All Chapters of Moonshadow: The Full Saga: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The scent of home hit her like a fist.Not the home of warm hearths and pup-laughter—as if she’d ever truly known that—but the home of stone and hierarchy and howled oaths. Moonshadow’s mark still clung to the land like an old bruise.Underneath it, something rotten writhed.Luna crested the last low ridge before the border at dusk.The day had been a long, grey stretch of walking. Clouds hung low, bruised with the promise of snow they’d never quite delivered. The air had grown thicker, heavier, with every mile.She’d known the line was close when the ground’s hum had shifted from wary to *sick*.Now, from the top of the ridge, she could see the first of Moonshadow’s outer sentry stones—tall, rough pillars that had once been set in a broad arc, each carved with crude moon symbols and marked regularly by patrols.The nearest one leaned at an angle, as if something enormous had shoved it from behind and it had refused, stubbornly, to fall.Blood darkened its base.Not old, dried brown.

Moonshadow sounded like a sick animal, panting in the dark.From the narrow gap beside the crooked gate, Luna slipped inside, keeping low, the rough stone scraping her shoulder as she squeezed through. Elia went ahead of her with the ease of long practice, a shadow among shadows.The courtyard opened like a blackened wound on the other side.Once, it had been the heart of the pack.Luna remembered it full: warriors sparring in the dirt at dawn, pups tumbling over each other at dusk, elders on the low benches against the walls, assessing everyone with narrowed eyes.Now, it was a tangle of movement and stillness that made her skin crawl.Torches guttered in their brackets, throwing jumpy, nervous light across the packed earth. The familiar training circle was scarred with new grooves—deep claw-marks, gouges from paws that had scrabbled, fallen, dragged.A few bodies lay where they’d fallen.Some were covered with rough blankets, shapes too neat to be anything but death.Others weren’t.

Selene tasted blood and ash on the air as Luna strode away toward the west wall, cloaked in wind and firelight.It burned worse than any wound.The courtyard swirled into motion around her—warriors shouting, omegas rushing, pups being bundled into inner halls—but for a moment, she heard none of it.All she saw was the slight girl she’d once pushed into the snow, now walking through Moonshadow’s heart like she owned the sky.Lightning on her skin.Wolves parting before her.Orion’s eyes on her back.Something inside Selene that had been lying coiled and patient for seasons reared up, hissing.Not fear.Hatred.“Selene.”Orion’s voice brushed the edge of her awareness.Too close.Too soft.She didn’t turn immediately.If she did, the expression on her face would betray too much.She stared at the fading shimmer of Luna’s power instead, jaw tight, hands curling at her sides.The runt had survived.The runt had *thrived.*The runt had come back crowned in the Goddess’ touch and the pack’s

By the time the west wall held—by the time the Bloodfangs slunk back into the trees, howls echoing their frustration, and the last of the shadow-mist peeled grudgingly off the fresh stone Luna had fused together—the pack looked at her differently.Not like a curiosity.Not like a ghost.Like a storm they’d just watched roll over their roofs and *not* tear them off.Some eyes were full of awe.Some were sharp with calculation.Some burned with resentment that she, the runt, had done what they could not.The politics started before the sweat on her skin had dried.“Storm-girl!”Rhea caught up to her first, panting, one hand pressed to a shallow gash along her ribs that still bled sluggishly.They were halfway back across the courtyard, the air thick with exhaustion and half-swallowed adrenaline.“You held that wall like it owed you money,” Rhea said, eyes bright. “If you’re taking volunteers for whatever crusade you’re about to lead, count me in.”Luna blinked at her, too tired to smoot

The Bloodfangs came back with the setting sun.Luna felt them before she heard them.The forest along the western border went unnaturally still, as if even the wind were holding its breath. Birds that should have been calling at dusk fell silent. Leaves froze in mid-rustle.Her skin prickled.“They’re here,” she murmured.Rhea, standing at her shoulder on the wall-walk, lifted her nose and inhaled.“Blood and stubborn,” she muttered. “Perfect.”Below them, the western gate bristled with wolves. Warriors in half-shift paced the packed dirt, claws sinking into old bloodstains from battles past. Youngers held spears with white-knuckled hands, trying not to stare too long at the crack that split the gate’s arch like a black vein.Orion strode along the parapet, eyes sharp, checking stations, murmuring to each squad. He’d put extra warriors on the inner corners, where the curse-claw marks in the stone were deepest.Luna stood in the center of the wall, palms pressed to the stone. The rock