đ Chapter 2 â The Shadow That Knows Her Name
The night after her vow, silence clung to the ruins of the Draven stronghold like a second skin.
The fires had burned out, but the air was still thick â with grief, with magic, with something ancient and awake.
Seren stood atop the balcony that overlooked what remained of her home. Below, her wolves moved like ghosts â burying their dead, tending their wounded, whispering her name like a prayer and a warning.
She should have felt hollow.
Instead, she felt⌠alive.
Too alive.
The mark on her neck â the one that once burned for Caelan â now pulsed with a new rhythm. Not love. Not mourning.
Something else. Something older.
> "He is watching you."
Lyra's voice brushed her mind, soft but trembling.
Seren's fingers tightened on the railing. "The shadow from before?"
> "He isn't just shadow. He smells of moonlight and death. I don't trust him."
Seren exhaled, her eyes scanning the treeline. "Good. Neither do I."
But even as she said it, her heart betrayed her â skipping when she caught the faint shimmer of movement beyond the mist.
He stepped forward then â Lucen â no longer cloaked in darkness but bathed in faint silver light, like the night itself bent around him. His presence was wrong and right all at once, like something the universe regretted making too beautiful.
"Luna Vale," he greeted, his voice a low hum that slid beneath her skin. "The dead have heard your vow."
Seren's eyes narrowed. "And you came to deliver their applause?"
His lips curved. "No. Their answer."
He stopped a few paces away, but she felt his power pressing against hers â ancient, magnetic, dangerous.
Lyra snarled within her, but Seren didn't back away.
"What are you?" she demanded.
Lucen's gaze flicked to the fading crescent mark on her throat. "Something that shouldn't exist," he murmured. "Much like you now."
She stepped closer. "You talk in riddles. I have no time for ghosts."
"Then why do you call to them in your sleep?"
The words froze her.
Her breath caught â because he was right. Since that night, her dreams had been full of whispers, her mate's voice fading in and out of reach. But beneath it, something darker had been whispering her name.
He tilted his head, studying her. "You asked for power. The moon refused. The shadow didn't."
Seren's pulse quickened. "And what does the shadow want in return?"
Lucen's eyes glowed faintly â silver rimmed with midnight. "It already has what it wants. You."
The wind howled around them, stirring her dark hair.
"Be careful, Luna," Lucen warned softly. "Vows made in grief are hungriest of all. Feed them wrongâŚ"
He reached out, brushing a single gloved finger against her jaw. "...and they'll eat you from the inside out."
Seren caught his wrist before he could pull away â her grip iron, her eyes burning.
"Then tell me how to feed it right," she said. "Because I'm not done burning this world."
For a moment, silence â only their breaths, heavy, shared.
Then Lucen smiled â dark and slow.
> "Then, Luna Vale," he whispered, "welcome to the other side of the moon."
And as his shadow merged with hers beneath the dying stars, Seren felt it â the bond forming. Not of love.
Of power.
Of vengeance.
Of something that tasted like fate rewritten.