Chapter 21 Full moon
ZANE'S POV
By the fourth day, I’d stopped being surprised.
Every morning, before I even arrived, Davina was already in the archive, sitting cross-legged on the floor with documents sprawled around her in what looked like chaos. But to her, it was a well-organized system, color-coded with strips of paper torn from a notebook.
When Caspian walked her through his findings on the two compromised Council members, she asked questions that made him pause, glancing at me over her head.
She was on a mission to find Aldric's daughter. That was her driving force, buried beneath all the treaty law and Council precedents. Every time she hit a dead end on the legal preparation, she’d go back to that goal, pulling out territorial maps and cross-referencing Ravenshade movement patterns with dates. She was building something methodical from whatever scraps she could find.
But so far, she hadn’t found her and yet, she hadn’t given up either.
On the fifth day, news about the hearing spread like wildfire. I wasn’t sure who leaked it, though I had my suspicions. By the time I caught wind of it, the story had already made its rounds through the compound. By the time it reached the outer cabins, it had changed into Grayson threatening to dismantle the entire Storm bloodline because I’d brought a human woman into pack territory and handed our enemies the weapon they needed to do it.
Which, if you stripped away the drama, was pretty much accurate.
As I walked through the dining hall that evening, I could feel the tension in the air. Conversations fell silent as I passed, and I caught lingering glances that seemed to last just a bit too long before they dropped away.
These were my people. I’d grown up alongside most of them, trained with them, bled with them in two territorial disputes before I turned twenty-five. When I said I would protect this pack, I meant it. Mara, who had been part of this pack for sixty-one years. The young wolves on the training ground who still flinched during sparring but showed up every morning anyway. Roan, who taught me to track when I was nine because my father was too busy holding the pack together to do it himself.
I cared about all of them.
And at the same time, without any doubt, I cared about the woman in the archive who spent her evenings trying to save a child she’d never met because it was simply the right thing to do.
The pack had every right to be angry. But I wasn’t going to apologize for either thing.
Fenris was aware of the full moon before I even realised it myself, he always was.
By midday, I felt that familiar low, restless energy in my chest. The late afternoon light had a unique quality, thicker somehow. I felt it in my joints, in the back of my throat, in the way sounds came in sharper than they should.
By evening, the whole compound felt different.
Full moons did something to the pack that was hard to explain to anyone who hadn’t grown up in it. It wasn’t chaos, it was more like everything that was always there, the instincts, the pack bonds, the pull toward each other and the territory all came closer to the surface.
The wolves who usually kept themselves in check were louder, laughing more.
Arguments that had been building up all week either worked themselves out or blew up into something that had to be dealt with. The younger ones, especially those still learning their control, moved around with restless energy, like they needed to burn it off.
I found Davina on the path outside the archive building just as the sun was setting, her arms full of folders. She was clearly still lost in whatever she’d been reading because she nearly walked right into me.
She looked up and took in my face. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” I replied.
She gave me a skeptical. “You look different.”
“Full moon,” I said simply.
She glanced up at the sky, where the moon was just starting to peek above the treetops, enormous and pale gold at this hour. She studied it for a moment before looking back at me.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
That question caught me off guard.
“Not exactly,” I said. “It’s more like pressure. Everything gets louder.”
She nodded slowly. “And the pack?”
“They’ll run tonight, most of them. It helps.”
She shifted the folders in her arms. “Will you?”
“Later.” I looked at her. “Are you alright out here? The compound gets a little unsettled on full moon nights. I want you inside before it gets dark.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I’m fine.”
“I know you think that.”
“Zane.” She adjusted the folders again. “I’ve been walking this compound for a week. I know where the paths go, which wolves to avoid, and I have a pretty good arm when I need it.” The corner of her mouth twitched slightly. “I’ll be inside in ten minutes.”
looked at her, standing there in the fading light with a stack of sixty-year-old documents and that expression she wore when she was done being told what to do. Fenris went still in my chest in that way that had nothing to do with the moon.
“Ten minutes,” I said.
“Ten minutes,” she confirmed.
I turned and walked back toward the lodge.
Behind me, I heard her shift the folders in her arms again, then her footsteps heading back toward the archive. I already knew it was going to be more than ten minutes.
I was almost at the lodge steps when the first howl rose from the tree line, long and low. A second answered from across the valley, then a third. By then the full moon had cleared the trees, and the entire compound lifted its heads to it.
Every wolf in the territory felt it, including the human standing at the archive door, who I was absolutely not watching.
But I looked back anyway, and she was standing in the doorway, folders forgotten against her chest, and her face turned up toward the moon with an expression I’d never seen on her before.