THE LUNA’S LIE
THE LUNA’S LIE
POV: Adira
The hall smells of wax and iron.
Torches spit against black stone, smoke curling toward a vaulted ceiling painted with wolves that never lived. A dais rises like a blade at the chamber’s heart, draped in crimson and silver. Runes crawl faintly along the floor — roots etched into stone, old words bent into obedience.
They told me this was only a rehearsal.
But rehearsals are prisons too.
I move through the steps the priest drilled into me: bow of the head, lift of the hands, turn of the wrist to show the bond-mark. My body performs with perfect grace; I was raised to make performance indistinguishable from truth. Still, my pulse betrays me, drumming against the child inside me.
The pack kneels in my imagination, though the hall is mostly empty. I see their bowed heads, their whispers: Luna. Luna. Luna. My name as triumph. My womb as proof.
I place my palm on the swell of my belly. The child stirs faintly, a flutter like wings.
Erik stirs with it.
Mine, he whispers, silk threaded with venom. Through you, through it, I rise again.
My throat closes. I keep smiling.
“Again,” the priest says, and gestures to the altar.
\---
The altar roots into the dais like veins through stone. Pale wood slicked with oil, carved with wolves whose mouths gape wide enough to swallow prayers whole. I press my hand to it. Heat throbs from the runes, crawling up my arm, whispering vows I did not write.
Beneath, something shifts.
Roots.
They coil, slow and patient, twining through the foundations. Not metaphorical. Alive. Drinking. Anchoring me in place. My knees weaken; I force them steady.
This is the part where I kneel.
I lower myself, silk skirts pooling, crown of braids heavy against my scalp. The position feels wrong. Too low. Too bare. But ritual demands it.
And Kade is already there.
\---
He kneels opposite me, head bowed. His shoulders sag beneath a cloak too heavy for his frame. Light shows every hollow in his face, every bruise beneath his eyes. His lips move without sound. His wolf is gone, and he kneels like a shadow pretending to be a man.
For a moment, I wonder if he can even see me.
His eyes lift. Empty.
Then Erik’s voice coils between us, sliding through the unborn child like a reed-pipe: Bow deeper, boy. Even broken heirs have uses.
Kade flinches. His hand trembles against the altar, fingers curling into claws that never come.
The priest doesn’t notice. Or pretends not to.
“Repeat,” he orders. “Repeat the vow.”
\---
POV: Kade
The altar burns my palms.
I don’t care.
I kneel because they force me. I whisper because I must. Not the vow they want — the name I can’t let go.
Araya.
Her fire. Her laugh. Her crown.
I see her when I close my eyes. The bond may be gone, my wolf torn, but she remains. Her name is the only thing the leash couldn’t choke out of me. So I whisper it, again and again, until the stone shakes with it.
The pulse answers.
It rolls through me like thunder in bone. My chest seizes. My eyes blaze with light not mine. For a breath, I almost feel her again. My wolf’s phantom howl, echoing from a cage already destroyed.
The priest shouts. I don’t hear him.
Adira stares, crown trembling. The altar groans. The runes flare, then fail.
The pulse strikes again.
It rattles the chamber, deafening in its silence.
I bow my head lower, not to her, not to the altar, not to the gods.
To the vow I carve into my chest with every whisper:
I won’t fail her again.
\---
POV: Adira
The roots split the dais. Torches die. The chamber rocks as though the city itself shudders.
The priest screams for order. Guards rush forward.
I clutch my belly. The child thrashes. Erik’s whisper cuts jagged through me: Hold it. Do not let the pulse claim what is mine.
But my body trembles.
Because the pulse has already touched me. Already touched him. Already changed the altar’s song.
When the roots finally still, when the torches flare back to life, when the guards drag Kade up hollow-eyed but still whispering her name — I know the ceremony will not save us.
It will only break louder.