The Luna Price

Chapter 3: Your Father Is Underground

My mother’s lullaby sounds different when the dead sing it. Slower. Like they have nowhere to be.

It faded at dawn. The silence it left was worse. I hadn’t slept. I hadn’t moved since Darius left. My back was against the cold stone wall, hands in my lap, palms up. I watched the black veins under my skin like they might spell out an answer.

The sweet, wrong smell from my own skin was stronger in the morning. Like black flowers blooming somewhere inside my chest.

The crack I made in the cell wall last night was wider. I hadn’t touched it.

I tried to remember my mother’s face. I kept getting the hospital bed instead. Seven white hairs at her temple. Hands that couldn’t hold a cup anymore. Hands that still tried to smooth my hair.

Three things were wrong that weren’t wrong yesterday:

My shadow on the floor was breathing. Slow. In and out. My own breath didn’t match it.

The pendant halves at my throat were warm. They hadn’t been warm since my mother died. I didn’t touch them.

I could hear underground. Not words. Pressure. Like something enormous turning over in its sleep.

Eighteen years my father looked at me like a mistake he couldn’t fix.

Last night he looked at me like a secret he couldn’t keep.

Those were different things.

I was only now learning how different.

Food slid under the door. I didn’t touch it. Dawn light hit the two halves of the pendant and threw two shadows on the wall instead of one.

Two shadows.

One body.

That should have frightened me more than it did.

The key turned. He was carrying my mother’s journal. Brown leather. Her name stamped into the cover.

Sela.

I stared at it. “Where did you get that?”

“She gave it to me,” he said. He set it on the floor between us. Didn’t sit. “The night before she died. She said—give it to Luna when she stops running.”

“I’m in a cell, Darius.”

“I know. That’s not the same as stopped running.” He pushed it toward me. “She said you’d say that too.”

I didn’t touch it yet. “What did you promise her?”

“To find your mate bond before someone weaponized it. To never leave you alone at a border.” He looked at the floor. “I was sixteen. She was dying. I would have promised her anything.”

“And the two years you called me useless. Was that part of the promise too?”

“No.” Flat. Honest. No excuse under it. “That was just me being a coward.”

“At least you know.”

“Luna—”

“What’s in the journal, Darius?” I looked at him. “You read it. I can tell. Your face is doing the thing it does when you know something you don’t want to say.”

His jaw tightened.

“What’s in it?”

Long pause. He crouched down. Eye level. Gold eyes. Completely still.

“Your father’s name,” he said. “Your real one.”

Silence. I picked up the journal.

The leather was warm under my fingers. Warmer than the pendant. Warmer than her hands ever were at the end. Like she’d just put it down. Like she’d been waiting for me to pick it up.

Darius waited by the door. I opened it. Three pages only. Never give everything at once.

Page 1

_Luna.

If you’re reading this then I’m gone and everything I hid is coming undone.

The Shadow Power isn’t a curse. It’s bloodline. It passes like eye color, like bone structure, like the shape of a mouth. You have it because I had it. I had it because my sister had it first.

My sister. You felt her last night. You know her voice now.

Don’t listen to it._

I stopped. Exhaled. Kept reading.

Page 2

_The man you call father—Alpha Cain—is not your father.

He knows. He has always known. He took you anyway. He loved you anyway. Whatever he did to hide you—it came from love. I need you to hold onto that when the rest of this breaks you.

Your real father’s name is Kael.

He was my mate. My chosen. The most powerful Shadow Wolf ever born.

He is also the reason my sister went underground.

He chose me over her. She never forgave either of us.

When she was sealed—he was sealed with her. Not as punishment.

As bait. For me. So I would break the seal to save him.

I didn’t.

Luna—if the seal breaks—he wakes with her. And he will come for you.

I don’t know if what’s left of him will still be your father.

I don’t know if love survives a hundred years underground._

I closed the journal. Didn’t speak.

Three questions I couldn’t say out loud:

The Shadow Queen wasn’t sealed as punishment. She was sealed as a trap. For my mother. That meant Mom chose to leave Dad underground rather than break the seal. What did that cost a person?

Kael. My father’s name was Kael. Was that whose voice I heard under hers? Was that the second pressure I felt below?

The seal cracked last night when I used the power. Did he already know I existed?

