BLESSING LUNA RISING

THE WOLFSBANE CONFESSION

CHAPTER 8:

The silver dust was still falling from my wings when the second howl cut the sky.

It wasn't a werewolf howl. It wasn't a Lycan roar. It was a mirror of my own — a song made of light and wind, but older. Wearier. Like it had been singing alone for nineteen years.

Every Lycan warrior in the courtyard lifted their heads. Even Darius stiffened behind me, his arms still locked around my waist, his forehead still pressed to mine.

My wings beat once, involuntarily, answering.

"Impossible," Darius breathed against my skin, his silver eyes snapping to the northern sky. "She can't be—"

But she was.

A speck of white against the black snowstorm, growing fast. Too fast. Not a bird. Not a beast I knew.

Another White Lycan. Wings like mine, but scarred. One wing dragging, feathers of moonstone cracked and dim. Her hair was white-blonde, like mine, but streaked with grey. Her dress was rags. And her face —

My mother.

Lira Vance. The woman the pack said died giving birth to a wolfless half-blood. The woman whose grave I had cleaned every full moon for ten years.

She landed in the courtyard in a crash of snow and silver dust, her broken wings folding around her like a shield. The Lycan warriors parted instantly, not out of fear, but out of reverence. One of them threw a cloak over her.

She looked up at the balcony. At me.

"Elara," she choked, and her voice was my voice, but broken. "My star. My little star, they told me you died. They told me you never took a breath."

The world tilted.

Darius caught me before my knees gave out, his arms sweeping me off the balcony's edge. One second we were on the balcony, the next his black wings — I had never seen them before, vast black membrane wings tipped with ice — had snapped open and we were landing in the courtyard, snow exploding around us.

He set me down gently, but kept one hand on my back, between my wings, holding me up.

My mother crawled through the snow to me. She didn't kneel to Darius. She didn't look at Kael, who was still pressed into the snow by my command, sobbing. She only saw me.

"They took you," she whispered, her hands — scarred, like Darius's chest — reaching for my face, but stopping inches away, afraid to touch the silver fire still racing up my arms. "Magnus Vale. Kael's mother, Mara. They knew what you were. A White pup is worth more than a kingdom. They told your father — your real father, the White King before Darius — that you died, and they sold me to the southern packs as a healer slave. They fed you wolfsbane to keep you dim, so you would never sing and call me."

Wolfsbane. Again.

Behind us, Kael made a strangled sound. "Mother? My mother did this?"

As if summoned by his voice, the gates groaned again.

Two Lycan warriors were dragging someone through the snow by her hair. A woman in Alpha black and silver. Her face was perfect, cold, untouched by age. Mara Blackthorn. Kael's mother. The Luna who had smiled at me while she handed me my daily tea. The tea that made me sleepy. The tea that made my chest feel empty.

They threw her at my feet, next to Seraphine, who was still bleeding in the snow, her fake pregnancy finally, brutally, ending as the White Lycan song forced truth out of bodies.

Mara looked up. She saw me. She saw my wings. She saw my mother. And her perfect face twisted with pure, venomous hatred.

"You were supposed to die!" she screeched at my mother, then at me. "You were supposed to be wolfless! Weak! I fed you wolfsbane since you were six months old! A drop in your milk! A drop in your tea! Every day for nineteen years! How are you still breathing? How do you have wings? You half-blood freak, you should be dead!"

Silence. Even the wind stopped.

Darius's hand on my back went ice-cold. The black ice under our feet cracked, spreading out from him in a perfect circle.

Kael stared at his mother like he had never seen her before. "You... you poisoned her? You poisoned Elara? For nineteen years? My fated mate?"

"She was never your fated mate!" Mara screamed, spitting snow. "She was a monster! White Lycans are abominations! They steal Alpha power! I did it for you! For the pack! For Seraphine, who was supposed to give you a real heir, not that wolfless—"

Darius moved.

One second he was holding me. The next, his hand was around Mara's throat, lifting her six feet off the ground with one arm. His silver eyes had gone completely black. His fangs were fully extended.

"You fed my Queen wolfsbane," he said, his voice so quiet, so soft, that the snow itself froze mid-air. "In her milk."

Mara choked, clawing at his hand. Her feet kicked.

"Elara," Darius said, not looking away from Mara, but holding his other hand out to me. "Little Luna. Come here."

I walked to him on shaking legs, my wings dragging, my mother's hand clutching mine.

"She is yours," Darius whispered to me, his eyes finally meeting mine, and they were pleading. Pleading for me to take control. "Her life. Her punishment. Her blood. You decide. Not pack law. Not Lycan law. Your law. As Queen."

He offered me a dagger. Not a ceremonial dagger like the High Priestess had. A black ice dagger, forged from his own castle walls, that hummed with cold fire.

Kael screamed. "Elara, NO! Please! She's my mother!"

Seraphine, bleeding and broken, laughed through her tears. "Do it! Do it, wolfless b***h! Show them you're a monster!"

My mother squeezed my hand tighter. "My star, you don't have to. You are light. You don't have to be like them."

I looked at Mara Blackthorn, dangling, choking, the woman who had smiled and poisoned me every day since I was a baby. I looked at Kael, kneeling, begging for the woman who destroyed his fated mate. I looked at my wings, made of moonlight, that had finally broken free.

I took the dagger.

And the silver fire in my veins finally, truly, exploded.