MARKED BY THE MOON

What To Do With a Trait.

Luna POV

Nobody can find the old woman.

I stand at the edge of the council chamber two hours later, listening to a room full of powerful people argue about a woman locked in a cage downstairs, and all I can think about is the elder who said my mother's name and then disappeared into a crowd of hundreds like smoke.

"She's not hiding," Kian says quietly beside me, reading my face the way he's started doing again, like five years never happened. "She's being hidden. There's a difference."

"That's not comforting."

"It wasn't meant to be."

The council table is full today, more elders present than I've seen since the night they exposed me. At the head of it, Kian sits with his jaw tight, and directly across from him, an empty chair sits where Cassia used to preside, a hole in the shape of a woman none of them know what to do with anymore.

"She orchestrated the framing of an entire pack," one elder says, slamming his palm flat against the table. "She is responsible for a war that nearly started. Blood law is clear on treason of this magnitude."

"Blood law also requires a full confession before execution," another elder counters, older, calmer, though his hands shake slightly where they rest on the table. "And Cassia has given us nothing. Kill her now and we lose whatever she knows forever."

"She already told us she's not the one in charge," I say, and every head in the room turns toward me. I'm not supposed to speak in council. I do it anyway. "If you execute her, you're not punishing the person responsible for any of this. You're just removing the only witness who might lead us to them."

The room erupts into overlapping voices, some agreeing, most furious that an outsider dared to speak at all. Kian raises a hand, and the noise dies fast, the way it always does under his authority.

"She stays alive," he says, "under guard, until we know more. That's not up for debate."

"And if she escapes the way Declan did?" the first elder snaps. "With help from inside these very walls?"

Nobody has an answer for that. I don't either. Whoever cut Torin's throat last night proved they can reach anyone in this pack house whenever they choose to.

"Then we don't just guard her," I say slowly, an idea forming as I speak. "We isolate her completely. No pack member goes near that cell alone. Two guards at all times, rotated every four hours so no single person has enough access to be compromised or bribed. And I want to be one of the people who talks to her."

"Absolutely not," the first elder says immediately. "You are not packed. You have no authority here."

"She's carrying the Alpha's child," someone says from further down the table, quiet, almost testing the words out loud for the first time in front of this many people. The room goes silent in a completely different way now. "That makes her something, even if none of us agree yet on what."

I feel my whole body go still. I haven't told anyone outside Kian and a handful of guards. Someone in this room already knew, or guessed, or heard it whispered somewhere I couldn't control.

Kian's hand finds mine under the table, steady, grounding, a silent promise that he's not going anywhere no matter how this room reacts.

"It's true," he says, loud enough for the whole council to hear, no hesitation in his voice at all. "Luna is carrying my child. And regardless of what any of you think about her right to sit at this table, she has more reason than anyone in this room to find out who's really behind everything that's happened."

The silence that follows feels different from every silence before it. Heavier. Like the whole room just recalculated exactly how much power I actually have now, whether they want to admit it or not.

An elder near the back, one who hasn't spoken all meeting, finally clears his throat. "Then perhaps it's time we discuss something else. Something none of us have said out loud in twenty-three years."

Every eye turns to him.

"Elena," he says quietly, and I feel my heart stop in my chest. "It's time we talk about what really happened to Elena Voss, and why we buried her the way we did."

Kian's grip on my hand tightens.

"You knew," he says slowly, dangerously, looking around the table at faces that suddenly won't meet his eyes. "All of you knew something, and none of you ever told me."

Nobody answers him.

Outside, thunder cracks low over the territory, the first storm in weeks rolling in fast and dark, and somewhere beneath us, in a cell with two guards and no answers, Cassia is still sitting in silence, the only person left alive who might know exactly how deep this goes.

The elder who spoke up finally looks at Kian, and for the first time since I walked back into this pack, I see real fear on the face of someone who's supposed to hold all the power.

"Not here," he says quietly. "Not where the walls can hear us."

And just like that, the meeting is over, chairs scraping back, elders filing out fast and silent, leaving Kian and me alone at a table full of secrets that just cracked open wider than either of us was ready for.

I sit there for a moment, staring at the empty chairs, trying to process how much just happened in one room in under an hour. A traitor spared. My pregnancy was made public in front of people who still don't fully trust me. And now, finally, the first c***k in twenty-three years of silence about the woman who might be my mother.

"Not where the walls can hear us," I repeat quietly. "What does that mean? Are they saying someone's listening?"

"I don't know." Kian's voice is tight, controlled in the way I recognize now means he's furious and trying not to show it. "But I intend to find out tonight, whatever it takes."

"They're scared," I say. "All of them. Even the ones who wanted Cassia dead an hour ago looked more afraid of that elder's question than they ever looked at her."

"They should be." Kian stands, pulling me up with him, his hand still wrapped tight around mine like he's not ready to let go of the one steady thing in this room. "Whatever happened to Elena, it was big enough that an entire council has kept it buried for over two decades. That's not fear of gossip. That's fear of something with teeth."

We walk out of the council chamber together, past guards who won't quite meet my eyes anymore, past whispers that follow us down every hallway now that my name and my pregnancy are both public knowledge in the same afternoon. I used to be good at ignoring whispers. Five years at Ashwood taught me how to walk through a room like nothing anyone says can touch me.

It still touches me. It just doesn't show anymore.

Outside, the storm has fully rolled in, rain hammering hard against the windows, thunder rattling low through the old stone halls of the pack house. It feels fitting, somehow. Like the whole territory knows something is about to break loose and can't hold it back any longer.

"I need to see Cassia," I say as we reach the stairs leading down to the cells.

Kian stops walking. "Luna—"

"She said someone else would be angrier than her. She's terrified of whoever's above her in this. If there's any chance she'll talk to me the way she won't talk to a room full of elders who want her dead, I need to try."

He looks at me for a long moment, weighing every risk I already know he's calculating, every reason to say no sitting right behind his eyes. Then he nods, once, sharp.

"I'm coming with you," he says. "And if she so much as looks at you wrong, this conversation is over."

I don't argue. I don't want to.

We head down into the dark together, the storm crashing overhead, and somewhere below us Cassia is waiting, the last living thread tying everything that's happened to whatever's still coming.

I have a feeling, walking down those stairs, that by tonight, I'm going to know a lot more about my mother than twenty-three years of silence ever let me learn.

I just don't know yet whether that knowledge is going to save this pack, or finish tearing it apart.