UNDER THE ECLIPSED MOON

CHAPTER 5

The ash rose like it had been waiting for permission.

It surged up from the ring at my boots in a black, whipping curtain—hotter than fire, colder than fear. The wave slammed into the creature’s face with a sound like sand against stone. It recoiled, snarling, and the trees around it shuddered as if they wanted to get out of its way.

I stared at my own feet, horrified. “I didn’t—”

“You did,” Dax snapped, dragging me backward by the wrist. “And you’ll do worse if you freeze.”

Kieran shouted something I couldn’t hear over the creature’s roar. Then there was a crack of branches and the heavy thud of bodies colliding. I turned my head on instinct—

Dax’s grip tightened. “Don’t look back.”

“I have to—”

“You don’t,” he said, voice like steel. “You want to save him? Survive first.”

Save him.

The idea punched the breath out of me. After rejection, after humiliation, after the council’s “evaluation”—and still my wolf twisted toward him like he was a wound she couldn’t stop licking.

Dax hauled me into a run.

We tore through the forest, ash puffing under our boots. The eclipsed moon bled copper through the branches, painting Dax’s jaw and my hands in bruised light. Behind us, the creature roared again, and this time I heard the wet edge of hunger in it.

“What is that?” I gasped.

“A tracker,” Dax said without slowing. “Old magic. Bone-hungry. Pack councils use them when they want a problem erased quietly.”

My stomach flipped. “My pack did this?”

Dax shot me a look that said, you already know the answer. “Maybe. Or maybe your council isn’t the one holding the leash anymore.”

We hit a slope and slid, half-running, half-falling down toward a ravine. Cold air pooled there, thick and metallic, like blood in the back of the throat. The ground grew darker, the ash finer.

A howl rose somewhere to our left—wolves.

Not Kieran’s pack call. Too ragged, too many voices layered together.

Rogues.

“They’re here,” I whispered.

Dax didn’t look relieved. He looked annoyed. “Of course they are.”

We reached the ravine floor and sprinted along the cut in the earth. The walls rose on either side like black teeth. Ahead, a thin seam of orange light split the rock—faint, steady, unnatural.

A fissure.

It glowed like buried coals.

Dax slowed only enough to shove me behind him again. “Stay close. Don’t breathe loud.”

“Don’t breathe loud?” I hissed.

His eyes flashed. “It hears panic.”

As if the ravine wanted to mock us, the air vibrated with a new sound—scraping, heavy, approaching fast. The creature was following the line we’d carved through the trees like it could taste our footsteps.

Dax reached the fissure and pressed his palm to a stone embedded in the rock beside it. The symbol carved there made my stomach clench: a crescent moon split by a straight line, the same mark on my mother’s gate-stone.

The rock warmed under his hand.

The fissure widened.

Not breaking—opening.

A narrow passage yawned into the earth, lit by dim amber lines that ran through the stone like veins.

“What is this?” I whispered.

“Sanctuary,” Dax said. “For the unwanted. For the dangerous.”

My pendant pulsed hard, answering the stone like they were speaking to each other. Heat poured into my palm. The amber lines brightened.

Dax noticed and his jaw tightened. “Don’t feed it.”

“I’m not feeding anything,” I snapped.

“You’re thinking,” he said. “And this power listens.”

Behind us, the ravine erupted with sound—feet skidding on ash, a wolf snarl, then Kieran’s voice, hoarse.

“Aria!”

I spun.

Kieran stumbled into the ravine mouth, shirt torn, blood on his knuckles. He looked like he’d fought something that didn’t bleed right. His eyes found me and locked, wild with urgency.

“Move!” he shouted at Dax. “It’s right behind me!”

As if summoned by his words, the darkness at the ravine edge bulged and shifted. The creature’s eyes appeared first—coal-bright—then its shape, too large for the gap, forcing stone to grind as it squeezed through.

My wolf screamed.

Kieran backed toward us, breath ragged. “Aria, please—”

“Please what?” I yelled, and the sound shook in my throat. “Please come back to the pack that wanted to cage me? Please trust you after you broke me?”

His face twisted like the words cut. “I didn’t know what they were going to do.”

“You knew enough,” I spat. “You chose them.”

The creature lunged.

Kieran shoved his body in front of it, buying seconds with his own skin. His eyes met mine over his shoulder—raw, terrified, not for himself.

“For you.”

Dax grabbed my wrist again, pulling me toward the passage. “Inside. Now.”

“But Kieran—”

“Inside,” Dax repeated, harsher. “You step into the open and it will switch targets. And then you won’t get up again.”

The pendant burned. The amber lines in the passage flared brighter, as if they wanted me. As if the tunnel recognized my blood more than Dax’s hand.

Kieran staggered, slamming his shoulder into the creature’s face. It snapped at him, missing by inches, teeth scraping rock.

“Aria!” he shouted, voice breaking. “If you go in there, they’ll never give you back!”

Dax yanked me forward. “He’s right,” he said, and that was what made it terrifying. “But they don’t have to.”

“What does that mean?” I breathed.

Dax’s eyes cut to my pendant. “Your mother didn’t give you a key to escape. She gave you a key to a prison.”

The creature roared, close enough now that the sound turned my bones to water.

Kieran threw himself sideways to block it again—and the creature’s claws raked his back.

He screamed.

My body lurched toward him without permission.

The ash at my feet exploded upward.

And the passage behind Dax slammed shut like a mouth.