The Hidden Luna- Moon Crowned Trilogy by Serena Clare

The girl was running. She always ran in the beginning — not from fear, but toward something she couldn’t name, her dark hair pulling loose from whatever had pinned it, her feet bare against a forest floor that seemed to rise and soften for her, the way ground doesn’t move for anyone. I knew that. I also knew I was dreaming. Neither thing stopped me from following. The woods were silver-dark, the kind of light that doesn’t come from the moon so much as from the air itself. I could see her clearly enough: the curve of a shoulder, the turn of a wrist, the way she moved like she was almost flying and didn’t know it yet. She was always just ahead of me, her outline haunting me. She never looked back. She’s close, Ares said. He said it the way he said everything about her — with a certainty that had nothing to do with distance and everything to do with weight. Like something settled into its rightful place. I’d been hearing that tone in his voice for almost a year now. She’s been close before. Closer, he said, and went quiet. She stopped at the edge of a clearing. I couldn’t see her face. I never saw her face, not clearly, not all the way — just the impression of it, the shape, the fact of her, like recognizing a word in a language you haven’t spoken yet. She half-turned. There was something in her expression that caught in my chest like a hook. Sadness. Not the small kind. The quiet, practiced kind, the kind that has learned to take up very little space. I reached for her. The dream dissolved the way it always did — not breaking so much as thinning, like smoke going out. — I came awake with my pulse running hard. The Alpha Suite was quiet around me. Pre-dawn gray pressed against the floor-to-ceiling windows, the forest beyond barely separating itself from the sky. Old stone, warm wood, the stillness of a building that has been standing for a long time and doesn’t feel the need to announce it. I lay there for a moment, cataloging the familiar details the way I’d learned to when the dream left me like this — restless, irritated at my own body, vaguely furious at nothing specific. Almost a year, I told Ares. He didn’t answer. He was still somewhere in that clearing. I sat up and reached for my phone. Fourteen messages. One from the border patrol captain time-stamped 2:47 AM — rogue sighting, southern perimeter, non-aggressive, scouts dispatched. I typed a response before I was fully upright: Status? A reply came back in under a minute. Cleared. No casualties. I sent the follow-up orders — wider patrol rotation, incident report by morning briefing — and set the phone back down. The dream was already losing its edges. That was the other thing about it: it left quickly. I couldn’t hold onto the details no matter how hard I tried. Just that sense of her. That particular sadness in a half-turned face. Ares stirred. She is close, he said again. Different close. I got up. — The suite had its own kitchen, which I used primarily for coffee and stubbornness. I ran through my morning routine with the same precision I applied to everything else — four miles on the trail below the east wing, weights, shower, the discipline of being useful before anyone else required me to be. By the time Jackson appeared in the doorway, I was already dressed and working through the patrol report with a cup of coffee that had gone slightly cold. He looked like a man who had not slept at all. “Sit down,” I said, without looking up. “I’m fine.” “You look like something I’d send back to the field to rest. Sit down.” He sat. Jackson Hale had been my Beta for six years and my closest friend for twelve, which meant he was one of approximately three people on earth who could tell from the back of my head what kind of morning it was. He poured himself coffee, took a breath, and started talking. The situation wasn’t new, but it was worsening in the particular slow way of things that get overlooked until they can’t be anymore. Pack strain from the southern border tension — three families who’d applied to transfer to the Ashwood territory for the third time, and this time I was inclined to let them go, which Jackson thought was too easy. Trade negotiations with the Ironwood pack stalled again. The Elder Council’s latest recommendation landing in my inbox like a stone through glass: The Alpha of SilverMoon should consider his obligations to the continuity of leadership. The matter of a Luna— I set the papers down. “No,” I said. Jackson looked at his coffee cup. “Dom.” “I heard you the first twelve times.” “The Elders aren’t wrong that—” “The Elders,” I said, “are welcome to consider their own obligations to their own continuity.” I picked up the border report again. “Tell Councillor Ambrose the answer is still no.” Jackson was quiet for a long moment. The kind of quiet that meant he agreed with me but was going to say something responsible anyway, which was the tax I paid for having a Beta with a conscience. “The palace summons came in this morning,” he said. “Confirmed. Three weeks.” I turned a page. “I