From His Luna to His Rival's Mate

Chapter 33

SELENE

The lecture hall was cold the next morning, someone had opened the windows and not closed them, and the October air was coming through.

I sat in my usual spot near the middle and pulled my jacket tighter. Around me students were settling in, pulling out notebooks, the usual pre-class shuffle. Professor Harlan was already at the front, arranging papers on his desk like he did before every single class.

He looked tired. I had noticed it for the past week. The way he looked tired in a way that sleep probably would not fix, like something was sitting on his mind and he could not quite put it down even when he was trying to teach.

He looked up and counted the room, then he sat on the edge of his desk instead of standing like he usually did.

"Today we are covering something I do not often discuss in this class," he said without preamble. "The Bridge Luna Prophecy. It is rare knowledge. Most of you will never encounter it in your pack histories, but it is real and it is documented and I think you should know it exists."

The room went quiet in that particular way lectures go quiet when the professor just said something important.

He stood up and walked to the board and wrote the words in clean capital letters. BRIDGE LUNA PROPHECY.

"The prophecy comes from texts written over three hundred years ago," he said, keeping his eyes on the board.

"At a time when the werewolf packs were fractured and at war with each other. Multiple bloodlines, multiple territories, no unified leadership." He turned back to face us. "A seer from the ancient Vale line wrote it down."

My hand stopped moving. I had my pen halfway to my notebook and I just... stopped.

"Vale?" someone in the front row asked.

"Vale," Professor Harlan confirmed.

"The prophecy states that a Luna will be born into a broken world. A Luna who carries the old blood. She will be reborn once, given a second chance that most do not receive, and in that second life she will either unite the fractured packs or bring them all to war."

He let that sit in the air for a moment.

"The prophecy has never been fulfilled," he continued. "In three hundred years, no Luna matching that description has appeared. Most scholars believe it was written for a specific moment in time that never came. Or that the conditions described are so rare they may never occur." He paused. "Some believe it is metaphorical rather than literal."

A girl near the window raised her hand. "Do people actually believe this? Like, do the packs take it seriously?"

"Some do," he said. "The older packs, the ones who keep detailed records. The prophecy was hidden away for a long time because it was considered too dangerous to know about. A Luna with that kind of power could destabilize everything." He rubbed his jaw.

"There are those who would want to find her before she found her own power. There are those who would want to stop her before she could do anything at all."

The room was completely silent now. "Is that why it is not taught?" someone asked.

"Partly," he said. "It is also because it is probably not real. Three hundred years is a long time to wait for something that may never happen." He went back to his desk and picked up his papers.

"But it is documented. It is part of our history, and you are old enough to know that history exists, even the uncomfortable parts."

He moved on to the next topic. Pack alliances in the 1800s. Something about territorial disputes. My notebook sat in front of me and I was not writing. My pen was in my hand but I was not moving it.

A Luna who carries the old blood. Reborn once, given a second chance, the Vale bloodline.

I had not told anyone about the rebirth, but I knew it had happened. I knew it was real. I was sitting in a classroom listening to a professor describe something that fit me so perfectly that it felt like he had looked directly into my head and pulled out the shape of my life.

Around me students were taking notes, they were thinking about pack alliances and territorial disputes and not realizing that Professor Harlan had just casually mentioned something that could change everything.

I looked at him at the front of the room, he was not looking at me. His eyes were on the board, on his papers, on anything except my direction.

But I got the feeling that he knew, not that I was the Luna, but that something about what he had just said mattered to someone in this room.

The lecture ended and I did not move immediately. I sat there while people packed up their bags and moved toward the door. Mara was already gone, she had left ten minutes early for something.

I was alone at my desk when Professor Harlan looked up from his papers.

He did not say anything, he just looked at me for a second, long enough for me to know that look meant something. Then he looked away and started organizing his materials like he was preparing for the next class.

I stood up and left. I went to the library instead of my next class.

I told myself I was just thinking but that was not quite true. I was looking, looking for old texts, records, looking for the prophecy written down in someone's actual handwriting from three hundred years ago.

I found a section on ancient bloodlines that did not get much traffic. Dust on the shelves, books that probably had not been checked out in years. I pulled down a volume on Vale history and sat in the back corner where no one would see me reading it.

The prophecy was there, not the full thing, but excerpts. Quoted from the original seer's journal.

*A Luna of the old blood shall be born into a world of fracture and fire. She shall love and lose and be broken by the hand she trusted most. But the Goddess shall grant her mercy in the form of return. A second life, a second chance. In this rebirth she will find her true strength and her true bond, and she shall choose: to unite the scattered children or to let them burn.*

I read it three times.

Love and lose and be broken by the hand she trusted most. Calder, the academy, the betrayal that had killed me before I was even born in this life. Second chance, second life.

I was sitting in a library reading about myself in a three-hundred-year-old prophecy. My hands were shaking a little. I set the book down carefully and closed my eyes, either unite the scattered children or let them burn.

That was not something small, that was not something I could ignore or pretend was not about me. That was everything, that was the reason Elara was drugging Calder.

That was the reason someone had shot me with a silver arrow, that was the reason people kept appearing and disappearing around the edges of my life.

They knew, or they suspected, or they were trying to figure out if I was the one the prophecy was describing. I opened my eyes and looked at the words again.

I had come back for a second chance. I had rejected Calder and chosen Kael. I was learning to control a power I did not fully understand yet, and somewhere out there, people were making plans based on whether I was real or just another coincidence wearing a familiar face.

I closed the book and held it against my chest. I needed to talk to Kael.