Snow fell in slow spirals outside the High Fortress of Thorne, blanketing the black stone walls and the sharp ridges of its iron-spiked gates. The keep rose high above the mountains like a crown of jagged teeth, built to remind the realm who sat at its center. It was not a place for softness. Not a place for mercy.
Not even for kings.
Kael Thorne stood bare-chested in the training courtyard, his breath visible in the frigid morning air. Snow clung to his boots and the fur-lined cloak at his feet, but he ignored the cold. His fists were raw, wrapped in blood-stained cloth as he struck the post again and again until the wood splintered.
Seven years of silence. Seven years of order. Seven years of forgetting.
And in a single night, it had shattered.
He hadn't spoken her name aloud since the execution. He hadn't allowed it to be spoken in the halls. He had purged her from the history scrolls, from the temple records, from the bond registry. She had died. Her power had been severed. He had felt it tear from his soul like a blade dragged across flesh.
But last night… it came back.
A pulse in his chest. A whisper of a scent he hadn't breathed in years—moonflowers and fire. He'd bolted upright in his bed, hand gripping the mark on his chest that no healer could ever erase. It had stopped glowing the day she died. But now… it burned again.
He didn't tell anyone.
Not his Beta. Not the High Priest. Not even the Seers, who wandered the halls murmuring warnings about a coming fire.
He just trained harder.
As if he could beat the memory out of himself.
"You're bleeding again," said a voice behind him.
Kael didn't turn. "Let it."
Beta Soren stepped forward, tossing a fresh cloth onto the snow beside him. "You've broken two ribs in three days. You keep this up, your bones will forget how to mend."
Kael grunted. "That would be convenient."
Soren tilted his head. "The dreams are back."
"They were never dreams."
The Beta hesitated. "Then what?"
Kael finally looked at him, eyes storm-dark. "A warning."
Soren didn't press. He'd served Kael long enough to know that silence was often more revealing than words. He simply bent, retrieved the bloodied cloth, and handed him the clean one.
"I'll have the Seers prepare the well," he said. "If there's a shift in the bond plane—"
Kael's voice was low. "Don't mention the bond."
Soren stiffened. "She's gone, Kael. We all saw her die."
"I buried her myself," Kael whispered, as if the words would protect him. "I held her body in my arms. There was no pulse. No spirit. No wolf."
"Then what's haunting you?"
Kael didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
He turned his gaze to the horizon, to the distant treeline far beyond the capital's reach. The Whispering Wilds. No High Pack wolves had entered those forests in years. They were cursed lands—marked rogue after the Fall of Luna Althea.
But the bond that flickered now… it pointed there.
The last place in the world he wanted to go.
---
Seraphina sat at the riverbank, watching her reflection in the black water. Her wolf form had faded just before sunrise, leaving her skin flushed and her eyes brighter than before. She could still feel the shift humming beneath her bones, like something unfinished. Her limbs ached, not from pain, but from restraint.
Her body was changing.
The forest had changed, too. When she walked through the glades this morning, the animals didn't hide. A black doe bowed its head as she passed. The water didn't ripple when she touched it. She was becoming something the Vale Pack didn't understand—and wouldn't accept.
She wasn't just a wolf anymore.
She was a Luna without a throne.
"You shouldn't be out here alone," came a voice from the trees.
She didn't flinch.
Elder Raen stepped from the shadows, his long silver hair braided down his back, his robes scented with pine and dust. He carried a staff carved from the roots of the Old Tree, marked with glyphs from before the Accord.
Seraphina turned her head slowly. "You always find me."
"I don't find you," he said. "You let me."
She said nothing.
Raen approached, kneeling beside her. "The stone glade. The mirror pool. The shift. The forest speaks of you now. Even the spirits. They wake when you pass."
Seraphina's fingers curled around a stone. "Do you know who I am?"
He studied her. "I know what you are. Luna-born. Soul-returned. Marked by flame."
"Do you know my name?"
"You've always been Seraphina."
She looked him dead in the eyes. "That's not what the moon calls me."
Raen inhaled slowly.
"I remember it all," she said, voice low. "I know the man who killed me. I know the council that cursed me. I know the throne that burned under my blood."
"You are still a child," he said carefully. "Power does not make you ready."
"I'm not a child," she snapped. "I was a queen before your ancestors had names."
Raen did not flinch.
Instead, he bowed his head.
"Then you know what must come."
She nodded. "I will burn the High Council to ash."
"And the Alpha King?"
Her voice turned ice.
"He will kneel."
---
Far across the continent, Kael stood before the ancient Oracle Stone, buried deep beneath the temple ruins of Solis Hollow. Only the Alpha King was permitted in the chamber alone. It was said the gods themselves carved this stone from the heart of the first moon. It revealed nothing to liars. Nothing to cowards.
But Kael was neither.
He placed his palm against the stone.
It pulsed once.
His vision blurred, and the world around him dissolved.
He stood in a hall of mirrors. Each panel reflected a different moment in time.
One showed him as a child, running from the whip of his father's Beta.
Another, cloaked in blood, holding the sword that won the High Throne.
Another, kneeling at the execution altar, watching her bleed.
He turned to that one.
Althea.
Her eyes bore into him from the glass. Silver. Endless. Alive.
Then the mirror shattered.
A new image emerged—Seraphina, older, cloaked in flame, standing above a burning city. And behind her… wolves. Hundreds. United under her mark.
Kael stumbled back, hand searing.
The bond mark on his chest blazed like fire.
The Oracle's voice echoed inside his head.
> "The moon rises twice for those who die with vengeance in their blood."
He fell to his knees.
Not in submission.
In revelation.
---
Seraphina stood at the cliff's edge, overlooking the Vale territory. The wind caught her hair, and her eyes—glowing faintly now—locked on the moon. Her fingers trembled, not from fear, but fury she'd carried since her first breath in this life.
She would leave the Vale soon.
They were not her people.
They had given her safety, yes. But they could not offer justice.
That belonged to her.
She didn't need a pack.
She needed retribution.
And the moon, watching from above, gave no objection.