All Chapters of Blood of the forgotten moon: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

“Stay close to me.” Riven’s voice was low and urgent as he grabbed my arm and pulled me through the hallway. His grip was firm, his body tense with purpose. I didn’t fight him. I ran beside him, my heart slamming against my ribs as the estate erupted into action around us. The pack mobilized faster and harder this time. Shouts echoed down the corridors. Wolves shifted in the courtyard with sharp cracks of bone and growls that vibrated through the floors. Doors slammed. Orders flew sharp and precise. Everything moved with a speed and intensity I hadn’t seen before. The air felt alive with urgency, but not the chaotic fear I grew up with. This was focused. Controlled. Deadly. Riven didn’t send me to the observation tower like last time. He brought me straight to the inner estate’s secure hall. Thea and Hazel were already waiting inside. He pushed me through the heavy door, his eyes hard with focus. “Stay here. Don’t leave this room no matter what you hear.” Then he was gone, t

“What’s happening to me?” The words slipped out as I pressed my back harder against the cold stone wall of the secure hall. My chest heaved. My skin felt too tight, like something inside me was trying to push its way out. During the attack, something had completely taken hold of me. I felt every wolf fighting outside like strings vibrating through my bones. Each snarl, each clash of bodies, each burst of pain from the pack-bond hit me like it was my own body taking the hits. The fear, the anger, the determination of every single wolf out there flooded into me all at once. The urge to respond, to let whatever lived inside me rise and answer them, had been so overwhelming I thought I would break apart right there in front of everyone. So I pressed myself against the inner wall, hands flat at my sides, nails digging into my palms. I held on. I breathed. In and out. Slow and deliberate. I did not let go of whatever it was that wanted to come out. I held it back with everything I had,

“I can’t keep wrapping it anymore.” I let the bandage fall onto the bed and stared at my wrist. The brand glowed steadily now, warm gold against my skin. It no longer said “Disgraced.” The old script had fully shifted into something ancient and elegant. The lines moved when I looked at them too long, like they were alive. Hazel sat across from me on the small couch, her eyes calm but watchful. “Does it hurt today?” “Not really,” I said. “It just feels… warm. Like it’s waiting for something. Every night it gets brighter. I stopped hiding it.” Hazel nodded slowly. “That’s how the stories begin. The old Moonseal women felt the same pull. Like the power inside them had its own heartbeat.” “Tell me more about them,” I asked, leaning forward. “Not the pretty versions. The real ones.” Hazel smiled faintly. “Long ago, there were women whose blood sang to the land itself. They could feel the entire pack like threads in a great web. Some legends say they could calm a storm with nothin

“I didn’t expect you to be here,” Oryn said. He didn’t say it rudely. He said it the way Oryn said most things, as plain observation, directed at neither of us specifically but landing squarely in the space between us. Riven didn’t look up from the file he was opening. “Sit down, Oryn.” Oryn sat. Looked at me once more. Then opened his own copy of the report and said nothing further about it. I folded my hands in my lap and waited. It took Oryn twelve minutes to walk through his preliminary findings. I know because I counted, the way I counted everything, the way I’d spent six years turning time into something I could hold when everything else moved too fast or hurt too much to track. Twelve minutes to lay out the systematic dismantling of my mother’s death. He was precise about it. Oryn was precise about everything, I’d learned. He didn’t editorialize. He didn’t soften. He read from his report in the same even voice he used for border security briefings and supply inv

“Routine border inspection,” Oryn said, handing me the note. “Northern sector. He’ll be back in three days.”I took the note. Read it. Handed it back.“Thank you,” I said.Oryn nodded and left.I stood in the corridor for a moment after he was gone, looked at the space where the note had been, and thought about the word routine.Routine.Sure.I knew within four hours that it wasn’t routine.Not because of anything dramatic. Not because someone slipped up or said something they shouldn’t have. Because I’d spent six years learning to read the energy of a household the way other people read text, and the energy of Sovereign North without Riven in it was different in a specific way I recognized immediately.More watchful. More contained.The pack moved through its daily functions the same way it always did. Training. Meals. Work. Everything on schedule, everything in order. But there was a quality to it underneath the routine. The particular alertness of people who were holding somethi