The Luna's retribution

Chapter 3

​The Silver-Crest Manor was a labyrinth of forced smiles and gilded lies, and for the first time, Nyx walked its halls as a spectator rather than a prisoner. Each morning, she sat at the breakfast table, a pristine portrait of the dutiful daughter, sipping tea while Alpha Silas raved about the expansion of the northern trade routes. She watched him, noting the tremor in his hands—the early signs of a man who was overextending his reach. She saw Sienna, her younger sister, preening in the reflection of a silver platter, eyes constantly darting toward the manor gates, waiting for the Black-Thorn scouts to announce Julian’s arrival.

​They were all playing a game they thought they understood. They believed they were the masters of their own destiny, while Nyx knew the exact moment the floor would drop out from under them.

​But she couldn't stay. To dismantle a mountain from the inside was a slow, agonizing process, and she didn't have the luxury of time. She needed an army, or at the very least, a force capable of crushing a house built on sand. She needed the Nightshade.

​Her plot began with the "Accidental Discovery."

​She spent her days meticulously curating a paper trail. She planted forged documents in her father’s study—letters detailing illegal alliances with the Iron-Ridge pack, a group Silas despised for their cruelty. She made sure the handwriting mimicked his perfectly, using ink she had stolen from the apothecary. She even took the liberty of "leaking" information to the head of the guard, a man whose loyalty to the pack was deeper than his loyalty to Silas.

​Every night, Nyx sat in the silence of her room, her mind a cold, calculating machine. She had to vanish in a way that left Julian’s sanity fractured and Silas’s credibility in ruins. It wasn't enough to just disappear; she had to be erased by the hands of those she once loved.

​She had spent weeks observing the local folklore and the superstitions of the Silver-Crest people. They feared the Midnight Gorge. They believed it was a place where souls were trapped, a place where the Moon Goddess punished the prideful. If she disappeared there, she wouldn't just be "lost." She would be a haunting.

​She began to cultivate the "Tragedy." She started showing subtle, calculated signs of distress. She would "forget" to eat during family dinners, picking at her food with a hollow, haunted look. She would "accidentally" let slip comments about the weight of the crown and the crushing expectation of her upcoming mating to Julian. She played the role of the breaking dove so convincingly that even her father, ever the opportunist, began to worry that his "dowry" might become damaged goods.

​"You look thin, Nyx," Silas remarked one evening, his eyes narrowing over his goblet of wine. "Julian will be here in two weeks to finalize the date. I expect you to look like a Luna, not a ghost."

​Nyx looked up, her eyes wide, glassy, and devoid of light. "I’m tired, Father. I feel as if I’m waiting for something... but the air feels so thin lately. As if the mountain is trying to push me away."

​Silas snorted, dismissing her concern with a wave of his hand. "Nonsense. You’re just nervous."

​But the seed was planted.

​She spent her nights training in secret. The North Wall route was still as dangerous as she remembered, a jagged, vertical chimney that required the strength of a wolf and the balance of a shadow. She practiced the climb in the dead of night, her fingers raw, her muscles screaming, but she didn't stop. She mapped every handhold, every loose stone, and every blind spot in the guards' patrol rotation.

​She was also learning to manipulate the scent of the pack. She raided the gardens for wild nightshade and pungent mountain herbs, crafting a mixture that would effectively "kill" her scent at the edge of the Gorge. If she did it right, the hounds would track her scent to the water's edge and lose it—a classic sign of a soul being pulled into the abyss.

​Her most delicate work, however, was with Julian.

​Whenever he visited the manor, she didn't give him the warmth he craved. She gave him distance. She gave him the "broken look." She would stand by the window, staring out at the distant peaks, and when he entered, she would flinch, as if his very presence were a weight she could no longer bear.

​"Why do you look at me like that?" Julian asked one afternoon, his brow furrowed with a mixture of irritation and a budding, insecure guilt. "I’ve done nothing but prepare for our future."

​Nyx turned, her face a masterpiece of repressed sorrow. "I feel as if I’m losing myself, Julian. The pack expects a Luna, but I feel like I’m becoming a statue. I think… I think I just need to be alone for a while. To remember who I was before the Silver-Crest."

​He didn't realize it, but she was already writing his epitaph.

​As the day of the Equinox approached, the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. She had "discovered" a map in her father’s study—one she had drawn herself—detailing a secret smuggling route through the Midnight Gorge. She left it lying open on her desk, knowing full well that Sienna would sneak in to snoop.

​It took less than forty-eight hours for the gossip to spread. Sienna, eager to frame Nyx as a traitor to the pack, would tell everyone she saw that Nyx was planning a "secret rendezvous" near the Gorge. When Nyx disappeared, no one would look for a kidnapping. They would look for a runaway who had been swallowed by her own guilt.

​On the night before her scheduled "death," Nyx sat in the dark of her room. She had everything she needed. Her pack was ready, hidden beneath the floorboards. Her scent-masking oils were prepared. Her heart was a cold, steady stone.

​She realized then that this was the most honest she had ever been in her life. She wasn't the princess anymore. She was a weapon, and she was currently being sharpened by the very people who were destined to be her first victims.

​She stood at her vanity, staring at her reflection one last time. She didn't look like a girl about to jump into a gorge. She looked like a woman about to conquer a kingdom. She had 24 hours until the play reached its final act.

​“The shadow is ready,” she whispered to her reflection.

​She wasn't afraid of the fall. She was only afraid that she wouldn't survive to see the look on her father’s face when he realized his empire was being dismantled by a ghost he had created. The plan was flawless, the actors were in place, and the stage was set for a tragedy that would rewrite the history of the four packs forever.

​She closed her eyes, letting the darkness of the room embrace her. She was no longer a daughter of the Silver-Crest. She was the architect of their ruin, and the night of her "death" would be the first day of her real life.