Chapter 7 Fresh Start

Chapter 7 Fresh Start
Nyssa POV

The sun had only just cleared the skyline when I zipped my last bag.

Everything felt unnervingly familiar, the weight of a suitcase in my hand, and the sense of stepping into a future I couldn’t fully see. Five years ago, I’d walked away from ashes. Today, I was walking back into them.

Clara hovered in the doorway, trying not to cry. “We’ll keep everything running. I already pulled in a temp director for analytics. The board’s been notified you’re on a ‘strategic sabbatical."

I smiled faintly. “Good. And hire more help if you need it. No heroics. I built this company so it wouldn’t fall apart without me.”

Adrian stepped forward, clasping my hand in both of his. “We’ll keep the empire safe. Just…come back, Nyssa.”

“I will,” I said, though my chest felt tight. “Keep the wolves at bay for me, alright?”

He gave a wry smile, but his eyes were serious. “Always.”

I kissed Clara’s cheek, squeezed Adrian’s hand once more, and headed for the waiting car. My driver already had the route entered, Adirondack Park. The same road, the same trees, the same jagged horizon that had swallowed me five years ago.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

The city’s towers gave way to winding highways and pine-dense hills. I watched the landscape roll past, and every mile pulled me further from glass and steel and deeper into the wilderness that had made me.

Vianna stirred, restless and almost eager. "You feel it too."

“I do,” I murmured. “A part of me is…thrilled.”

"The hunt always calls us home."

Three hours later, the car slowed at the same pull-off where a black sedan had waited years ago to take me to freedom. Now, another black sedan delivered me to my reckoning.

I stepped out, inhaling the sharp bite of pine and cold air. The scent hit me like a ghost of my old life, earth, smoke, and wolf. I tightened my grip on my suitcase and walked toward the great doors of the keep as though they still belonged to me.

Inside was dim and hollow. The hall smelled of damp wood and neglect.

Then a voice cracked through the silence. “Luna?”

Rowan stood at the far end, a little older now, his clothes were torn, and exhaustion was etched into his face. The moment our eyes met, he ran to me and dropped to his knees, wrapped his arms around my legs, and clutches me like a drowning man.

“Luna, thank the Moon Goddess,” he sobbed. “She’s answered our prayers. They’re killing the children. I’ve been fighting as hard as I can.”

My heart split wide open. I set my hand on his bowed head. “You are a loyal beta, Rowan. I will need you by my side.”

He nodded, and tears streaked through the grime on his cheeks. “Always, Luna. Always.”

I left my suitcase where it fell and stormed deeper into the keep, and Vianna paced inside me. The place was unrecognizable. The paint was peeling, furniture was broken, and the floors were smeared with mud. The once-modest but proud halls looked like a battlefield dressed up as a home.

My hands curled into fists. This was Cassian’s legacy, a kingdom turned to ruin.

“Luna!”

Greta came running from the side hall, with her skirts hiked in her fists, and her tears streaming freely. Her eyes shone with desperate relief. She caught my hand, kissed it, and pressed it to her forehead. “Thank you, Luna. Thank you for coming.”

I steadied her shoulders. “Show me.”

“Please,” she begged. “Come with me to the pack house. They need to see you.”

I took a deep breath, squaring my shoulders. “Then take me.”

And for the first time in five years, I felt the weight of the title slide back over me, not as a chain, but as armor.

Greta led the way down the cracked stone steps that used to gleam beneath polish and pride. Outside, the air smelled of wet pine and despair. A handful of wolves lingered in the courtyard, they were thin, wounded, and their eyes were hollow. They stared as I passed, murmuring my name like a prayer they didn’t believe could be answered.

“How many?” I asked quietly.

Greta swallowed hard. “Maybe three hundred, Luna. At our strongest, we were two thousand. Most are dead or gone. Some joined Redclaw or Ironmoon to survive.”

The words hit like blows. “Cassian let this happen?”

She nodded, and shame shadowed her face. “He stopped listening after you left. The borders fell. The hunters came. We lost everything.”

Rage flared, hot and sharp. He let our people burn while he drank himself into legend.

"He was never an alpha," Vianna snarled. "He was a crown without a kingdom."

We crested the hill that led to the pack house, once the heart of Moonfang. Now it looked like a ruin, with shutters hanging loose, the porch half-collapsed, and windows shattered. Wolves milled about in silence, wary and broken.

When I stepped onto the porch, conversation died. Dozens of heads turned. Their gazes met mine, in confusion first, then disbelief, then something fierce and wild. Hope.

“Luna?” a young girl whispered.

I straightened my spine. “Yes.”

The word rolled through them like thunder.

Greta clasped my hand, and her tears were shining. “They remember, my Luna. Even after everything.”

I was about to speak when the front doors banged open so hard one nearly came off its hinges.

Cassian Holt staggered in, bottle in hand, and fury etched into every drunken movement. His once-golden hair hung limp, and his eyes were bloodshot and sunken.

The room froze.

Then he saw me.

For a heartbeat, disbelief flickered across his face. Then his mouth twisted into a sneer.

“What are you doing here, whore?” His voice slurred, but the venom in it was clear. “This isn’t your pack anymore.”

I laughed, cold and low. “A fine job you’ve done with it, then. Three hundred left from two thousand? You’ve built yourself a graveyard, not a pack.”

He growled, taking an unsteady step toward me, but before he could reach the bottom of the stairs, Rowan was there, broad, steady, and furious.

“Stay where you are,” he said, his voice ringing through the hall.

Cassian blinked at him. “You dare stand in my way, Beta?”

Rowan didn’t flinch. “I am no Beta of yours. Not anymore.”

Gasps rippled through the wolves gathered inside.

Rowan’s voice deepened, shaking with power. “I denounce you as my Alpha.”

The words struck like lightning. The pack bond, once a shimmering thread between them, snapped with an audible hum that echoed in every wolf’s chest.

Cassian staggered back as if he had been hit, clutching his head.

One by one, voices rose, male, female, old, and young.

“I denounce you.”
“I denounce you.”
“I denounce you.”

The sound built until it was deafening, in a chorus of liberation and fury. The severing burned through the air, in a crackling current that made the hair on my arms stand.

Cassian fell to his knees, screaming as the collective bond ripped from him. The light of connection that had once flickered behind his eyes dimmed to nothing.

He gasped, trembling, with sweat pouring down his face. “You’ll regret this,” he snarled, his voice raw. “All of you. You fucking fools.”

He glared up at me, and his face contorted in rage. “And you, Nyssa, you think you’ve won? I’ll be back for you. I’ll make you wish you’d never come home!”

He howled, a broken, empty sound, and then stormed from the hall, his bottle shattering against the doorframe as he vanished into the dark.

No one followed.

The silence that remained was heavy, trembling, and strangely pure. The air itself seemed to breathe again.

Rowan turned toward me, falling to one knee. “Luna,” he said, his voice hoarse. “We’re yours, if you’ll have
us.”

I looked over the faces of the surviving pack, my wolves, my people, and felt Vianna rise like fire in my chest.

“Then rise,” I said.

“Because from this moment forward, Moonfang is reborn.”