LUNA AURELIA'S ABSOLUTION

Chapter Two - Taken By Moonlight

—Aurelia—

The blood moon didn’t wait.

It watched.

Hung low over Hollow Creek like a wound torn open in the sky, it cast every thatched roof and frost-kissed field in crimson. The air buzzed with static. My skin prickled beneath my shawl as if the moonlight itself had fingers.

And I wasn’t the only one who felt it.

The animals were restless—my hound barked and whimpered at the door, and the raven in the rafters ruffled his wings with shrill warnings. Even the wind had gone still, as though the forest was holding its breath.

Then I heard them.

Hooves. Heavy. Dozens.

I stepped out onto the porch just as the riders crested the hill, torches in hand. My stomach turned. These weren’t travelers lost in the woods or village men seeking aid.

These were soldiers. And they were coming for me.

I didn’t run at first. I stood there, frozen like prey beneath a predator’s eye. A strange calm settled in my chest, the way it always had in the moment before something terrible, right before my mother vanished. Before my brother died. That calm that whispered, This is it. The moment your life changes.

The first soldier dismounted and strode toward me, his armor polished obsidian and crimson, matching the sky. The crest on his cloak shimmered faintly—a silver wolf beneath a full moon. Royal guard.

“You are Aurelia Virelle,” he said, voice cold and sure. “Daughter of Selene, born on the night of the eclipse. Bearer of the mark.” I didn't answer.

“You are summoned to Caerwyn by royal decree. The Moon has claimed you. Do not resist.” I turned and bolted.

Through the garden. Through thorns. Past the old well and down the overgrown path into the woods. I knew every root and shadow of that forest. I thought I had a chance.

But magic was against me.

A force pulled at my legs, making the air feel like honey. My limbs grew heavy. The red light warped the woods into a maze I didn’t recognize. I stumbled, fell, and rose again—only to be met with a wall of silver-tipped spears.

The guards formed a circle around me. I thrashed, screamed, and struck out with my fists. Then came the prick. A sting on my neck.

Poison? No sedative. Everything dimmed.

The last thing I saw was the raven in the trees, cawing furiously, wings outstretched toward the sky as if to claw the blood moon down.

The next time I woke, I was shackled in a carriage bound for a city I’d only heard of in myths. Caerwyn.

Once, when I was small, my mother whispered its name like a fairy tale. Now it was a sentence.

The priestess across from me was ghostlike—cloaked in grey, face dusted with white ash, eyes like hollow moons. She watched me with neither pity nor malice. Just... inevitability.

“I don’t want this,” I said, voice hoarse from sleep. “Whatever they’ve told you, I’m not some sacred offering. I’m a healer. I grow herbs. I bury animals. I am not—”

“You are the Luna,” she said simply. “The Moon chose you. That is all that matters.”

“I don’t believe in the Moon’s will,” I snapped.

“That doesn’t matter either.”

I rattled my chains, fury boiling beneath my skin. “You can’t force a bond. You can’t bind someone to a monster and call it fate.”

Her gaze didn’t waver. “The Dread Wolf was once a guardian. A spirit of balance. He was only corrupted after the last Luna broke the pact. This is your chance to restore what she destroyed.”

“Then find someone else,” I hissed. “I didn’t break your cursed pact. I owe your wolf nothing.”

A flicker of something—almost regret—passed across her face. “We all owe him something.” The capital loomed by dawn.

Stone walls spiked with silver wards, towers that clawed at the sky, windows like eyes. The air itself was colder here, tainted with incense and old blood. Statues lined the path leading to the gates—women with moonstone daggers at their chests, all wearing the same expression. Resignation.

We passed through streets emptied for the procession. The townsfolk had been kept inside. Only guards and priests watched as I was dragged from the carriage, my limbs numb, my mind whirling.

I tried to memorize details—anything I could use to escape. Alleyways. Archways. Soldier positions. But it was too much, too fast.

They brought me to the Sanctuary of Lunaris—a marble temple with silver veins running through the stone, as though the moon herself had bled into its bones.

There, they stripped me.

Not of dignity—I’d lost that long ago—but of identity. They bathed me in sacred water. Dressed me in a pale silken gown. Painted the crescent mark on my forehead in ash and silver dust.

I was no longer Aurelia of Hollow Creek. I was the Luna.

At least, that’s what they whispered over and over as they led me into the Moonstone Hall, where seven masked figures sat in judgment.

The High Council. One by one, they questioned me. My lineage. My blood. My dreams.

But the question that stopped my breath came last—from the woman at the center, her mask carved like a weeping moon.

