He Rejected His Broken Luna. Now His Mad Wolves Beg for Her Touch

Chapter 11 – Back Down the Mountain

The next morning the sky is knife-clear, scrubbed clean by the night wind. It feels like the world is trying too hard to look innocent.

Roenan waits while I pack.

It doesn’t take long. I never really unpacked. My few clothes, the faded photo, Selvi’s pouch of herbs, the notebook with my messy, frantic notes about triggers and breath counts and what worked and what didn’t.

I run my thumb over the last page I wrote last night:

Fire on ridge. Flashback tried to bite. Stayed. Present. Pack field muted. Bond bruised but holding. Not hopeless.

For once, my own handwriting doesn’t look like a stranger’s.

“You sure you want to do this today?” Roenan asks quietly from the doorway. “We could take a few more days. Test the bond more. Build your strength.”

“If we wait,” I say, stuffing the notebook into the bag, “Vessira will have a week of unchallenged narrative. I’d rather show up while my bruises are still visible.”

He grimaces. “She’s going to hate that.”

“Good,” I echo his words from last night, surprising a small, fierce smile out of myself. “She doesn’t get to be the only one who hates things.”

He steps aside to let me pass. The clearing feels different in daylight—less like an island, more like a lookout point. The guards nod as we move by, unconsciously shifting formation to flank us.

“You don’t have to escort us all the way,” I tell them.

One of them, younger than me by a handful of years, shakes his head. “With respect, Luna, we’re not escorting you. We’re walking home with you.”

The word home lands differently this time. Not as a house I might be thrown out of, but as a place I might help rebuild.

We start down the trail.

The forest breathes around us—leaf-rustle, birdcall, distant rush of water. Each sound tests the edges of my nerves. A snapped twig. A rock skittering down the slope. The faint clang of metal from somewhere farther down the mountain as patrols adjust the firebreak.

My wolf flinches at some of it, but the old automatic lunge toward panic is… slower. The bond is there, humming in the background, Roenan’s presence woven through it like a thicker thread.

When the world tries to tilt, I lean into that thread, not away.

“Still with me?” he asks once, when the path narrows and the drop-off yawns to our left.

“Mostly,” I answer. “Tell me something stupid Garrik did last week.”

He huffs a laugh. “He tried to teach the new recruits his ‘secret’ feint. Tripped over his own feet and ended up on his ass in front of everyone.”

I cling to the image: Garrik, all stoic dignity, flailing in the dirt. It helps. Humor always did.

By the time the trees thin and the first rooftops of the packhouse appear, my shirt is damp with sweat and my hands ache from clenching and unclenching. But I’m still on my feet. I’m not dragging my body toward the edge of a border I didn’t choose.

The courtyard quiets as we step through the gate.

Of course word has already reached them. Wolves move like water when it comes to gossip. Conversations taper off. Children are tugged subtly closer to their parents. A ring of space opens in the center of the yard as we walk in, as if the pack itself is exhaling around us, not sure whether this breath will end in relief or an order to run.

I feel them. All of them.

Only this time, it’s like standing in shallow surf instead of under a wave. The weight is there, but the edge has been blunted. Roenan’s presence at my side takes most of the hit.

“I’ve got it,” he murmurs under his breath when he feels my back stiffen. “Focus here. On us. Let me handle the rest.”

So I let him.

We stop in the center of the courtyard. The last time I stood here with every eye on me, I’d just come back from nearly dying. I remember the way Roenan’s hand pressed into my shoulder then, solid and proud and terrified.

Now his hand finds mine.

Just that. No display, no claim.

Selvi stands near the front of the gathered wolves, eyes rimmed red but bright. Corren hovers at her shoulder. Nyla clutches a sketchbook to her chest. Garrik leans in the doorway of the training hall, arms folded, expression unreadable. Meren lurks near the infirmary steps.

Vessira is there too, of course. At the edge of the crowd, staff planted, face as inscrutable as ever.

Roenan’s voice rises, alpha-clear. “You all know why she left the house,” he begins. “You all felt what happened to her yesterday.”

A murmur shivers through the pack. Heads dip. Throats work.

“She nearly passed out,” someone mutters. “I felt it in my teeth.”

“Yes,” Roenan says. No hiding. “Because without warning or consent, someone in that council decided to show me how neatly our luna could be cut out of us.”

The words hang like smoke.

Gasps. Low growls. Eyes flick, almost as one, toward Vessira and the elder cluster.

“Old law,” one of the elders starts, chin lifting. “Invoked for the pack’s—”

“No,” Roenan says, and the word cracks like a whip. “Invoked without my consent. And without hers.”

He looks at me then. Just a glance, a question.

My heart is a drum in my throat. My wolf bares her teeth in agreement.

I take a step forward.

The pack’s attention hits like heat on my skin. My knees want to buckle. The bond twinges. Roenan’s hand tightens on mine.

“Hi,” I say, because anything more ceremonial will choke me. “It’s been… a week.”

There’s a startled bubble of nervous laughter. Good. Let them breathe.

“You’ve all seen what happens when my wolf panics,” I continue, voice shaking only a little. “You’ve seen what happens when I lose time. You’ve also seen what happens when we pretend that fear isn’t there and hope it goes away on its own.”

I let my gaze slide over the elders, then back to the younger faces. Selvi. Corren. Nyla. The boys and girls whose eyes mirror the way mine must have looked when I first came home bleeding.

“Yesterday,” I say, “someone tried to prove I could be neatly removed. Like a bad tooth. Like a threat.”

A low, angry rumble runs through the crowd.

“They were wrong,” I say simply. “What they actually proved is that we can change the way I carry you. The way any of us carries you. That we can pull the pack’s weight back when it crushes someone, without throwing them off the mountain.”

I pause, letting that sink in.

“I am not safe yet,” I add, blunt. “Not the way I was before that alley. But I am learning. We are learning. And I am done letting decisions about my fate be made in rooms I’m not allowed to enter.”

My eyes lock on Vessira’s.

“For as long as I am luna,” I say, feeling the word settle differently on my tongue, “I will stand here. In the center. Not because I am perfect, but because I am proof. That broken does not mean disposable. That unstable does not mean exile by default.”

Silence follows. Then, from somewhere near the back, a voice calls, shaky but clear:

“What if we’re scared?”

I don’t have to search for the speaker. I know fear when it touches my skin.

“Then you come talk to me,” I say. “You tell me exactly what scares you. And we work with that. Together. You don’t get to use it as an excuse to vote me off the island without ever once looking me in the eye.”

A few wolves huff in surprised amusement.

Roenan’s scent is a mix of pride and simmering rage. He steps forward enough for his voice to roll out over theirs like thunder.

“From this moment,” he says, “there will be no more talk of severing bonds in secret rites. If we discuss cutting someone out of this pack, they will be in the room. They will have a voice. And we will know that what we are choosing is not safety. It is amputation.”

His gaze rakes the elders. Vessira’s shoulders stiffen, then settle.

“This is not softness,” he finishes. “This is responsibility. For our wounded. For our fear. For the choices we live with afterward.”

He glances at me again, that question back in his eyes.

You still with me?

I squeeze his hand.

“For now,” I murmur, so only he can hear, “this is enough.”

The pack field hums, shifting, uncertain.

Not fixed. Not healed.

But, for the first time, tilting in our direction.