MARKED BY THE MOON

Ashes and Answers

Luna POV

We reach the east wing to find flames already climbing the stone walls, smoke pouring black and thick through the hallway I walked twenty-four hours ago looking for proof of exactly this kind of corruption.

"Water line's this way!"

Kian POV

Declan's teeth were an inch from Luna's throat when I hit him.

I didn't think so. I didn't plan it. My body just moved, and my jaw closed hard around his shoulder, and the two of us went crashing into the council table. Wood cracked under us like dry bone. Somewhere behind me, Cassia was snarling as three younger wolves pinned her against the wall.

This was my best friend. The man who taught me how to throw a punch when we were kids. The man who stood next to me the day my father died and told me I could do this, I could lead this pack, I wasn't alone.

And right now he was trying to kill the woman I just called my mate in front of the whole council.

Luna didn't wait for me to process any of that. She slammed her weight into Declan's side, and I felt him flinch through the bite still locked in my jaw. Blood hit my tongue, hot and metallic. Through the chaos, I felt her sharp, focused, angry and for one strange second in the middle of all this violence, something in my chest settled. She was fighting next to me. Not against me. With me.

Declan tore free and staggered back, chest heaving. Blood ran down his shoulder where I'd bitten him. For a second he just looked at us, Luna standing beside me with her teeth bared and something moved behind his eyes. Not hate. Something closer to grief.

"You don't understand what's coming," he said. His voice was rough, but he was still talking like a man, even half-shifted. "This isn't just about Blackthorn. It was never just about Blackthorn."

"Then tell me," I growled, stepping toward him. "Before I make you."

He didn't answer. Instead, he threw something at the ground between us. A small glass vial. It shattered and a thick, bitter smoke poured out fast, filling the whole hall in seconds. My eyes burned. I heard Luna cough beside me. By the time the smoke thinned enough to see anything, Declan was gone. He'd slipped out through the side door, the same door Cassia had been trying to reach the whole time.

Cassia was on her knees now, held down by three guards, spitting curses at anyone close enough to hear them. But her eyes weren't on the guards. Her eyes were locked on the door Declan had just disappeared through. And for one second, I saw something on her face I didn't expect.

Fear.

Not fear of me. Fear of whoever Declan answers to.

"Who is he working for?" I shifted back to human form, my voice raw. "Where does he report?"

Cassia's mouth stayed shut. Whatever she knew, she'd rather die in this hall than say it out loud in front of this many witnesses.

Luna shifted beside me, breathing hard. A shallow cut ran along her ribs, blood dripping down onto the stone floor. I was at her side before I even realized I'd moved, hands hovering over the wound, some old instinct in me screaming to protect what's mine.

"I'm fine," she said. Her voice shook a little.

"You're bleeding."

"I've had worse."

She looked at me, and for a second the noise of the hall, the guards, Cassia's curses, the smell of smoke still hanging in the air all faded into the background. Five wasted years sat between us in that look.

"Kian." Her voice dropped low. "Declan just told us Cassia isn't the top of this. There's someone above her."

I already knew that. The vial. The timing of his escape. The way he vanished the second thing went wrong. None of that belongs to an elder working alone. Someone planned this with the kind of patience that takes years to build, not weeks.

"We need her talking," I said, nodding at Cassia. "Tonight. Before whoever she answers to decides she's a problem worth removing."

As if the thought summoned him, a guard burst through the hall doors. His face was pale. He was out of breath before he even got the words out.

"Alpha." His voice cracked. "The east wing. It's on fire."

For one second, I didn't understand.

Then I did.

The records room. Every piece of proof Luna had found the requisition forms, the ledgers, everything that could expose who was really behind all of this was burning right now, while we stood in this hall arguing over things we already half knew.

I was moving before I even finished the thought. Luna was already a step ahead of me, faster than I could keep up with, her wound forgotten, her focus locked completely on the smoke starting to crawl under the far doors.

Behind us, Cassia started laughing. Low. Quiet. Satisfied. Like she'd just watched her own capture turn into someone else's win.

We ran through the halls, past pack members frozen in the doorways, past the smell of smoke growing thicker with every step. My mind kept circling back to one question, over and over, no matter how fast I ran.

