The Forgotten Luna

7 - The Fire Beneath

[Astrid P.O.V.]

The Moon Stone Pack estate was unlike anything I had ever known. It was warm in both architecture and atmosphere. My room, situated down the hall from the Alpha’s room, was flooded with natural light. Pale wood beams ran across the ceiling, and modern furnishings softened by forest-inspired tones gave it a quiet sense of luxury that I loved. There was no cold tile under my feet, no barked orders from Luna Arielle echoing through the halls. Just sunlight, warmth, and quiet.

Still, peace was a fragile thing. It never truly took root in a soul that had never lived too long without it.

Juno stirred inside of me, restless. They’re watching, she growled one morning, only a few days after we’d arrived. Too many eyes, too many whispers. Especially from her.

I didn’t need to ask who she was. It was Liliana.

The dark-haired beauty was all sugary smiles whenever they met in public, but her energy had been all wrong. It was too sharp, too polished, too possessive of Atlas. She’d lean in too close, laugh a little too loudly at Atlas’s every word, as if staking her claim in plain sight.

And Atlas hadn’t even noticed.

But Rhea had. She’d gently placed a hand on my back and guided me away from her circle of attention, murmuring something about giving him space. That same night, when I curled into bed, I had asked Juno a question that had been burning in my chest since we left the Dark Moon Pack.

Are we even allowed to be happy?

Juno had simply replied. We didn’t survive for nothing.

I found myself slowly settling into the Moon Stone Pack, despite the glances from Liliana and her whispered conversations that trailed behind me like a fog. I helped in the gardens with the twins, Cleo and Cora, who were charming and mischievous. They climbed trees and demanded bedtime stories that I happily indulged. Alexander was warming up to me, but his lingering grief over his late mate was still buried deep in his soul. Still, he watched over me with a gaze that I didn’t quite understand yet.

One morning, I caught Alexander speaking with Atlas outside the training grounds. The former Alpha’s voice was low and gravelly.

“She is not like the others. She doesn’t need pampering, she needs purpose.”

I looked away before anyone noticed me, that comment echoing behind me louder than it should have. Was I being evaluated, or protected?

Rhea was the only constant that made this place feel like home. She’d been given guest quarters just down the hall from me and often padded into my room late at night, wrapped in a robe and armed with tea.

“Atlas is trying, you know,” she said one night as they sat on the bed wrapped in blankets for warmth. “But he doesn’t know how to protect someone without making it look like a claim. And you? You’ve never been given anything without strings. It’s confusing the hell out of both of you.”

I sighed, my thoughts swirling around in my mind like a storm cloud. “I’m trying to be grateful. But I feel like I’ve been dropped into someone else’s life. Like I’m just pretending it’s mine.”

Rhea sipped her tea, her eyes twinkling at my words. “You’re not pretending. You’re adjusting. Just don’t lose who you are in the process.”

Just when I was beginning to get comfortable, adjusting finally after days, Liliana struck. She struck when I least expected it. It was during a community dinner at the Pack’s central lodge, an event that I started to allowed me to meet new pack members. I stepped outside to catch my breath, leaning against the wood of the deck as I listened to the music drifting through the window to me.

I hadn’t realized Liliana followed me until she spoke. “You’re good at playing meek,” she said, her voice thick with honey. “Do they fall for it, or is it just Atlas?”

I turned slowly, my eyes meeting her gaze. “Is there something you need?”

Liliana’s smile thinned. “I need you to understand that whatever fairytale you think this is, it isn’t real. He and I…”

“You aren’t his mate,” I said calmly, though Juno stirred beneath my skin. I didn’t want to let her get to me, but her words were making it difficult.

Liliana’s expression cracked. “I was the one he was supposed to end up with. We trained together, bled together. I was his first. You think some bond, some mystical snap of fate, means more than everything we built?”

Her words hit me like slaps, but my voice remained quiet. “Yes, I do.”

Liliana lunged at my words.

It wasn’t a punch, not quite. More like a clawed swipe, her hand hit across my cheek and knocked me sideways into the railing. The sting was immediate.

Juno growled, Enough, and she surged forward, pushing me back to take control.

I didn’t fully shift to deal with her. My reflexes sharpened, and my muscles bunched. I spun back towards Liliana, who barely had time to register the change before I grabbed her arm and twisted.

Liliana cried out, stumbling back, but I didn’t let go.

“You don’t get to touch me,” I said, my voice low with the voice of Juno mixing with mine. “Not anymore. I’m not a servant here, and I am not your competition. You lost the moment the Moon Goddess chose me.”

There were gasps; someone had seen.

Atlas appeared at the top of the deck steps, his eyes snapping between Liliana and me. For a second, he stared, his chest rising and falling fast. Then he stormed forward, pried us apart, and placed himself firmly between us.

“What the hell is going on?” He demanded.

“She attacked me!” Liliana cried.

