MARKED BY THE MOON

The Lockdown

Kian POV

The scream belongs to a dead man.

I found him in the storage hall outside the east cell block, half-hidden behind a stack of crates, throat opened clean and fast by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. It's Torin. One of my night guards. The same guard who had the key to Declan's cell.

The pieces click into place before I even want them to.

"He let Declan out," I say, more to myself than to Luna, who's standing beside me with her hand pressed to her mouth. "And whoever's running this made sure he couldn't tell anyone about it."

"They're cleaning up," Luna says quietly. "Fire. A body. Every loose thread gets cut the same morning."

I look at her, and something in my chest tightens at how calm she sounds, how fast her mind moves through the horror in front of us like she's cataloguing it instead of feeling it. Five years of training did that to her. Five years I wasn't there for.

I don't have time to think about that right now.

"Full lockdown," I say, loud enough for the guards gathering behind us to hear. "Nobody leaves this territory. Nobody enters. I want every single person in this pack accounted for by noon, and I want to know exactly where they were last night."

One of the older guards hesitates. "Alpha, that includes the Ashwood liaison."

The words land heavy in the hallway. Every eye turns toward Luna.

She doesn't flinch. "I understand."

"You're not a suspect," I say quickly, sharper than I mean to.

"I'm an outsider standing next to two bodies of evidence in one morning." Her voice is even, controlled, but I catch the flicker underneath it, the same fear she's been hiding since the moment she walked through my doors. "Of course I'm a suspect. Treat me like one. It's the only way this pack trusts anything that comes out of this investigation."

She's right, and I hate that she's right, because doing this properly means dragging her in front of the whole council again, and last time that happened, it nearly destroyed both of us.

By midmorning, the great hall is packed wall to wall. Every pack member summoned, every face tight with fear and exhaustion, the kind of crowd that's one wrong word away from turning into a mob. I stand at the front with Luna beside me, and I can feel her heartbeat through the bond, fast and steady like a war drum.

"Two attacks in one night," I say, loud enough to carry to the back of the hall. "A record room burned. A guard was murdered. And a prisoner is missing. I will not stand here and pretend I have all the answers. But I will not let fear turn us against each other either."

"Then start with her," someone shouts from the crowd. An elder I don't recognize, pointing straight at Luna. "The Ashwood liaison who isn't Ashwood at all. We all heard Cassia's accusation. We deserve to hear the truth."

The hall goes dead silent.

Luna's hand finds mine, quick, steady, grounding. I feel the exact moment she decides not to hide anymore.

"My name is Luna Sorensen," she says, voice carrying clean across the hall. "I was born in this pack. I was rejected by my mate five years ago and I left because staying would have destroyed me. I came back under a false name because I had proof Ashwood didn't start the border war we're being blamed for, and I knew if this pack recognized me, no one would listen to the evidence instead of the history."

Murmurs ripple through the crowd, some angry, some stunned, some quiet in a way that feels worse than shouting.

"I am not your enemy," she continues. "But someone in this pack burned that record room and killed a guard to protect a secret bigger than any of us. And I intend to find out who, whether you trust me or not."

For a long moment, nobody says anything.

Then an old woman near the front, one of the few elders who's always kept quiet in council, steps forward with her hands folded and her eyes fixed on Luna like she's seeing a ghost.

"Sorensen," she says slowly. "That was your mother's line, wasn't it. Elena's line."

The hall goes very still.

I feel Luna's whole body go rigid beside me.

"What did you say?" Luna's voice comes out barely above a whisper.

The old woman's face pales, like she's just realized she said something she wasn't supposed to. "I misspoke. Forgive me."

"No." Luna steps forward, and I move with her, my hand still locked around hers. "Say it again."

But the old woman is already backing into the crowd, shaking her head, refusing to meet anyone's eyes, and the guards nearest her don't move fast enough to stop her from disappearing into the mass of frightened, whispering pack members.

I look down at Luna, and I can see it in her face, the same thought hitting both of us at once.

Somebody in this hall just said the name Elena Voss out loud, connected to Luna's, in front of the entire pack.

And whoever's been burning evidence and cutting throats to keep secrets buried is standing somewhere in this crowd right now, watching us realize exactly how much they still have left to hide.

I raise a hand, calling for order, but the hall is already breaking into noise, dozens of conversations at once, people repeating the name Elena to each other like it means something they half remember and can't quite place. I catch fragments of it. A woman who vanished. A scandal nobody explained. A name the older generation stopped saying out loud a long time ago, for reasons nobody younger than me was ever told.

"Enough." My voice comes out harder than I intend, and the hall quiets fast, the way it always does when I let the Alpha in my voice show instead of hiding it. "This lockdown stands. Every elder who was part of this pack twenty-three years ago will be brought in for questioning, starting today. That includes you." I look toward the spot where the old woman disappeared, though she's long gone now, swallowed by the crowd. "Find her. Gently. She's a witness, not a suspect, until we know otherwise."

Two guards peel off from the wall and push into the crowd. I don't watch them go. I'm watching Luna instead, the way her jaw is set, the way her free hand has curled into a fist at her side like she's holding herself together through sheer will.

"You okay?" I ask, low enough that only she can hear it.

"No," she says honestly. "But I will be, once I know what that woman almost told me."

I want to promise her we'll get answers today. I want to promise her this ends soon, that whatever's coming for this pack will be handled before it touches her, before it touches the child neither of us has said out loud yet in front of anyone but ourselves. I don't make either promise. Not because I don't want to. Because after this morning, I'm not sure it's a promise I can keep.

The hall starts to empty slowly, pack members filing out under the watchful eyes of guards checking names off lists, cataloguing who was where, who can account for their night, who can't. It's going to take hours. Maybe days. And somewhere in the middle of all those names, I know, is the person who lit a match and picked up a knife in the same quiet hour before dawn.

Luna stays close to my side as the hall clears, and for a moment, in the wreckage of everything that just happened, it's just the two of us standing where we stood five years ago, except now there's no elder council forcing my hand, no fear pulling me away from her.

Just a pack full of secrets, a records room in ashes, and a woman's half-finished sentence still hanging in the air between us like the first thread of a rope that's about to unravel everything.