Lahat ng Kabanata ng THE LUNA HE THREW AWAY: Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

Three days is nothing when you’re waiting for the world to end.We didn’t sleep. Cass and Fen argued over maps and rumours. Jax made enough bread to feed an army, then burned half of it trying to stay awake. Kael never left my side. His touch was steady, but his eyes kept drifting north, like he could see the coming war on the horizon.I held the black stone the Exile King gave me. It beat with a slow, cold beat. When I closed my eyes, I heard voices; old, broken, angry. They talked about blood and bargains, about Sovereigns who failed and worlds that burned. I wanted to drop it, but I couldn’t. The longer I held it, the more I felt something coiling inside, waiting. The old stories called these stones heartshards. Some said they were pieces of the world’s first binding, broken off when the earliest magic was sealed. Others whispered that only lost kings and traitor Sovereigns ever carried one, and that touching it meant sharing their fate. I remembered a rumour from a faded book: a b

The world was ending, and it smelled like burning roots and broken oaths.The Hollow was a battlefield now. Slayers and mages clashed with Exiles and packless, silver clanging on bone, magic screaming in the air. Somewhere behind me, Jax shouted for help. Cass cursed, her knife flashing. Fen was a shadow, bleeding and relentless. Kael was at my side, every inch the Alpha he’d been raised to be, every inch mine.But the centre held. The pool, the King, the Elder with his blade.I charged, not a Sovereign, not a Luna, just Lira, angry and tired and out of second chances.Garrow smiled when he saw me. “You’re too late.”He plunged the blade into the Exile King’s chest. The King didn’t scream, didn’t even flinch. He just looked at me, sad and proud and finished.The runes burned brighter. The ground cracked. The Hollow shuddered.Kael tackled Garrow, teeth bared, claws raking. Cass dragged Jax to safety. Marek crawled to the King’s side, his hands shaking.I dropped to my knees and presse

A cold night wind stung my face as we entered Thornridge. The forest was behind us, the Hollow’s magic still humming in my bones. Ahead, the lights of the Council Hall flickered, almost daring us. The pack’s old banners hung limp over the stone walls. I remembered standing here as a child, small and quiet, always watching. Tonight, I wasn’t small. Tonight, the world was watching me.Kael kept to my left, Fen to my right, Cass and Jax close behind. Rowan’s wolves moved across the shadows, silent as ghosts. I felt every eye on me, every hope and doubt. The Sovereign, the correction, the one who’d broken the old world and wasn’t sure what she’d build in its place.We reached the gates. Ironveil’s wolves were camped outside already, their Alpha, Dara, standing with arms folded, her face unreadable. “You’re late,” she called, voice sharp as glass.“You waiting for an invitation?” Cass shot back.Dara smirked. “Waiting to see if you’d survive the night.” Her gaze flicked over us, sizing up

Fen had been silent through all of this. Now he made a short sound... not agreement, exactly. Acknowledgment. "He's right," he said, as if it cost him something. "The timeline's accelerating. Whatever's waking up in the dark, it's going to come for you in a place where you have the least support if we let Aldric rebuild that support first."I looked at the ash on my palm. At the broken window and the ordinary sky through it."Okay," I said. "We go to Thornridge.""Tonight?" Jax asked."Tomorrow. We sleep first." I looked at Cass. "You especially."She opened her mouth."Not a debate," I said.She closed it. The compliance was its own indicator of how tired she was.We found a room in the lower levels of the hall that was mostly intact, old stone, thick walls, no broken glass. Someone, at some point, had used it for storage; there were blankets in a cedar chest that smelled of time but were dry and clean. Jax found food in a pack one of the fallen Enforcers had dropped. He didn't comme

Thornridge came into view at midmorning, and my first thought was that it looked smaller than I remembered.Which was wrong. Nothing had changed. The walls were the same stone, the gates the same iron, the sigil the same wolf trapped in the same thorns. But I had changed, and things look different when you're not afraid of them.The outer guard saw us when we were still two hundred yards out. I watched them see us. Watched the ripple move through them, one man touching another's arm, heads turning, someone pulling back toward the gate. Going to report."Give them thirty seconds," Kael said quietly beside me. "Then they'll open the gate or they won't, and we'll know what we're dealing with."Twenty-two seconds. The gate opened.Not because they were welcoming us. Because whoever opened it had made a calculation about what refusing would cost them.We walked in.The courtyard was wrong. Too quiet. There were people, pack members, gathered at the edges in the way people gather when they'