All Chapters of MOONBOUND : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The breakthrough came from an unlikely place — Old Maren, who'd overseen every mating ceremony and pack ritual for six decades, remembered something the written records hadn't captured. "Aldric Thorne," she said, settling into a chair in Vane's study with the particular deliberateness of someone whose memory had outlasted most written accounts of the pack's history. "I was young when he was cast out, barely more than a pup myself, but I remember the talk that followed for years after. He had a daughter, you know. Left behind when he was exiled — the pack didn't cast out family for one wolf's sins, whatever his crimes." Vane's head came up sharply. "A daughter. I don't have record of that." "You wouldn't," Maren said. "She changed her name, married outside the pack within a few years, wanted nothing to do with her father's legacy from what I understood at the time. Sensible thing to do, given what he'd been cast out for." She paused, considering. "Sorrel, I believe her name was. S

Winter settled over Redoak Hollow gentler than any season in recent memory, the first in three years, it seemed to me, without some fresh crisis pressing at the pack's edges.Wren took her first unsteady steps that winter, right in the middle of the pack house kitchen, wobbling three full paces toward Rhys before collapsing into a fit of delighted giggles that had both of us laughing along with her, the particular unguarded joy of a milestone witnessed together instead of relayed secondhand."Did you see that?" Rhys said, scooping her up, pride radiating off him so completely it was almost comical for a man who commanded an entire pack's respect through quiet authority. "She's going to be running circles around both of us by spring.""God help us," I said, though I was smiling just as widely, watching him spin her gently, her small hands fisted in his shirt, utterly delighted with her father's attention.The pack itself had settled into something steadier too, Corrin's council seat pr

The howl that cut through the blizzard just before dawn wasn't pack alarm this time — it was something wounded, desperate, carrying from somewhere past the eastern tree line where no Redoak wolf should have had reason to be caught out in weather this brutal.I woke to Rhys already half-dressed, listening intently at the window despite the driving snow obscuring everything beyond arm's length."That's not one of ours," he said grimly, reaching for his boots. "Too far east. Nobody's patrol runs that deep in this storm.""Then who—""I don't know. But nothing survives out there long in this cold without shelter." He was already moving, urgency overriding the late hour and the brutal weather both. "Get Ferris ready. Whoever that is, if they're still breathing when we reach them, they won't be for long."I dressed fast, fear for whatever stranger lay freezing in that storm outweighing my own reluctance to face the blizzard myself. Kian met us at the pack house entrance, already bundled aga

We left the northern territory two days after the ceremony, the journey home stretching into a rare, unhurried few days without pack business pressing at either of us — just Rhys and me, alone together for the first extended stretch since Wren's birth. Reya had all but shoved us out the door herself when we'd hesitated over leaving our daughter behind even for the wedding, insisting she'd sooner deal with a toddler's tantrums than watch the two of us forget how to be a couple instead of just parents and pack leaders."When's the last time we did this?" Rhys asked, riding easy beside me through unfamiliar territory neither of us had reason to hurry through. "Just the two of us, no crisis demanding we rush back.""Never, I think," I said, realizing it as I said it, turning the thought over with something like surprise. "Not since before Wren. Maybe not since before Kian came back at all. It feels strange, doesn't it? Counting how long it's been since we had nothing but each other to thi

Ferris's letters went out within the week, addressed to every pack elder and record-keeper he'd corresponded with over four decades of practicing medicine across pack lines. The responses trickled in slowly over the following month, most amounting to polite uncertainty or secondhand legend, until one arrived that made Ferris summon Rhys and me to his study with an urgency that set my nerves on edge before he'd even spoken."This is from Elder Thistlewood," he said, "who keeps the oldest genealogical records among the western packs. She recognized the description immediately. White coat, gold eyes — she says it's documented, rare but real, tracing back to a bloodline the old stories call the Lunari line.""Lunari," Rhys repeated slowly."The stories say they were the first wolves," Ferris continued, reading carefully from the letter, "blessed — or cursed, depending on which telling you favor — with an unusually direct connection to the moon's power. Capable of shifting at will regardle