The Luna They Tried to Bury

Untitled Episode

Alison's Pov

The forest was endless.

I ran until my feet bled, until the trees blurred and my breath tore through my lips like a broken glass.

The wind howled louder than the voice in my head — the one that whispered Ryder's name, again and again, like a shadow I couldn't outrun.

I ran with the weight of betrayal lodged in my chest, with dirt in my nails and blood drying on my skin from the rogue attacks I had barely survived. My body was a map of bruises and claw marks. My spirit? Cracked but not yet broken.

Not yet.

Days blurred into so many nights I stopped counting. Hunger hollowed me out and grief gutted what little was left in me.

And just when I thought I'd found refuge, they found me.

Foreign wolves.

Maybe, not foreign wolves.

The Blue Moon Pack.

They hadn't come to the ball. Hadn't stood under the grand chandeliers or toasted to Tamara's power. They were outsiders like me. And when I collapsed at their border, too weak to shift or even escaped, I expected teeth. Hell, I expected death.

Instead I got Alpha Aidan.

He didn't ask who I was. Didn't even care about what I'd done.

He just looked at me — mud-caked, shivering, tired — and decided that I was his.

That night, they bathed me. Fed me. Let me sleep in a bed that didn't smell like rot and regret but kindness was just the beginning of the cage.

The first time he touched me, it wasn't gentle but it wasn't cruel either. It was possessive, like he was claiming something no one else dared to touch.

“You're mine now,” Aidan whispered in my hair in his tough, deep voice. “No one else will ever touch you again.”

Those words were supposed to make me feel safe. But I didn't. Instead, I felt owned.

Still, I let it happen.

I let him touch me because I didn't want to be alone anymore.

I let him f**k me because I felt some broken part of me needed to feel wanted.

In the end, it left bruises on my thighs, bites on my neck, earlobes and chest.

He never forced me but he never asked either.

It was just expected every night.

Every time he came to me, I hated how my body responded. I hated how the heat pooled between my legs and how my lips parted beneath his. I was desperate for his touch. At least he saw me as a woman and not as a liar or a criminal.

Aidan was fire. One burning bright and dangerous to touch. But I wanted to be scorched.

And slowly, against all logic and every instinct in me still tethered to Ryder, I began to crave him.

The way he held me after s*x, like I wasn't just a body but like I was his.

His strength that protected me.

His lips that always wanted mine.

I loved it all but it hurt too.

Because every night with Aidan was a constant reminder that Ryder rejected me.

The mate bond still pulsed beneath my skin like a dying ember. It hadn't snapped. Hadn't faded yet. It still lingered like a dull, aching grief, hurting me everytime Aidan whispered “mine” on my bare skin.

I was torn in two.

Half of me longed for the man I was fated to love even if he left me to rot in a dungeon without hearing my side of the story while the other half was falling for the man who had picked up my broken pieces and used them to build a cage around us both.

Aidan wasn't soft. He wasn't tender either but there were moments — rare, fleeting moments — where I saw something in his eyes. Something broken like me and I hated how that made me feel less alone.

He never spoke of love. He barely spoke to me at all but he watched me every second like I was a speech he was trying to memorize. He took me without asking, kissed me without warning, and held me like I might vanish.

And eventually, I stopped pretending I didn't need him.

I let him have all of me.

Not just my body but also, the truth.

One night, after the storm rolled through and the fire in the fireplace crackled low, I turned to him. My skin was still slick with sweat, my throat raw from gasps I couldn't hold back.

“Aidan,” I whispered, voice trembling. “I — I'm falling in love with you.”

He froze. And for a moment, I thought he'd say it back. I thought the silence would c***k and something real would pour out but all he did was run his hand into my hair and kiss me, slow and deep like he was sealing the words inside me forever.

And maybe that wasn't enough.

Maybe I didn't need his words.

Maybe, I just needed the way he looked at me like I was his last salvation.

But after he fell asleep, his arms draped around my waist, I stayed awake and stared at the ceiling, thinking about Ryder.

Thinking about the night I was dragged out of the ball.

About Tamara's voice like venom wrapped in silk.

About the way no one listened and how no one cared.

They left me to die.

Ryder left me to die.

