when the curse broke

I kept my glowing hand pressed to the rubble and called his name again. On the other side of the collapse I heard stone grinding, claws scraping, and Drake’s low, furious growls. He was tearing the barrier apart with nothing but strength and desperation.

“I’m here,” I shouted once more. “I’m all right.”

The white light still pulsed faintly under my skin, softer now but steady. Every time I breathed it answered, as if it had finally woken and refused to sleep again. I did not fully understand it yet, but I knew one thing with absolute certainty: this power belonged to me. It had never been absence. It had been waiting.

A large slab of rock shifted. Dust poured down. Then a bloodied hand punched through the gap, followed by Drake’s scarred arm and finally his face. His eyes found me instantly. Relief and something fiercer burned in them.

“Aria.”

He forced the opening wider and climbed through, ignoring the sharp edges that cut his skin. The moment he reached me he dropped to his knees and pulled me against him, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other checking me for new injuries. I felt the fine tremor running through his body.

“I heard him,” Drake said against my hair. “I heard what he said to you. I could not reach you.”

“I’m still here.” I pulled back just enough to look at him. The soft glow from my hands painted his scars in pale light. “Something happened. When he tried to kill me, it came out of me. Light. Power. I threw him across the tunnel.”

Drake stared at my hands, then at my face. Understanding dawned slowly, followed by something that looked almost like awe.

“The First Luna,” he said quietly. “Her magic. It has been sleeping in you all this time.”

I nodded. “That is why I never had a wolf. The power was always there. It just needed a reason to wake.”

He touched one of my glowing fingers with careful reverence. The moment our skin met, the light flared brighter and flowed toward him. Drake sucked in a sharp breath. The nearest scar on his forearm—deep, old, and angry—began to fade under the white glow. The raised tissue smoothed. The pain that had lived in that mark for centuries seemed to ease.

We both froze.

“Again,” he said.

I placed both hands on his chest, right over the worst of the scars that crossed his heart. The magic poured out of me willingly this time, warm and sure. Drake’s head fell back. A low sound escaped him, half groan, half relief. One by one the ancient marks began to lighten. Some disappeared completely. Others remained as pale silver lines, no longer wounds but memory.

“Your power is the key,” he whispered. “The same magic that bound me is the magic that can free me. You are the counter to the curse.”

Tears stung my eyes. I kept my hands on him, letting the light do its work. “Then let me finish it.”

Drake cupped my face. His thumbs brushed my cheeks, gentle despite the strength in his hands. The mate bond that had been humming between us since the first moment roared to life, no longer a quiet recognition but a living current. I felt everything he felt—centuries of loneliness, the shock of finding me, the fierce need to protect, the wonder that I was real.

“I have waited five hundred years,” he said. “I will not rush this.”

“I’m not asking you to rush,” I answered. “I’m asking you not to stop.”

He kissed me.

It was not careful. It was hungry and grateful and full of everything we had not been allowed to say. I kissed him back with the same intensity, my glowing hands sliding up his neck and into his hair. The magic surged between us, brighter than before. Heat and light and power wrapped around our bodies until I could no longer tell where I ended and he began.

The curse broke with a sound like the mountain itself exhaling.

A massive shockwave of white energy exploded outward from the place where we knelt. It tore upward through stone and earth and fire, shooting into the night sky in a brilliant column of light that could be seen for miles. Every werewolf in the territory would feel it. Every pack would know.

The First Alpha was free.

Drake pulled back just enough to rest his forehead against mine. His scars were nearly gone. His eyes glowed with clean, powerful light. When he smiled, it was the first true smile I had ever seen on his face.

“It is done,” he said. “Because of you.”

I was still glowing, still shaking, still tasting him on my lips. Outside, the mountain continued to burn, and somewhere beyond the smoke Ethan Blake would already be receiving the news that his worst fear had come true.

But for this one moment, none of that mattered.

I was no longer the worthless girl they had sent to die.

I was the Luna who had freed the true Alpha.

And he was finally mine.