Chapter 4- Letter To The Luna

Elowen:

The guard's news that night was grim, though not yet about Zarek directly.

Rogue activity had been spotted stirring near the Thornwood border, unconfirmed, unsettling, enough to put Ronan on edge but not enough, yet, to explain the quiet dread that had already begun settling over the house like something waiting to happen. 

He left before dawn to see to it himself, and two more long, aching days passed before I saw Selene again.

When she finally came, she did not knock the way Ronan had. She simply opened the door and stood there, still wearing the same travel coat she seemed to wear like armor even inside her own home."You knew," she said. Not a question.

"I found out four days ago. From Alpha Ronan," I said. 

Her hands were clasped in front of her, and I watched her fingers curl around each other, then release, like she was holding something back by force. 

She stepped inside and closed the door behind her, quieter than I expected. "My mother arranged that engagement when Zarek was an infant," she said.

Her voice steady at first, then catching, just slightly, on the next words. "I was twelve. I remember the celebration, music, dancing, my father toasting to two bloodlines becoming one. I did not understand, back then, what it meant to promise someone's whole future away before they had even learned to walk." 

She stopped, pressing her lips together, struggling visibly to hold the rest of it in. "He never told me either," she continued finally. "My own brother let me walk into this house accusing you of trapping him, standing there humiliating you in front of the staff, when he was the one hiding a truth from both of us the entire time."

I did not know what to say to that. I had not expected an apology, and this was not quite one, but it was not the same cold fury from before either.

"I am still angry," she said, before I could mistake her tone for something softer than it was. "You are still a servant carrying my husband's brother-in-law's child, born outside marriage, and that is still a scandal I have to manage carefully, if I want to protect this house at all. That has not changed."

"I understand," I said quietly. 

"But I am angrier at him." Her voice cracked, once, and she looked away toward the window before letting herself finish. "He let both of us stand there and be humiliated, when he could have simply told the truth from the start." 

She shook her head, like she was trying to shake the thought loose entirely. "Whatever happens now, I want you to know, I am not deciding your fate to protect Zarek. He has already lost whatever protection I might have given him."

She left soon after, and I sat there for a long time afterward, turning her words over and over, trying to understand what they meant for me, for the child growing quietly inside me, for whatever future the two of us might still be allowed to have in this house.

That night, once the house had gone quiet and the candles had burned low, I made myself sit up in bed and press both hands flat against my stomach.

I"I don't know what's going to happen to us," I whispered, my voice trembling but steadying as I spoke, growing surer with each word. "I don't know if your father is ever coming back, or what kind of home you're going to grow up in. But I know one thing for certain. I'm done letting fear pick who I get to become."

I thought about every version of myself I had been taught to be, quiet, careful, grateful for whatever scraps of kindness this house was willing to hand me.

 I thought about my mother, who had spent eighteen years bending herself smaller and smaller just to keep us both standing, folding herself into corners so no one would ever have a reason to notice her, to question her, to threaten what little safety she had built. I thought about how tired I suddenly was of mistaking that kind of vanishing for the only way to survive.

I did not have rank. I did not have Zarek, not anymore, maybe not ever really. I did not even fully have Selene's mercy, not yet.

But I had this child, growing inside me, innocent of every mistake that had brought it into being. And I decided, right there in the dark, holding my own future in both hands, that whatever came next, rejection, shame, even being cast out of this house entirely, I was going to face it as someone who had chosen to stand up, not as someone waiting to be told how small she was allowed to be.

In the morning, I asked my mother to help me write a letter. "To Zarek?" she asked gently, already reaching for parchment.

"No," I said, and something steady settled into my voice as I said it. "To Selene."

I did not ask for forgiveness in it, and I did not ask her to reconsider my punishment. I asked her for one thing only, a chance to prove, through my work and my conduct, that I could still be useful to this house, and that my child, whatever its birth, deserved a place in this pack no smaller than any other child born within it. 

My mother read the words back to me twice before I let her seal it, her hands trembling slightly around the wax, like she understood, better than I did, exactly how much courage it had taken me to write something so simple and so dangerous all at once.

I gave it to Odessa to deliver that afternoon, my heart pounding the entire time I watched her walk away with it tucked carefully inside her apron.

I did not expect an answer that same day. I certainly did not expect what actually came instead.

It was nearly dusk when I heard footsteps running down the hall outside my room, too fast, too urgent to be anyone simply passing by. The door burst open before I could even call out, and it was Odessa again, breathless, her face pale.

"Elowen." She could barely get the words out between breaths. "There's been an attack. At the Thornwood estate."

My whole body went cold. "What kind of attack?"

"Rogue wolves, the messenger said. Last night, during the engagement feast." Odessa's hands were shaking as she reached for mine. "Several guards were killed. Aria's own father is badly wounded."

I could hardly breathe. "And Zarek? What about Zarek?"

Odessa hesitated, and in that single, unbearable pause, I understood that whatever she was about to say next was going to change everything all over again. 

"No one knows," she whispered. "No one's seen him since it happened. He's missing."

And somewhere deep in my chest, fear and love tangled into one unbearable ache.