Chapter 173 CHAPTER 173

Chapter 173 CHAPTER 173

Red burst out of me, her body low and ready.

Zyrell smiled. "There she is, a little too small for a Moon born but then, you're not the most gifted either."

Red lunged.

Zyrell sidestepped and caught her by the scruff, throwing her sideways. Red skidded, turned, and went again. This time her teeth found Zyrell's forearm and the ancient Moon-Born hissed, yanking free.

The wound sealed in seconds.

Red didn't care.

She knew the importance of this last attack even though it felt like Zyrell was just having fun. She kept going, biting, clawing, attacking from every angle. Marks appeared on Zyrell's arms, her ribs, her thigh.

None of them lasted. She healed faster than Red could damage her.

Then, mid-lunge, the mental attack hit.

Not my parents this time. Not the belt or the kitchen or the basement.

Marcus. My eighteenth birthday.

The dark house. The silence that was worse than his screaming. The knock on my basement door that made my blood freeze because Marcus Green never knocked.

"Cassandra, open up. I have to talk to you."

The memory played with a cruelty that was worse than any dark energy she'd thrown at me. Every detail sharp, every sensation real.

The belt dropping. The zipper.

His hands on my arms, flinging me to the bed. The crack in my leg when he dragged me back. My shorts tearing.

"Please stop, you're supposed to be my father!"

Red collapsed. Not from a blow but from the weight of what was flooding our shared mind. She whimpered on the ground and I was screaming inside her, trapped in the memory.

But then Zyrell did something worse than replaying what happened.

She changed it.

In the real memory, Red tore through me at the last second. My wolf saved me. She shifted and Marcus pissed himself and ran.

In Zyrell's version, Red never came.

The shift never happened. The wolf stayed silent.

And Marcus didn't stop.

I felt it.

Every second of a thing that never happened but felt more real than the ground under my body. The weight of him, the whiskey breath, my screams turning to silence because nobody was coming, not my wolf, not anyone.

"That's what really would have happened without your precious, dormant and weakling of a wolf," Zyrell whispered, crouching beside Red's trembling body. "And deep down you know it. You were seconds away from being destroyed that night and the only reason you survived was luck. Not strength. Not power. Luck. Your wolf woke up by accident and you've been pretending you're strong ever since."

Something inside me cracked so deep I felt it in my teeth.

But underneath the cracking, underneath the fabricated memory and the real one and the shame I carried like a second skeleton, something else was there.

The quiet place.

The one I built the night my mother carried me on her hips, when Red tore through me for the first time and I felt that shift inside my chest, not just the wolf awakening but something else. Something that took the terror that was eating me and my mother alive and made it smaller. Manageable. Mine.

I'd used it every day since without even knowing what it was.

When Marcus raged, I made the fear smaller so I could function. When Stephan was thrashing during his heat, I reached through the bond and quieted the chaos inside him. When that Councilman wanted him to kill him so he'll be taken for trial, it was that power that slowed his brain down enough for him to see the trap. When he was bleeding out on the operating table, I touched his chest and settled his wolf so Caly could work.

Emotional control.

Not the Moon-Born light, not the triad power. Mine. Born the same night as Red, from the same terror, two gifts from the same moment of almost being destroyed.

And if I could make fear smaller, make chaos quiet, make panic settle, maybe...

Zyrell was still in my head. Still connected through the channel she'd opened to push Marcus at me. So confident she hadn't bothered closing it.

I stopped fighting the memory she'd put on a dirty, vicious loop and I let it play. Let Marcus come. Let the bed and the hands and the zipper fill every corner of my mind.

And then I reached through the channel and grabbed what was on the other side.

Two hundred years of pain hit me like a wall of water.

Her wolf being ripped from her body while the wolves she saved held her down. Days of screaming as the bond was shredded thread by thread. Centuries of wandering alone, wolfless, turning to dark gods because no one else would help.

The loneliness.

A loneliness so complete it had eaten everything else she'd ever been.

And with a triumphant smile, I shoved it all back through the channel.

Zyrell's eyes went wide. Her mouth opened but nothing came out. She grabbed her head and staggered.

"What... what is this?" she gasped.

"You wanted to share memories," I said in her head, standing up on four legs that had no business holding me. "So let's share yours."

She wasn't as upset as I wanted so pushed harder. I made her relive every painful memory, in clear view, no changing of details or twisting realities.

Just the horror of being a moonborn who dared to do things her own way.

Every betrayal, every century alone, every dark god deal that ate another piece of her soul. The moment she realised no wolf would ever love her again. The century in which she didn't speak to another living soul.

And then she screamed.

Not a villain's scream. The scream of a woman drowning in two hundred years of grief she'd been running from.

Her eyes flickered. Black, normal, black, normal. Across the battlefield, turned creatures collapsed or shifted back to confused, naked, terrified humans who had no idea where they were or what had happened to them. The Council wolves suddenly found themselves exposed, their puppet master on her knees.

I didn't stop. If I stopped for one second she'd recover and this would all be for nothing.

I heard them coming before I saw them. The ground shaking under paws I knew like my own heartbeat. Not through the bond because the bond was still disconnected. But the sound of Thane's roar from the south and Ace's snarl from the west was unmistakable.

Thane hit her first. His massive jaws clamped around her torso and lifted her off the ground. Dark energy sparked weakly from her fingers but there was nothing behind it.

Ace came from the other side. His teeth found her neck.

My mates did what I couldn't do alone.

When they pulled away, what was left didn't look like a monster.

The silver veins faded from her skin. Her eyes shifted from black to grey to a pale, watery blue. For one second I saw the girl the goddess chose five hundred years ago. Frightened. Powerful. Alone.

"I'm sorry they did that to you," I whispered. "You deserved better."

The blue eyes stared at nothing. The chest didn't rise again.

Red turned around with as much sadness as I had and turned to take in the war that still hasn't ended.

The turned humans were scattered across the field, crying, disoriented, some naked, some injured, all of them looking around at the blood and destruction with no understanding of how they got here. They weren't enemies. They never were.

They were victims of a war they had no business in.

But the Council wolves were still fighting. Zyrell was dead, their army was gone, and they should have surrendered. But wolves don't kneel easily, especially Alphas who had staked everything on the old order surviving. They fought harder now, cornered and desperate.

But our wolves were exhausted. Hours of war, too many dead, injuries that even wolf healing couldn't keep up with.

Thane and Ace were standing but barely.

I looked across the ruins of our home and felt the weight of what was left to do settle on me.

"Luna," Caleb's voice cut through the link. "Look north."

I turned.

On the ridge above our territory, silhouetted against the first grey light of dawn, an army stood. Hundreds of wolves in tight formation.

My heart stopped.

We couldn't survive another wave.