Perfect Luna, Double Crowned

Chapter 23 – The Pit on the Map

The word “quarry” tasted like dust and old bone.

We left Ash and Eli under tight guard—Rowan would have opinions about their long‑term fate, but tonight, ropes and three rotating pairs of eyes would hold. The rest of us fell back to a wider glade, where we could talk without the trappers’ stares clawing down our backs.

Someone lit a small fire, banked low under a rock overhang. The circle that formed around it was ragged but real: Moonfang on one arc, Stormclaw on the other, a thin seam of shared ground where I stood with Caelan and Rylan.

Rylan dropped a battered map onto a flat stone, smoothing the creases. Roads and tree lines crisscrossed it, human names scrawled along the edges, old wolf markers layered over top.

“The Pit,” he said, tapping the north‑east quadrant. “There’s only one place she could mean.”

The ink there was smudged, where years of fingers had avoided or pressed too hard.

An old scar in the land. I knew it before he circled it: a jagged oval, dark hash marks diving inward.

Ashridge’s abandoned stone quarry.

Of course.

“Perfect,” I said, too lightly. “Homecoming.”

Caelan’s jaw tightened. “You’ve been there recently?”

“Not since…” I swallowed. “Not since just after the fall. Humans fenced it off. Too unstable, they said. Deep shafts, bad rock. We avoided it. Packs took that as a sign the Moon didn’t want us poking the wound.”

“And Draven heard ‘no one’s watching,’” Kade said grimly.

Liora leaned in, eyes narrowed. “Quarry’s good ground for an ambush. High walls. One entrance you think you can see. Too many holes you can’t.”

“Good echoes too,” Jace added. “You yell in the right place, everyone hears it different.”

Rylan’s finger traced the old access road. “Humans still use this?”

“Sometimes for dumping,” I said. “Not often. Most of the time it’s kids with beer and bad ideas.”

Finn, hovering behind my shoulder, frowned. “Why blood moons?”

“Because she’s dramatic,” I said. “And because the magic runs thicker on those nights. Easier to twist. Harder to hide from.”

“Four nights,” Taryn said. “She’ll expect us to follow the same pattern. Snare, scream, Luna runs.”

“We won’t,” I said. “We’ll be waiting where she thinks she’s safe.”

Caelan studied the map, then looked at me. “Tell us everything you remember.”

Not a request. Not a demand. An anchor.

So I went back.

“The main pit drops fast,” I said, drawing a circle around the quarry mark, muscles tightening with each stroke. “Forty feet of bad rock to the first ledge, then steeper. Three service ramps—here, here, and here.” I sketched rough lines. “Humans fenced the top after a kid broke his neck. The fences are rotten now.”

“And underground?” Rylan asked.

I hesitated. “There are tunnels. Old extraction shafts. We played in them as pups until the elders caught us. They go deep. Some connect to the river. Some don’t go anywhere at all.”

“Perfect place for someone who likes controlling where everyone stands,” Caelan said.

“Exactly,” I said. “She can see, we can’t. So we change that.”

“How?” Finn asked, leaning forward until Taryn tugged his hood back out of the fire’s reach.

“We don’t walk in blind,” I said. “We scout from above. We use human eyes where wolves can’t go without raising every alarm.”

Nyra’s face flashed in my mind. Elias’s.

Rylan’s brows drew together. “Humans?”

“Some of them owe me,” I said. “And some already think the quarry’s haunted. We give them a reason to stay away on blood moons and a reason to look the other way if trucks start moving at strange hours.”

“We can barely keep the current lies straight,” Caelan pointed out. “You want to add more?”

“I want less bullets aimed at moving shadows,” I said. “If we’re pulling half the forest toward the Pit, we don’t need curious hunters on the rim filming it.”

That landed. Slowly, reluctantly, heads nodded.

“Fine,” Rylan said. “You and your humans work the top. We’ll work the stone.”

He tapped three points around the quarry circle. “Moonfang takes east and south rim. Stormclaw takes west and north. Mixed teams cover the ramps. No one goes below the lip until we know exactly where she’s standing.”

“And me?” I asked.

“Topside,” Caelan said immediately.

“Center,” Rylan countered.

They stared at each other across the map.

“If Draven wants her as badly as these idiots say,” Caelan said, “we don’t dangle Kaela over the deepest hole in the forest.”

“She’ll expect that,” Rylan said. “She wants to drag you into a fight over who ‘gets’ to protect her. We don’t give her that. We put Kaela where she can see all of us. Where all of us can see her.”

I cleared my throat. “You know I can hear you.”

“Good,” Caelan said. “Pick a side.”

“No,” I said. They both blinked. “I pick the middle. Top rim, not the pit. Somewhere I can get down if I have to, but not before we’re ready.”

“Luna—” Caelan started.

“Kaela,” Rylan cut in at the same time.

I planted my finger on the map, on a narrow outcrop jutting into the quarry ring.

“Here,” I said. “This ledge. Above the main ramp. I can see the floor, the ropes, and anyone trying to sneak up behind us. You ring me with mixed scouts—Moonfang on one side, Stormclaw on the other. If she comes for me, she has to show her face to both packs.”

Silence.

It wasn’t a perfect plan. There wasn’t one. But the outcrop gave us angles, not just teeth.

Liora exhaled slowly. “It’s stupid,” she said. “And probably what Rowan would call ‘inevitable.’”

“Rowan will call it ‘ill‑advised,’” I said. “Then help anyway.”

Caelan slowly nodded. “Fine. That ledge. But you don’t go near it without at least four wolves in arm’s reach.”

“Eight,” Rylan amended.

“Six,” I bargained. “Two from each pack and two who answer to neither council.”

“Who answers to neither?” Kade asked.

“You, when you’re not being an ass,” I said. “And Jace, when he’s not tripping over his own jokes.”

They both sputtered. That helped.

“We have four nights,” Taryn said. “We can’t move everyone at once without humans noticing.”

“Then we don’t,” I said. “We move in threads, not a river. Small groups. Training disguised as hunts. Sickness runs. Whatever excuses your packs use to stretch their legs.”

“And you?” Caelan asked.

“I go to town,” I said. “I talk to Elias about ambulances that ‘accidentally’ take the long road around the quarry for the next week. I talk to Nyra about kids with bad ideas. I make sure if anything goes loud up there, it doesn’t turn into a spotlight.”

Finn shivered. “Feels like the night before a storm.”

“Good,” Rylan said quietly. “We’re tired of being the trees that get hit. Time to be the lightning.”

The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks upward. For a second, they looked like stars trying to punch through the cloud cover.

Four nights.

Four nights to move packs, warn humans, map tunnels, and prepare to drag my worst nightmare into the open.

“Get some sleep,” I said, more to myself than anyone else. “Tomorrow we start pulling every thread she thinks she owns.”