The Rogue Queen's Reckoning

Chapter 2-Ashes and Promises

Five years later, and I still woke up tasting blood.

Not my blood, not anymore. The silver wound had healed years ago, leaving only a jagged scar across my abdomen that my children liked to trace with tiny fingers, asking the same question: "Did it hurt, Mama?"

Every day, I never said. It hurts every single day.

Instead, I'd kiss their foreheads and tell them about strength. About surviving. About how scars were just proof that we'd won against the things that tried to break us.

They were too young to understand. But they would. Eventually, they'd understand everything.

I pushed myself out of the narrow cot, calling it a bed would be generous and moved through the pre-dawn darkness of my quarters with the silence of a wolf who'd spent five years learning to disappear. The Ember Sanctum was quiet at this hour, just the crackle of dying fires in the corridors and the occasional snore from the barracks below.

My wolves. My army. My family now.

I dressed quickly: leather pants reinforced at the knees, a fitted black tunic, boots worn soft from years of use. The rogue uniform. No silk.

No ceremony. Nothing that reminded me of the Luna I'd been.

That girl died in the courtyard at Silvercrest.

What crawled out of those flames was something else entirely.

I braided my hair, midnight black streaked with silver now, more pronounced after the children and secured it with leather cord. Weapons next. Twin daggers at my hips. Throwing knives in my boots. A short sword across my back.

"You look like you're going to war."

I didn't startle. Hadn't startled at unexpected voices in years. I turned to find Seraphine leaning against my doorframe, arms crossed, that perpetual smirk playing at her lips.

"Aren't I always?" I checked the edge of one dagger. Still sharp. Good.

"Fair point." She pushed off the frame, her own weapons glinting in the low light. Sera was my scout, my spy, my best friend, though neither of us would ever say that word out loud. Rogues didn't have friends. We had allies. People we trusted not to stab us in the back.

Usually.

"Castor wants to see you before the raid." She fell into step beside me as I headed for the door. "Something about the supply routes being different than expected."

"Different how?"

"More guards. Better armed. Almost like someone knew we were coming."

I stopped walking. "A leak?"

"Maybe." Her expression darkened. "Or Ronan's just gotten paranoid enough to guard everything like it's made of gold."

Ronan. Even his name tasted like poison.

Five years, and he'd only gotten worse. Three territories under his control now, Silvercrest, Shadowpine, and Ironwood. Thousands of wolves bowing to his Black Crown. The Council was too corrupted or too terrified to stop him.

But that was about to change.

"Tell Castor I'll meet him at the strategy tent in ten minutes." I resumed walking, my mind already calculating. If there were more guards, we'd need a different approach. More distraction. Better timing. "And wake the strike team. I want everyone ready to move by dawn."

"Already done." Seraphine grinned. "You're predictable, Ghost."

I shot her a look. She laughed and disappeared down a side corridor, silent as her namesake.

The Ember Sanctum sprawled across the ruins of an ancient fortress deep in the Ashen Wilds, far enough from pack territories that we were safe, close enough that we could strike and vanish before anyone organized a pursuit. We'd built it from nothing. Scavenged stone and salvaged wood and sheer stubborn will.

Home.

I wound through familiar corridors, past the training yard where younger wolves were already sparring despite the early hour, past the makeshift infirmary where our healers tended to last week's wounded, past the kitchens where the morning meal was being prepared.

My pack. Not by blood or tradition, but by choice. Every wolf here had been cast out, rejected, hunted. And every single one of them would die for me.

Not because I commanded it. Because I'd earned it.

"Mama!"

The voice was bright, joyful, completely at odds with the grim fortress surrounding us. I turned just in time to catch Lyria as she launched herself at me, silver-blonde hair streaming behind her like moonlight.

"What are you doing up?" I swept her into my arms, breathing in her scent, wild roses and rain, somehow, despite the fact we lived in a wasteland. "The sun isn't even up yet."

"Caelum had a nightmare." She wrapped small arms around my neck. "He won't tell me what about, but Nyx says it's bad. The kind that comes true."

My stomach tightened. Nyx's visions were never wrong.

"Where are they now?"

"Training yard. Caelum wanted to hit things." Lyria pulled back to look at me with those storm-gray eyes, my eyes and I saw worry there that no four-year-old should carry. "He's scared, Mama. But he won't say why."

I set her down gently. "Go back to bed, little moon. I'll check on your brothers."

"Can't sleep." She fell into step beside me, had to jog to keep up with my longer strides.

"My gift is being loud tonight. Everyone's emotions are all spiky and dark."

Her gift. Empathic abilities that were getting stronger every month. She could sense emotions, sometimes even influence them.

My gentle daughter, cursed with feeling everyone's pain.

"What do you sense from me?" I asked quietly.

She tilted her head, considering. "Angry.

Always angry. But there's something else too.

Something... cold. Like ice that never melts."

Hatred, I thought. That's what you're sensing, baby. Pure, refined hatred.

