60 Days Before the Doomsday: The Discarded Luna’s Rebirth

I woke up screaming for a core I thought was no longer there.

My hands flew to my chest. I expected a hole, torn flesh, warm blood pouring between my fingers. Instead I felt smooth skin, and under it, a soft golden pulse that matched the frantic beat of my heart.

It was still inside me.

For a long moment I could not breathe. I could still feel the silver knife sliding between my ribs. I could still see Blake kneeling over me, the same hands that used to tuck my hair behind my ear, now holding my life like it was something he had borrowed and was finally taking back.

I remembered the night before the wall fell. I had held the barrier alone for more than eleven hours, my nose bleeding, my vision going black at the edges, while Catherine Westwood complained from her warm chair that her tea had gone cold. Nobody offered me water. Nobody asked if I was tired. I was the Luna. Lunas don’t get tired.

I remembered the last sanctuary door opening with room for one more person. Only one. I did not even ask. I just looked at Blake, and Blake looked at Evelyn, and that was my answer.

And I remembered the sacrifice stone, the warriors holding my arms, and Evelyn leaning close to whisper that I had only ever been the spare.

But the thing that burned hardest, the thing that still made my hands shake now, was what I heard as I lay dying in the snow. Old Elder Orin asked Blake if he had known about the Silvermere seal in my blood.

“Since she was seventeen,” Blake answered. “Why do you think I mated her?”

Five years. Five years of loving him, healing for him, bleeding for his pack, and he had known exactly what I was the entire time. He had kept me close the way a man keeps a lock close when he is waiting for the right moment to steal what is inside.

I grabbed my phone from the nightstand with trembling fingers.

October 12. 8:00 AM.

Sixty days until Doomsday.

Sixty days until the red moon rose, the ground split open, and the Great Frost buried the world under ice and monsters. And three days until the Luna ceremony, when Blake planned to bind me to his pack for good.

The Moon Goddess had not saved me out of kindness. She had given me one chance to make them pay, and I knew exactly where to start.

The bedroom door slammed open.

“Up,” Catherine Westwood snapped, sweeping inside without a knock, her perfume filling the room. “Blake wants his tea, the array in the sanctuary is not ready, and Evelyn has been in pain since dawn. Does a Luna lie in bed all morning?”

Blake followed her in. Dark hair slicked back, blue eyes already narrowed with impatience. Behind him, Evelyn hovered in one of my own silk robes, her face pale in a way that looked carefully practiced.

I stared at them.

It was strange. In my last life, this scene would have sent me scrambling out of bed with an apology on my lips. Today I only noticed small things. How Catherine never once looked at my face. How Blake had not asked if I slept well in five years. How Evelyn kept her hand on his arm like she was marking territory.

“Iris,” Blake said, with a heavy sigh, as if I were a child who had forgotten her chores. “Evelyn’s core is unstable again. Go to the sanctuary and give her your healing aura.”

“Blake, don’t be harsh,” Evelyn whispered, tugging his sleeve. Her eyes filled on cue. “Maybe she is tired. I can bear the pain.”

She let the robe slip off her shoulder as she said it.

“You don’t have to bear anything,” Blake told her gently, and pulled her into his side. “That is what Iris is for.”

That is what Iris is for.

Something inside me went completely still.

Not rage. Rage was hot. This was colder, quieter, like a blade being drawn very slowly from its sheath.

I stood up. My legs did not shake.

“No.”

Catherine’s mouth fell open. “What did you say to me?”

“I said no.” I turned my eyes to Blake. “I will not heal her. I will not make your tea. And I will not be at the Luna ceremony.”

For a second nobody spoke. Then Blake’s face hardened, and I felt his Alpha aura roll across the room like a wave of iron. It pressed down on my shoulders, my knees, my spine, the same command that had brought me to the floor a thousand times.

“Kneel, Iris.”

I did not.

I felt it hit me, and I felt it slide off. Like wind against a mountain. Deep in my chest, my core flared hot and bright, and something ancient cracked open inside my blood like ice breaking on a spring river. Far down, beneath five years of silence, my wolf lifted her head.

Blake felt it too. His eyes widened, and he took one small step backward before he could stop himself.

“What are you doing?” he said, low and sharp.

“Seeing you for the first time,” I answered.

Catherine looked from him to me, confused. “Blake, what is she talking about?”

He did not answer her. He was staring at me like I was a stranger wearing his mate’s face.

“I know what you found in my blood when I was seventeen.”

The color drained from his face so fast it was almost beautiful.

“Iris,” he said, very carefully, “whatever you think you know, we can talk about it later.”

“There is no later.”

I lifted my chin. The windows trembled in their frames. Evelyn’s fingers went white on his sleeve, and for the first time in my life, I saw real fear in Blake Westwood’s eyes.

“By the blood of the Moon Goddess,” I said, my voice ringing through the room like a bell, “I, Iris Silvermere, the true heir of the Royal Wolf line, reject you, Blake Westwood, as my Mate and my Alpha.”