Second Chance for the Discarded Luna

Chapter Six

Elena? Where are you?

Kellan's voice came through the mind link sharp and urgent, cutting through three years of silence like it had never been broken at all. I pressed my back harder against the wall of the guest house, arms still wrapped around my knees, and for a moment I couldn't make myself answer him. It had been so long since I let anyone hear me like this, unguarded, stripped down to whatever was left after a night like tonight.

I'm at Blackthorn, I finally said. I need to come home, Kellan. I can't stay here anymore.

The pause on his end lasted only a second, but I felt the fury building in it anyway, felt it travel down the link the way anger always used to when we were pups and he found out someone had hurt me before I could hide the evidence.

What did he do to you?

I closed my eyes. Everything. He took a mistress. She's pregnant. He gave me two choices, stay and serve her or leave with nothing, and when I refused both, they accused me of attacking her and threw me out on a lie.

I heard him say something to someone else on his end, voice muffled and clipped, and I realized he was already moving, already giving orders before I had even finished explaining myself.

Stay exactly where you are, he said. I'm sending an escort within the hour. Don't leave that room, don't speak to anyone from that pack, and Elena, if any of them try to stop you from leaving, you use everything Father taught you. Do you understand me?

I understand.

I felt him hesitate, the link going quiet in that particular way that meant he wanted to ask something and wasn't sure if he should. I know you, Elena, he finally said. You've been swallowing this for years, haven't you. Pretending everything was fine every time we spoke.

I didn't answer that directly. I couldn't, not yet, not with my throat still raw from crying and my chest still hollowed out from watching Nessa look past me instead of at me. I'll explain everything when I get there, I said instead. I just need to get out of here first.

Then get ready. I'm not waiting an hour. I'm coming myself.

The link went quiet, but I could still feel the edge of his presence lingering there, the way I always could when we were younger and one of us was in trouble. It steadied something in me, just slightly, enough that I could finally unclench my arms from around my knees and push myself up off the floor.

I didn't own much in that guest house. Most of what I called mine had stayed behind in the main house, in a room I would never sleep in again, tangled up with a life I no longer wanted any claim to. I packed what little I had into a single traveling bag, my mother's old cloak, a few plain dresses, the small carved wolf my father had given me the day I left for my bonding ceremony, and I sat by the window and waited.

I didn't have to wait long.

I felt Kellan before I heard him, the particular hum of his wolf approaching fast through the trees beyond the guest house, and something in my chest loosened at the familiarity of it even through everything else weighing me down. When the door finally opened, he was standing there in human form, dressed for travel, three warriors flanking him, and the look on his face when he saw mine nearly broke whatever composure I had managed to rebuild.

"Elena." He crossed the room in two strides and pulled me into him, and I let myself be held the way I hadn't let myself be held by anyone in three years. "You look—" He stopped himself, jaw tightening, clearly deciding it wasn't worth finishing that sentence in a room that still smelled like Blackthorn.

"I'm fine," I said, which was a lie, and we both knew it.

"We're leaving now," he said instead of arguing with me about it. "Father's already been informed. He wants you home before the sun rises."

I nodded, gripping the strap of my bag tighter than necessary, and let him lead me out of the guest house without looking back. I didn't glance toward the main house as we crossed the compound. I didn't let my eyes drift toward the garden, though I felt its absence like a missing tooth, a space where something rooted used to be. I kept my eyes forward and my spine straight, because if I looked back even once I wasn't sure I would keep walking.

The guards at the outer gate hesitated when they saw Kellan's warriors, clearly unsure whether they had orders to stop a Ravenspire escort from removing the disgraced Luna from pack land. Kellan didn't give them the chance to decide.

"She is a princess of Ravenspire," he said, voice carrying the particular authority that came naturally to him in a way it had never come naturally to me, "and you will open this gate, or you will explain to my father personally why you didn't."

The gate opened.

We rode through the night without stopping, the forest blurring past in shades of black and silver, and somewhere around the second hour I finally let myself stop holding my spine so rigid. Kellan rode close beside me the entire way, glancing over every few minutes like he expected me to disappear if he looked away too long.

"You should have called me sooner," he said finally, breaking the long silence between us.

"I know."

"Three years, Elena. Three years of letters that said everything was fine, and this whole time—" He stopped, shook his head, and I watched something darken behind his eyes that I recognized from childhood, the particular fury he reserved for anyone who hurt the people he considered his to protect. "He's going to regret this. Blackthorn is going to regret this."

"I don't want a war fought over my pride," I said quietly.

"This isn't about your pride." His voice was harder now than I'd heard it in years. "This is about a King's daughter being humiliated in front of an entire pack, accused of a crime she didn't commit, and thrown out like refuse. That's not pride, Elena. That's an insult to Ravenspire itself, and Father is not going to let it stand quietly."

I didn't argue with him further, because some small, exhausted part of me didn't want to. I let myself lean into the truth of what he was saying instead, the truth I'd been avoiding since the moment Marcus first raised his voice to Lyra's defense in that courtyard. This had never really been just about me.

The trees began to thin as dawn crept up over the ridgeline, and somewhere ahead, past the last stretch of forest, the towers of Ravenspire finally came into view, pale stone catching the first gold light of morning. I hadn't seen my home in three years. I hadn't let myself miss it, not fully, because missing it would have meant admitting how much I'd lost by choosing to hide inside someone else's pack instead of claiming my place in this one.

Kellan slowed his horse beside mine as the gates came into view, guards already moving to open them, word of our arrival clearly having outpaced us.

"Welcome home, Elena," he said quietly.

I looked up at the towers, at the banners bearing my father's crest snapping in the morning wind, and felt something in my chest that I hadn't felt in longer than I wanted to admit. Not quite relief. Not quite grief. Something closer to the ground finally settling back under my feet after three years of standing on borrowed soil.

"It's good to be home," I said, and for the first time since the courtyard, I meant every word of it.