MARKED BY THE MOON

An Accident That Wasn't

Luna POV

Kian wants me to rest. I go hunting instead.

It's not defiance for its own sake, though I know that's exactly how it'll look if he finds out before I'm back. After a night like the one we just survived, I need air, movement, something to do with my hands and my body besides sitting in a healing room watching Declan sleep off an arrow wound while Bettina hovers nearby. The forest at the edge of Blackthorn's territory has always cleared my head better than anything else, even now, even pregnant, even hunted by something none of us fully understand yet.

I tell myself I'm just checking the border markers Declan mentioned, the place where the shooter vanished without a trace last night. I tell myself I'm being careful. Mostly, I believe it.

The morning is quiet, birds calling overhead, sunlight filtering thin and gold through branches still wet from yesterday's storm. I move slowly, deliberately, reading the ground the way Maren taught me years ago, searching for anything the guards might have missed in the darkness last night.

I find the spot easily enough. Crushed undergrowth where someone knelt to steady a shot. A single broken twig, snapped clean rather than torn, the kind of precise damage a trained hand leaves behind. Whoever fired that arrow knew exactly what they were doing.

I crouch to examine it closer, and that's when I hear it. A faint click beneath my boot, barely audible, the kind of sound easy to miss if you're not trained to listen for exactly that.

I don't think so. I move.

I throw myself sideways just as something snaps taut in the underbrush behind me, a weighted branch swinging hard and fast through the space where I stood half a second earlier, close enough that I feel the wind of it against my cheek as I hit the ground and roll.

For a moment I just lie there, heart slamming, breath knocked half out of me, staring up at the canopy overhead while my mind catches up to what just happened.

A trap. A hunting trap, expertly set, disguised well enough that I nearly missed it entirely despite five years of training that should have caught it immediately.

I push myself up slowly, checking for injuries, relief flooding through me when I find nothing worse than a scraped palm and a racing heart. Then I look at the trap itself, still swinging gently on its rope, and something cold settles into my chest.

This wasn't meant for a wolf. The trigger sits too high, the branch weighted wrong for catching an animal at running height. It's built for something taller. Something walking upright.

Something exactly my height.

I search the surrounding area carefully now, adrenaline sharpening every sense, and find two more traps within a hundred feet, each one hidden well enough to fool a casual eye, each one positioned along the exact path I'd naturally take from the pack house to the border markers.

Someone knew I'd come this way. Someone set this up in advance, patient enough to wait for me to walk directly into it.

My hand goes instinctively to my stomach, and fear replaces adrenaline fast and cold. If that trap had caught me at running speed instead of catching me still, if I hadn't heard that click, hadn't reacted fast enough

I didn't finish the thought. I can't afford to.

I move carefully now, retracing my steps back toward the pack house, checking every footfall before I take it, my heart still hammering long after the immediate danger has passed. By the time the walls come into view, I'm shaking, though I'm not entirely sure if it's fear or fury driving it.

Kian meets me at the gate before I've even fully processed what I'm going to say to him, his face shifting from relief at seeing me safe to alarm the moment he reads whatever's written across my expression.

"What happened," he demands, already crossing the distance between us.

"Hunting traps," I say, forcing my voice steady even as my hands still tremble slightly at my sides. "Three of them, near the border markers. Built for something my height, not for an animal."

His face goes pale, then hard, fury replacing fear with terrifying speed. "You went out there alone."

"I needed air. I didn't think"

"You could have died." His hands find my shoulders, gripping tight, and I feel the tremor running through him now too, matching my own. "Luna, if that trap had caught you at speed—"

"It didn't." I press my hand against his chest, steadying us both. "I'm fine. The baby's fine."

He pulls me into him then, tight enough that it almost hurts, his face pressed into my hair, and I feel the full weight of his fear finally breaking through the careful control he's held onto all night.

"I can't lose you again," he says, voice rough and low. "I can't survive it a second time."

"You won't have to." I hold him just as tight, letting myself feel the fear now that I'm safe enough to feel it. "But Kian, whoever set those traps knew exactly which path I'd take. That's not random. That's someone who's been watching me closely enough to predict my movements."

He pulls back slightly, searching my face, the same cold understanding I'm feeling settling behind his eyes.

"Someone inside these walls," he says quietly. "Someone who knows your habits. Your routines."

"Someone close," I say, "or someone who's had eyes on me since the day I arrived."

We stand there together at the edge of Blackthorn's gates, morning sunlight doing nothing to warm the chill settling between us, and I realize with sudden, sickening clarity that the danger we've been chasing all night isn't hunting Declan anymore, isn't hunting Cassia or Priya or any of the names on that list.

It's hunting me. And it has been, patiently, carefully, since long before I ever knew to watch for it.