Chapter 7 7

“I tried to get to you,” Ty said, closer now, though he did not touch me. “Marian’s rogues dragged me off while she went back for you. By the time I broke free, you were gone, and your father was dead. Alpha Cameron found me before dawn. He knew if the truth came out wrong, the pack would tear itself apart before I could prove what really happened. He sent me to training early, and I let him, because I thought if I became strong enough, I could come back and finish what I failed to stop.”

“You let me bury him thinking I was alone,” I said. I had not meant to cry. I had promised myself years ago that tears were a luxury other girls could afford. But my voice broke anyway, and once that first crack formed, there was no hiding the rest. “You let me grieve you both. Do you understand that? I lost my father, my sight, my life, and then I lost you, too. And all this time, you knew.”

When Ty answered, his voice sounded wrecked. “There was not a single day I didn’t know exactly what it cost you. I carried it through every training ground, every fight, every breath. I knew I had no right to ask anything from you when I came back—not forgiveness, not trust, not even your anger. But don’t ever think I stayed away because I stopped loving you.”

The words should have been a relief. They should have landed soft and healing. Instead, they hurt in a new place. Because some stubborn, traitorous part of me had wanted to hear them for so long that hearing them now—here, in blood and smoke and betrayal—felt almost unbearable. Love did not fix this. The mate-bond did not erase a grave.

“Beautiful,” Marian murmured from the dark. “Two broken children trying to make tragedy sound romantic.” Her voice sharpened. “Ask him the part he still hasn’t said, Sila. Ask him what your father was protecting.”

I hated that Marian could still pull the strings of the moment. I hated even more that she was right. “Protecting what?” I asked, my voice thin from crying and fury and too much truth at once.

This time Marian answered first. “You,” she said. “Or rather, what you were born to become.”

Neeka surged so hard against my mind that pain flashed white behind my ruined eyes. Ty swore. Somewhere ahead, Marian shifted again, and this time I could hear the wetness in her breathing, the strain in her body. She was hurt, cornered, and still smiling. Nothing in the world was more dangerous than a cruel person with nothing left to lose.

“Your father wasn’t hiding a crime,” Marian said. “He was hiding a prophecy.” A beat of silence passed, sharp as a blade. “And the blind girl he tried to silence is the next true Luna.”

The forest seemed to recoil from the words.

For one suspended second, even my grief forgot how to breathe. The next true Luna. The words crashed through everything else—through my father’s betrayal, through Ty’s confession, through the cold, unbearable fact that Marian Lancaster was still out there in the dark smiling at the ruins of my life. Then disbelief came roaring in after it, fierce and immediate. “No,” I said. My voice came out hoarse, shaking, but it carried. “No.”

Marian laughed softly, as though I had confirmed something delightful. “Denial is such a human response. But your wolf already knows, doesn’t she? That is why she woke when she did. That is why blindness did not break you. That is why the bond snapped into place the second your little Alpha crossed the border.”

“I will kill her,” Neeka said with terrifying calm. Then, lower, unwillingly, “She is not entirely lying.”

The admission hit me like another blow. “Neeka.” It was barely a whisper, part plea, part accusation. My wolf had never lied to me, not exactly. But there were truths she had circled, instincts she had swallowed, fears she had hidden because I had been drowning already. Suddenly I could not tell which part of me was breaking harder—the girl who had just learned her father died at her mate’s claws, or the one learning that even her own wolf had sensed a future she had never been allowed to imagine.

“Enough,” Ty said, and the force behind that single word rolled through the trees like thunder. He stepped closer, not touching me, but close enough that I could feel the heat of him at my side. “You do not get to throw pieces of her life at her and call it truth. If there is a prophecy, you will give us all of it.”

“All of it?” Marian echoed. “Very well. The true Luna is not chosen for beauty, or obedience, or bloodline politics. She is the wolf-born heart of the pack. The one who can bind power, command loyalty, and see what others refuse to see. Your father found out when she was still a child. He should have handed her over. Instead, he hid her. Loved her. Tried to outrun what she was.”

Loved her. The word sliced in where everything else had torn open. My father had betrayed me. My father had tried to silence me. And somehow, beneath that ugliness, there had still been love twisted into fear. The contradiction was unbearable. It made grief ache in new directions. “Then why?” I demanded. “Why blind me? Why leave me alive?”

