CHAPTER THREE: The Moon Goddess Is Angry

Lyra's POV

Pain.

Not the kind you can breathe through. Not the kind you brace for and survive. This is the kind that erases everything else — the crowd, the cold, the humiliation still ringing in my ears — until there's nothing left in the world except the fire tearing through my chest.

I collapse before I even realize my knees have given out.

Stone scrapes my palms. Somewhere above me, voices are shouting, but they sound distant, muffled, like I'm hearing them from underwater. My whole body convulses, and then—

Light.

Silver light bursts from beneath my skin, pouring out of my chest, my arms, the hollow of my throat, bright enough that I hear people crying out and shielding their eyes even through my own closed lids.

It doesn't feel like fire anymore. It feels like something breaking free — something that's been buried under my skin for twenty years, finally clawing its way to the surface.

"What—" someone starts, and doesn't finish.

I can't open my eyes. I can't move. All I can do is lie there on the cold stone while silver light spills out of me like blood from a wound, and let whatever this is happen.

Then, just as suddenly as it started, it stops.

The light fades. The pain drains out of me all at once, leaving me boneless, shaking, gasping against the ground.

My vision clears in slow, blurry pieces — first the stone beneath my cheek, then the hem of a silver robe crouching beside me.

The Moon Priestess.

She's not standing anymore.

She's kneeling. On the ground. In front of me.

And she's not the only one.

I lift my head, ribs still aching, and see them — Elders who've led this pack since before I was born, dropping to their knees one by one across the courtyard, heads bowed, like something invisible just walked past and commanded it of them.

Only one person is still standing.

Draven.

He hasn't moved. His jaw is tight, his eyes fixed on me with an expression I can't read — not disgust anymore, not quite. Something closer to disbelief. Something closer to fear, if Alphas were capable of it.

The Priestess reaches for my wrist with trembling hands and turns it over, exposing the pale skin of my forearm. Her breath catches.

There, faint but unmistakable, a mark glows beneath my skin — intricate lines curling like moonlight given shape, fading even as I watch, but not before every wolf close enough to see it goes utterly silent.

"Impossible," she whispers.

"What is it?" I manage, my voice cracked and raw.

She doesn't answer me. Not directly. She just stares at the fading mark like it might vanish if she blinks, murmuring something under her breath in the old tongue — words I don't recognize, prayers maybe, or warnings.

Then she looks up, and her voice cracks through the courtyard, sharp enough that every wolf still standing flinches.

"Protect her! Now! No one touches her without my word!"

Guards move instantly, forming a loose circle around me, though I can't tell if it's protection or containment. My head is still spinning too hard to care which.

Draven finally steps forward, and his voice cuts through the murmuring crowd like a blade.

"She's still rejected," he says, flat, final, like the mark burning into my skin means nothing at all. "Whatever that was, it doesn't change what happened here tonight."

The Priestess turns on him so fast her robes snap around her ankles.

Something in her face isn't calm anymore. It's not even reverent. It's horrified.

"You think this doesn't change anything?" Her voice shakes — not with weakness, but with something closer to fury. "Alpha Draven, do you have any idea what you've done?"

He doesn't answer. For the first time since he arrived, I see something flicker across his face that isn't arrogance. Doubt, maybe. The smallest crack.

The Priestess doesn't wait for him to find his voice. She turns back to me instead, kneeling again at my side, and takes my face gently in both hands, like I'm something fragile and ancient all at once.

The whole courtyard has gone dead silent, waiting.

"This seal," she says quietly, though her voice still carries in the stillness, "only exists in legend. I never thought I'd live to see it wake."

My pulse is still hammering, my body still weak, and none of what she's saying makes sense to me, but I don't dare interrupt her.

She looks past me, back to Draven, and when she speaks again, every word lands like a struck bell across the sacred grounds.

"Alpha."

He stiffens.

"You didn't reject an ordinary mate."

The silence stretches, thin and taut, the entire pack leaning in without moving an inch.

"You rejected the next True Luna."