“Have you heard his voice yet?”

I stared at her. “Whose?”

“The spirit’s. The Dread Wolf. The one waiting for you beneath the veil.”

The room seemed to tilt.

“I hear… howls,” I whispered. “In my sleep. Sometimes… dreams.”

“That is how it begins.”

“How does what begin?”

“The bond.”

That night, they locked me in a tower room high above the sanctuary. They called it a chamber of preparation.

I called it what it was. A gilded cage.

I stood by the window, gazing out over the sleeping capital—and far beyond, the woods from which I’d been stolen.

I thought of the boy I’d saved.

Of the raven in the trees.

Of my mother.

And then I felt it. A pulse.

Cold and sharp, deep in my chest like a second heartbeat not my own.

Followed by a voice—rough, low, ancient. Whispered across the tether of something older than time.

“You’re not what I expected.” My hands trembled.

—Kaelen—

The moon burned red tonight.

It pulsed against the sky like a second heart — mine — and with every beat, the walls of my prison echoed its thrum. I lay in shadow, my back pressed against the cold stone floor of the sanctum, the chains around my wrists glowing faintly with runes meant to subdue me.

But nothing could subdue this.

Her.

She had awakened.

Not fully. Not yet. But enough for the bond to stir. Enough for the tether between us to draw taut across the veil that separated soul from soul.

And Gods help me, I felt everything.

At first, it was a flicker. Like the scent of lavender in the air that should not carry scent. Then came the warmth — alien and achingly familiar. A quiet mind brushes mine. Angry. Afraid. Defiant.

Then her thoughts became color, and her color became pain. They were dragging her from the woods. The images weren’t clear. But the feelings were.

Rage. Desperation. Refusal.

And beneath it, deeper, the echo of something long buried in my blood — recognition.

My wolf stirred. Not the beast the temple feared — not the twisted shade they locked in cages and whispered about behind sacred doors. The old part of me. The one that remembered forests before fire, vows before betrayal, moons before curses.

She is here.

Not just in Caerwyn. Not just in flesh.

Here.

In me.

I roared, and the walls answered.

Chains rattled, flared. The runes carved into my skin pulsed as the bond surged against them like a tide against stone. Pain cracked through my skull.

I was not meant to feel her like this — not until the Rite. Not until they offered her in white before the altar, whispering sacred lies as they completed the chain that bound me.

But she had crossed the threshold. She had awakened the bond on her own. And that meant one thing.

She was mine.

Not theirs. Not the temple’s. Not the gods’.

Mine.

And yet—she recoiled.

I felt it. The moment she sensed me. The sharp intake of breath. The shudder in her chest. The questions flooded her thoughts like stormwater.

What is this?

Who are you?

And finally—

Are you the monster they warned me about?

My silence answered for me. Because I was a monster. But not in the way they said. Not in the way the stories claimed.

I wasn’t a beast who tore through women for pleasure. I wasn’t a cursed demon who fed on the moon’s light. I was made a monster by betrayal, twisted by centuries of lies. I was forged into a nightmare by priests who feared my blood, kings who feared my bond, and Lunas who had failed before her.

I’d been waiting.

For her.

For Aurelia.

Her name came to me as though it had always been mine to speak. Not whispered. Not shouted. Claimed.

I pressed my palms to the floor. The stone hissed where I touched it, steam rising. Chains groaned. She was in the tower now.

I could feel the elevation of her thoughts. The way the wind moved around her. How she kept her back to the door and her gaze on the woods, as though memory alone could undo her capture.

But memory was a blade, not a key. I wanted to reach for her. To say, I will not harm you. I remember what love is. I remember what mercy tastes like.

But my voice was broken from centuries of silence.

The most I could manage was a whisper—one that slipped across the bond like a breath against her ear:

“You’re not what I expected.”

She flinched. I felt the bond recoil. And yet, she didn’t break it. She stayed.

Not out of trust. But stubbornness. Curiosity. Hope. That was more dangerous than fear. Because hope had the power to change everything. The priests would come soon.

They would sense the activation of the bond and tighten the bindings. They would drug me with silver and salt. They would try to sever what had already begun. But they couldn’t.

Because the bond was older than their rituals. It was older than me. Older than the gods who once cursed me. Aurelia had awakened something sacred and forbidden in me.

And the moon — that cruel, crimson witness above — knew it. She was the last. And if she broke the bond, if she failed like the others… I would not survive it.

But if she didn’t? If she chose me? Then I would burn the world to keep her. Even if she never loved me back. Even if the only way I could have her…

…was in the dark.

The Dread Wolf had found me.

And the bond had begun.