CHAPTER 20

Aria’s POV 

I saw Solara. It always begins with the same.

On seeing the woman screaming on the battlefield. My hands were soaked in blood, sticky and warm. I couldn’t breathe. Even to move.

She was dying in front of me. Her long hair was tangled in ashes, while her mouth opened very wide. No sound—just her eyes. Her name burned on my tongue.

“Solara...”

Then the flame devoured her.

I jolted awake, gasping, heart hitting my chest as if it was trying to break free.

Another dream. Another piece of something I didn’t understand.

Solara. The name rang through me like a memory that didn’t belong to me.

I dressed in silence. Outside, dawn crept along the edges of the forest, spilling pale gold light over the blackened earth. The scent of smoke clung to everything.

Dorian was already waiting at the gate.

“You’re late,” he said.

“You didn’t give me time.”

He smirked, but it faded quickly. His expression was tense, distant.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I need to show you something right now.”

We rode in silence, past the Crimson Pack’s sacred trees and into the wastelands—where the old magic still whispered beneath layers of stone and time. The wind carried the scent of sulfur and something… older. Something lying down.

Suddenly, we reached a crater rimmed with jagged lava rock. At its center stood the ruins of a stone temple, half-swallowed by blackened earth and moss.

It pulsed with a strange energy. Like it was alive.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“A Moon Queen temple,” Dorian answered, dismounting. “One of the few that survived the purges. The elders covered it in shadow and buried it under flame. They didn’t want it found.”

I stopped the horse immediately and stepped forward slowly, feeling heat rising from the cracks on the ground. Magic buzzed through the soles of my boots.

Inside, the air was thick, and the place was calm. The walls, though damaged, still held carved images—faded, but clear.

The same woman appeared again and again.

Long braids. Eyes bright as moons. In one carving, she held three swords. In another, she stood between three different figures—each cloaked in a different element: flame, shadow, and storm.

In the last carving, she cradled a child wrapped in silver light. The power radiating from him was carved in rays like sunlight.

The woman’s face looked like mine.

I swallowed hard. “She looks—”

“Like you,” Dorian finished. “I know.”

“Is this…” My fingers grazed the carvings. “The Moon Queen?”

He nodded slowly. “Or her descendant. She was chosen.”

I stared at the image of the three figures. Mates, maybe?

Three swords, three mates, and one child. My child.

I turned round with a heart thudding against my chest. “I didn't believe in fate,” I said calmly.

“You don’t have to,” Dorian replied. “It believes in you.”

I spun toward him. “Is that why you brought me here? To tell me I’m supposed to have three mates? That my child is some prophesied heir?”

He stepped closer, his face showing an unreadable expression. “I brought you here because I needed you to see that your path was never going to be simple. You were never meant for just one choice, Aria. You’ve been fighting a war that isn’t just yours.”

My throat tightened.

“So now what?” I whispered. “I have to choose between them? Between Kael and Cato and you?”

His expression shifted—just slightly. Enough for me to see it.

He wasn’t just saying this for prophecy.

He meant it.

“I’m falling for you,” he said softly. “Not because of some fate or carving on a wall. But because I see you. Every version of you. The Alpha, the mother, the woman behind the scars. And I want all of her.”

I blinked, taken off guard. A part of me had known the way he watched me. The way he never pushed but was always there. The way he kept showing up even when I tried to keep him at arm’s length.

I opened my mouth to speak—

Then the temple shook.

A deep rumble rolled beneath our feet. Dust fell from above.

Dorian’s hand found mine instantly.

“Something’s waking,” he said. “That wasn’t me.”

“What does that mean?” I inquired suddenly.

But he was already looking around.

Runes on the floor—dormant moments ago, began to glow. Faint red, pulsing like a heartbeat.

Then a whisper echoed through the chamber.

“Aria…” I froze. That voice is familiar to me; I knew it was Kael.

But not.

It was warped. Hollow. Like someone wearing his voice like a mask.

I stepped back as a crack opened in the floor, black mist curling up from the gap. The carvings on the wall flickered.

The image of the woman cradling the child began to bleed.

Not real blood, but magic. Dark, sticky magic that dripped like ink.

“No,” Dorian muttered. “It’s too soon.”

“What is this?” I demanded.

“The awakening, the crown, and it’s tied to you and to the child.”

“My son?” I asked softly.

The shadows grew thicker, swirling upward from within them, and something moved. It is a figure rising.

Her face was mine.

But not.

Her eyes were too cold, and her smile was too cruel.

The Moon Queen. Or something worse.

She didn’t speak aloud, but I heard her. Felt the words slip into my bones like a poison.

Three mates. One heir. And a blood sacrifice to awaken the Crown.”

“No,” I breathed. “You won’t touch him.”

The spirit smiled, then the shadows burst outward.

Something dark and monstrous stepped forward—its body half-man, half-wolf, its eyes burning red.

It locked eyes with me and in its mouth…

A familiar chain, a pendant.

Kael’s.

He’d worn it since we were teenagers. And now it dangled from this thing’s jaws.

“Aria, we need to go,” Dorian said, dragging me back.

Staring at the creature as it growled low. And from the mist behind it, more shapes stirred.

More shadows. Not just one creature but an army.

All of them have glowing red eyes and are rising.