Chapter 75 Echoes of the First Moon
She didn’t remember walking back to her rooms.
The Moon Court, the bleeding sky, the vibrating name in her blood—Aradia—they all blurred into one long breath she couldn’t quite release. By the time the world felt solid again, Roman was closing the door behind them, shutting out the corridor, the guards, the council, the red-stained moon.
It was only them.
And the silence between her heartbeats.
Aria stood in the middle of the chamber, fingers curled loosely at her sides. The room was dim, lit by one oil lamp and a streak of ruddy moonlight slipping through the high, narrow window. Her bed sat beneath it, the furs turned back. A basin. A stand of armor. The cloak Roman had draped over her shoulders after the council session hung from a hook, still faintly smelling of his scent.
She focused on small things.
Because the big thing was too much.
Roman leaned against the door for a moment as if gathering himself. Then he pushed off it and crossed the room in a few strides.
“Sit,” he said quietly.
It wasn’t a command.
It was a plea.
She sank onto the edge of the bed more out of habit than obedience. Her legs were starting to shake; she only realized it when she sat and her knees felt like water.
Roman crouched in front of her, one arm braced on his knee, close enough that his scent—pine, smoke, cold air—wrapped around her like a cloak. He didn’t touch her yet.
His eyes searched her face.
“Tell me everything,” he said.
She laughed, a breathless, shaky sound. “You say that like there’s an order to any of it.”
“Start with the name,” he replied. “Then we’ll unravel the rest.”
Aria stared down at her hands.
The Mark on her forearm pulsed faintly, as if listening.
“It didn’t feel like something new was speaking to me,” she said slowly. “Not like a spirit. Not like the Shadow Court. It felt like… like the Moon wasn’t reaching out.” Her throat tightened. “It was reaching in.”
Roman’s jaw flexed.
“Inside you.”
She nodded. “Like it knew me. Not as Aria. But as… Aradia. The way an old friend might say a nickname only they use.”
“And that symbol,” Roman said, voice rough. “The one that lifted from your skin. That isn’t a Nightwolf crest. It isn’t from any of the packs. It’s older.”
She finally looked up at him.
“You recognized it.”
His gaze flickered, just for a heartbeat.
“No,” he said. “Not truly. I’ve seen sketches of something similar in the restricted archives. Writings about the First Moonborn—the Lunas who existed before there were packs or Alphas. The stories are more myth than history. Most don’t believe them.”
“And you?” she asked softly. “Do you believe them?”
Until now, Roman might have shrugged. He might have said myths were for pups and lullabies.
Now, he took a slow, careful breath.
“The first time I saw you,” he said instead, “you were standing alone in the ruins of a temple no one remembers building. You called moonlight into your hands without trying. My wolf went silent.” His lips twitched humorlessly. “I think I started believing then.”
The honesty in his voice made her chest ache.
“Roman…” she started.
But the Mark flared.
Not a little glow this time.
A sharp, biting pulse that shot pain up her arm, into her shoulder, up the side of her neck. She gasped, clutching her forearm, fingers digging into the skin around the Mark but not touching it directly, as if some instinct warned her not to.
“Aria.” Roman’s hands closed over her shoulders. “What is it?”
She tried to speak—I’m fine, the useless lie—but the second pulse hit her, harder than the first.
Her vision blurred.
The room tilted.
For a heartbeat, she saw Roman’s face—eyes gone full wolf-gold, teeth bared in fear he wouldn’t name—then the world fell away.
She didn’t fall onto the bed.
She fell into light.
Not harsh. Not blinding. Cold, like moon on snow. Soft, like fog across a lake at dawn. It swirled around her, weightless and endless, until she couldn’t tell which way was up.
“Roman?” she called.
Her voice didn’t carry. It dissolved, soundless.
She reached for the bond between them and felt it—like a thread, taut and vibrating—but something wrapped around it gently, not cutting it, not breaking it.
Shielding it.
No, a feeling—not quite words—whispered along her spine. This is not his to see yet.
Her pulse stumbled.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
The light shifted.
It condensed, folding in on itself until it formed shapes. An archway. Pillars. Carved stone. Not as rough and ancient as the mountain fortress—this was older still, but paradoxically less worn, as if the world had not been allowed to scar it.
