Chapter 127 Bloodline Battle
Rowan's POV
The words stray into the clean hospital air.
Heavy implications I’m not quite ready to digest. I stare at Cian, I’m just waiting for my brain to catch up with what he just said.
“There’s more to Malia than we think.”
"What do you mean?" I keep my voice down, conscious of the door hanging open behind us. "More how?"
Cian draws his hand out of his pocket, runs it through his hair again. That twitchy little nervous tic he has and only ever seems to do when something really gets under his skin.
"I’ve been researching for days," he says in a low voice. "Ever since we discussed the possibility of assisting her. Investigating hybrid genetics, power manifestation, anything that could shed light on what’s happening to her.”
"And?"
"And I came across patterns." Historical documentation. Genetic markers that match—" He stops. Looks down the hallway like he’s looking for eavesdroppers. "Rowan, what Malia's showing us—these abilities, they’re not just random hybrid mutations. They’re reel specific. Consistent with a certain bloodline."
My heart races. "What bloodline?"
He takes a breath. He looked at me with an expression of weary certainty that was still a little like disbelief.
"Her genetics is tied to someone. Someone powerful. What he waits, and I see him hesitating how to utter it. "Who founded this whole institution."
The terms don't add up. I shake my head. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about—" A second pause Building suspense. Then he says it, quiet and certain: "Lady Aurora Mooncrest."
I almost gag on my own breath. "What?"
“Lady Aurora Mooncrest," Cian repeats, his speculative gaze boring into me. "The original founder of the school."
“That's —" I groped for words. "That's not right.Aurora Mooncrest passed away more than fifty years ago. She—"
"She vanished," Cian corrects. "Left for the human world in the early 1900s. The official records say she died there, but there's no body. No grave. No definitive proof. Just —absent.”
I press even further into the wall, needing to hold myself up. "So you’re telling me Malia is related to her? She’s descended from her?"
"I'm telling a possibility: Perhaps as Malia’s daughter."
The hallway tilts slightly. “Her daughter. Aurora Mooncrest’s daughter. The Aurora Mooncrest who was one of the most powerful Lunas in supernatural history. That Aurora Mooncrest?"
"Yes."
“That's-“ I choke. Process. "How is something like that even when It could happen? The timeline makes no sense. Aurora left in, what, 1918? Malia’s nineteen. She would be—"
"Born in the human world," Cian finishes. "After Aurora left. After she vanished from supernatural society altogether. Which would explain why there’s no record of her. Why Malia’s family history has so many blanks. Why her father raised her alone with vague explanations about complicated genetics. "
My mind is racing, trying to connect the dots. “The abilities. The power manifestations.They're not hybrid instability. They’re awakening Mooncrest bloodline abilities.” Cian took out his phone and showed me a document. “I have it all printed out.
Historical records. DNA testing. Firsthand experiences with Aurora’s power. Rowan, they match.”
The golden eyes, the superhuman strength, the forced change that hybrids are not meant to undergo — it all fits what Aurora was capable of.
I look at the document on his screen, but I don't really read it. Just trying to process.
Malia. Malia: Weak, focused, tormented Malia.
Possibly the daughter of one of the most potent supernatural beings ever.
"Does Vesper know?" The question bursts out. "Is that why she flagged Malia? And why she has been trying to rip her apart? If she knew—"
"I don’t know." The expression on Cian’s face darkened. "But it would explain a lot. The monitoring. The men in suits discussing containment. The way she has been chronicled since before she was even here. If they had suspicions – or knowledge – of what Malia was – "
"They would want to control her if they could, or kill her." The thought is terrifying. "Because a Mooncrest heir, born again in power—”
"Would be incredibly powerful," Cian finishes. "Bigger and more powerful than any alpha that is currently alive. A rival for established power structures. Or a resource to be managed."
We stand silently for a moment as the gravity of this new information sinks in.
Malia doesn't know. It's not a doubt. She has no idea what she could be. What is on her veins.
"I’m telling her," I finally say.
“We should tell her But no yet." Cian glances towards the door. "She just woke up. She's wounded, traumatized, sorry about hurting Aiden. If we throw this at her now…"
"She'll break completely." I finish the thought. "But we can’t hide it from her forever."
