When The Moon Remembers

Chapter 8: Family Secrets

Elowen’s POV

I lay restless in bed, staring at the canopy corners above me while the moonlight spilled through the wide windows. I counted them again and again until the numbers blurred, yet sleep refused me.

Thoughts of what the cursed Lycan might have done to Kaelen haunted me still—and the memory of his hand at my throat lingered like a brand. Vaelric’s fury had burned in his eyes, and then… just as suddenly, he had released me and vanished. Swift, inhuman, untouchable. A hybrid’s strength, a hybrid’s curse. My skin still remembered the grip even as I told myself it had been nothing but a warning.

I pushed the heavy duvet aside and slipped from bed. My lace nightdress clung softly to my skin, and for a moment I considered trying to lie back down. But the old, familiar urge crept in—a need for wine to quiet my mind. I had always drunk in secret. It had been one of the reckless habits Kaelen and I once shared.

I lit a candle, shielding the flame so it wouldn’t betray me, and slipped out into the corridor. The manor was silent save for the whisper of my feet against the cold stone. I made it halfway to the kitchens when a movement froze me. A shadow—hooded, cloaked—slipped through the dark toward Father’s library.

I pressed myself against the wall, breath caught in my throat. Moments later, Father himself appeared, striding after the cloaked figure. At this hour?

Curiosity overpowered caution. I crept forward until I reached the library doors. They had not closed fully, leaving the faintest gap. I leaned close.

At first, only the murmur of voices reached me. Then another shape moved within—Aedric. My brother stood with them, his arms crossed in rigid attention.

Father placed something on the table. In the glow of a single lamp, I saw it flash: a silver knife. The cloaked man took it, turning the blade in his hand as though savoring its weight.

“… I will have the guards ready when it is time,” Father said in a low, deliberate tone.

“My father has ruled long enough,” the cloaked man answered, his voice a sharp whisper that sliced through the room.

I knew that voice. Prince Kaelis.

My heart lurched. Treason.

Aedric spoke then, his voice steady. “We must act before your brothers suspect.”

Kaelis’s laugh was quiet, bitter. “My brothers? Aldren is too loyal, and Vaelric—he is too lost in the ghost of his dead love to claim a throne.” He lifted the silver knife, and for an instant I caught a glimpse of his face in the light—hard, hungry. “But if Vaelric interferes, I will end him as he ended my twin brothers.”

My stomach twisted. The rumors… were they true? That he had slain his own blood on the night his wife died?

Father’s voice lowered, but I caught the words. “…his sudden appearance in court and at the ball last night means he is finished mourning Isolde.”

Isolde. So that was her name—Vaelric’s lost mate.

Kaelis’s reply sharpened, his words heavy with venom. “…and yet you choose to ignore it, though you know she looks like her.”

I stiffened. She? Who looks like her?

The candle in my hand trembled, wax spilling hot over my fingers. I backed away from the door, careful not to let it creak further. The words I had overheard pressed against my skull, each more dangerous than the last.

My father. My brother. And the Lycan prince.

Plotting treason in the dead of night.

And if they had seen me…

I would already be dead.

I was woken by the maid’s clumsiness. The scrape of curtains yanked across the rod, and suddenly the sun crashed against my face, hot and merciless. I flinched, pulling the duvet over my head like a shield. When I lowered it, she was standing there in silence, rigid, her shadow cutting across my bed as if she were some judge waiting for me to rise.

“Good morning, my lady,” she said quickly once she noticed my eyes on her. Her voice was too steady, as if she was trying to erase the awkwardness of her intrusion.

I only nodded, my throat dry.

“I was sent by your father to prepare your bath.”

That pulled me upright a little too fast. The canopy above me gave a long, aching groan, one of the wooden joints straining with the sudden movement. “My… father?” I croaked. He had never once sent for me at dawn—never sent for me at all unless it was to remind me of my shortcomings.

Before I could press her, the door opened. My father stepped inside, my mother trailing him. For a moment I forgot how to breathe. Images of last night—his whispering in the library, Kaelis’ voice, the silver knife—rushed back like a fever I couldn’t sweat out.

I swallowed hard and greeted them, though the words scraped my throat. Mother didn’t even respond. She looked pale, drained, as if she hadn’t slept. Her fingers twisted against the folds of her gown like she had been wringing them all night in worry.

“Corvin, don’t do this,” she whispered, turning toward him, desperation in her voice.

My father’s eyes didn’t leave me. I pulled the heavy duvet from my body as though that would steady me, the bed groaning again in protest, loud in the tense silence.

“What’s happening?” I asked, my voice smaller than I wanted.

“The girl is useless. Wolfless,” he said, as if I weren’t sitting right there, as if I were a stain on the floor instead of his daughter. His words cut sharper than any blade. He hadn’t spoken to me in months, not since the wolf-out ceremony, but this… this was a sentence.

“She will never find a mate if she remains under this roof,” he went on. “She is nothing but whispers clinging to House Thaloris.”

“Not by giving her to an omega without status!” my mother burst out, her voice breaking. “She is a noble’s daughter. Our daughter.”

My legs carried me clumsily off the bed, my heel catching in the lace drape of the canopy. I nearly stumbled, heart hammering, the word omega ringing in my skull. “Mother—what are you saying?”

She opened her mouth, but Father silenced her with a glare. “Enough. I have found her a mate. She will bathe, dress, and meet him. Today.”

The words struck like a hammer to the chest. I stared, unblinking, while the floor seemed to tilt beneath me.

And then he turned and left. Just like that. My mother hovered, torn between staying and chasing after him, her lips trembling with words she didn’t dare speak.