233

233
Dravina POV
They caught up with us sooner than I expected snarling, growling, the scent of betrayal rolling off them.
Ashflow warriors.
Traitors from Malrik’s own ranks.
They fanned out in a slow circle, claws flexing, eyes burning with the kind of hunger that saw only weakness. They thought I was a mindless beast that had fled the battle.
They were wrong.
I had chosen this.
In my wolf form I rose tall, head high, and reached for them with a voice sharpened by power and memory.
“I am the daughter of Rhydian Mancini. Your loyalty belongs with me.”
Some of them faltered, ears flicking.
They’d heard it. Drethos had called me Orielle. Roarke had confirmed it. They knew something about the story didn’t fit.
One warrior growled low, uncertain.
“You heard Drethos,” I pressed, my words flowing into their minds, “he called me by my mother’s name Orielle Mancini. You heard Roarke admit it. I didn’t die. I was hidden. If you let Roarke Fenwick collar me, I will die, and with me, the true Mancini bloodline ends.”
I stepped forward. No more stumbling. No more tremor in my limbs.
“You’ve seen what Marzena did to her mate what she did to Zenovia. Do you serve Roarke Fenwick and Marzena? Or do you serve the Mancinis?”
The growling faltered.
One warrior stepped back.
Then another.
And then the duskthorn struck but not the way I’d feared. No fever. No madness. No loss of control.
Instead it surged through me like fire laced with lightning. Strength. Speed. Clarity. The poison that should have broken me burned away everything weak, leaving only what was true.
Blue’s voice howled inside me not in pain, but in awakening.
What’s happening to me? Why isn’t the duskthorn destroying me? Why does it feel as if it’s activating something instead?
Maybe I was more than a Moonchild.
Maybe I was the next evolution.
“Will you fight with me to save lives,” I linked to them, our breath steaming in the cool forest air, “or stay pawns in the game Roarke and Marzena have played for years?”
Hesitation rippled through them one last pull of old loyalties, of fear.
Then the broad-shouldered one with sharp eyes threw back his head and howled.
“We serve the true Mancini heir!” he linked back.
That was all I needed.
We charged.
I led them my warriors now back toward the palace. Smoke twisted through the sky, bodies strewn across the ground, but the tide was shifting.
And deep inside me, I felt it the power I’d feared, avoided, doubted slide into place.
Compulsion.
Not forced. Not reactive.
I shaped it.
I molded it.
This time, I commanded it.
We stepped onto the battlefield like ghosts made flesh. Roarke’s face curved into triumph at the sight of us returning.
“Well done,” he purred to the warriors at my side, convinced they’d dragged me back.
He never saw it coming.
They turned on him in perfect synchrony.
Seven Ashflow warriors unleashed themselves on his forces claws flashing, teeth tearing, upending the fight in an instant.
The battle detonated anew.
And I reached out with my compulsion not to control, but to shield. To liberate. A mental wall erupted from me like a force field, slamming against Roarke’s power, cutting off its reach.
Tavian stirred first. The pressure peeled off him, his wolf snapping back with a roar as he launched into the fray.
Then Dashira. Then Ansel.
Then Ysolde.
“Stay back,” I linked to Ysolde. “You’ve done enough. Let them fight.”
But she shook her head and growled.
“I won’t sit still while they bleed.”
Even wounded, even weary, she refused to be idle. They all did.
Because when the pressure shattered and my compulsion stood between us and Roarke like an unmovable wall, they remembered who they were
And who I was.
Not just a survivor.
Not just a daughter.
But the heir.
The weapon.
The Luna.