Oya the Wise

Chapter 14

Oya the Wise

POV: Adelina McKenna

Mama Oya didn’t speak of the Moon Matrons often.

She mentioned them in fragments. Names whispered into wind. Battles buried in bone. But never a full truth. Never the whole story.

Not until the fire burned blue.

That’s how I knew something had changed.

On the sixth night, after days of brutal training and sleepless hours spent watching the tree line for Silver Fang patrols, I returned to the den to find the flame dancing with indigo light, casting strange shadows across the walls.

Oya was already seated on the floor, legs crossed, eyes closed. The scent of herbs and ash filled the space.

When I stepped inside, she opened her eyes.

“They’re ready,” she said simply.

“Who?”

She pointed to the fire.

“Your mothers.”

I knelt across from her without question.

Something in the air demanded reverence.

Oya pulled a small bowl of water from her side and placed it between us. She held her fingers over the flame until smoke curled around her wrist, then dipped her hand into the bowl.

“Blood of mine,” she whispered, “speak through the daughter of your line.”

She turned the bowl toward me.

“Drink.”

I hesitated for only a second.

Then I obeyed.

The water was warm, metallic, bitter with magic.

It coated my tongue, then vanished.

The world tilted.

Suddenly, I was standing in the ruins.

But they were no longer ruins.

They were whole.

The Matron Temple the original stronghold, where Mama Oya’s coven once lived was restored before my eyes. Moonlight bathed its stone walls. Wolves in silken robes walked the halls, laughing, chanting, training.

At the center of it all stood a woman cloaked in midnight.

She turned to me slowly.

And my knees buckled.

Because she looked like me.

Older, yes. Taller. Eyes brighter. But undeniably, impossibly—me.

Or perhaps, the woman I was becoming.

“You have come late,” she said, voice like wind through trees. “But not too late.”

“Who are you?” I whispered.

She stepped closer.

“I am what your line forgot. I am what your Council feared. I am the voice buried in your bones.”

She reached out and placed a hand over my heart.

“And I am what your daughter will become.”

I woke with a gasp, soaked in sweat.

Oya hadn’t moved.

She regarded me silently.

“What did you see?” she asked.

“Her,” I breathed. “One of them. Maybe all of them.”

She nodded.

“That was Nalia,” she said. “The last known High Matron before the Fall. She was killed during the Scorching Trials, when Silver Fang aligned with the Obsidian Pact to destroy the independent lineages.”

“The Scorching Trials?”

“A war,” Oya said, standing slowly. “One most of our kind don’t remember. Or won’t speak of. Because it wasn’t written in stone. It was written in blood.”

She walked to the far wall and pulled back a heavy curtain, revealing a carved mural I’d never seen before.

It showed women in wolf form, standing side by side with males but not behind them.

Beside them.

Equal.

Some of the wolves bore strange markings tattoos glowing from their fur, rings of flame around their eyes.

“These were the Moon Matrons,” Oya said. “Chosen not by Alpha lineage, but by vision. By calling. By the moon herself.”

I stepped closer.

“Why were they destroyed?”

She looked at me.

“Because they couldn’t be controlled.”

She told me the story over the next few hours, sitting close to the fire, her voice low but steady.

The Moon Matrons, she explained, were once one of the three Pillars of the Shifter world alongside the Alpha Kings and the Seer Clans. Together, they kept balance.

But when the Seers began to vanish, and the Kings grew hungry for power, the Matrons were cast as outlaws. Branded witches. Sorceresses. Wild bloods.

One by one, their lineages were hunted.

Temple after temple burned.

Bonded males were forced to sever ties. Offspring were hidden or worse, killed.

By the end, only two Matron strongholds remained.

Oya’s was one.

And mine… the Hollow Moon pack, my father’s ancestral home… was the other.

“Your father was a Flame Bearer,” she said. “One of the last warriors sworn to defend Matron blood.”

My eyes stung.

“But I never knew him.”

“You weren’t meant to,” she said gently. “To protect you, your mother kept you hidden. And the day you shifted ”

“The bond activated,” I finished.

“Yes.”

“And now they know.”

“They suspect,” she corrected. “But they don’t understand. Not yet.”

She turned to me, eyes bright.

“That is your greatest weapon. They still think you’re just a broken mate. A severed soul. They have no idea what you carry.”

My hand drifted to my stomach.

“And Lux?” I whispered.

Oya smiled, for the first time in days.

“Lux is more than Matron. She is Matron reborn.”

She led me outside just before dawn.

Snow dusted the trees. Fog hugged the ridgelines.

We walked in silence until we reached a circle of standing stones I hadn’t noticed before, half-swallowed by roots and time.

“The old altar,” she said.

She handed me a bone-handled dagger.

I took it without question.

“You will cut your palm,” she instructed. “Let your blood fall on the altar. And then speak the Oath.”

“What oath?”

She stared at me.

“You’ll know.”

I stepped into the circle.

The stones pulsed faintly with blue light.

I raised the blade to my palm and hesitated.

Not from fear.

From knowing.

Because once this was done, there would be no going back.

I would not just be a rogue wolf.

I would be a challenger.

A heretic.

A memory returned to life.

I sliced clean and fast.

My blood spilled onto the stone.

And the moment it touched the surface, the mountain shuddered.

Wind howled.

The fog split.

And a voice rose from my throat, one I didn’t recognize:

“By moon and flame, by blood and howl—

I awaken the line they tried to bury.

I remember the names they made us forget.

I burn the silence they forced into my mother’s bones.

I claim my place.

I call my strength.

I call my kind.

Let them hear me rise.”

When I looked up, Oya was smiling again.

And behind her, the flame wolves had returned.

Four of them.

Shimmering spirits of Matrons past.

They bowed their heads to me.

Not in reverence.

In recognition.