A plateau.
Black rock, polished to a mirror sheen.
Beyond its edge, the sky spilled out in an ocean of stars.
Above it—
The moon.
Closer than she had ever seen it. Enormous and perfect, its surface veined with rivers of silver light.
Her breath caught.
Moonfall Plateau.
She knew it.
Not because someone told her.
Because something inside her sighed, relieved, and whispered:
Home.
Her knees hit the black stone.
Her palms pressed to it.
It was warm, like skin.
Memories rose—not complete, not whole. Flashes.
Bare feet running along this same stone.
Hands outstretched under a white moon.
Voices singing in a language with no words, only tone—wolf and wind and star.
A name on that wind.
Aradia.
This time, when she heard it, it didn’t sound foreign.
It sounded like the missing half of her own heartbeat.
Aria turned.
Someone stood at the edge of the plateau, cloaked in white that moved as if made of mist, hair long and dark and braided with silver threads. She wasn’t tall, but she stood like someone who knew no one looked down on her.
Her face… blurred when Aria tried to focus on it, as if some law of this place would not let her see herself too clearly.
Because she knew.
She was looking at herself.
Not as she was now.
As she had once been.
As Aradia.
“You’re not supposed to be here yet,” the other version of her said. Her voice was layered, as if a thousand echoes spoke at once and then narrowed into one clear tone. “You’re early.”
Aria swallowed. “That’s not my fault. Someone forced the eclipse.”
Dry humor flickered in the other’s voice. “No. The Shadow Court always were impatient.”
Aria took a step closer. “Are you… a spirit? A memory?”
“I am what is left,” the other said simply. “The shard of you that remained when your first body died. When the Moon broke us to hide us. When you chose to fall.”
“Fall?” Aria repeated faintly.
“To be born again,” Aradia said. “With less power. Less memory. Less danger.” Her gaze—or what passed for it—moved over Aria with a mix of sadness and fondness. “You asked the Moon to make you small, little one. So they would not fear you. So they would not worship you. So they would not kill for you again.”
Her stomach turned.
“What was I?” Aria whispered. “What am I?”
“The first of the Moonborn,” Aradia said quietly. “The one who bound the sky to the earth. The one who taught the first wolves to hold form. The first Luna.”
The words should have crashed into Aria like an avalanche.
Instead, they slid into place like a key into a lock that had always been there.
“Why don’t I remember?” she asked.
“Because you asked not to,” Aradia repeated gently. “Because power without memory destroys. And memory without wisdom corrupts.”
A shadow passed over the plateau.
Not from clouds.
From wings.
Aria looked up.
Something enormous circled in the distant sky—a shape of smoke and ash and tattered, ancient wings. It didn’t feel like the Shadow Court creatures she had encountered.
It felt… older.
More patient.
“Is that—” she began.
“One of the first shadows,” Aradia said. “They are waking with you. They remember the taste of your power. They remember that when you were whole… you almost burned the sky.”
Aria’s heart stuttered. “I—what?”
Images slammed into her.
The moon filled with cracks of red.
Wolves howling in worship and fear.
Her own hands raised, light pouring from them like torn starfire as shadows surged up from the horizon.
Not because she was evil.
Because she had tried to hold too much.
“We lost control,” Aradia said quietly, as if hearing her thoughts. “You tried to bind more than even the Moon allowed. To save them all. To stop every death. To close every shadow gate. Your heart was too big for your power. It broke us.”
Aria staggered back.
“I don’t want that,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be a goddess. I don’t want to burn anyone. I just want—”
“Roman,” Aradia finished.
The name twisted in Aria’s chest like a blade and a balm at once.
“Yes,” she said hoarsely.
Aradia moved closer.
Her not-quite-face softened.
“Good,” she said. “Because this time, you are not here to be a goddess. You are here to be a choice.”
Aria frowned. “A choice?”
“Yes.” The plateau trembled faintly, as if acknowledging the word. “The prophecy they whisper? That you will either burn the world or bind it? It is incomplete. The Moon never wanted you to be a weapon or a savior. It wanted you to decide.”
“Decide what?” Aria whispered.
