Chapter 30: Steel and Moonlight

Chapter 30: Steel and Moonlight
I stared at Roslyn, the words not quite connecting in my brain. The prisoner. Someone killed him. The meaning floated just out of reach, like trying to grasp smoke.

"What?" The word came out flat.

"The prisoner, Miss Chloe." Roslyn's face was pale as death, her injured arm clutched against her chest. "Someone murdered him during the night."

The second time, the words hit like ice water. Garrett was dead. Our only lead, our only connection to whoever was orchestrating these attacks, was gone.

I pushed past Roslyn without another word, running as fast as my sprained ankle would let me. Each step sent fire shooting up my leg, but I gritted my teeth and kept moving. The pain didn't matter. Nothing mattered except getting to the dungeons and seeing for myself.

The stone corridors blurred past me. My ankle screamed protest with every stride, threatening to give out completely but I kept running as fast as I could.

The dungeon entrance was packed with warriors when I finally reached it. Night Pack members crowded the narrow space, their faces twisted with anger and confusion. The air felt thick with tension, like everyone was one wrong word away from violence.

Dad's voice rose above the chaos, raw with fury in a way I'd rarely heard.

"How in the Moon Goddess's name did this happen?" He stood in the center of the crowd looking pissed, His hazel eyes blazing as he turned on the guards. "You were supposed to be watching him!"

The guards looked stricken, their faces pale. "Alpha, we don't know what happened. We were all at our posts, we didn't see anyone—"

"You didn't see anyone?" Dad's voice dropped to something dangerous. "A prisoner under maximum security gets murdered, and you didn't see anyone?"

I pushed through the crowd, using my elbows when necessary. Warriors stepped aside when they saw me, their expressions a mix of respect and pity.

Lucian stood near the dungeon entrance, his brown eyes troubled as he examined something on the ground. I made my way to him, grateful for a familiar face that's actually calming in all this chaos.

"What happened?" I asked, slightly breathless from my run.

He looked up at me, and something in his expression made my stomach drop. "It's so stupid and crazy that it makes no sense."

"What do you mean?"

Lucian gestured toward the dungeon entrance. "The prisoner died with a crossbow bolt through his heart. Clean shot, right between the chest bone. Instant death."

I waited for more, but he just shook his head in frustration.

"That's it?" I prompted.

"That's it Chloe, even though it makes no sense." Lucian ran a hand through his dark hair. "He was guarded by six trusted warriors. Your father's most loyal men according to him. They were positioned around the entrance in shifts, two watching at all times while the others rested nearby."

"And?"

"And none of them saw anything. No one entered the dungeon. No one left. They swear they were alert the entire night." His voice dropped lower. "Which means whoever did this moved through six trained warriors completely undetected, killed the prisoner, and escaped the same way."

The impossibility of it settled over me like a weight. "That… makes no sense."

"Exactly." Lucian's jaw tightened. "Which leaves only one logical explanation..."

I finished the thought for him, my voice barely above a whisper. "One of the guards did it."

But even as I said the words, I knew they felt wrong. I looked at the guards my father was questioning. Men I'd known my entire life. Warriors who'd trained me when I was young, who'd protected our family for decades. Their loyalty to my father was absolute, had been proven time and time again.

"No," I said firmly. "They wouldn't. These are my father's most trusted men. Their loyalty is unquestioned."

"Then how do you explain it?" Lucian's voice was gentle, but the question hung heavy between us.

I didn't have an answer.

Dad's voice rose again, pulling my attention. He stood toe-to-toe with Beta Thomas now, both men's faces flushed with anger and frustration.

"Someone in this castle is working against us," Dad was saying, his hands clenched into fists. "Someone who can move through our security like it doesn't exist. Someone we fucking trust."

The words felt like poison spreading through my veins. How deep did this conspiracy go? How many of our people had been turned against us?

I left Lucian standing by the entrance and moved deeper into the crowd. My ankle throbbed with each step, but I barely noticed anymore. The pain had become background noise, just another thing to push through.

The day passed in a haze after that. I tried to make sense of what had happened, tried to find some explanation that didn't involve betrayal from within. But no matter how I turned it over in my mind, nothing fit.

Later, when Dad finally emerged from hours of questioning the guards, I cornered him in his study.

"What did you learn?" I asked without preamble.

He looked older than I'd ever seen him, exhaustion carved deep into every line of his face. When he spoke, his voice was rough with fatigue.

"They all tell the same story. Six men, rotating in shifts of two. They stayed alert, didn't sleep at their posts, followed every protocol." He collapsed into his chair, burying his face in his hands. "They only discovered the body this morning when they went to check on him."

"And the bolt? Where did it come from?"

"That's the thing." Dad looked up at me, and I saw real fear in his eyes for the first time. "It's one of ours. Standard issue for Night Pack guards. Could have come from any of their quivers."

Which meant nothing and everything at once. Either one of the guards had killed Garrett, or someone had stolen a bolt to frame them. Either way, the conspiracy had reached deep into our most trusted ranks.

\---

The training grounds were empty in the late afternoon light. Most pack members were still dealing with the aftermath of the festival attack, tending to the wounded or preparing the dead for burial. But I needed this. Needed to move, to fight, to do something other than think about all the ways we were failing.

I found a wooden practice sword leaning against the equipment shed and hefted it, testing the weight. My sprained ankle throbbed the moment I shifted into a fighting stance, but I'd wrapped it tight with cloth and splint before coming out here. It would hold.

It had to hold.

These past weeks, I'd been useless and weak. Running from danger or being protected by others while pack members died around me. I'd acted like some damsel in distress from one of those stupid ballads, waiting to be saved instead of fighting back.

It was starting to really piss me off.

