Sarah Cross's POV - Luna
I watched my world collapse as that silver light swallowed Jamie and Ethan, leaving nothing but empty air where they'd been stood.
"No!" Maya screamed, falling to her knees. "Bring him back!"
Derek was already shifting, his wolf form breaking free as he howled his rage and grief into the night. The sound made my heart clench with sudden pain. In three years of marriage, I'd never heard Derek make a sound like that. Pure, broken sorrow.
The Shadow Wolves were retreating, their laughter echoing through the trees like broken vows. Their boss paused at the edge of the clearing.
"This isn't over," the thing snarled. "We'll find the Moon Child. And when we do, we'll finish what we started tonight."
As the monsters faded into the darkness, I was left standing in the wreckage of everything I'd thought I understood.
Jamie was Derek's son. The little boy with the blue eyes I'd tried to kill was my husband's kid.
Maya was Derek's true mate. The omega I'd hated and ignored was the one person Derek had ever truly loved.
And I was the evil in this story.
"Sarah." Derek's voice was cold as winter when he changed back to human form. "What have you done?"
I looked at his face - really looked at it - and saw something that made my stomach drop. He wasn't angry with me. He was disgusted. Like I was something dirty he'd found on his shoe.
"I was protecting our marriage," I said, but my voice sounded weak even to me.
"By attacking a child?" Maya stood up, her power sparking around her like lightning. "You tried to kill a three-year-old!"
"He's not just any child!" I snapped, my own anger burning. "He's Derek's son with another woman! Do you know what that makes me look like?"
"It makes you look like exactly what you are," Derek said softly. "A selfish, cold woman who married me for power instead of love."
The words hit me like physical blows. "That's not fair! You married me too! You picked me!"
"I chose duty," Derek corrected. "I picked what my father told me was best for the pack. I never picked you, Sarah. Not really."
Maya was staring at both of us like we were speaking a strange language. "You're fighting about politics while your son has been kidnapped!"
Derek's face crumpled with pain. "You're right. We have to find him."
But I couldn't let it go. Three years of living with a husband who looked through me like I was invisible, three years of knowing I was second choice to a memory - it all came spilling out.
"You think I don't know?" I screamed. "You think I don't know that you search for her every night? That you call her name in your sleep? That you've never once looked at me the way you look at her?"
Derek turned to face me fully, and for the first time in our marriage, I had his total attention. Unfortunately, it was the wrong kind of attention.
"You're right," he said simply. "I have never looked at you the way I look at Maya. Because Maya is my mate, and you're just a political deal that I've regretted every single day for three years."
The truth hit me like a slap across the face. I'd always known, but hearing him say it out loud made it real in a way that broke something inside me.
"Then why didn't you just reject the marriage?" I asked, tears starting to fall. "Why did you put us both through this?"
Derek's face softened slightly. "Because I thought I was doing the right thing. Because I thought duty meant more than love. I was wrong."
Maya stepped between us, her face desperate. "This doesn't matter right now! Ethan has Jamie, and the Shadow Wolves are still out there. We need to focus on finding him!"
But I was already backing away, shaking my head. "No. No, you don't understand. This changes everything."
"Sarah, what are you talking about?" Derek demanded.
I laughed, but it came out broken and bitter. "The marriage contract, Derek. Did you ever actually read the small print?"
Derek's face went pale. "What about it?"
"If our marriage is dissolved for any reason - including you taking another Luna - my father's pack gets to claim half of your territory as compensation."
The clearing went dead silent. Even Lily, who'd been trying to track Ethan's smell, stopped and stared at me.
"You're lying," Maya whispered.
"I wish I was," I said, pulling the folded contract from my jacket. "It's all right here. My father insisted on it as safety against exactly this situation."
Derek snatched the papers from my hands, his eyes scanning the law text. His face went whiter with every line he read.
"Half the territory," he breathed. "Including the land where the pack school is. Where the nursery is."
"And the healing center," I added quietly. "And the main water source."
Maya's knees buckled. "You mean if Derek chooses me..."
"The pack gets torn in half," I finished. "Families split. Children forced to leave their homes. All because your sweet true love is more important than everyone else's lives."
Derek looked like I'd just hit him in the stomach. "My father knew about this clause?"
"Of course he knew. He's the one who negotiated it. He thought it would keep you from ever wandering." I folded my arms across my chest. "Looks like he was wrong."
The weight of what this meant settled over all of us like a dark cloud. Derek couldn't choose Maya without ruining his pack. But he couldn't stay married to me knowing she was his true mate.
"There has to be another way," Maya said desperately.
"There is," I said quietly. "Derek stays married to me. You disappear again. And we all pretend this never happened."
"Over my dead body," Derek growled.
"That can be arranged," a new voice said from the tree line.
We all spun around to see Marcus, Derek's beta, emerging from the shadows with a dozen pack fighters behind him. But something was wrong. Marcus wasn't looking at the trees where danger might come from.
He was looking at Derek like Derek was the danger.
"Marcus?" Derek said slowly. "What are you doing?"
"What I should have done three years ago," Marcus answered coldly. "Protecting this pack from its Alpha's selfishness."
That's when I saw the guns. Silver chains and tranquilizer darts filled with wolfsbane. The kind of tools used to control rogue wolves.
"You're staging a coup," I breathed in shock.
Marcus nodded grimly. "The pack has lost faith in Derek's leadership. His obsession with finding Maya has left us exposed. His son being exposed as some kind of supernatural target puts us all in danger. And now this marriage contract threatens to destroy everything our ancestors built."
"Marcus, you can't do this," Lily protested, but several warriors pointed their guns at her too.
"The pack council has voted," Marcus declared. "Derek Stone is no longer fit to lead. He will be detained until a new Alpha can be picked."
Derek stepped protectively in front of Maya. "I won't let you hurt her."
"We're not here to hurt the omega," Marcus said. "We're here to remove her from pack territory permanently. She's caused enough damage."
But as the fighters moved forward with their silver chains, something completely unexpected happened.
The ground beneath our feet began to shake. Not an earthquake - something else. Something that made every wolf in the clearing look up at the sky in fear.
Because the moon, which had been full and bright just moments before, was going black.
"What's happening?" Maya whispered.
Elder Rosa's voice came from behind us, thick with old fear. "Moon eclipse. Unscheduled, difficult, and very, very bad."
"Bad how?" Derek demanded.
The old woman's eyes were wide with fear. "When the moon goes dark, the barriers between places weaken. Things that were locked away can break free."
As if called by her words, a sound echoed across the territory - not the howl of Shadow Wolves, but something much worse. Something that made every wolf present, from Alpha to omega, drop to their knees in instinctive surrender.
"Oh no," Rosa breathed. "They're not just hunting Moon Children anymore."
"What's coming?" I asked, though I was afraid to know the answer.
Rosa looked at each of us with the expression of someone giving a death sentence.
"The Shadow King. The father of all Shadow Wolves. And if he's awakening now, it means someone with great power is calling to him."
Through the pack tie, we all felt it at the same time - a pull from somewhere far away. Ethan's position, wherever he'd taken Jamie.
But the magical signature we were feeling wasn't Ethan's protective power or Jamie's innocent Moon Child skills.
It was something else. Something that felt like Ethan, but wrong. Twisted. Dark.
"He's not protecting Jamie," Maya whispered in fear. "He's using him."
As the moon disappeared totally, plunging us into unnatural darkness, one terrifying thought echoed in all our minds: What if Ethan had never been a Moon Guardian at all?