All Chapters of The Moon Never Chose Him: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

I have relived this night so many times that I can tell you exactly how the grass felt under my bare feet before I even knew I would be running through it. Cold. Wet with early dew. My toes curled into it while my whole world came apart in front of two hundred people who used to know my name.But the night didn't start with the grass. It started with a truck that smelled like pine air freshener and old coffee, and a boy who couldn't stop glancing at my dress like it had personally offended him.Ren Hale's truck rattled through the trees at seven that evening, heater ticking uselessly under the dash. He never bothered fixing that heater. He liked how the cold made me lean into him, and I used to think that meant something. That night I just pulled my jacket tighter and watched the trees blur past the window, dark shapes swallowing the last of the light."You didn't wear the blue dress." His eyes flicked to my black one and back to the road, like I'd failed a test I never agreed to take

Grandma Ruth's old truck rattled over every rut in the road, and I spent the whole drive turning Colt's words over and over: there's a lot you don't know yet, like a stone I couldn't stop rubbing between my fingers until the edges wore smooth and still meant nothing."You don't have to have it figured out before we get there." She kept both hands steady on the wheel, eyes flicking to me every few miles like she was checking a wound for bleeding. "Whatever's waiting for us, we handle it when we see it."The checkpoint appeared at the edge of Hollow Pine territory just as the sky started bruising toward evening, and my stomach dropped before my brain caught up with why. There had never been a checkpoint there before. Two wolves stood beside a marked post in dark grey jackets, a crescent stitched over a bare branch on each shoulder, a symbol I'd never once seen on our land.One of them leaned down to the window, forearm scarred long and pale, built like something you'd have to go through

Bree found me before I found her.I was walking out of the training grounds the next afternoon, arms aching, still replaying the morning's session on a loop in my head, when a familiar voice sliced clean through my thoughts."Well, look who decided to come back to the land of the living."I turned. She was leaning against the fence, arms crossed, dark eyes unreadable at first, hair cropped short where I remembered a long braid. Bree Owusu. My best friend before I traded her for a boy who was never worth the trade."Bree." My mouth went dry. "I'm sorry. For all of it. For choosing him over you. I don't have an excuse."I braced my feet against the ground and waited for her to walk away. She would have had every right to.Instead, she pushed off the fence and crashed into me, arms wrapping so tight it knocked half the breath from my already tired lungs."I know." Her voice came muffled against my shoulder. "I forgave you a long time ago, idiot. When I heard what happened at that party,

I didn't show him the phone.By the time I hit the training grounds at ten, sweat already prickling along my spine before a single drill had started, I'd decided that whatever Ash knew, he could earn it the same way I planned to earn my own answers. Slowly. On my terms.He didn't ask again. That almost bothered me more than if he had."You're distracted." He caught my wrist mid-strike and held it there, not hard, just enough to stop me. "Where's your head?""Wherever it wants to be. You're not my therapist." I wrenched my arm back and reset my stance."No." The corner of his mouth did that almost thing again, gone before it fully arrived. "I'm worse. I actually expect results."We ran drills for another hour, and somewhere in the middle of it, chasing his footwork instead of overthinking my own, I forgot to be angry with him for a few minutes at a time. I hated how easily that happened. I hated more that some small, traitorous part of me had started looking forward to ten o'clock.Bre