Chapter Three -The Moonstone Council’s Verdict
1932 Words
—Aurelia—
The crescent mark they painted on my brow had dried and cracked. I stood before the Moonstone Council beneath a canopy of mirrored glass, each step echoing on the sacred obsidian floor.
The hall was more cathedral than court — round, vast, suffocating. Moonlight filtered through a domed ceiling where star patterns shimmered unnaturally. Every breath felt like it wasn’t mine to take.
The seven High Priests and Priestesses watched me from thrones of ivory and petrified bone. Each wore a silver mask that concealed their features, but not their judgment. Their silence was a noose. Only the High Oracle in the center dared speak.
“You are the Luna,” she said. “Chosen by the Moon. Born of eclipse. Bearer of the mark. Your soul has stirred the tether.”
My throat tightened. “I didn’t stir anything. I didn’t choose this.”
The Oracle’s voice remained tranquil, as though I hadn’t spoken at all. “The bond has awakened prematurely. We have felt the ripple in the sanctum. You touched the spirit of the Dread Wolf.”
I said nothing. Because it was true. I hadn’t meant to. But in the tower last night, something in me had... opened. Like a door long sealed, suddenly cracked by moonlight. And through it had come his voice. Gravel and ancient smoke.
You’re not what I expected.
Just a whisper. But it had rooted inside me. Now I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“You must understand,” the Oracle said. “Your role is not merely ceremonial. You are meant to complete the bond — to restore the old order, to purify the wolf’s spirit through the Rite of Absolution.”
I clenched my fists. “And if I don’t?”
A hush fell across the chamber like a curse.
Another priest leaned forward. His voice was colder. “Then the curse continues. The Dread Wolf grows stronger. His madness returns. And Caerwyn falls.”
I scoffed. “So your entire kingdom is tethered to me being sacrificed to your pet monster.”
“He is not a monster,” said the Oracle. “He was a god, once. Before the last Luna betrayed him. Before the bond broke. Before the blood moon came and never left.”
And now you want me to fix it, I thought. To become the offering that redeems centuries of guilt.
They wanted me to cleanse him. To enter the sanctum, unchain the Dread Wolf, and bind our souls—not in choice, not in love, but in a magic older than consent. I looked up, chin high.
“I will not be your salvation. I am not a vessel to cleanse your sins.” The Oracle studied me in silence for a long, long moment.
Then she said, “We do not ask that you love him. Only that you survive him.”
—Kaelen—
The chains had been re-inscribed.
Blood runes burned into my wrists with a priest’s dagger. Salt laced the air. The sanctum’s floors had been freshly anointed with ash, prayers whispered not for mercy, but control. Because they feared me now. Not because I roared. Not because I had slain guardians in the past.
But because for the first time in centuries… I felt her. And worse — she felt me.
They hadn’t expected the bond to awaken before the Rite. They’d underestimated the pull of our souls. Of fate. Of whatever divine madness stitched our threads together across lifetimes.
Now they were panicking. Punishing.
The High Priest knelt beside my cage, whispering incantations in the dead tongue. My body convulsed. Silver-hot agony rippled through my bones as the rune-locks flared, resetting my restraints. Trying to dull the connection to her. But they couldn’t erase it.
I had tasted her fire. Felt her fear. Her fury. Her defiance. And I knew her now.
She wasn’t meek. She wasn’t pious. She wasn’t like the Lunas who came before, starry-eyed and trembling and hollowed by their sacred duty.
She was angry. She questioned. She refused. And in that defiance, she gave me something no priest had ever granted me. Hope.
Even now, I felt her pulse at the edge of my soul — distant but unwavering. She hadn’t collapsed under their verdict. She hadn’t surrendered. She was still herself.
And gods forgive me, I wanted her all the more for it. The chains tightened. The priest hissed an incantation meant to numb the soul.
But my soul had already tasted hers.
Later, when the pain subsided and the priests left me in darkness again, I let the silence stretch. And in that stillness, the tether hummed. She was alone in her tower. Thinking of me.
I did not intrude. I did not press into her mind again. Not yet. But I let the bond unfurl just enough to whisper a feeling. Not a thought. Not a command. Just presence.
You are not alone.
A breath passed between us. And for the first time in centuries…
The Wolf slept with something like peace.
—Aurelia—
Sleep never came.
I sat curled on the window ledge of the tower chamber they’d called my “preparation quarters.” The bed behind me remained untouched, its silk coverlet too pristine, too final — like a burial shroud stitched with lilies.
Below, the city of Caerwyn flickered with torchlight, unaware of the rituals and whispers hanging over its people like a curse. And in the sky, the moon remained red.
Still bleeding.
Still watching.
They wanted me to wait. To let them shape me. Strip me down to purity and rebuild me into a bride fit for a god. But I wasn’t a bride. And I wasn’t pure.
