The Luna Who Burns: Rejected, Exiled, Returned As Queen

The petition

*Chapter 6: The Petition

Darius came back at sunrise. Not with warriors. With paper.

He stood at our broken door holding a leather scroll tube, sealed with blue wax. The Blue Moon Pack seal. A wolf howling at a crown. I hated that symbol.

Lady Morrow was with him, plus two Council scribes. Witnesses. This was official.

Lia was still asleep. Thank the Goddess for small mercies.

“Wren of Greyvale,” Lady Morrow said. Using the fake name helped. It reminded everyone I was a citizen, not a runaway Luna. “The Alpha King has filed a Petition of Paternity and Custody under Treaty Law 7B.”

Elise handed me tea. My hands were shaking too bad to hold it.

“He claims the child Lia is his biological daughter,” Morrow continued. “Born of his former mate, Aria of the Blue Moon Pack. He claims you are Aria. He claims you hid his heir.”

Three claims. All true. All dangerous.

Darius hadn’t spoken yet. He watched me over Morrow’s shoulder. He’d changed out of the armor. Now he wore dark wool and leather, like a traveling lord. No crown. He was trying to look... human. It wasn’t working. Power rolled off him in waves.

“Say something,” Elise muttered to me.

I set the tea down. “I’m Wren. I’m a healer. That’s my daughter.”

“A blood test will prove—” Darius started.

“We are not in your pack lands,” Lady Morrow cut him off. “No blood. No wolves. No force. The Treaty is clear. You must prove _intent_ and _benefit_.”

Intent. He had to prove he intended to be a father. Benefit. He had to prove Lia was better off with him.

He unrolled the scroll. It was three feet long. “My intent,” he read, voice flat. “One: To recognize Lia of Greyvale as Lia of the Blue Moon Pack, my legal daughter and heir. Two: To grant her all rights, titles, and protections thereof. Three: To provide for her education, safety, and training as befits her station.”

Station. Like she was a horse he was buying.

“And the benefit?” Morrow asked.

He looked up from the scroll. Right at me. “She will be a Princess. She will have guards. Teachers. A future. Not... this.” He gestured at our shop. At the broken door. At the dried herbs hanging from the ceiling.

Heat flooded my face. “She has a home. She has love. She has a mother who didn’t throw her away.”

The scribes stopped writing. Even Morrow blinked.

Darius’s jaw clenched. “I didn’t know about her.”

“You didn’t ask!” I was shouting again. “You rejected me because I was wolfless. Did you ever think why? Did you ever ask a healer? Did you ever—”

“Mama?”

We all froze.

Lia stood in the doorway to the back room. Hair tangled. Green nightgown. Clutching her stuffed rabbit. Her amber eyes went from me to Darius and got wide.

“You came back,” she said to him. Not scared. Curious.

Darius made a sound. Like someone punched him. He went to one knee again, scroll forgotten on the floor. “Yes. I came back.”

“Are you still mad?”

“No.” His voice cracked. “No, little one. I’m not mad.”

She padded forward. I wanted to grab her. Elise put a hand on my arm. _Let her_, her eyes said. _The Council is watching._

Lia stopped two feet from Darius. She studied him. “You have my eyes.”

“I do.”

“Did Mama have your eyes too?”

The question was so innocent it broke something in the room. One of the scribes actually put her pen down.

Darius looked at me. For the first time, I saw it. Not anger. Not entitlement. Grief. Five years of it.

“Yes,” he told Lia. “Your Mama had the whole world in her eyes. And I was stupid enough to lose it.”

He was good. I’d give him that. He was playing the Council, playing me, playing Lia. Or maybe he wasn’t playing. Maybe five years of thinking I was dead, thinking his heir was dead, had actually changed him.

I didn’t care. I couldn’t afford to care.

“Lia,” I said, keeping my voice soft. “Go with Madame Elise. Have some breakfast.”

“But—”

“Now, baby.”

She looked between us, then huffed and went. Elise followed, throwing me one look. _Be careful._

When she was gone, Darius stood up. The softness was gone. Back to King.

“I want shared custody,” he said to Morrow. “Six months in the pack house. Six months here. Until she’s ten. Then she chooses.”

My blood went cold. “You want to take my five-year-old to the place you exiled me from?”

“I want my daughter to know her people.”

“She _has_ people. Here.”

“She has a human healer and a Council witch,” he snapped. “She’s an Alpha’s daughter. She needs to learn control before her wolf comes in. Or she’ll kill someone.”

That shut me up. He was right. I hadn’t thought about that. Lia floating things was cute at five. At fifteen, if she lost her temper, she could level the market.

Lady Morrow wrote something down. “The mother’s wolf status?”

Darius answered before I could. “Active. As of five years ago.”

He smelled it on me. Of course.

“And your wolf?” Morrow asked me.

I lifted my chin. “Active.”

It wasn’t a lie. Lyra was awake. She’d been awake since Lia was born. Quiet, but awake. Watching. Waiting.

“Then the child will likely present as Alpha,” Morrow said. “High risk. High power.” She looked at me. “Wren. Can you train her?”

Could I? I was a rejected Luna. I never got Alpha training. I knew herbs. I knew healing. I didn’t know how to teach a future Alpha Queen not to accidentally kill her classmates.

“I can learn,” I said.

“She’ll have the best tutors in the territory,” Darius said. “Warriors. Historians. Politics. Everything she needs.”

“Everything _you_ think she needs,” I shot back. “You think a crown is safety. It’s a target. I know. I wore it.”

“You wore it for six months before you—” He stopped himself.

“Before I what? Before I got pregnant? Before I went wolfless? Before I became inconvenient?”

The scribes were writing very fast now.

Lady Morrow held up a hand. “Enough. The Council will deliberate. Alpha King, you will not approach the child without the mother present. Wren, you will not leave Greyvale city limits until a decision is made.”

She rolled up Darius’s scroll. “We will reconvene in three days. At the Council Hall. Both parties will present their case for the child’s benefit.”

Three days. I had three days to prove I was better for Lia than a King.

Darius nodded once. He didn’t look at me again. He walked out. His warriors followed.

When they were gone, Elise came back. Lia wasn’t with her.

“She’s in the back, reading,” Elise said. “I told her you and the tall man were talking grown-up stuff.”

I sank into a chair. My legs were done. “He’s going to win, Elise. He’s a King. He has money. Teachers. An entire pack. I have... this.” I waved at the shop.

“You have five years,” Elise said. “You have her love. You have truth. And you have something he doesn’t.”

“What?”

She smiled, sharp and old. “You’re her mother. And you chose her. Every day for five years. He chose power.”

It sounded nice. But Council Law didn’t care about nice. It cared about benefit.

I looked at the broken door. At the winter light coming through.

“Three days,” I said. “I need to become the better choice in three days.”

Elise pulled the map back out. The one with my mother’s village marked.

“Then we better start,” she said.