All Chapters of REJECTED BY THE MOON : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Elara's MotherWe went to see her the next morning, Elara and I together, the way I'd promised.The walk to her mother's cottage took us past the edge of the training grounds, and I caught myself glancing at the dead oak Kieran and I had spent so many mornings failing to wake, its bark still bearing the faint crack we'd never managed to widen past that first afternoon."She's going to know why we're here the moment she sees both our faces," Elara said, her hands twisting together the same way they had in the library two days before."She always could read me like that. It used to make lying to her impossible when I was young.""Then we won't lie," I said. "We'll ask her plainly, and let her decide how much of the truth she's ready to give us."Elara's mother, a woman named Priya with silver threading through dark hair much like Akira's, met us at her door with an expression that told me Elara was right.Whatever composure she'd meant to hold onto slipped the instant she saw us standin

The Second BreachThe alarm came at midday, which frightened me more than any night attack could have.Shane's people, and whoever else moved against us now, had always favored darkness, the cover of shadow and sleep, the particular vulnerability that comes with being caught unaware between one dream and the next. An assault in broad daylight meant either desperation or confidence, and I wasn't certain which possibility unsettled me more, standing there in the training yard with my palm still warm from the dead oak's bark."The northern quarry," the guard reported, breathless, finding Kieran and me where I'd spent the morning chasing a spark that had refused to answer. "A crew of Shane's men were spotted moving equipment through the old mining road. Heavy equipment, Alpha. Wagons loaded with iron."Kieran's jaw tightened, the ease that had settled over his face these last few mornings vanishing in an instant."The quarry sits less than a mile from the sanctuary's eastern wall.""He's

Practicing the UnbearableKieran and I spent the following days in a routine that felt, despite everything, almost peaceful in its repetition.Mornings in the training yard, my palm against the dead oak, reaching for the bond between us with steadier control each day, the crack in the bark slowly, gradually widening under our combined effort until it ran nearly the full length of the trunk. Afternoons in the library with Akira and Kaiden, piecing together whatever remained of the release clause's mechanics, timing, and consequence, the candles burning lower each evening as the fragments slowly assembled into something like understanding. Evenings, when exhaustion finally caught up with all of us, spent together in whatever quiet corner of the castle would have us, saying less and less because there was less need to fill every silence with words that had already been said in some other form the day before."You're different than you were a week ago," Elara observed one afternoon, watc

What Priya WithheldWe gathered at Priya's cottage after dusk, the same small kitchen where Elara and I had first heard the truth about Wren, though this time the room felt more crowded, Kieran and Akira and Kaiden filling the space alongside Elara and me, everyone's attention fixed on the woman standing at the head of the table with her hands folded tightly in front of her, her knuckles pale from the pressure."I told you the truth two days ago," Priya said, once we'd all settled onto the mismatched chairs she'd gathered from every corner of the small house. "But I didn't tell you all of it. I've spent two days deciding whether the rest was mine to share, and I've decided the eclipse is close enough now that withholding it any longer would be its own kind of betrayal.""Then tell us," I said, my hands already tightening in my lap.Priya drew a slow breath, her eyes moving briefly to Elara before settling on me, and I watched some old fear steady itself behind her expression, the look

What the Test CostI found Elara in the library three days later, staring at a blank page instead of reading anything on it, her expression distant enough that I nearly turned around before she noticed me standing in the doorway."I tried to remember the color of the dress you wore to my sixteenth birthday," she said, without looking up, her fingers idly turning the corner of the empty page over and over. "I couldn't. Not the shade, not the fabric, nothing. It should be an easy thing to remember. We danced in that dress until your feet blistered and you had to walk home barefoot, and you complained about it for a week afterward.""Maybe you never remembered it that clearly to begin with," I said, settling into the chair across from her, though I didn't fully believe my own reassurance even as I offered it."Maybe," she said. "Or maybe the chamber took something small from me that night, the way it took something small from all of us, and none of us thought to ask exactly what before w