The forest didn’t sleep that night.

Wolves moved through the shadows, restless, sensing the crack in their Alpha’s control. I could feel their unease pulsing through the pack bond — low, questioning, afraid to name what they smelled on me. Fear and faith were close cousins in Nightbane. I’d built our strength on both.

But now, something inside me trembled.

That scent — hers — clung to the inside of my lungs, haunting every breath. I’d told myself it was gone, that she was gone. That the fire had burned away the last trace of her blood.

Yet the past doesn’t burn clean. It leaves embers.

And mine was starting to glow.

________________________________________

I stood on the ridge until the moon slipped behind the clouds. The smell of pine and ash blurred into something older — a ghost of another night. The Blood Moon.

The memory rose without mercy.

The air had been thick that night, red light bleeding through the trees, turning every shadow into a wound. My pack moved like ghosts through Silverfang territory — silent, sure, blades glinting faintly in the glow.

We weren’t there to conquer.

We were there to end a betrayal.

Alpha Theron Silverfang — Lyra’s father — had been a friend once. A brother-in-arms before greed rotted him from the inside. He’d promised an alliance, shared blood with me under oath. But he’d broken it for power.

He’d taken in witches — human and dark-blooded — feeding them pack secrets, bartering our kind to strengthen his own bloodline. He called it protection. I called it treason.

And worse — he’d taken something from me.

My mate.

No one ever knew that part. Not even Daren. She’d gone to Silverfang lands to broker peace. Theron had used her, offered her up to his dark allies when his pact soured. I found what was left of her beneath the altar stone.

That was the night I stopped believing in mercy.

________________________________________

I remember the way Theron looked when I found him — silver eyes wild, half-shifted, blood slick on his claws. He didn’t beg. Didn’t explain. Just said, “You wouldn’t understand.”

Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I didn’t want to.

I tore his throat out beneath the Blood Moon, his roar swallowed by the screams around us. His pack fell soon after, half by my hand, half by the chaos he’d unleashed.

Only later, when the fire reached the dens, did I smell her — faint and small, hiding under the bodies. The pup.

Lyra.

She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. I remember standing there, frozen, the blood of her father drying on my hands. My wolf wanted to finish it — to end the bloodline before it rose again.

But I couldn’t.

Her eyes… they were his but not corrupted yet. Still wild, still alive. I turned away. I told myself the flames would do what I couldn’t.

They didn’t.

________________________________________

Now, years later, her scent lingers on the wind again, stubborn as memory.

The bond between us — that ancient, cruel trick of the Moon — shouldn’t exist. I shouldn’t feel her. Not after what I did.

And yet, the wolf inside me is restless. It paces and growls and whispers a word I can’t bear to hear.

Mine.

I close my eyes and see the Blood Moon reflected in her father’s blood. I feel the tremor in my hands, the one I thought I buried years ago.

If she’s alive, she’ll come for me.

If she’s alive, she’ll want vengeance.

And maybe that’s what I deserve.

________________________________________

When dawn breaks, I turn from the ridge and give my orders.

“Double the patrols. No one crosses south without my command. If anyone scents her, you bring that to me first — no one else.”

Daren hesitates. “You think it’s really her?”

I meet his gaze, voice low. “I think the past doesn’t stay buried. It just waits for the right moon to rise again.”