Daughter of the Moon

Chapter 3 – The Bond That Never Was

Cayden’s POV

The sound of shattering glass still rang in my ears. My wolf snarled under my skin, ready to leap after her, but my feet wouldn’t move.

Luna’s wolf had been… breathtaking. So white it was blinding, her fur catching the moonlight like shards of ice. But it wasn’t just her beauty that had stolen my breath.

It was the emptiness.

No bond. No pull. No spark.

Nothing.

For twenty-three years, I’d been told she was mine. That we were destined to rule together. That the prophecy demanded it. And in one heartbeat, the future I’d been raised for shattered into dust.

“Find her!” Alpha Zade’s roar rattled the walls. “No one sleeps until my daughter is back within these walls!”

I forced myself to focus, but my thoughts kept circling back to her eyes. I’d known Luna since she was a pup ,since the day she tried to sneak into the training yard and ended up flat on her back when my wolf nudged her into the snow. I’d protected her, teased her, fought alongside her. And now… she was gone in more ways than one.

Six months ago, I’d passed Sarah’s office and caught part of a conversation that had never left me.

“The signs are appearing too early,” she had whispered into the phone. “The markings on her skin, the dreams she keeps having… If Luna finds out what really happened to her mother—”

The rest had been muffled. I’d heard the words Council and risk, but without proof, without context, I’d convinced myself it was nothing. Now I wasn’t so sure.

“Cayden!” Zade’s voice snapped me back. “You’re the fastest tracker we have. Lead the search north. I’ll take the south.”

I nodded, shifting into my wolf ,midnight black, built for speed. Snow began to fall as I ran, the world blurring around me. But I knew I wasn’t following her trail.

I was following a pull.

And it was leading me to the only person who might understand what I’d just seen — the one person Sarah had always warned me to stay away from.

The exiled Lorekeeper of the Northern Packs. My grandmother.

Her cottage stood at the edge of wolf territory, shrouded in wards older than the Council itself. As I approached, the air thickened with magic, and flickers of memory rose , my father as a boy, training with Zade; Luna’s mother running through these same woods; Sarah standing over a ritual circle, her eyes cold.

I shifted back to human form at the threshold, snow stinging my bare feet. Before I could knock, the door opened.

“I’ve been expecting you, grandson,” she rasped. Her silver hair glinted in the moonlight, her blind eyes fixing on me. “The Moonborn has awakened. And with her… something that should have stayed buried.”

She motioned for me to follow her deeper into the cottage, past shelves sagging with scrolls and jars of dried herbs. The fire crackled, throwing shadows against the walls.

“You want to know what she is?” Her voice was low, but it carried weight, as though the walls themselves leaned closer to listen.

I nodded. “Yes. I saw her shift… and it wasn’t like anything I’ve seen before.”

“That’s because she is Moonborn,” she said simply, as if naming the wind. She set the glowing tome on the table and flipped it open to a page inked in silver. A single image stared back a wolf so white it seemed carved from light, eyes burning like the moon.

“The prophecy was spoken long before you were born,” she continued. “It tells of a child born under a moon so bright it steals the shadows from the earth. That child will carry the Moonborn gene ,a gift from the Moon Goddess herself. This power can awaken in any bloodline, though it is strongest in those who descend from another Moonborn.”

Her fingers traced the page. “A Moonborn’s gifts are unlike a normal wolf’s. They command both moonlight and shadow, can bend energy into raw power, and… after the Second Rite, they may wield abilities the Goddess herself once held. Healing. Destruction. Creation.”

I frowned. “Then why hunt them?”

She looked up, her blind eyes clouded with memories. “Because power is only as safe as the one who holds it. Two centuries ago, a Moonborn named Elaria lost control after her Second Rite. Her magic consumed her, and in a single night, she destroyed half the werewolf world. The Council decided then no Moonborn would ever be allowed to reach full strength. Every time one was born, they would be found, contained… or killed.”

“And Luna”

“She is the first in a century,” my grandmother said, voice hardening. “They will fear her. They will hunt her. And if she survives the Second Rite…” She closed the book with a snap. “The world will change again — for better, or for ruin.”

A howl split the night — low, ancient, and powerful enough to make the protective wards shudder.

It wasn’t Luna.

And whatever it was, it was getting closer.

The hunt wasn’t over. It was just beginning.