MARKED BY THE MOON

Named

Luna POV

Every eye in the chamber turns toward me at once, and for one suspended second, I consider lying again. Denying everything. Walking back the entire mission and disappearing into the night before Cassia can finish what she's started.

Then Kian steps forward, and the decision is taken out of my hands completely.

"She doesn't owe you an explanation, Cassia." His voice carries across the chamber, hard and absolute, the voice of someone who's stopped asking permission to lead. "I do. Because I'm the one who's about to give you one."

Cassia's smile falters, just barely.

"Alpha, if this woman is"

"Her name is Luna Sorensen," Kian says, cutting through whatever Cassia was about to claim first. "She's my rejected mate. The one I threw away five years ago on this council's advice, and the one I'm done pretending I don't recognize."

The chamber erupts into noise gasps, murmurs, someone near the back saying her name like it's a curse word they'd forgotten how to pronounce. I stand frozen at the center of it, every carefully built wall I've spent five years constructing collapsing in real time, in front of the entire pack that once watched me walk away in disgrace.

"This is highly irregular," one of the elders says, rising halfway from his seat. "A rejected bond cannot simply be"

"I'm not here to debate old law," Kian says, and something in his tone makes even the elderly sit back down. "I'm here to tell you that the woman you're currently trying to expose as some kind of threat found evidence, in this pack's own records, that Elder Cassia authorized scent-masking herbs the same week as the second border attack blamed on Ashwood."

Silence slams down over the chamber like a physical weight.

Cassia's expression shifts, fast and ugly, composure cracking at the edges. "That is a fabrication."

"Is it?" I finally find my voice, pulling the folded requisition form from my sleeve and holding it up for the chamber to see. "Because your signature is right here, Elder. Dated the same week Ashwood took the blame for an attack we never committed."

Murmurs ripple through the assembled council, elders leaning toward each other, voices low and urgent. Cassia's eyes lock on mine, and for just a moment, beneath the fury, I catch something else entirely.

Fear.

"You have no right," she starts, but her voice has lost its earlier honeyed confidence.

"I have every right," I say, stepping fully into the center of the chamber despite every instinct telling me to run. "I came here to clear my pack's name from crimes it didn't commit. I didn't expect to find myself standing in the middle of whatever this actually is. But I'm not leaving until I understand exactly what you're protecting, Elder Cassia. Because a war between Ashwood and Blackthorn doesn't happen by accident."

Cassia's composure finally shatters completely, something raw and terrified breaking through the careful mask she's worn since I first arrived.

"You don't understand what you're unraveling," she says, voice dropping low enough that only those closest can hear. "This isn't about Ashwood. It was never about Ashwood."

"Then what is it about?" Kian demands, moving to stand beside me, close enough that I can feel the heat of him, close enough that the chamber can see exactly where his loyalty has landed tonight.

Cassia's eyes dart toward the chamber doors, toward the elders, toward every exit as if she's calculating whether she can still escape whatever she's about to be forced to reveal.

"Guards," Kian says quietly, not taking his eyes off her. "Elder Cassia is not to leave this pack house until she's answered every question this council has for her."

Two guards move to flank her, and something in her expression finally breaks completely, not surrender, but something closer to desperation.

"If you pull this thread," she says, voice shaking now, "you're not going to find what you expect. You're going to find something this pack buried decades ago, and once it's out, there's no putting it back."

"Then we'll deal with that," Kian says, "the same way we're dealing with you. Directly."

Cassia's gaze slides toward me one final time, and what I see in her expression isn't hatred.

It's a pity.

"You should have stayed gone, Sorensen," she whispers, just before the guards lead her from the chamber. "For your own sake, and for the sake of everyone who's about to find out exactly why your name was buried in the first place."

The chamber doors close behind her, and silence falls over the room like a held breath, every elder staring at me now with a mixture of shock, suspicion, and something that looks unsettlingly close to recognition.

Kian turns to face me fully, and for the first time since I walked back into Blackthorn wearing another woman's name, I see something steady in his expression despite the chaos still crackling in the air around us.

"Whatever she's hiding," he says quietly, "we're finding it. Together."

I should tell him there is no together. I should remind myself that five years of careful distance don't dissolve just because he finally remembered my name in front of his entire pack.

Instead, I nod, because some part of me, the part I thought I'd buried five years ago along with everything else that night, cost me already knowing I'm not walking away from this a second time.