And yet, the bond still remained — unwanted but alive.

I didn't know when my love for him turned to ash.

Was it the night he chose power over the truth?

Was it the first time Aidan kissed me like I was worth worshiping?

Or was it when I realized that both of them had, in their own ways, consumed me?

Well, I was tired of being consumed.

I wanted revenge and not the kind with fire and swords and death but the quiet kind. I wanted the kind of revenge that took back everything that's been stolen from me — my name, my dignity, my story.

They called me a traitor but soon… they'd remember my real name.

Alison, daughter of the Moon, marked by fate, and loved by two Alpha's.

And they'd learn that the girl who stirred pots and whispered flavours into sauces was more dangerous than any wolf they'd ever met.

Because now?

I was done surviving.

It was time to rise.

****

They said love is war but I never thought I'd be the one fighting on both sides.

Aidan never said the words. Not once. And yet, I gave him everything — my body, my heart and my loyalty.

When I told him for the second time that I was falling in love with him, I expected a storm, anger, maybe or worse, pity, but Aidan only blinked, lips curling into that unreadable smirk of his.

“Make me fall for you then,” he said.

Just like that.

Like it was a challenge. Like I was just another game he could play and win without consequence.

My heart cracked that night, a quiet fissure in a house already built in ruins but I didn't leave. I stayed because deep down, some reckless part of me believed I could be enough for him. That I could make him see me and choose me.

So I tried for months.

I made him breakfast before his training. I laughed at his dry jokes. I listened when he talked about his pack, about the wolves who trusted him, the burden he carried alone. I became his confidante, his shadow, his secret.

And when the nights turned cold and his silence turned heavy, I cradled I to bed with him, wrapped my limbs around his darkness, and pretended his warmth meant more than just comfort.

I didn't realize that when love is one-sided, it doesn't bloom. It decays.

Still, I told myself I was winning. That I was chipping away at the walls he'd built. That the way he held me tighter those nights meant something.

It had been a year.

A whole year of almost and maybes.

And then Tamara arrived.

The moment she stepped into Aidan's territory, the air shifted. Her power clung to the wind like strong perfume.

I watched her descend from the carriage, all elegance and threat like a queen returning to her throne.

And Aidan? He smiled.

Not the fake smile he wore like an armour but a real smile. One I'd never earned in a freaking year.

I stood behind him like I always did — my face hidden behind a veil, quiet, unseen, but always watching.

When she wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered something in his ear, I felt my stomach twist. Not in jealousy. Well, not entirely, but in dread.

“You never told me she was your cousin,” I said to Aidan later, when we were alone.

He shrugged, pulling his shirt over his head. “You never asked.”

“I didn't think I had to.”

He looked at me then. “Tamaraand I have history. Not the kind you're thinking. Blood must've tied us but war made us allies.”

I wanted to ask what kind of war. But I already knew the answer.

Ryder.

The name still hurts to say even in the silence.

I stayed close that week. Closer than usual. I followed Tamara with my eyes, listening when she thought I wasn't listening. She spoke with Aidan for hours behind closed doors and when they laughed, it sounded like knives being sharpened.

Then, one night, I heard them. I shouldn't have. I wasn't supposed to be near the drawing room. But something pulled me there. Call it instinct. Maybe fate.

Their voices leaked through the c***k in the wooden door.

“Ryder won't know what hit him,” Tamara said, her tone cold and triumphant. “He still thinks you're neutral. That you're hiding away with your little pet.”

Pet.

She meant me.

Aidan didn't deny it. Just chuckled.

“Let him think it. When the time comes, we'll strike. And when he falls, the packs will turn to us. To me.”

“And your pet?” Tamara asked.

Aidan hesitated to reply. For a second. “She doesn't need to know.”

My breath caught.

“But she's useful,” he added. “She softens me. Makes the pack think I've changed.”

Tamara snorted. “Or maybe you're catching feelings.”

He didn't answer.

I didn't wait to hear more.

I walked away from that door like a ghost, my heart a battlefield of shattered illusions.

He didn't love me.

He would never love me.

But that wasn't what broke me.

It was knowing that I had poured every drop of myself into a man who saw me as a tool, a means to an end.

Just like Ryder.

Just like everyone.