THE LUNA HE NEVER TRULY KNEW
Marcus frowned, the expression deepening the lines across his forehead, lines that had not been there a year ago, lines that spoke of sleepless nights and impossible choices and the slow, grinding erosion of certainty.
"What is this?" he asked, and even to his own ears, his voice sounded different—smaller, younger, more vulnerable than he had allowed himself to be in decades.
Elder Hale answered in a low voice that seemed to come not from his throat but from the stones themselves, from the archive, from the very foundation of the world they stood upon.
"A forgotten order." A pause, heavy with the weight of centuries. "One that existed long before the current Alpha Kings. One that existed bef