I moved through the basic forms slowly at first, letting my muscles remember the patterns Dad and Thomas had drilled into me since childhood. Strike, parry, pivot, slash. The movements felt rusty after weeks of neglect, but they came back easier than I'd expected.

The practice dummy took my frustration without complaint. I hit it harder than necessary, putting my whole body into each strike. Sweat soaked through my training clothes, my ankle screamed protest, but I kept going.

I don't know how long I'd been at it when I heard someone clapping.

I spun around, wooden sword raised defensively. Marcus stood at the edge of the training grounds, his grey eyes watching me with something I couldn't quite name.

"How long have you been standing there?" I asked, breathing hard.

"Long enough to see you've still got it." He moved closer, his movements easy despite the injuries he'd taken at the festival. "Even with that ankle."

"What do you want, Marcus?"

Instead of answering, he picked up another wooden practice sword from the equipment rack and moved into position across from me. His stance was perfect, weight balanced and his shoulders loose.

"I wanted to apologize," he said, settling into a ready position. "For my behavior earlier. For avoiding you."

I stared at him, surprised. Then I shifted into my own stance, mirroring his position. "Don't go soft on me just because you feel guilty."

That got a smirk out of him. "Wouldn't dream of it."

He came at me fast, his wooden blade cutting through the air where my shoulder had been a heartbeat before. I parried on instinct, the impact jarring up my arms.

"I heard what happened this morning," Marcus said, pressing his advantage. Strike, parry, pivot. "Another dead end."

I blocked his next attack and countered with a low sweep he barely avoided. "They wouldn't betray my family. I know these men."

"Then how do you explain it?" He feinted left, then struck right. I caught the blade just in time.

"I can't." The frustration bled into my voice as we circled each other. "Just like I can't explain Derek attacking you. Or his brother trying to kill me. Or Jorik calling me a witch when we'd talked just days before without any malice."

I launched a series of quick strikes, driving him back a step. "It's like they changed overnight. Like someone flipped a switch in their heads and turned them into weapons."

Marcus parried each strike, his movements fluid despite his healing wounds. "That's impossible."

"So is a prisoner being murdered by guards who swear they saw nothing." I put everything I had into a strong, skillful strike, hoping to catch him off guard.

For just a moment, I had him. His eyes widened slightly, his weight shifted wrong. Then his wolf-enhanced reflexes kicked in and he recovered, parrying at the last second and following up with a counterattack that sent my wooden sword skittering across the packed dirt.

The point of his blade stopped an inch from my throat.

I swatted it away, slightly pissed at myself for getting caught. Marcus chuckled, which only made my irritation burn hotter.

"Don't be a sore loser," he said, grinning at my glare.

I rolled my eyes and moved to sit on the low stone wall that bordered the training grounds. The evening sky was starting to darken, stars beginning to peek through the fading blue. My ankle throbbed something fierce now that I'd stopped moving, but I'd deal with it later.

"I hate this," I said quietly. "Being wolfless. Being weak."

Marcus sat beside me, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body after our sparring. "You're not weak."

"I just lost to you in under five minutes."

"You lasted longer than most." He stared up at the darkening sky. "And you're fighting with a sprained ankle after nearly dying twice in one week. That's not weakness, Chloe. That's stubbornness."

"Same thing."

"Not even close."

We sat in comfortable silence for a moment, watching the first stars appear. The air had cooled with the approach of evening, carrying the scent of pine and earth from the surrounding forest.

"Can I ask you something?" Marcus said finally.

"Sure."

"The Moonheart Crystal. What is it exactly?" He turned to look at me, genuine curiosity in his grey eyes. "I saw what it did during the battle, but I never really understood what it was or where it came from. I had my own shit going on, so I never bothered to learn."

I settled back against the wall, organizing my thoughts. It was a long story, one passed down through generations of Night Pack Alphas.

"About three hundred years ago," I began, "all the packs were at war. Not just skirmishes over territory, but real war. The kind that threatened to destroy everyone."

Marcus listened intently, his full attention on me.

"During one particularly brutal battle, something fell from the sky. A fragment of something from the Moon Goddess's realm, they say. It was the size of a human heart, glowing with silvery-blue light."

"The Moonheart Crystal," Marcus said.

"Right. All the pack Alphas rushed to claim it, thinking it would give them the power to win the war. But the Moon Goddess appeared in dreams to all of them that night." I traced patterns in the dust with my boot. "She declared that the Night Pack would be its guardians. Something about our devotion to lunar wisdom and our neutral diplomatic stance making us the right choice."

"And it does what, exactly?" Marcus asked. "Besides make your eyes glow blue and turn your warriors into unstoppable fighting machines?"

I couldn't help but smile at his description. "It amplifies the Alpha's connection to the pack. Strengthens the pack bonds, lets the Alpha channel power through every member at once. It's why we're called the guardians - the Crystal chose us, and in return, it protects us when we need it most."

"Can anyone use it?"

"No. Only the Alpha bloodline of Night Pack can activate it. It's bound to our family somehow, connected to our line." I paused, thinking about what Dad had looked like during the battle. "But it takes a toll. Using it drains the Alpha completely. Dad could barely stand afterward."

Marcus was quiet for a long moment, processing everything I'd told him. Then he looked up at the stars and said just one word.

"Fuck."

The profanity surprised a genuine laugh out of me. Not a polite chuckle or forced smile, but real laughter that bubbled up from my chest and made my sides hurt. After everything that had happened, after all the death and fear and frustration, that single word of amazement was exactly what I needed.

Marcus grinned at my reaction, pleased with himself.

When I finally caught my breath, an idea struck me. Something reckless and probably against a dozen protocols, but the thought wouldn't let go once it took root.

I turned to face Marcus fully, studying his profile in the fading light. He looked back at me, one eyebrow raised in question.

"Would you like to see the Moonheart Crystal, Marcus?”