“No,” I said, blood running warm down my cheek from her swipe, not having realized she broke my skin until now. “She did.”

Atlas turned toward Liliana, jaw clenched. “Go home.”

“But…”

“Now!”

Liliana stormed off, and Atlas turned back to me. He reached up, brushing my hair out of the way to assess the cut. This thumb trembled slightly.

“She got you.”

I nodded, my heart thudding. “I let her.”

“Why?”

“Because I needed to stop her.”

His eyes locked onto mine. “You scared me,” he admitted, his voice thick with emotion. “I felt your anger through the bond. I thought…”

“I would lose control?” I finished for him. He nodded, and I smiled fainly at him. “I didn’t.”

Atlas exhaled, pressing his forehead against mine. “No. You didn’t.”

After the dinner, Atlas walked me back to my room. We were quiet, no need for words as the moon hung heavy overhead. Our bond pulsed between us, urging us to take the next step.

When we reached my door, he lingered. “I’ll talk to my father. She won’t be allowed back.”

I touched his arm. “Don’t exile her because of me.”

“I’m not doing it for you,” he said. “I’m doing it for the pack. We protect each other here.”

I nodded, turning to my door before pausing to look at him. “I meant what I said.”

“About the Moon Goddess?”

“About the bond. I didn’t ask for it. But it’s mine. And I’m not ashamed of it anymore.”

Atlas reached for me, leaning into me as he brushed his lips across my cheek just beside the scratch Liliana gave me. “Good.”

Inside me, Juno hummed, We aren’t prey anymore.

And for the first time in years, I believed her.

-

[Third Person[

Liliana moved like a shadow through the dense thicket behind the Moon Stone estate, her breath sharp, her pulse hotter than the late-night wind that swept the trees.

She could still hear Astrid’s laugh echoing behind her, still see the way Atlas looked at her like she was the goddess he’d been waiting for. It made bile rise in Liliana’s throat.

No. She would not be replaced. Not after all she had sacrificed. Not when she had been so close.

The stories had always whispered of something older than the Alphas, something twisted and rooted deeper than blood. Most called it a myth. But Liliana believed in power, and tonight, she was ready to pay for it.

The path opened before her like a wound, leading into a half-buried ruin she had only heard spoken of in panicked whispers. Stone and shadow intertwined in the clearing, with an arch of broken granite as the center.

There, beneath the crooked bones of the forest, stood a woman.

She emerged from nothing. Not cloaked in glamour, but in something more primal: her gown spun of dried thorns and shed snake skin, her fingers stained black with herbs and bloodroot. Her silver eyes glowed faintly beneath tangled hair. She looked ageless. Tired. Powerful.

And vaguely familiar, though Liliana couldn’t say why.

“You come for death,” the witch said softly.

Liliana did not flinch. “I want the girl gone. Astrid. She’s a threat to everything I’ve worked for.”

The witch didn’t blink. “You want her dead.”

“Yes.”

“Because your heart breaks when he looks at her?”

Liliana’s jaw tensed. “Because she doesn’t belong.”

The witch considered her, as if searching the edges of her soul. Then, without a word, she withdrew a vial from within her robes, small and smooth, filled with a dark, viscous fluid that shimmered red in the moonlight.

“One drop,” she said. “On skin. No incantations. No theatrics. She won’t bleed, but she will rot. Quietly. Quickly. And it will look like her body simply gave up.”

Liliana reached for the vial, but the witch closed her hand around it before she could take it.

“There is a price.”

Liliana narrowed her eyes. “I assumed.”

The woman stepped closer, her gaze sharp now, gleaming with something ancient and cold. “You will owe me a life. One freely given. Not blood from a battle, not death by accident. A life you choose to take with your own hands, when I come to collect it.”

Liliana paused. “Any life?”

“Yes.”

“And when will you come?”

The witch smiled, something neither warm nor cruel, simply patient.

“When it matters.”

Liliana hesitated, then reached out again. The moment her fingers touched the glass, she felt a pulse of power slide up her arm, dark, aching, hungry.

“Do not spill it,” the witch warned. “It cannot be unmade. And beware… if the girl is more than she appears, the death may echo.”

Liliana’s breath caught. “What do you mean?”

But the witch had already turned away.

“Leave now. Before you start to feel regret.”

“I don’t regret anything,” Liliana hissed, tucking the vial into her coat.

But even as she turned back toward the pack, her heart beat louder in her ears.

Behind her, the witch stood beneath the broken arch, the moonlight spilling down her weathered features. She whispered a name to the wind, a name she didn’t yet understand that had power in her bloodline.

The breeze shifted.

The girl was stronger than the others. Different. There had been a pull in the air when the witch crafted the poison. A shimmer beneath her ribs.

But she ignored it.

Whatever the girl was, whoever she was, her fate was sealed.

And soon, Liliana would deliver it.