not at the little girl, but to the whole yard. "We are being punished for our softness! The Goddess takes back what She gave!"
Luna wanted to howl.
Punished?
Softness?
When had they ever been soft to the runt?
To the omegas?
To anyone who didn't shine under the elders' approval?
Her fingers stung where her nails bit into her palms.
Wind crawled along the courtyard floor, restless, tasting blood and fear and gathering storm.
The pack she'd left behind was spilling its insides in front of her—old cruelty and new terror laid bare.
Rebel—Orion's former Beta—appeared then at the gate leading to the outer halls, fur bristling, a fresh slash bleeding along his temple.
"We lost the west patrol!" he shouted up to Orion, ignoring Selene entirely. "Three down. One… one walked into the crack and didn't come back out. We're holding with four wolves. Four. The Bloodfangs could breathe on the wall and knock us over."
His voice cracked on the last words.
Orion's jaw clenched hard enough that tendons stood out in his neck.
"Rotate the tired ones in," he said hoarsely. "Pull whoever can still stand from the training yard."
"The *training yard* is empty," Rebel shot back. "You've thrown everyone at the cracks or the rogues. The only ones left are pups, omegas, and elders who can barely make it up the stairs without wheezing."
His gaze flicked, just for an instant, toward Maera and Kerran.
Disgust flashed.
Quickly masked.
Selene stepped smoothly into that moment.
"Then use them," she said, voice like a knife dipped in honey. "We can't afford dead weight. Put the omegas on the inner fires. Let the elders watch the pups. Every other able body goes to the walls. Or do you *want* Moonshadow to fall because you were too sentimental to use what you had?"
Her eyes swept the courtyard, daring anyone to contradict her.
Some looked away.
Some nodded, reluctantly.
Some stared at the floor, knuckles white.
Luna saw herself in all of them—different choices, different fears, same traps.
"You do that," Elia muttered under her breath, eyes never leaving Selene, "and the first thing that shadow eats will be your 'dead weight.' Pups and elders are easy pickings when their keepers are gone."
"Maybe that's what she wants," Luna whispered back, bile rising. "A smaller, 'stronger' pack she can rule over without all the inconvenient souls who remember a different Moonshadow."
Elia's mouth twisted.
"And you?" she asked softly. "Are you seeing enough yet?"
Luna sucked in a shaky breath.
She *had* wanted to see this.
To know what kind of place she was about to step into.
Now that it was laid bare, she almost wished she could un-see it.
Her tormentors had not suddenly become pitiable saints.
Selene still coiled and struck, a serpent wrapped around the Alpha's heart.
The elders still shifted blame downward.
Warriors still let their anger roll over those weaker than them when fear had no other outlet.
But the consequences of those old cruelties—left unchecked, unchallenged—were here now, in living color.
In the way pups collapsed in hallways while elders preached about "weakness."
In the way warriors ripped into each other instead of the enemy because no one had taught them how to grieve.
In the way Orion's shoulders bowed under weight he'd helped place on himself.
In the way Kade had walked willingly into the cracks because no one had stood in front of him before.
The pack she had left behind was paying for everything it had fed itself on for years.
Pride.
Fear.
Cruelty.
Silence.
Luna pressed her back against the cold stone, sucking in the oily air, letting the sights and sounds embed themselves in her bones.
This was the Moonshadow she was coming back to.
Not the memory.
The reality.
Her wolf shivered under her skin, torn between wanting to lunge and wanting to turn tail and run until the cursed walls were a rumor again.
*Ours,* it whispered. *Not-ours. Hurt-den. Break? Heal?*
"Both," Luna said, so low only Elia could hear. "We do both."
Elia gave her a long, measuring look.
"You're going to have to choose your first bite carefully," she said. "Break the wrong thing, and they'll turn on you before you can blink."
Luna's gaze tracked back to the collapsed little girl by the door.
To her mother's shaking shoulders.
To the circle of wolves who had formed around them, watching from a safe distance, horrified but paralyzed.
To Orion, who had turned once, halfway toward them as if to go, then stopped, Selene's hand light on his arm.
To the way his face had flinched—just once, quickly—before he'd forced his attention back to Rebel's report.
Her healer's thread vibrated painfully.
Her storm hummed.
She knew where her first step would take her.
Into the light.
Into their line of sight.
Into the center of the very courtyard where she'd once stood small and exposed.
"I know," she told Elia softly. "And I think I know where to start."
Elia followed her gaze.
Her mouth thinned.
"Of course you do," she sighed. "You always pick the hardest possible path."
Luna's lips twitched, humorless.
"It's the only one that was ever really mine," she said.
For a few heartbeats more, she lingered in the shadow, imprinting the sight of her former tormentors as they were now.
Selene: beautiful and terrible and already cracking around the edges, even if she didn't yet see it.
The elders: diminished, their platitudes hollow against the stones' groans.
Warriors: frayed, snapping at each other because no one had shown them any other target for their rage.
Orion: standing in the middle of it all, eyes silver-threaded, surrounded by the consequences of choices he'd made and hadn't made, trying to hold back a tide with bare hands.
This was the pack she had left behind.
This was the pack she was coming back to save—or to watch fall, if it refused to change.
She pushed off from the wall.
Stepped out of the comforting darkness.
Into the courtyard's harsh, flickering light.
And for the first time since the night of her public rejection, Luna walked into Moonshadow's heart not as the runt no one saw, but as a storm waiting to break.