The Luna Who Burned The Pack

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The scent of blood and burnt ozone lingered in the quiet cabin, thick and suffocating despite the cool morning breeze slipping through the high, narrow windows.

Curran remained seated on the edge of the wooden mattress, his eyes fixed on the floorboards between his feet. The dark, sprawling veins across his chest were already fading back beneath his tan skin, receding into the background like tides pulling away from a jagged shore.

I stood near the cherrywood table, holding the damp cloth in my hands. The white linen was stained with a mixture of dark blood and a strange, soot-like residue that had dissolved from his wounds under my fingers.

Curran exhaled slowly, the sound heavy and ragged. He pulled his dark shirt off the back of a nearby chair and draped it over his broad shoulders, leaving it unbuttoned.

"You're quiet," he said softly, without looking up.

"I'm waiting," I replied. My voice sounded remarkably steady, though inside, the ground felt as if it were shifting beneath my boots. "You said you would explain everything. You promised me answers when the moon passed."

Curran’s shoulders dropped a fraction. He rubbed his face with both hands, a weary gesture that looked so raw and human on a man whose name was used to frighten children in the Dark Moon territories.

"Come here, Violet," he murmured, rising to his feet and walking over to the carved cherrywood table. He reached down to a leather satchel resting against the leg of the table—a bag he had brought with him from Dark Moon the day he took me—and unbuckled its rusted brass clasps.

I stepped closer, watching his large hands with a sharp, guarded focus.

From the depths of the worn leather, Curran drew out a small, leather-bound volume. Its covers were scuffed and faded, the edges of the thick paper dark with age and hand-oils. Across the spine, faint gold lettering had flaked away, leaving only impressions in the leather.

He placed it gently onto the center of the wooden table between us.

"What is that?" I asked, my gaze fixed on the book. A strange, prickling sensation hummed along the back of my neck, the same low vibration I had felt when I touched the shadow-beast’s fur hours ago.

"A record," Curran said, his voice deep and measured. "And a diary. I searched for this for three years."

He pulled out a chair and indicated for me to sit. I lowered myself slowly, keeping my eyes on the book as if it might spring to life. Curran did not sit; he stood beside the table, leaning one broad hand on its surface, his shadow stretching long across the floorboards.

"Three years ago," Curran began, "when the shadow-beast’s pull became too strong to ignore, I realized the curse would claim me by my thirtieth birthday if I did not find the cure. The ancient records left by the Bone Keepers were clear: only a descendant of the Emberveil Coven—a true fire-blood—could break the three-part curse laid upon the Sharpblade line."

"The coven your grandfather slaughtered," I said quietly.

"Yes," Curran admitted, his jaw tightening. "My grandfather slaughtered them. But he did not kill them all. One survived—Seraphine, who cursed us. And another escaped into hiding."

He reached out and flipped open the cover of the journal. The paper was delicate, brittle at the edges. Written in dark, elegant script across the opening page was a name that made my breath catch in my chest.

Coraline Harpsichord.

My mother’s name.

My fingers twitched against my thighs. "My mother... she was a fire-blood?"

"She was the last known daughter of the Emberveil line," Curran said, staring at the written page. "I spent three years tracking her bloodline across the northern territories. I followed breadcrumbs, old pack ledgers, and whispered rumors through five different territories until the trail finally led me straight to Dark Moon Pack."

The room seemed to shrink around me. The air grew dense, heavy with the weight of years spent in dirt and misery.

"You came to Dark Moon for her," I whispered, the pieces clicking together with sickening precision. "You didn't invade Dark Moon to expand your territory or take slaves. You came for my mother."

"I came expecting Coraline Harpsichord," Curran said, his dark green eyes turning to meet mine. "I believed she was hiding there. I intended to bring her here, to offer her protection, wealth, anything she desired in exchange for helping me break the curse. But when my scouts gathered intelligence inside Gideon Moon's borders..." He paused, his expression darkening. "I learned she had been dead for sixteen years."

A cold lump formed in my throat. Sixteen years. Sixteen years of scrubbing floors, eating scraps out of the dirt, enduring Sasha's boiling soup, Beta Holloway's brutal enforcement, and Alpha Gideon's utter disdain.

"I thought the bloodline was extinct," Curran continued, his tone low and grave. "I thought my last hope was gone. But then my scouts brought me another piece of news. Coraline had left behind a child. A girl deemed worthless. A wolfless runt. An enslaved servant kept in the dirt of the pack house."

He leaned in slightly, his gaze holding mine so intensely I couldn't look away.

"I didn't take you as a sacrifice, Violet. And Gideon Moon didn't give you up because he was clever. I demanded the runt. I gave him a choice: surrender the girl he treated as garbage, or watch his pack house burn that very afternoon. He threw you to me because he thought he was tricking me into taking trash off his hands."

My mind whirled, spinning over every memory of my life in Dark Moon. The beatings. The hunger. The absolute certainty everyone had projected onto me that I was a broken thing, a mistake of nature, a girl without a wolf or a purpose.

"If my mother was a fire-blood..." My voice trembled slightly, but I forced the words out. "Then what am I?"

"You are an Emberveil fire-blood," Curran said plainly. "You carry the magic of fire fused with the ancient wolf bloodline. You are not a runt, Violet. You never were."

"Then why don't I have a wolf?" I demanded, standing up so fast the wooden chair scraped loudly against the floor. "Why can't I feel fire? Why did I spent twenty-three years getting beaten by omegas and pushed into the lake by enforcers if I have this power?"

Curran didn't flinch at my sudden outburst. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a small piece of folded parchment, and laid it beside my mother's journal.

"Because your power was stolen from you," Curran said. "Or rather, locked away."

I stared at the parchment. "Locked away?"

"Your fire. Your wolf. Your senses. Everything that makes you what you are was bound beneath an ancient witch seal when you were an infant," Curran explained, his voice growing dangerously sharp around the edges. "A dark magic suppressant, anchored directly into your bloodline. It blocked your wolf from emerging on your sixteenth birthday. It kept your fire dormant. It made you appear weak, frail, and entirely human."

My hands began to shake. I gripped the edge of the cherrywood table to steady myself, my knuckles turning white. The wood beneath my fingers felt faintly warm, but I barely registered it.

"Who did it?" I asked. My voice wasn't loud. It wasn't hysterical. It was stripped of all emotion, reduced to a whisper that cut through the silent cabin like a drawn blade. "Who sealed me?"

Curran went very quiet.

The silence stretched between us, long and tense, filled only by the distant sounds of Camp Sharpblade waking up outside—the barking of camp dogs, the faint ringing of iron from the forge, the voices of children running near the farmlands.

Curran stepped closer to me, his massive frame blocking out the pale morning light from the window. His silver-edged green eyes burned with an old, dark fury as he looked down at me.

"Gideon Moon," Curran said, his voice dropping into a register so deep and quiet it made the dust motes in the air settle. "He knew what you were from the day you were born. And he was terrified of you."