Chapter #3 The Awakening

Rowan Vale POV

Dawn, Stocks Courtyard

I knew she was gone before I even reached the courtyard.

I felt it. Some instincts don’t whisper. They don’t nudge. They detonate. By the time I sprinted across the frost-coated stones, my lungs were burning and my heart was a screaming, frantic thing in my chest.

“Emara...Emara...please....”

I skidded to a stop. The stocks were empty. Completely. Horrifyingly. Empty.

The blankets I wrapped around her were shredded. The snow was trampled. And streaks of frozen blood led toward the treeline like the mountain itself was pointing at her fate. My breath punched out of me in a sound that wasn’t human.

“NO!”

I fell to my knees, and my hands were shaking so violently I nearly face-planted into the snow. I pressed my palm to the bloodstain, desperate to pretend it wasn’t hers.

It was hers. I knew her scent as well as my own heartbeat.

And tangled through it....Beta Veega and his filthy daughter Lyrina.

My stomach turned to stone.

“Emara…” My voice cracked in half. “Oh goddess, Emara…”

Before I could rise, before I could sprint into the woods, a sugary venom-laced voice sounded behind me.

“Well,” Lyrina said, stepping into view with her girl gang bristling behind her, “looks like someone wandered off where she didn’t belong.”

Her smile was bright and vicious. I surged to my feet. “You bitch. You KNOW something. Where is she? What did he do? Where...”

Two wolves grabbed my arms. Another kicked the back of my knee, forcing me down. A boot slammed into my ribs before I could even spit in their faces.

“Careful,” Lyrina drawled. “If you scream loud enough, Alpha might hear. And he doesn’t need another reminder of the trash that embarrassed him last night.”

Trash. They called her trash. I roared, pure grief fueled rage bursting out of me, but four wolves shoved me into the snow at once.

“Shut him up,” Lyrina snapped.

A fist crashed into my jaw. Another into my stomach. A knee crushed my spine. Someone yanked my hair so hard my vision blackened at the edges.

“You love her, don’t you?” Lyrina purred, crouching in front of me. “That useless little piglet? That pathetic, fat nothing?”

I spit blood at her boots.

“She was worth ten of you,” I rasped.

Her smile vanished. She slapped me so hard I tasted iron and snow.

“Take him away,” she hissed. “If he dies out there, even better.”

They dragged me, literally dragged me, through the trees and hurled me into the brush behind my den. I hit the ground with a sickening crack.

Alone. Bleeding. Barely breathing. A sharp pain bloomed in my chest as the world tilted.

“I’m coming, Emara,” I whispered through blood and tears. “I’ll find you… wherever you went.”

The darkness swallowed me fast. I didn’t fight it. I didn’t want to.

Death meant peace. Death meant her.

___________________________

Emara Dell POV

The In-Between

I woke up in a world made of moonlight.

Soft silver grass brushed my palms. Warm wind hummed with lullaby tones I remembered from childhood, my mother’s voice threading through the air like a memory made real.

And Rowan was beside me. Not bleeding. Not bruised. Not broken. His hand found mine instantly.

“Emara…” His voice was thick and shaking. “We’re dead.”

I nodded. For a moment, there was nothing but quiet relief.

Death didn’t hurt. Death didn’t judge. Death was warm.

“Are you scared?” he asked softly.

“No.” My voice felt small, and fragile. “I’m… tired. But not scared.”

He squeezed my hand.

“Let’s go together then,” he whispered. “Wherever it leads.”

I smiled as my heart swelled. We stepped forward. The horizon glowed like a doorway, shimmering soft and gold.

And just as our feet touched it.....The world snapped like a ruptured string. A boom of divine power shook the sky.

The grass whipped sideways. The air thickened. Moonlight blazed brighter than the sun.

A voice thundered from everywhere at once.

“STOP.”

Rowan and I froze. A figure peeled itself out of the light, tall, radiant, and furious in a way only gods could be.

Moon Goddess Nyra.

But this was not the gentle mother of legends.

This was a storm given shape. Her eyes burned with molten silver. Her hair swirled like a comet’s tail. Fury rippled off her in waves that cracked the ground beneath us.

She looked at Rowan first.

“You were beaten for loving too gently. Mocked for loving the wrong gender. Hunted for defending what is sacred. This world has lost its sanity.”

She touched his cheek, and power sparked beneath her fingertips. Then she turned to me. And the fury in her gaze eclipsed everything I had ever known.

“My child,” Nyra whispered, “they mocked the body I crafted with care. They spat on the heart I shaped from moonfire. They destroyed what was soft, believing softness was weakness.”

Thunder rolled behind her.

“They murdered you for kindness.”

Her voice deepened, shaking the world.

“They murdered you for having mercy.”

Lightning ripped the sky open.

“They murdered you for the shape of your flesh.”

I flinched. Not from fear. From being seen....truly seen....for the first time in my fucking life.

Nyra’s expression softened only a fraction.

“I will not allow cruelty to reign in my mountains,” she said. “Not toward those who love freely. Not toward those whose bodies reflect the fullness of the moon. Not toward wolves who deserved better than scorn.”

She reached out. Her hand pressed over my heart. Warmth spread through my dead chest like blooming embers.

“Emara Dell,” she whispered, “you do not die today.”

Her other hand pressed to Rowan’s sternum.

“Nor do you, Rowan Vale.”

Silver fire surged around us. Nyra’s voice rose with the wind, a divine decree that rattled every star in the sky.

“You will rise together. You will be my vengeance. My restoration. My balance.”

Her hand glowed brighter, searing against my heart.

“Emara, rise as my Shadow Luna.”

A shockwave blasted outward.

“Rowan, rise as her Silver Guardian.”

A second shockwave. Nyra stepped back as the world around us tore itself open in a spiral of moonlight.

“Go,” she commanded. “Breathe again. Walk again. Change everything.”

The doorway behind us shattered. Light consumed us.

And I breathed.

___________________________

Emara Dell POV

Awakening

Cold air hit my lungs like a scream.

My fingers twitched. My heart thundered. My eyes snapped open to a sky full of stars. I lay in the same blood soaked snow I died in.

Beside me, Rowan gasped awake, coughing, then laughing through the shock.

We were alive. Alive. Changed. Power hummed under my skin, shadowfire, moonfire, fury and rebirth intertwined.

Rowan looked at me with wide, silver glowing eyes.

“Em… we came back.”

I reached for his hand.

“We’re not the same.”

He smiled through tears.

“No, baby. We’re so much more.”

The moon above us pulsed, like it was bowing. And the world, our world, shifted.

The Shadow Luna had risen.

And the mountain would never be the same.