Marian’s breathing rasped, then steadied. “Because dead girls become martyrs. Broken girls become warnings.” Her voice sharpened. “You were supposed to live small. Ashamed. Unmated. Powerless. A lesson in what happens when destiny reaches too far.”

A growl tore out of Ty so low and vicious it barely sounded human. Leaves crushed under his boots as he took a step forward. “You touched her because you were afraid of what she would become.”

“Afraid?” Marian spat. “No, little Alpha. Practical. Do you know what a true Luna means? She threatens every weak alliance built on lies. Every Alpha who rules through force without balance. Every family that has clawed its way close to power and intends to keep it.” A branch snapped beneath her shifting weight. “The pack was never meant to kneel to a blind girl.”

Something hot and furious rose through the wreckage inside me then. Not confidence. Not peace. Nothing so gentle. This was rage with nowhere left to go but outward. “Then you should have killed me,” I said into the dark, each word shaking. “Because if all of this is true, you failed.”

Silence answered me first. Then the forest changed.

Wind tore through the trees hard enough to make the branches groan overhead. The air thickened, charged and strange, until even my skin seemed to listen. Neeka surged forward so suddenly that I staggered. Somewhere far off, wolves howled—one, then several, then many, the sound rolling over the ridge like a summons. I had no sight to tell me what changed around us, but the world felt different, as if something old had lifted its head and taken notice.

Ty swore under his breath. Not in fear. In recognition. “Sila,” he said, and there was awe in his voice now, raw and unwilling. “Your scent just changed.”

I hated that. Hated the trembling in my limbs, the pressure in my chest, the way power or panic or prophecy—whatever this was—made my own body feel borrowed. “Do not say it like that,” I snapped. “Do not stand there sounding amazed while my entire life is being torn apart.”

“I’m not amazed by your pain,” Ty said, the hurt in his voice immediate. “I’m amazed because even now—right now, standing in the middle of everything they did to you—you’re stronger than all of them.”

The words nearly undid me. I wanted to throw them back at him. I wanted to keep them. I wanted, with a desperation that made me furious with myself, to believe him. “You don’t get to say beautiful things to me when I still don’t know whether to hate you,” I said, and my voice finally broke on the last word.

“Then hate me,” Ty said softly. “But live long enough to do it.”

The branch to our left cracked.

Ty moved before thought could catch up to motion. One second he was beside me; the next he slammed into me hard enough to send us both crashing to the ground as something sliced through the air where my throat had been. Silver hit stone with a vicious ring.

Pain jolted through my shoulder as we landed, but Ty’s body twisted around mine before I could feel the worst of it. A snarl ripped from him—wolf, not human this time. He launched up again almost instantly. Ahead of us, Marian cursed. I heard the uneven rhythm of her fleeing steps and the scrape of another weapon leaving her hand.

“Now,” Neeka roared.

I did not know what I was reaching for. Power. Air. Instinct. Survival. All I knew was that something in me answered the command with terrifying ease. “Stop,” I cried.

The forest obeyed.

Wind slammed sideways through the trees and died in the same instant. Leaves stilled mid-shiver. The night itself seemed to hold its breath. Ahead, Marian’s ragged steps cut off so abruptly it was almost violent. When she spoke again, fear had finally reached her voice. “No,” she whispered. “No, you shouldn’t be able to do that yet.”

I pushed to my feet, shaking hard enough that my teeth wanted to chatter. Ty said my name, warning and wonder tangled together, but I barely heard him. For the first time since the accident, Marian Lancaster sounded afraid of me. The feeling that surged up in response was dark and intoxicating. I understood in one ugly flash how power could seduce good people into terrible choices.

“You think this changes anything?” Marian gasped. “You think being the true Luna makes you safe?” Her breath hitched, and I heard desperation harden into malice. “You still know nothing about your mother. Nothing about what she was. Nothing about what they sealed inside you when you were born.”

Ty went utterly still. “Marian,” he said, and now there was something new in his voice. Not rage. Not grief. Alarm. “Do not say another word.”

My heart stumbled. “What does she mean?” I asked, turning toward Ty. “What do you know about my mother?”

For one devastating second, no one answered. Then Marian laughed again, wild and breathless and triumphant despite the fear. “He didn’t tell you?” she whispered. “Of course he didn’t.” Her next words dropped like a blade between us. “Your mother wasn’t murdered, Sila. She’s the one who bound your sight—and she’s still alive.”