Perfect Luna, Double Crowned

Chapter 10 – Terms of a Truce

The word hung in the cave like smoke.

Truce.

Not peace. Not pardon. Just a thin strip of ground between two cliffs, and me standing in the middle with my veins tied to both sides.

Taryn cleared her throat, the sound too loud. “If you two are done counting teeth, the patrols still need assignments.”

Rylan’s jaw worked, but he nodded once. “Outside,” he said without looking away from Caelan. “Give us a minute.”

She hesitated, flicked a glance at me, then slipped past Caelan and out into the gray light.

The cave felt smaller with just the three of us.

I dragged in a breath. “If this truce is going to be more than a word, we need rules.”

Caelan’s mouth twitched. “Of course we do. You’d make treaties for breakfast if we let you.”

“Breakfast treaties keep you from bleeding on my floors,” I said. “Rule one: no crossing each other’s borders with teeth out unless someone’s actually dying.”

“That narrows it down to half our social life,” Rylan muttered, but his shoulders eased a fraction.

“Rule two,” I went on. “You don’t drag me out of anyone’s camp in front of their wolves. If you have a problem, you take it to me. Not them. Not your beta. Me.”

Caelan’s gaze cut to the fang at my throat, then back to my face. “Even if that problem is you vanishing into caves like this without a word?”

“Especially then,” I said. “You want to yell, you yell at me. You don’t turn packs into weapons because you’re hurt.”

He eyed me for a long moment, then nodded once. “Fine.”

Rylan’s jaw clenched. “And when my wolves see her in Moonfang’s circle with your wreath on her head?”

“They already did,” I said. “And I survived. So did you when your charm ended up where everyone could see it.”

Both their gazes hit the fang again.

Heat prickled under my skin. “That’s rule three,” I said. “No more secrets about me. Not to your packs, not between you. If someone asks who I am to you, you tell them the truth. All of it. I’m done hiding.”

Caelan’s brows rose. “You realize what that means, don’t you? Two packs of traditional idiots processing the phrase ‘shared Luna’ in real time.”

“Yes,” I said. “I also realize the alternative is finding out on a battlefield when someone shouts it for you.”

Rylan’s lips thinned. “She’s right.”

“About the battlefield or the idiots?” Caelan asked.

“Both.”

For a heartbeat, something almost like reluctant amusement flickered between them. It faded fast, but it was there.

“Fine,” Caelan said. “We go back and tell them. In our own words. No spin. No curses.”

“Minimal curses,” Rylan amended.

“Acceptable,” I said. “And rule four—”

“Four?” Caelan echoed. “How many—”

“Four,” I repeated. “If I say stop, you stop. Fight, argument, ritual, whatever it is. I’m not doing this if I have to drag you apart by the throats every time we share a clearing.”

Their eyes met over my head. Measuring. Pushing. Something silent passed there.

“All right,” Rylan said finally. “If she calls stop, I stop.”

Caelan’s jaw flexed. “Same.”

The bonds inside me shifted, testing the new shape of things. Two pulls, still opposite, but no longer trying to tear the same piece of me at once.

For now.

Outside, a howl cut through the air—short, sharp, not from either camp. Alarm.

Rylan’s head snapped toward the cave mouth. “That’s the south patrol,” he said. “Too close to the human road.”

My hand was already on my pack. “Traps again?”

“Or hunters,” Caelan said, grim. “Either way, your treaties are going to get their first field test.”

“Perfect,” I said. My heart was already picking up speed, bonds tightening as Stormclaw’s fear flickered at the edge of my awareness and Moonfang’s bristled to match.

I moved toward the cave mouth.

Behind me, two sets of footsteps fell into stride. Neither ahead. Neither behind.

For the first time, when I ran toward trouble, both my kings ran with me.