THE REJECTED LUNA'S REVENGE

Untitled Episode4: SILVER EYES

MAYA DISCOVERS HER SILVER EYES AND THE MOON GODDESS'S MARK

I woke up to silence.

Not the heavy, suffocating silence of Blackwood after the rejection.

This was different. Peaceful.

Sunlight was streaming through the small window of Kade’s guest room. Dust motes danced in the air. I could hear birds outside. Real birds, not the crows that always circled Blackwood.

For a second, I forgot.

Forgot the rejection. Forgot the snow. Forgot the blood.

Then I moved, and pain shot through my ribs.

Right. I was in Silverfang.

A rogue Alpha had saved me.

I was no one’s Luna anymore.

I pushed myself up slowly. Mara had left a bowl of water and a cloth on the table. I splashed my face, trying to wake up.

That’s when I saw it.

The mirror on the wall.

I froze.

The woman looking back at me wasn’t the same one who walked out of Blackwood.

My hair was tangled, yes. My face was pale. There was a bruise along my jaw.

But my eyes...

They weren’t brown.

They were silver.

Not gray. Not light brown. Silver. Like molten metal. Like moonlight captured and poured into my skull.

My hands started shaking.

"That’s not possible," I whispered. My voice cracked.

Wolves’ eyes changed with age. With power. But not like this. Not overnight.

There was a knock at the door.

"Maya? You awake?" Kade’s voice.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I was staring at my reflection like it was a stranger.

The door opened anyway. Kade poked his head in, then stopped when he saw me at the mirror.

His eyes went wide.

"Oh," he said softly.

"You knew," I said. It wasn’t a question.

Kade stepped inside and closed the door behind him. "I suspected. After I saw you shift yesterday."

I turned to face him. "What am I, Kade?"

He didn’t answer right away. He walked to the window and looked out. Like he was gathering his thoughts.

"Come with me," he said finally. "There’s something you need to see."

---

He led me to the pack library.

Silverfang’s library was small compared to Blackwood’s, but it smelled like old paper and wood. Comforting.

Kade pulled down a heavy book. The cover was worn, the pages yellow.

"Legends of the Moon Goddess," he said, setting it on the table. "My grandmother made me read this when I was a kid. I thought it was just stories."

He flipped through pages until he found what he was looking for.

There was an illustration. A wolf. But not a normal wolf.

Its fur was silver-white. Its eyes glowed silver. And around its head was a crown of moonlight.

"Read this," Kade said, pointing.

My hands were still shaking as I read aloud.

"'Once every hundred years, the Moon Goddess chooses a wolf. Born under the blood moon. Marked with silver eyes. They will walk through fire and rejection. They will be broken. And from the pieces, they will unite the packs.'”

I looked up at Kade. "Unite the packs? That’s stupid. I can barely unite myself right now."

Kade gave me a small smile. "The last one was assassinated before she turned 20. That was a hundred years ago."

The room went cold.

"You think..." I couldn’t finish the sentence.

"I think your rejection wasn’t just about Selena," Kade said quietly. "I think Damian’s father knew. Or suspected. And he was scared."

"Scared of me?" I laughed. It sounded hysterical even to me. "I’m a beta’s daughter. I was going to be Luna through marriage. That’s it."

"Were you?" Kade asked. "Maya, do you know who your mother was?"

I frowned. "She died when I was 10. She was a beta. Like my dad."

"Did she ever tell you stories? About the moon? About dreams?"

I thought back. My mom used to sing to me at night. Old songs about the Goddess watching over us. She’d always said I was special. That I was born on a night when the moon was red.

My blood ran cold.

"She was scared of something," I whispered. "The last month before she died, she kept telling me to run if anything ever happened to her and dad."

Kade nodded. "Someone has been hunting your bloodline, Maya. For a hundred years."

I sat down hard in the chair. My head was spinning.

Rejection. Rogues. Silver eyes.

It was too much.

"I don’t want this," I said. My voice was small. Like I was 10 again and my mom had just died. "I just wanted Damian. I just wanted to be Luna. I didn’t ask for this."

Kade crouched in front of me. He didn’t touch me. He just looked at me.

"I know," he said. "But the Goddess didn’t ask you either. She chose you."

Tears burned my eyes. "Why? Why me?"

"Because you’re still standing," Kade said simply. "After everything, you’re still standing."

---

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

I kept going to the mirror. Staring at my silver eyes.

Mira was awake inside me. More awake than she’d been in years.

We are chosen, she whispered. We are not broken. We are becoming.

"Becoming what?" I asked her.

Strong, she answered. Dangerous. Free.

I went outside.

The moon was full. Brighter than I’d ever seen it.

Without thinking, I shifted.

The pain was there, but it was different now. Cleaner.

Mira came out, and she was magnificent.

Silver-white fur. Silver eyes. Bigger than any wolf I’d ever seen at Blackwood. When I ran, the snow barely touched my paws.

I ran until my lungs burned. Until the forest blurred around me.

I ran because for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like I was running away.

I was running toward something.

When I came back, Kade was waiting by the fire pit outside. He had two mugs of something hot.

"You saw it too, didn’t you?" he asked as I shifted back and took the blanket he offered.

"Saw what?"

"The aurora." He pointed at the sky.

Above us, the night sky was rippling with green and silver light. Like the moon was painting the stars.

"It only happens when a Chosen is marked," Kade said quietly. "My grandmother told me."

I sipped the tea. It was sweet. "So what now?"

"Now," Kade said, "we train. We get you strong. Because if what I think is true, Blackwood isn’t the only one who’s going to come for you."

I looked at my hands. They were steady now.

"And then?"

Kade smiled. It was the first real smile I’d seen from him. "And then you decide what the Chosen does next."

I looked up at the moon. At my reflection in the tea. At my silver eyes.

Damian rejected me because he thought I was weak.

He thought I was nothing without him.

He was wrong.

I wasn’t just Maya Reyes, the rejected Luna.

I was something else now.

Something the Moon Goddess had marked.

"Okay," I said. "Teach me."

---

Back in Blackwood, Damian woke up screaming.

He’d been dreaming of silver eyes. Of a wolf running through snow.

Of a bond dying and something new being born in its place.

He stumbled to the window. The moon was full.

And for the first time since he rejected Maya...

He was terrified.

Because deep down, he knew.

He hadn’t just rejected a mate.

He’d rejected the future of the packs.

========= END CHAPTER 4 =========