know.” “You’re going to need to present—” “I know what I need to present.” He exhaled. “You’re not sleeping.” “I’m sleeping.” “You’re having the dream again.” I looked up at him then, and he had the good sense to look at least mildly cautious. “Drop it,” I said. He dropped it. But I caught the way his shoulders shifted — for now he listed to his Alpha. But I know him. My Beta would pick this up again. It was why he was good at what he did and periodically exhausting to be around. The door swung open. Merrick came through it the way he did most things — without knocking and with the expression of someone who had just thought of something amusing and couldn’t wait to share it. “Morning,” he said. “The eastern trail is muddy, for the record. You’re both tracking it in.” He dropped into the chair across from Jackson, helped himself to the last of the coffee pot, and looked between us with the expression of a man arriving mid-argument. “What’d I miss?” “Nothing,” I said. “The dream,” Jackson said. I looked at Jackson. He looked at the window, choosing to ignore the heat coming from my glare. Merrick — my Gamma, and one of the only people on the planet who could push every single one of my tolerances and somehow still be alive — leaned back and said, thoughtfully, “Still the same girl?” “Drop it.” “Ares being dramatic about it?” “Merrick.” “I’m asking questions. It’s called conversation.” He drank his coffee. “Chloe’s been on about some new girl from the diner she’s working with, apparently they’re becoming friends. Very touching. She mentioned something about—” Ares shifted. A small thing, but Merrick caught my expression and paused. “Just a girl from the diner,” I said. “Right, yes. Just.” He gestured loosely. “The usual.” I turned back to the report. Ares was entirely too still in the back of my mind, which meant he was paying attention to something. What it was he wouldn’t share. Still, his last words slid across my mind. Closer. — The morning ran the way mornings did — full, structured, the particular momentum of a pack in motion. I handled the patrol debrief, reviewed the transfer requests, sent three responses to Ironwood that would delay things another two weeks without technically being obstructive, and declined the Elder Council’s latest query with language that was technically respectful and practically clear. By midmorning, I was at my desk in the study with the border maps and the week’s security rotation, and Jackson was at the secondary desk running logistics, and neither of us was talking much because this was how we worked best, and the room was quiet except for the scratch of pens and the distant sound of the pack going about its day below. Chloe appeared at lunch. She came in like a weather system — cheerful, slightly breathless, hair escaping her braid in the way it always did by noon — and immediately stole the piece of bread I had not gotten around to eating. Jackson tracked her across the room with the focus of a man who thought he was being subtle. He was not being subtle. I had decided not to mention this for another few weeks because watching it was the most entertainment I’d gotten out of a workday in months. “You’re going to the lake,” I said, before she could announce it. She stopped. “How do you—” “You have your lake bag.” She looked down at the bag she had apparently forgotten she was carrying. “I’m taking Anna. From the diner. She’s had a rough week.” “Be back before dark.” “It’s the lake, not the wilderness.” “It’s the south woods,” I said. “Merrick’s report this morning included a rogue sighting two ridges over. Non-aggressive, cleared, but be back before dark.” She sighed in the theatrical way that meant she was going to comply and simply needed to register her objection first. “You’re so paranoid.” “I’m thorough.” “Same thing.” She kissed the top of my head — something she’d done since she was seven and I’d never figured out how to make her stop, or whether I actually wanted to — and made for the door. “Her name is Annabelle, by the way. Not Anna. She just lets people call her that.” She was gone. Jackson watched the empty doorway for approximately three seconds before realizing he was still watching it and looking sharply back at his papers. I said nothing. Filed it away. Ares was quiet at the back of my mind. Not settled-quiet, though. Alert-quiet. The kind of stillness that isn’t rest. She’s close, he said, for the third time that morning. I looked at the patrol map. Three ridges over. Non-aggressive. Cleared. I told myself it was the rogue report that made my shoulders tighten. Told myself the unease settling into my chest was standard tactical caution. I was responsible for this pack, for its safety, for every single person inside these borders — including the ones who had no idea they were inside them. That was all it was. That had to be all it was. I went back to work. But by evening, something in me was still standing in that silver-dark clearing, reaching toward a girl I couldn’t see clearly, feeling the void.. wrongness of a world in which she was just out of reach.