I was angry. Exhausted. Hollowed out by truths that didn’t belong in stories. Still, I couldn’t forget the voice I’d heard in the dark. Not cold. Not cruel. Just... lonely.
You’re not what I expected.
And then again, later—
You are not alone.
The bond wasn’t just a chain. It was a mirror. And in it, I had seen not a beast, but something broken and buried. Something like me.
The firelight flickered. My hands trembled as I touched the place beneath my sternum where warmth still lingered, like his presence had rooted there.
Could I reach him?
Not to speak. Not to cry out. Just to feel. To see if he was still... waiting.
I closed my eyes and breathed out slowly, as if releasing something old. And then—
A pulse.
Not a sound, not a word. Just a weight pressing gently behind my ribs. As though someone had placed a hand on my chest. Not possessive. Not pleading. Steady.
I’m here, it said.
I should have shut it out. Blocked the bond. Refused the magic curling between us like ivy around a ruin. But instead, I let it remain. Not because I trusted him.
But because, for the first time since they dragged me from Hollow Creek, I didn’t feel entirely stolen.
—Kaelen—
The echo came back. Faint. But it was hers.
A quiet answer. A ripple across the tether that wasn’t rejection or terror, but acknowledgment.
She hadn’t shut the bond. She had felt me, and she had stayed. It was not love. Not trust. But it was the beginning of something older.
Older than prophecy. Older than betrayal. Something even the gods no longer understood. I touched the stone beneath me, closing my eyes.
And for the first time in a hundred years…
I whispered her name.
“Aurelia.”
The sanctum did not burn. The chains did not tighten. The darkness did not rage. Only the moon wept above.
Night before the shift—shared in silence, soul to soul
—Aurelia—
The stars were beginning to fade, drowned by the blood-hued moon.
I hadn’t moved from the ledge. The castle was still. The guards had rotated twice already, their booted steps tracing the stone paths like clock hands. Dawn would be coming. But I didn’t want it to.
There was something sacred in this night—something not meant for the light.
My fingertips brushed my collarbone, tracing the outline of the crescent-shaped birthmark that had condemned me. It burned faintly now, a dull throb that pulsed in rhythm with the strange warmth inside my chest.
Kaelen.
I whispered the name silently, letting it sit in my thoughts like a confession. It was his, even if I had no right to it yet.
Was he awake?
Was he still reaching for me? Or had I imagined the sensation — the feeling of his soul brushing against mine like wind through lace?
Then, gently—as if in answer—came the echo.
Not words. Not a voice. But a memory. Not mine.
His.
Dark woods. Rain. A pair of hands cupping a wolf’s bloodied muzzle. A whisper from long ago: “You were never a monster. You were mine.”
The warmth of a woman’s laughter. Then cold steel. Betrayal. A scream. The memory shattered like glass — and I gasped aloud. My palms pressed to the window ledge to keep myself grounded, heart racing, breath ragged.
That wasn’t just magic. That was a scar. A wound etched deep into a soul that had carried it through lifetimes. He’d shown it to me. Let it slip through the bond — a thread of memory too raw to speak aloud.
And I had felt it. The betrayal. The grief.
The love that had been turned into a weapon.
Tears stung my eyes before I realized they’d fallen. I wiped them away quickly, angrily. I didn’t want to weep for him. I didn’t even know him. But I did. Somehow.
Somewhere deep inside me, that was older than my name, I knew him.
I pressed my fingers to the window, where the chill met the pad of my skin like breath. Then, softly—almost imperceptibly—I let the bond respond.
I see you.
—Kaelen—
I nearly collapsed.
The moment her message passed through the bond — those three simple, terrible words — my knees gave out. Not because of pain.
Because of recognition.
I see you.
No one had seen me in centuries. Not the priests who caged me. Not the kings who feared me. Not the Lunas they sent to die beneath my touch.
But she did.
And worse — she did not recoil. She stayed.
She reached back across the void and saw me, not as a beast, not as a weapon… but as someone wounded. And something shifted in me.
Not the curse. Not the hunger.
Something older. Something holy.
My body sank against the sanctum wall, and for the first time since I was named the Dread Wolf, I stopped fighting the chains. Not because they held me. Because she did.
A girl from the edge of the woods. A healer. A stranger. A flame the gods had not managed to extinguish.
If they had their way, they would break her before the Rite. They would crush that defiance, purify her into obedience, shape her into a vessel for absolution.
But they had miscalculated one thing. She wasn’t here to save me. She was here to challenge me. And I would rather be broken beside her in truth… Than worshipped alone in a lie.
The moon pulsed above, no longer bleeding red, but slowly softening to silver. The turning point was coming. They didn’t know it yet.
But tonight… we began.
- Writer