My mother left my father underground for twenty years to keep the world safe.

And then she sang me his lullaby every night.

I didn’t know if I wanted to find him.

I didn’t know if I was more afraid he was a monster.

Or that he wasn’t.

“—already read page two,” I said before he reached the door. “So you can skip the part where you decide how much to tell me.”

He stopped. Something left his face. Relief, maybe. The exhaustion of a secret finally dropped.

“Okay,” he said.

“Sit down or leave. Don’t stand in the door like you’re deciding.”

He sat. First time in my life I gave him an order. First time in my life he took it.

“Kael,” I said. “My father’s name.”

“Yes.”

“You knew him.”

“He was my Beta. Before.” His jaw moved. “Before your mother. Before the seal. Before everything.”

“Your Beta.” I let that sit. “So she left your Beta underground to keep the seal. And you raised his daughter and called her a disgrace.”

“I called you a disgrace to keep you alive.” His voice cracked—first time, ever. “The Shadow Hunters have a list. Every bloodline descended from Kael. You were on it the day you were born. A wolf-less, powerless Alpha’s disgrace is worthless to them. A Shadow Wolf heir is a death sentence.”

Silence.

“Did it work?” I said quietly.

“Until the border.” He looked at his hands. “Until you shifted.”

“And now?”

“Now the whole world knows what you are.”

He stood. Stopped at the door. “Kael felt the seal crack,” he said without turning. “I don’t know how much of him is left. But something down there felt you use the power.”

Something down there knows I exist.

“Is he dangerous?” I said.

The Alpha’s hands were shaking again. “He was the most dangerous man I ever knew,” he said. “And that was before a hundred years underground with your aunt.”

He left. I sat with that.

Alone. I closed my eyes and reached for the power deliberately. First time with a goal.

If he felt me—I want to feel him back.

I want to know what’s left.

The humming started in my chest. Low. Then—underneath it—a second frequency. Deeper. Like a drum under a river.

Warmth spread up my sternum, then something else. Cold. Coming from below. Not threatening. Careful. Like something very large trying not to frighten me.

My veins went black. Smoke poured from both palms. Then the smoke moved toward the floor—downward—like it was reaching.

Ozone, graveyard, my mother’s perfume—and something new. Rain on stone. Iron. Old forest.

Copper on my tongue. Ancient. And then—warmth. Like a hand on the back of my head. Like being held at six years old. A memory I didn’t have.

Something touched back. From below. Just once. Gentle. I felt it like a word with no sound. Like someone saying: _I know you’re there._

I pulled back fast. Released the power. Checked my hair. No new white strand. I only held it.

He’s alive, I thought. Whatever’s left of him—something is alive down there. And it recognized me.

The Shadow Queen’s voice—sharp, sudden, furious: “Don’t touch him,” she hissed from underground. First time she’d sounded like anything except amused.

She’s jealous, I realized.

She sealed her own mate underground for a hundred years and she’s still jealous.

That’s not love.

That’s a cage.

Night. I was alone with the journal. I turned to page three—the last page I’d read tonight.

Page 3

was shorter than the others. Just two lines. My mother’s handwriting shakier here—written later, I thought. Written when she was already losing time.

_If Kael surfaces before you’re ready—run.

If he surfaces and says he loves you—run faster.

Love and possession feel identical when the shadow power is involved. I learned that too late.

Don’t make my mistake._

I closed the journal.

Too late for what, Mom?

What was your mistake?

The cell went cold. Fast. Like something sucked the warmth out of the air.

My shadow on the wall stood up again. But this time it wasn’t smiling with the Shadow Queen’s wrong smile. It was standing straight. Still. Watching me.

And it was taller than my shadow should be.

Much taller.

“Hello, Luna.”

Not the Shadow Queen’s voice. Low. Careful. Like something that had been practicing how to sound human again.

“I’ve been waiting,” the tall shadow said. “A very long time.”

My pendant—both halves—burned white hot against my chest.

My mother’s warning rang in my skull: _run._

My feet didn’t move.

“You sound like the lullaby,” I said. My voice didn’t shake. I don’t know how.

The shadow was quiet for a moment. “Your mother taught it to me,” it said. “Before everything.”

Dad, I didn’t say.

I didn’t have to.

Far underground, the Shadow Queen screamed.