"A few days. Let her heal. Get her strength back. Then we tell her everything." He hits the button on his phone. "But Rowan—this is gonna stay between us right now. No one else. Not July, not Freddy, and definitely not anyone who works for Vesper or those men in suits."
I nod slowly. "Okay. A few days. Then we find out what this means."
"Yeah." Cian's look is bleak. “What it means for her. For us. For everything.”
After the significance of this discovery hits us, we can hold still for a few more moments.
Then Cian straightens. "We should get back in. Before they start wondering what we’re talking about.”
"Right."
We back into the room. Yet July and Freddy are still at it, letting Malia in on campus gossip and class cancellations. She's half-listening, too tired to care yet fully awake.
I just can’t look away from her.
Seeing it now. The resemblance to the portraits of Aurora Mooncrest that hang in the adminstrative building. The same bone structure. The same set to her jaw. The same eyes—albeit brown and not gold, but there’s something there in their shape.
How come I never saw this before?
July's phone buzzes. She steals a look at it and in a flash her face goes from animated to horrified.
"Oh no," she breathes. "Oh NO NO NO NO—”
"What?" Freddy leans over to look.
July's face has gone pale. She looks up at Malia with something close to anguish.
“There’s a video. From the preserve. Of—” She can not finish.
Malia's expression closes off. “Of me. Shifting.”
“Yes.” July's voice is small. “It’s—it’s all over. Posted on every platform. And the comments—”
She looks sick. “Lydia and her friends are saying—they're calling you dangerous. Feral. Saying you attacked Aiden unprovoked. That you're a threat to campus safety.”
The rage that floods through me is instant and overwhelming.
“Let me see.”
July hesitates, then hands over her phone.
The video is clear. Too clear. Shot on a good camera—Lydia or Dinah’s phone, probably. Malia is captured in the act of transforming, eyes glowing golden, claws bared.
Shows her pushing Aiden into a tree. Shows her slashing him across the chest, blood immediately soaking his shirt.
It is everything but the context that is missing. The forced transformation. The pain she was in. The fact that she wasn’t in control.
Just the violence. Just the monster. The comments are worse. I told all that she was dangerous
Now this is what happens when you let hybrids in
She should be kicked out immediately
Lock her up before she kills someone else
Aiden could have died
And the comment from Lydia, which is always pinned at the top: This is who she really is. I tried to warn everyone. She’s unstable and violent. How many more people have to get hurt before somebody does something?
"I've had enough." The words come out cold. Flat. Final.
Before I even know I'm doing it, I'm moving. toward the door with fury pumping through every vein.
"Rowan—" Cian called
"No." I don’t look back. "I've had enough with Lydia. And with her games. And with the way she’s been wrecking Malia and nobody does anything. I’m done.”
Freddy asks, “What are you going to do?”
"Whatever it takes."
I rush out, slamming the door behind me.
Behind me, in the hospital room, all is quiet.
Leaning her head on Freddy's shoulder, fatigue and surrender etched in every line of Malia’s body.
Cian watches wordlessly, his pale eyes taking everything in, forming connections.
July is tightly gripping her phone, the horrific video still looped.
And somewhere on campus, Lydia's in her dorm, watching the views add up, watching the comments roll in, watching her campaign of destruction win.
Not realizing that she has just made an enemy of someone who can fight back. Someone who isn’t playing nice anymore.
One who’s ready to burn down everything she’s built. And somewhere in the administrative office, Madame Vesper views it too.
Watches them with shrewd eyes. Watch as Malia is turned into something that justifies every theory.
Watches evidence of exactly what she's been watching for. And that makes a call to men in suits—who have been anticipating this type of proof for decades.
We are all the pieces now moving. The game getting out of hand. Malia—tired, hurt, completely oblivious to what she really is—sits at the heart of all of it.
A powder keg just waiting for a spark.
A Mooncrest heiress rising to powers she does not understand. A target for anyone who seeks to control or eliminate what she stands for.
Cian observes it all play out with mounting dread.
Because he knows what's coming. Knows this will end badly. Knows that even all they’ve been through so far is nothing compared to what they’re about to get started on.
Not good, he thinks, as he watches Malia lean on Freddy, shattered and unconscious.
This is so not gonna be good.