The Moon Priest Warning

Kenna’s POV

“Why would he ask for her?” Elaine’s voice cut sharp through the sitting room, her eyes darting toward me like I had arranged this myself. “Jenna is home. Jenna is the rightful bride. What business could he possibly have with the substitute?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly, because I didn’t.

My father’s jaw tightened. “Send back my message to him, I’ll speak to the man myself and find out what nonsense.”

“He won’t speak to anyone but her.” The servant was still balanced by the door, squeezing his hands. “He was very clear, my lord. He said he would wait at the gates all night if he had to.”

Roland exhaled through his nose, the particular sound he made when something inconvenienced him without actually mattering to him. 

“Fine, Go. Whatever he wants, settle it quickly and don’t embarrass this family with whatever superstitious nonsense he’s carrying on about.”

“Perhaps he only wants to release her formally,” Jenna offered gently, touching my sleeve as I stood. 

“Now that everything’s returning to normal. It would make sense, wouldn’t it? A proper end to the ceremony, now that I’m home.”

It made more sense than anything else I could think of. I told myself that the entire walk to the temple, matching my steps to the priest’s slower ones, the old man was silent beside me the whole way, his hands folded into his sleeves like he was holding something in.

He didn’t speak until the temple doors shut behind us and we were alone beneath the carved stone ceiling, candlelight throwing long shadows across the altar where I’d stood four months ago while a crown that wasn’t mine settled onto my head.

He studied me for a long moment. Not the way people usually looked at me, through me, past me, around me. 

He looked at me, the way you’d look at something you were afraid to touch.

“Tell me about the mark,” he said finally.

My stomach dropped. “What mark?”

“Don’t.” His voice wasn’t unkind, just tired. “I already know. Alpha Jace described it to me himself, silver or whatever on your wrist. I need to know everything, when it started, how often, what else came with it.”

There didn’t seem to be any point lying to a man who already knew the shape of the truth. 

“It started the night of the wedding,” I said slowly. “Just a flicker at first, then it got stronger. I have had dreams. A castle, broken towers, a moon that isn’t the right color. 

A voice calling me things I’ve never been called.” I hesitated. “Princess. Once, daughter of the lost crown. And today, in the garden, I heard a name, Aelra.”

The priest went very still.

“There’s more,” I admitted, because his silence frightened me more than his questions had. “Whenever I touch certain places, especially the garden, I see things like fragments. A woman in a silver crown. A child’s voice. It happened again just today.”

“Show me.”

I pulled back my sleeve. Nothing there now, just bare skin, ordinary in the candlelight. 

He stared at it anyway like he expected it to answer him.

“When Alpha Jace saw it,” he said, “what exactly happened?”

“The ground shook. The roses bloomed out of season. He grabbed my wrist and asked what it was. I told him I didn’t know. That was true then. It’s still true now.”

“Has he told anyone else?”

“I don’t think so.”

The priest let out a slow breath, some of the tension leaving his shoulders, though not all of it, not nearly all of it. “Good. That’s good.” He turned away from me, pacing toward the altar, his robes whispering against the stone floor. 

“Listen to me carefully, Kenna. From this moment, you must hide this. All of it. The mark, the dreams, the visions. No one can know. Not the council, not your family, not even people you trust.”

“Why?” My voice came out sharper than I intended. “What is it? What’s happening to me?”

He didn’t answer.

“Please.” I stepped closer. “You know something. I can see it in your face. I deserve to know what’s happening to my own body.”

“There are people,” he said slowly, like each word cost him something, “who have spent generations searching for signs exactly like the one on your wrist. Longer than you or I have been alive. Longer than this pack has stood on this land.”

“Searching for what? For me?” I almost laughed, the sound coming out thin and disbelieving. “I’m nobody, I’m just the wolfless daughter nobody wanted. Why would anyone spend generations looking for someone like me?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

His eyes met mine, and for the first time I saw real fear in them, not for himself, I realized for me. 

“Both,” he said quietly. “Because the moment I explain it, both of us become a great deal less safe than we are right now. Trust no one, Kenna. Not until you understand the truth yourself. Not even the people closest to you.”

I stood there in the candlelight, my whole chest tight with everything he wasn’t saying, and I forced out the one question I’d been circling since the wedding night.

“Was it an accident?” My voice shook, but I made myself finish it. “Me becoming Substitute Luna. Was that chance, or was it always going to be me?”

He looked away. He didn’t answer at all.

And somehow that silence told me more than anything he could have said.

I walked back toward the estate with my arms wrapped around myself, though the night wasn’t cold enough to explain it. Every step turned the priest’s words over and over, generations, searching, trust no one, until my miserable, invisible life started looking less like bad luck and more like something built, brick by brick, by hands I’d never seen.

I was so lost in it that I almost didn’t notice the figure standing near the garden entrance.

A guard, I thought first, some late patrol along the hedge line. 

But the guards didn’t stand that still, and they didn’t wear their hoods pulled that low, and they certainly didn’t watch a person the way this stranger was watching me, like he’d been waiting there specifically for me to walk this path.

I slowed. My pulse climbed. “Can I help you?”

He stepped out from the shadow of the hedge, and even in the dark I could tell his eyes were fixed only on me, nothing else.

“Kenna.” My name in his mouth landed strange, reverent almost, the way the priest had said Aelra — like it was a different word entirely from the one I’d worn my whole life. 

“I’ve searched for you for years. I didn’t think so, I was afraid I wouldn’t find you before they did.”

“Before who did?” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “Who are you?”

He opened his mouth to answer. Then his eyes went wide, snapping to something over my shoulder, all the color draining from what little of his face I could see beneath the hood.

He pressed something small and cold into my palm before I understood what was happening, a silver pendant, its edges worn smooth like it had been held a thousand times before mine.

“Run,” he breathed. “Now.”

I turned instinctively toward whatever had frightened him, and my whole body went cold.

Black-cloaked figures were stepping out from between the trees, silent as smoke, moving without a single sound of footsteps on the grass.

Every one of their eyes was fixed on me.