Mira’s POV.

Twenty-four names. Children born in the last decade. All marked with crescent symbols. Lyra's name was third from the top. "They've been collecting them for years." Kael's voice was hollow. "Building an army of children with power that shouldn't exist."

"Where are they taking them?" "East. The Wastes. Where we're already heading." He looked at me. "This whole thing, your return, our search, we're walking into a trap."

Raven had found a concealed door. "Down here." The stairs descended into darkness, and I followed before I could think better of it.

The chamber below was ancient. Older than the camp, older than the trees above. Walls covered in carved text that swam before my eyes until I stopped trying to see and just... looked.

The words came to my lips unbidden: "When the Alpha of Broken Bonds seeks what he cast away. When the Crescent Daughter returns to ash-marked ground. When the Child of Two Worlds rises in the East. The old power shall wake, and the packs shall kneel or fall."

"How are you reading that?" Kael touched the wall, confused. "I don't know. I just, I can." Center of the chamber: a stone pedestal with three hand-shaped indentations. Two adults. One child. "It's a lock." Raven circled it carefully. "Whatever this prophecy promises, it needs all three of you."

"Lyra isn't even mine," I whispered. "The timeline, after Kael rejected me, I thought, " I stopped. The math had never quite worked. I'd always assumed I was wrong about dates.

Footsteps above. Voices. We froze. "Mira's return was inevitable. The bloodline calls to itself." I knew that voice. Darius. Kael's half-brother. "And if she refuses to cooperate?" "Then we use the child as leverage. Lyra believes we saved her from neglectful parents."

My nails bit into my palms. Blood welled hot against my skin. "The girl's power is already beyond projections. With her mother's blood added to the ritual, the old packs will submit or be eradicated." Kael looked ready to storm upstairs. I grabbed his arm, shook my head. We had to hear more.

"Let Kael come searching," Darius continued. "Let him bring her right to us. The prophecy demands all three." The voices faded. Raven breathed out slowly. "They've been herding you from the start."

We made it halfway to the exit before everything went wrong. A young wolf rounded a corner. Looked up at me. Her eyes widened, my eyes, looking back at me.

"Mother?"

She wasn't Lyra. But she had my face. My coloring. My marks. "They told us you'd come." Her voice trembled. "That you'd try to take us from our purpose." "I don't know you," I said gently, raising my hands. "I'm not."

She screamed. "Intruders! The Crescent Mother is here!" Alarms exploded through the camp.

We ran. Wolves poured from every direction, but they weren't trying to kill us. They were herding us, pushing us like prey toward a specific destination. "The altar," Kael shouted. "They're pushing us toward the altar!"

I tried to change direction. Fought against the flow. My body moved before my brain caught up, somehow perfectly synchronized with Kael's movements. The mate bond turned us into one fighter with four limbs.

But there were too many. We ended up at the altar anyway, surrounded. Darius stepped from the crowd, slow-clapping. "Impressive. You made it farther than expected." Kael lunged. Guards restrained him, forcing him to his knees. "Still playing hero, brother?" Darius smiled. "You rejected her. I'm offering her what you never could, purpose."

He turned to me, and something in his gaze made my skin crawl. "You feel it, don't you? This place recognizes you. You belong here." I did feel it. The pull, the resonance. The marks on my skin hummed with something I couldn't name. "Where is my daughter?"

"Our daughter is exactly where she wants to be." Darius's smile widened. "Training to lead our people to glory."

"Our?"

"Did you think Cyrus was being noble? He's descended. Distant line, but enough." Darius circled me slowly, predator assessing prey. "Your daughter isn't Kael's. She's mine. Product of carefully orchestrated breeding." The world tilted beneath my feet.

"That night after the rejection, you thought you got drunk alone?" His voice was poison. "You were vulnerable. Heartbroken. It was easy to slip something into your drink. Easy to take what I needed."

Horror crashed over me in waves. The gaps in my memory. Waking up disoriented, sore, and confused. I'd thought it was grief. Thought I'd just fallen apart alone. But I hadn't been alone. Kael was screaming, fighting against the guards holding him down.

"Lyra is the perfect heir," Darius continued, savoring every word. "Perfect bloodline, perfect power. And she'll never know the truth." My knees hit stone. Six years. Six years of loving a child conceived in violation. Six years of lies built on rape and manipulation.

Something inside me broke. And the marks on my body ignited. Light poured from my skin, amber and blinding. Power I didn't know I had surged through me, and wolves dropped to their knees all around us, compelled by something primal. Even Darius looked uncertain for the first time.

"Where. Is. Lyra." My voice carried a command that made every wolf flinch with the need to answer.

Darius resisted, barely. "You can't; this wasn't supposed to happen without the ritual." The symbols throughout the camp lit up in response to whatever was burning through me. I felt connected to every carved surface, every marked stone, like my blood recognized this place on a cellular level.

"The prophecy," Raven shouted somewhere behind me. "The Broken Bond Alpha and the Crescent Daughter, together they're." "Separate them!" Darius screamed at his wolves. "Now!"

But I was done being controlled. Done being used. Done being anyone's breeding stock or political pawn. I channeled everything, all my rage, all my grief, all my violated agency, into one strike. At the altar. The stone that focused this entire operation.

"Mira, no!" Kael's scream cut through everything. The altar shattered under my power. Magic exploded outward. The ground shook. I was thrown backward, the power extinguishing as suddenly as it had come, leaving only searing pain in every nerve.

Darius stood over me as darkness crept into my vision. "Foolish girl. That altar was just a focus. The real power is in you. In your blood. In your daughter." His face blurred and doubled. "All you've done is make this harder on yourself." Then nothing but black.

I woke in chains. Stone cell. Small window showing only darkness. The crescent marks on my skin were dead, lifeless. The power completely burned out of me. My body ached everywhere. My soul ached worse.

Footsteps. Darius appeared outside the bars. "Lyra arrives tomorrow. I'll tell her you came to destroy everything she's built. That you wanted to drag her back to the life that abandoned her. She'll hate you for it. And that hatred will complete her training."

I met his eyes, refused to let him see me break. "She'll see through you eventually." "Perhaps. But by then, it won't matter." He smiled, cruel and certain. "By then, she'll have become exactly what we need her to be." He left me in darkness.

I touched the lifeless mark on my wrist. Whispered her name into the empty cell. "Lyra. Baby, I'm coming. I promise." Somewhere miles away, through the mate bond that still connected us despite everything, I felt Kael. Felt his rage, his determination, his plan forming.He was coming back for me. I prayed he'd be fast enough. I prayed we'd both survive what came next.