Chapter 4

I stood in the ashes of the great hall. The Luna throne was gone, burned to bone. Dax turned to me.

“Take it now,” he said.

“There is no throne,” I whispered.

He looked at me like I’d already become something else.

“No… you are the throne.”

Zoryn kissed me. Not with love, with hunger. He tasted what lived inside me, and smiled.

“I was sent to kill you,” he said.

“But you’re too beautiful to waste.”

I slapped him. Then I kissed him back. Because I needed his darkness more than his loyalty.

Lira’s coronation was drowned in moonlight and blood. The traitor packs howled her name.

She wore a crown of bone and frost.

“Let them see their ruin,” she told her mirror.

Then she laughed. Because it was my face reflected in the glass.

The old wolves met in silence. Alpha ghosts, buried kings, forgotten Lunars. They demanded tribute from me. I gave them nothing, only blood. The pact sealed in my veins. The eclipse lives in you now, Seris said. With it… comes war.

The chains broke in my mind. Seris roared loose, not fully, but enough. My eyes glowed. My bones shifted.

Vaeron stepped back.

“Saelaith…?”

I smiled.

“No,” I said. “Not anymore.”

The moon shattered again inside me. The cave was supposed to be empty. But something moved beyond the firelight, tall, silent, wrong. Its eyes glowed like dying stars.

“Another wolf?” Dax asked.

“No,” I whispered. “Not a wolf.”

When it lunged, I didn’t flinch. Because deep inside, Seris was already smiling. Vaeron returned from the battlefield, wounded and alone.

He refused help. Refused rest. He stared at his own blood like it wasn’t his.

“Do you ever regret it?” he asked me.

I didn’t answer. Not with words. Just silence. And silence hurt more. She thought the spell would trap me.

Thought silver vines and enchanted fog could bind what I’d become.

But Lira underestimated one thing: I was never hers to control. I shattered her curse mid-air, my wolf howling through my lungs. And in that moment, she looked afraid. Good.

Dax placed the scorched parchment in my hands. It was a battle map. A prophecy. A warning.

Circles marked in blood. One word repeated over and over: No One.

“This isn't just your title,” he said.

“It’s your fate.”

And I wasn’t sure which terrified me more. We met beneath the blackened moon. Outcasts, rogues, forgotten bloodlines, all standing around me.

“I don’t promise peace,” I told them.

“I promise war. I promise teeth. I promise fire.”

They howled with me. And in that moment, something ancient awoke. We were no longer a group.

We were a pack. Something called to me in sleep. Not Seris. Not the Moon.

Something older. Hungrier. It whispered my true name, the one no one had spoken since I was born.

I woke up crying ash.

And the stars were no longer watching me. They were running. He showed me the mark. Hidden beneath his ribs. A brand from when his father chained him to the sunrock.

“That’s why you never speak of love,” I said.

He turned away.

“No,” he muttered. “That’s why I only speak it to you.”

I didn’t know what to say. Zoryn returned with a torn shoulder and a dead man’s voice.

“He said your name,” Zoryn rasped.

“Who?” I asked.

“The one from the mountain,” he said.

“The man with no scent. The one who knows what you are.”

Then Zoryn collapsed. And my blood ran cold. In the ritual pool, I saw her. Seris, her eyes like obsidian knives. She slammed her hands on the water’s surface. The mirror shattered from inside.

“Let me out,” she begged.

“No,” I said.

But my reflection was already gone. And hers was in its place. A messenger arrived with white roses.

Lira’s seal stamped in wax. Inside the petals, powdered silverroot.

Enough to kill twenty wolves. A note was pinned beneath:

“You forgot who taught you to be cruel.”

I burned it and sent her back a wolf's heart instead.