Who was patient enough to plan this far ahead? Who had access to Declan, close enough to turn my oldest friend against me? And what, exactly, had Cassia meant when she said this was never just about a border war?

We turned the last corner into the east wing, and the heat hit me first, a wall of it, thick and sharp, pressing against my skin before I even saw the flames. Orange light spilled from the doorway of the records room, licking up the stone walls, eating through years of paperwork in seconds.

Luna froze in the doorway beside me, her face lit orange, her jaw tight.

"That's everything," she said quietly. "Every piece of proof we had. Gone."

I looked past her, into the fire, and felt something cold settle in my chest that had nothing to do with the smoke.

Someone in this pack knew exactly which room to burn. Someone knew exactly when to do it. And whoever they were, they were still inside these walls, watching us right now, probably close enough to hear us breathe.

shouts, already tearing his shirt off to wrap around his face. I follow, my lungs burning, my eyes streaming.

By the time the fire crew gets it under control, the records room is gutted. Ash where the requisition forms used to sit. Ash where every shred of documented proof against Cassia's network used to exist.

Except one thing.

The form is still folded inside my boot, where I put it the night I found it. The original evidence. The only piece of paper in this entire pack that hasn't burned.

I haven't told anyone that yet. Not even Kian. Some habits from five years of training don't die just because a bond woke back up in my chest.

We stand outside the smoking ruin of the east wing as dawn cracks gray over the tree line, both of us soot-streaked, both of us silent, both of us thinking the same thing without saying it.

Someone inside this pack set that fire. Someone who knew exactly which room to burn and exactly when to do it.

"You should sleep," Kian says finally, voice rough from smoke.

"So should you."

"I'm not the one bleeding."

I glance down at my side, where the cut from the fight has finally stopped seeping through my shirt. "It's shallow."

"It's still bleeding, Luna." My name in his mouth still lands like a small shock every time, even now. He steps closer, close enough that I can feel the exhausted heat coming off him. "Let me look at it. Please."

I should say no. I should walk away and lock my door and remind myself why I built walls five years thick around every part of myself that used to belong to him. Instead I let him lead me to a quiet room off the main hall, let him kneel in front of me and press a clean cloth against the wound with hands that are shaking, just slightly, in a way an Alpha's hands aren't supposed to shake.

"I'm sorry," he says quietly, not looking up from the wound. "For everything. Five years ago. For not recognizing you the second you walked through my door. For every year I let it pass instead of looking harder."

"You said you looked."

"Not hard enough." His eyes finally meet mine, dark and open in a way I haven't seen since we were teenagers hiding behind the training barn, stealing moments before the world demanded we be someone else. "I don't expect you to forgive me. I don't even think I deserve to ask. But I need you to know I never stopped feeling what I felt for you. I didn't dare to say so until it was too late."

My chest aches with something dangerously close to hope, and I hate how easily it rises in me, how quickly five years of careful armor cracks under the weight of his voice.

"There's a girl," I say instead, because it's easier than answering the thing he actually asked. "Sable. She recognized me. Called me by name in front of everyone before this whole council mess started."

Kian's brow furrows. "Sable. Elder Mira's daughter."

"She said her mother told her I was..." I trail off, remembering the way her voice caught, the way she looked at me like I was a ghost. "She never finished the sentence."

Something shifts across Kian's face: recognition, then confusion, then something darker. "Elder Mira. She died two years ago. Sudden illness, they said."

"You don't believe that."

"I didn't, at the time. There was no reason not to." He sits back on his heels, staring at nothing, pieces clicking together behind his eyes. "But if Sable's mother knew something about you, about your family, about the Sorensen line, and Cassia's been running a conspiracy this deep for this long"

He doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't need to.

A soft knock interrupts us, and Sable herself steps into the doorway, eyes red-rimmed, a folded piece of paper clutched in her trembling hands.

"I found this in my mother's things," she whispers, holding it out to me. "I think you need to see it before anyone else does."

I take the paper with a hand that isn't quite steady, and the moment I unfold it, my whole world tilts sideways.

It's a birth record. My birth record. Except the parents listed aren't the ones I grew up believing were mine.