Perfect Luna, Double Crowned

Chapter 22 – What Rot Looks Like

We tied them to a tree because killing them on the spot would have been too easy.

Rylan’s wolves used Stormclaw knots—quick, brutal, efficient. Caelan added one more loop himself, a Moonfang twist that would tighten if they tried to wriggle free. Eli watched every movement with wide, sick eyes. The first trapper—Ash, he’d snapped when Taryn demanded a name—just stared at me like I was the one with wire in my hands.

“Comfortable?” Kade asked, flicking his blade in a way that made clear he didn’t especially care.

Ash bared his teeth. “Thought you healer types didn’t do this.”

“I stitch flesh,” I said. “Rot’s different.”

He laughed, short and harsh. “She said you’d say something noble.”

“She misremembered me,” I said.

We’d pulled back from the creek to a ring of rock and root a little up‑slope, out of sight of the road. Fires were a bad idea this close to human routes, so the only light came from moonsheen and the faint glow of Caelan’s eyes.

Stormclaw and Moonfang formed a loose semi‑circle around the prisoners. Not shoulder to shoulder, not yet—but close enough that if either human bolted, they’d hit fur before tree line.

“So,” Rylan said, voice flat. “You run errands for Draven. You string snares. You bait pups. Why?”

Ash’s jaw tensed. “Because she’s right. The forest forgot how to cut away the weak. She’s reminding it.”

“And you’re what?” Caelan asked. “Her scissors?”

Something flickered in Ash’s expression. Pride. “Her hands.”

Eli made a choked sound. “We were supposed to watch,” he blurted. “Signal if any of you came too close. Not get caught.”

“Great job on that,” Taryn said. “Truly inspiring.”

Eli’s shoulders hunched. “She said the Luna would always choose the road. That if we set enough humans screaming, you’d ignore the trees.”

My stomach knotted. “Because if I chased humans, wolves would die in traps. If I chased wolves, humans would die on the road. Either way, more bodies, more fear, more war.” I shook my head. “She’s efficient, I’ll give her that.”

Ash sneered. “You broke the cycle at the road. You should’ve let him die.”

“Like at Ashridge?” I asked softly. “That how she told the story?”

His eyes flared. “She told us you ran. That while your pack bled, you were hiding in human halls learning how to put bandages on the disease instead of cutting it out.”

The words hit, because there was just enough truth tangled in them to hurt.

“I ran,” I said. “Because my Alpha tried to trade my throat for more power. Because your bright Draven thought a few strategic deaths were worth a better treaty. I didn’t have a knife big enough to cut that out from the inside.”

“You had teeth,” he shot back.

Behind me, a growl rolled through the wolves—Stormclaw and Moonfang together. I felt it in my bones.

“Enough,” Rylan said. “You want to worship a butcher, that’s your business. You start hanging our colors on your traps, it becomes ours.”

“She’s clearing the sickness,” Ash said. “You’re too close to see it. Sleeping with your enemies. Sharing Luna.” He spat the word like it tasted foul. “You think that makes you strong. It makes you soft. Slow. Easy to cut.”

“I watched Ashridge die from the inside,” I said, voice low. “Do you know what that looked like? Not strong wolves fighting worthy battles. It was children screaming under falling stone because someone wanted a cleaner border on a map.”

Ash’s nostrils flared. “Ashridge fell because it forgot old law.”

“Ashridge fell,” I said, “because people like Draven decided they knew better than the Moon what lives were worth keeping. Because they thought rot in a pretty pattern was still wood.”

Rowan’s words, thrown back through my teeth.

Eli’s gaze snapped to me. “You knew her. Before.”

“Long enough to know she likes playing surgeon with other people’s bodies,” I said. “And that she doesn’t like being surprised.”

Rylan’s eyes glinted. “Then she’s going to hate tonight.”

“Where is she?” Caelan asked, stepping closer to Ash. Not looming, exactly, but there was a reason even full‑grown wolves remembered not to test him. “You set snares. You pass orders. You’ve seen her.”

Ash’s mouth thinned. “You think you’re hunters now? You’re still prey. You just bit the hook.”

Caelan’s hand fell on his shoulder. Not hard. Heavy.

“We can do this cheerfully,” Caelan said. “Or we can do it the Stormclaw way.”

“Stormclaw doesn’t torture,” Rylan said, but there was no warmth in it. “We’re more… surgical.”

Ash swallowed.

I stepped in before that line could get blurrier than I wanted it.

“We could drag names out of you one scream at a time,” I said. “Or we could trade.”

Eli’s head jerked up. “Trade?”

“You walked into this thinking you were weapons,” I said. “You’re not. You’re witnesses. Pawns. The second you fail, you become loose ends. She will cut you just as clean as she wants to cut us.”

Ash’s bravado wavered, just for a heartbeat. Eli saw it. Hope flared in his scent—thin, desperate.

“If we talk,” Eli said, licking dry lips, “if we tell you where she meets us, what she’s planning… what then?”

“Then you don’t go back,” I said. “Ever. You pick exile, or you sit under Rowan’s eye until he decides you’re more useful alive than buried. You won’t like either. But you’ll be breathing.”

“And if we don’t talk?” Ash asked.

Rylan’s voice went very, very quiet. “Then you leave this clearing in pieces, and I tell my pups I used every chance I had to stop more snares from going up.”

The matter‑of‑fact way he said it made even a few wolves shift uneasily.

Ash looked from Rylan to Caelan. To the circle of wolves. To me.

“You’d really keep us,” he said slowly. “After what we’ve done. After what we tried to do to your… precious balance.”

“I’d keep you where I can see you,” I said. “Where you’re not stringing wire around children’s throats on her orders. Where maybe, one day, you figure out she fed you a story because she needed hands, not truth.”

Ash stared at me.

Then he laughed. Not harsh this time. Tired. A sound that belonged to someone older.

“You sound like her,” he said. “Did you know that? Same fire. Different direction.”

“She can keep the fire,” I said. “I’ll take the forest.”

Eli flinched as if I’d struck him. “She said you’d say that too.”

“Then she really doesn’t know me anymore,” I said.

Silence stretched, thin as a snare wire.

Finally, Eli spoke, voice barely above a whisper. “Old quarry,” he said. “North of the human town. She calls it the Pit. Meets us there on blood moons. Next one’s in four nights.”

Ash’s head snapped toward him. “Eli, don’t—”

“She’s not coming back for us,” Eli said, eyes on me. “Is she.”

I didn’t lie. “No.”

Ash sagged against the ropes, something hollowed out behind his eyes.

“Four nights,” Caelan said. “Is that enough time to move the whole forest?”

“For a properly motivated forest,” Rylan said, “yes.”

Kade exhaled, low. “And here I thought this week couldn’t get any messier.”

Finn edged closer to me, eyes huge. “You’re really going after her.”

“Yes,” I said. My voice didn’t shake. “We are.”

The bonds inside me tightened, not with fear this time, but with something like grim alignment.

For years, Draven had been a wound I couldn’t see, only feel—the ache behind every trap, every pointless death, every push toward war.

Now she had a name on our tongues, a place on our map, and two packs she’d tried to break staring straight at her shadow.

Rot liked the dark.

We were about to drag it into the open and see what, exactly, we were dealing with when the forest stopped being hers and started being ours again.