Blood and betrayal

Chapter 4:

"A choice about what," Luna said again, though the words felt like they belonged to someone else, someone far away, someone whose whole world hadn't just tilted sideways for the second time in one night.

Ivy's hands were shaking. She wrapped her arms around herself like she was trying to hold her own body together, and behind her, wolves were still slipping out of the black trees, one after another, closing off every direction Luna and Kade might have run.

"They came to me two days ago," Ivy said, and her voice was raw, cracked open with something that sounded like real grief even though Luna didn't want to believe a single word of it. "Garrick's people. They knew about the bond between you and Damon before the ceremony even happened. They knew what would wake up in your blood the moment it broke."

"You knew," Luna said. Her voice came out flat, empty, worse than screaming would have been. "You knew Damon was going to reject me. That's why you looked guilty all week. That's why you couldn't meet my eyes at breakfast."

"They said if the bond broke naturally, your blood would wake up somewhere quiet. Somewhere they could find you without anyone else getting hurt." Ivy's voice broke entirely on the last word, tears cutting fresh tracks through the dirt already on her face. "They said if I helped, they wouldn't hurt you. I believed them, Luna. I swear to the moon I believed them."

"You made Damon reject me." The pieces were falling into place now, ugly and complete, and Luna felt something in her chest go cold and hard where heartbreak had only been raw before. "You didn't just take him. You planned this. All of it. My whole life, blowing up in front of three hundred people — that was a plan."

"It wasn't like that—"

"Then what was it like?" Kade's voice cut across the clearing, low and dangerous, and Luna felt him shift protectively closer, one arm tightening around her waist even though his own blood was still running freely down his ribs. "Explain it to her. Explain how betraying your own cousin to men who want to put her in chains is anything other than exactly what it looks like."

Ivy flinched like he'd struck her. "I didn't have a choice. My mother — Luna, they threatened my mother. They said if I didn't help them, they would hurt her, and I couldn't — I couldn't let that happen, I—"

"You could have told me," Luna said. Her voice cracked wide open now, all the anger draining out and leaving only the wound underneath it, raw and enormous. "Ivy, we grew up together. I would have helped you. I would have found another way. Instead you let me stand on that platform and fall in love with a lie for five years, and then you let him break my heart in front of everyone I've ever known, and you smiled at breakfast that morning like nothing was wrong."

"I'm sorry." Ivy was sobbing now, openly, her whole body shaking. "I am so sorry, Luna, I never wanted any of this—"

"But you did it anyway."

The silence that followed was worse than anything Garrick's wolves had done to them so far. Luna stood in the ruin of her torn silver dress, blood and dirt streaked across her arms, and looked at the cousin she had loved her whole life, and felt something break inside her chest that she wasn't sure would ever fully heal — not a bone, not a bruise, but something deeper, something that had trusted without question and would never be able to do that again.

"Enough," said a new voice, and Garrick stepped into the clearing behind Ivy, fully human now, blood from Kade's teeth still dark against his shoulder, his expression carrying none of the pleasant menace from before. This time it was simply cold. "Touching as this reunion is, we don't have time for it. Ivy, step aside."

Ivy didn't move. "You said you wouldn't hurt her."

"I said I wouldn't hurt her unnecessarily." Garrick's eyes moved past her, fixing on Luna with a hunger that made her skin crawl. "That is a very different promise, and it becomes considerably harder to keep the longer she resists coming with us peacefully."

"She's not going anywhere with you," Kade said again, the same words he'd said before, but something in his voice had changed — quieter now, more certain, like a wall being built stone by stone in real time. "You'll have to go through me first, Garrick. And you already know how that went the last time you tried."

Garrick's jaw tightened, a muscle jumping there, and Luna understood in that moment that Kade had actually hurt him — not just in this fight, but at some point in the past, badly enough that the memory of it still stung.

"You're outnumbered twelve to one," Garrick said. "Even you can't win those odds forever."

"He's not alone," Luna said.

Every head in the clearing turned to look at her, including Kade's. Luna felt her own heartbeat hammering in her ears, felt the strange silver fire still humming faintly under her skin even through the bone-deep exhaustion, and she made herself stand up straighter despite legs that wanted to buckle.

"I don't know what I am," she said, and her voice, to her own surprise, came out steadier than she felt. "I don't know what a Moonfire is supposed to be able to do. But I already hurt three of your wolves tonight without even trying. I don't know what happens if I actually try."

Garrick studied her for a long moment, and something flickered behind his eyes that might have been the first real uncertainty he'd shown all night.

"Bold words from a girl who can barely stand," he said, but there was less confidence in it than before.

"Test her and find out," Kade said softly. "I dare you."

For one long, suspended moment, nothing moved. Luna could hear her own pulse in her ears, could feel Kade's heartbeat where his arm still pressed against her side, could see Ivy standing frozen at the edge of the clearing with her hands pressed to her mouth, could see a dozen wolves crouched low in the shadows, waiting for a command that hadn't come yet.

Then, somewhere behind Garrick, a new howl rose through the black trees — deep, resonant, carrying an authority that made every wolf in the clearing flinch and turn toward the sound.

Garrick's face went carefully, deliberately blank.