"That's called determination," I said instead.

"Grandmother says determination and vengeance aren't the same thing."

Of course Maeve would say that. My grandmother had appeared three times in the past five years, cryptic warnings, strange prophecies, instructions about training the children. Then she'd vanish again into whatever dimensional pocket she hid in.

Helpful, but maddening.

We reached the training yard. Dawn was just starting to break, painting the sky in shades of blood and gold. Appropriate.

Caelum was in the center of the yard, wolf form, attacking a training dummy with a ferocity that made even the hardened warriors watching take a step back. His ash-gray fur was bristling, his movements too fast for a child his age. Shadow-walking, he flickered in and out of visibility as he struck, a technique that had taken me months to master but came to him as naturally as breathing.

My son. Four years old and already more dangerous than wolves twice his age.

"Cael." I didn't shout. Didn't need to. My alpha voice carried across the yard, calm but absolute. "Shift. Now."

He froze mid-strike, breathing hard. For a moment I thought he'd refuse, he had his father's stubbornness, a fact that both terrified and saddened me. But then he shifted, standing naked and trembling in the dawn light.

I grabbed a training cloak and wrapped it around his shoulders, pulling him against me.

He resisted for maybe half a second before collapsing into my arms.

"Tell me about the nightmare."

"Don't want to."

"Caelum."

His voice came out muffled against my shoulder. "I saw Uncle Damon. He was hunting someone. Hunting... you."

The world tilted slightly. "Damon?"

I'd never met Ronan's brother. He'd been away…. some mission in the northern territories during my time as Luna. But I'd heard the rumors. The enforcer. The shadow.

The wolf who did Ronan's dirty work without question or mercy.

"Are you sure it was him?" I kept my voice steady despite the ice flooding my veins.

"Nyx says so." Caelum pulled back, and I saw golden-amber eyes staring at me, wrong eyes, not gray like mine or blue like Ronan's.

Where had those come from? "She says he's the one. The one from the prophecy. The shadow wolf who'll stand between death and destiny."

"That's not ominous at all," Seraphine muttered from behind me. When had she arrived?

I looked past Caelum to where Nyx sat cross-legged at the edge of the training yard, perfectly still, watching us with mismatched eyes, one silver, one gold. My youngest daughter, who hadn't spoken a word in three days because she'd been "listening to the future."

"Nyx." I released Caelum and moved to kneel before her. "What did you see?"

She blinked slowly, focusing on me with that eerie intensity that made grown warriors uncomfortable. When she spoke, her voice had that hollow, distant quality it got during true visions.

"The shadow wolf hunts the silver ghost. But when he finds her, the bond will break him.

Brother will turn on brother. Blood will spill on both sides. And three children will decide whether the moon rises or falls forever."

Silence. Even the sparring warriors had stopped to listen.

"Well," Castor's gruff voice cut through the tension. The old wolf limped into the yard, battle-scarred and gray-muzzled but still dangerous. "That's significantly worse than the supply route problem."

Despite everything, I almost smiled. Castor had a gift for understatement.

"Brief me on the raid," I said, standing. My children clustered around me, Lyria holding my hand, Caelum pressed against my side,

Nyx watching with those too-knowing eyes.

"Then we move. If Ronan's brother is coming, I want to be gone before he gets close."

"About that." Castor's expression turned grim.

"The scouts reported an hour ago. There's been movement. A small force, elite warriors, heading toward the Wilds."

My pulse quickened. "How small?"

"Fifty wolves. Led by someone they're calling 'The Truth Seeker.'"

Damon. Had to be.

"How long do we have?"

"They'll reach our outer perimeter by nightfall. Maybe sooner if they're faster than expected."

I looked at my children. At my army. At everything I'd built from ash and rage and desperate hope.

Ronan wanted me dead. Wanted my children dead. And now he was sending his brother, his enforcer, his shadow to finish what he'd started five years ago.

Fine.

Let him come.

Let him see what he was hunting.

Let him see what his brother's cruelty had created.

"Change of plans," I said, my voice carrying across the yard. "We're not running. We're not hiding." I met Castor's eyes and saw understanding dawn there. "We're going to send Ronan a message. One he can't ignore."

"And what message is that?" Seraphine asked.

I smiled. It wasn't a kind smile.

"That the Silver Ghost isn't a ghost anymore. She's a queen. And she's coming for her throne."

The yard erupted in howls, approval, anticipation, bloodlust. My wolves are ready for war.

But Nyx grabbed my hand, squeezing tight, her small voice cutting through the noise:

"Mama. When you meet the shadow wolf... don't kill him. Please. We need him."

I looked down at my daughter, at the tears streaming down her face, at the desperate plea in her mismatched eyes.

"Why?" I whispered.

She looked toward the horizon, toward where Damon and his hunters were coming.

"Because he's the only one who can save you from what's coming next."

Before I could ask what that meant, she collapsed.