“Whether the packs, the Moonborn legacy, the shadows, the old courts—whether any of it is worth saving as it is,” Aradia said. “Or whether you let it all fall… and begin again.”
Ice slid down Aria’s spine.
“You’re telling me I have the power to end everything?” she asked, appalled.
“No.” Aradia shook her head. “I am telling you that your existence will force everything to choose what it truly is. Shadow or light. Wolf or beast. King or tyrant. Mate or master.” Her voice softened. “And you must choose too. Not now. Not yet. But soon.”
Aria pressed a hand to her chest, where her heart thudded painfully.
“I don’t know how to be what you were,” she admitted. “I don’t know how to carry all of this and still be just… me.”
“You aren’t supposed to be what I was,” Aradia said. “You’re supposed to be more and less at once. Human enough to feel. Moonborn enough to act.”
The light around them dimmed, just a little.
The plateau’s edge seemed farther away, as if the vision was pulling back.
“You don’t have much time,” Aradia murmured. “The eclipse is cracking early. The Shadow Court are moving. The Moonfall Guardians are stirring. And the boy with the crown and the wolf eyes—”
Aria’s heart clenched. “Roman.”
“Yes.” There was a warmth in Aradia’s voice now. “He anchors you. Good. You will need an anchor when the sky begins to scream.”
Aria swallowed. “What do I do?”
“For now?” Aradia stepped back, dissolving slightly around the edges, as if the dream were fraying. “Wake up. Tell no one my name yet. Not the elders. Not the council. Not even him.”
Aria stiffened. “I can’t lie to Roman.”
“You won’t,” Aradia said. “You will just not tell him everything. Not yet. If they know you are the First, they will push you onto an altar or into a grave. Neither will save them.”
The light thinned further.
Aria reached out. “Wait—when will I see you again?”
“When the Moon bleeds fully,” Aradia replied. “When the Moonfall Plateau calls your body, not just your mind. When you stand where I stood, at the edge of everything. Then, little Moonborn…” Her voice went soft, almost fond. “We will decide together whether the world burns or is remade.”
The plateau shattered into light.
The moon rushed toward her like a falling star.
Aria gasped—
—and slammed back into her body.
She was on the bed now.
Sweat dampened her hairline. Her chest heaved. The Mark on her arm blazed, then dimmed to a faint, steady glow.
Roman sat beside her, one hand cupping the back of her neck, the other gripping her fingers so tightly they ached. His eyes were wild, his breathing almost as ragged as hers.
“Aria,” he rasped. “Look at me.”
She did.
The bond between them thrummed—alive, desperate, terrified.
“What did you see?” he demanded.
She opened her mouth.
Aradia’s last warning echoed in her mind.
Tell no one my name yet.
Aria swallowed around the knot in her throat.
“I saw the Moonfall Plateau,” she said, voice trembling. “And someone there. A… version of me.”
Roman’s hand tightened on hers.
“A past life?” he asked.
“A fragment,” she said carefully. “A shard of what I was. She called herself the first Moonborn.” Her gaze dropped to their joined hands. “She said the eclipse isn’t about a monster I might become. It’s about a choice I will have to make.”
Roman’s expression darkened.
“What choice?”
Aria lifted her eyes to his.
“Whether I use what I am to destroy everything that’s broken…” Her voice shook. “…or to try to bind it back together again.”
His throat moved.
“And what do you want?” he asked quietly. There was no Alpha command in the words. Just Roman. Just a man asking the woman he loved if she would burn the world he’d sworn to protect.
She thought of the plateau, the shadows, the old war, the blood.
She thought of pups sleeping in the dens below.
She thought of him.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Not yet. I just know this, Roman—if I choose wrong, everyone pays. If I choose right…” Her chest ached. “I don’t think I walk away unchanged. Or at all.”
His jaw clenched.
He leaned forward slowly, resting his forehead against hers, closing his eyes.
“Then we’ll make the choice together,” he said hoarsely. “And whatever it costs—you won’t pay it alone.”
The Mark on her arm warmed, as if agreeing.
Outside, the moon pulsed again.
The eclipse deepened another fraction.
And somewhere far from the fortress, on the real Moonfall Plateau, something ancient opened its eyes—
and smiled.