"That would be the King's Envoy," he said, and for the first time all night, Luna heard something in his voice that sounded almost like relief at an interruption. "It appears my report has already been forwarded further up the chain than I intended."

"You called the King Alphas," Kade said, and his voice had gone dangerously quiet.

"I called my superiors the moment I felt her blood wake up. What they do with that information is no longer my decision to make." Garrick took a slow step backward, his eyes never leaving Luna. "I would be careful, Ashford. Whatever debt you think you owe this girl, whatever promise you made to her mother — none of that will matter once the Envoy arrives. The King Alphas have wanted a Moonfire heir under their control for a hundred years. They are not going to let one slip away over your sentiment."

"How do you know about a promise to her mother," Luna said, the question tearing out of her before she could stop it, before she could even fully understand why it mattered so much in the middle of everything else happening. "Who was my mother to any of you?"

Garrick's smile came back, thin and cold. "Ask Ashford. He seems to know a great deal more about your family than he's told you so far." He tilted his head, listening to the second howl rolling closer through the trees, and something in his posture shifted — not retreat, exactly, but repositioning. "This isn't over, little wolf. Consider tonight a warning. The Envoy is not a patient man, and he does not make the same mistake of underestimating what you are that I nearly did."

He turned, and with a sharp gesture, the wolves surrounding the clearing began to melt back into the shadows, one after another, until only Ivy remained standing frozen at the tree line, tears still streaking silently down her face.

"Luna," Ivy said quietly. "For what it's worth — and I know it isn't worth anything anymore — I never stopped loving you. Not for one single day."

"Go," Luna said. The word came out broken, exhausted, more sad than angry now that the adrenaline was draining out of her all at once. "Just go, Ivy."

Her cousin held her gaze for one more long, agonized moment, and then turned and disappeared into the black trees after Garrick's retreating wolves, leaving Luna standing in the ruin of the clearing with blood on her hands and a hole in her chest where trust used to live.

The silence afterward was almost worse than the fighting had been.

Luna's legs finally gave out. Kade caught her before she hit the ground, easing her down onto a fallen log instead, his hands careful and steady despite the deep gash still bleeding sluggishly along his ribs. Up close, in the thin gray light of very early morning beginning to creep through the canopy, Luna could see how much the fight had cost him — bruises darkening along his jaw, a shallow cut above one eyebrow, exhaustion carved into every line of his face.

"You're hurt," she said.

"So are you." He crouched in front of her, gently turning her hands over in his to check for injuries, his touch far more careful than his voice had been all night. "You're shaking."

"I think I might be in shock." Luna's laugh came out wet and unsteady, tears finally spilling over now that there was nothing left chasing them. "An hour ago the worst thing that ever happened to me was getting rejected in front of my whole pack. Now I've been hunted by an army, my cousin betrayed me to save her mother, and apparently I'm some kind of legendary bloodline that an entire kingdom is afraid of." She looked up at him, and her voice cracked on the next words. "I don't even know who I am anymore."

Kade was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, like he was giving her every chance to pull away if she wanted to, he reached up and brushed a fallen strand of hair back from her tear-streaked face.

"I know exactly who you are," he said quietly. "You're the girl who threw herself between me and Garrick's wolves even though you'd never met me an hour before. You're the girl who used a power she didn't understand to save my life instead of running to save her own. That's not nothing, Luna. Whatever else you are — Moonfire, omega, rejected mate — that's who you actually are underneath all of it."

Luna's breath caught. Something about the way he said it, low and certain, like he'd already decided it was true and nothing would change his mind, undid something tightly wound in her chest.

"You still haven't told me the truth," she whispered. "About my mother. About my father. About why Garrick knew you'd made her a promise."

Kade's eyes darkened, and for a moment Luna thought he might close himself off again, might retreat back behind the careful, guarded stranger from the border stone. Instead he let out a slow breath, and something in his shoulders eased, like a decision had finally been made after a long fight against making it.

"Your mother's name wasn't always Elena Hart," he said quietly. "Before she came to Silver Moon Pack, before she hid herself in a small pack no one would think to look for a Moonfire heir inside, her name was Elena Voss. And she wasn't just descended from the Moonfire line, Luna."

"What was she?"

Kade's gaze held hers, steady and grave in the pale gray light of the coming dawn.

"She was its last true heir," he said. "Until you."

Luna's whole world tilted sideways again, faster this time, deeper, and before she could find words to answer him, before she could even begin to process what that meant, the ground beneath them trembled — once, twice, a low rolling shudder that sent birds screaming up out of the canopy in every direction.

Kade was on his feet instantly, pulling Luna up with him, his whole body gone rigid with alarm.

"That's not an animal," he said. "That's not even a wolf."

The ground shook again, harder, and this time Luna heard it too — a low, grinding groan rising up from somewhere deep beneath the forest floor, ancient and enormous, like something vast was stirring awake after a very long sleep.

"Kade," Luna breathed. "What is that?"

His face had gone pale, his pale gold eyes fixed on the black ground beneath their feet like he could see straight through it to whatever was moving underneath.

"That," he said, very quietly, "is the reason no one has ever come back out of the deep part of these Woods."