MOONBOUND HEART THE SUDDEN LUNA

CHAPTER 4 THE SHADOW OF MY MOTHER'S SISTER

I stared at the carved mark on the tree as if it could explain everything. The curve beneath the slashes reminded me of a crescent moon, but broken, warped. Ronan stood beside me like stone, arms crossed, his jaw locked.

“She was banished,” he said. “Long before you were born. Your mother sealed her fate. Now she’s come to settle the blood debt.”

“What kind of sister kills her own kin?”

“One who believes the power you carry belongs to her.”

I could barely breathe. “You’re telling me the person trying to kill me is my aunt.”

Ronan nodded. “Her name is Selene.”

The name hung in the air like smoke.

“She was supposed to be Luna. Before your mother. She was next in line. But the moon chose differently.”

“It chose my mother.”

“And Selene never forgave her.”

He motioned for me to follow him. We crossed the field into the forest, deeper than we had gone before. The air shifted. The birds stopped singing. I felt the woods tighten around us like they recognized who we were.

In a hidden grove, Ronan knelt and brushed aside a layer of moss. Beneath it lay a stone slab. Carved into it were names. Dozens of them. Some cracked, others scratched through like they had been erased.

“This is the Luna Stone,” he said. “Every woman chosen by the moon leaves her mark here.”

I stepped closer.

There was my mother’s name.

Cressida.

Right below it, a space. Blank. Waiting.

“She never told me any of this,” I said. “All these years, she just kept it buried.”

“She wanted to keep you out of it. But blood always finds a way.”

My hand brushed the empty space. It pulsed beneath my fingers.

“She will come for this,” Ronan said. “Selene wants the mark. She wants the title. And she’ll do anything to stop you from getting it.”

I looked at him. “Then we make sure I get it first.”

He smiled, not with amusement but with approval.

We returned to the cottage as night fell. I could feel the pull of the moon building. My dreams twisted that night, filled with dark wings and a whisper that sounded like my mother’s voice calling me back.

When I woke, a feather lay on my pillow.

It shimmered silver.

That day, Ronan began teaching me the old ways. Not just training my body, but teaching me how to read the land, how to sense magic before it struck. We studied runes and roots. The language of wolves. The shape of memory carved into stone.

But even with the lessons, I felt her.

Selene.

She was close. I could feel her shadow at the edge of the trees. She never stepped into the light. But I saw the marks she left. Carvings in bark. Bloodless animal carcasses left in strange spirals.

She was toying with me.

And then one night, it stopped.

Everything went silent.

No birds. No wind. Not even the hum of insects. I stood in the middle of the clearing, and the world held its breath.

Then I saw her.

A woman with hair as white as bone. Eyes like frost. She stood where the trees thinned and stared at me with a smile that promised death.

Selene.

She did not speak. She only raised her hand and pointed to the moon.

And it turned red.

Ronan appeared beside me seconds later, breath ragged like he had run from deep in the woods.

“You saw her,” he said.

“She was real,” I whispered. “And she made the moon bleed.”

His jaw tightened. “She’s marking the beginning of the claiming. A blood moon means war.”

The wind picked up, carrying the scent of something metallic. It was not just symbolism. It was magic. Old and angry.

That night, the ground trembled beneath the cottage. Animals screamed in the woods. I stood barefoot at the threshold of my home while Ronan lit protection wards around the trees. The seer’s cottage in the distance had gone dark.

We barely slept.

By morning, a message was waiting.

Three stones stacked on the porch. Each marked with the same curved s***h as before. Beside them, a ribbon the color of my mother’s dress the night she left Ravenhollow. It had not faded.

“She’s not just here for the mark,” Ronan said. “She wants to rewrite the story. And she’s starting with memory.”

I reached down and touched the top stone.

It was warm.

That evening, we returned to the Luna Stone. Ronan carried the blade. I carried the pendant. The wind whispered warnings in a language I could almost understand.

I knelt before the stone. Closed my eyes.

A voice echoed inside me.

“Do you accept the path?”

It was not Ronan’s voice. It was mine. Older. Stronger. A version of myself I had not yet met.

“Yes,” I answered.

The stone lit with silver veins that snaked outward like lightning.

Then the sky cracked.

A howl split the air, but it was not a wolf’s. It was deeper. Hollow. Echoing from inside the earth.

Ronan pulled me up. “We need to go. Now.”

We ran through the trees, light breaking apart in the branches, until we reached the ridge overlooking the southern valley.

What we saw made me stumble.

The council.

Not in robes. Not in human form.

Shifted.

Wolves as tall as men. Eyes like glowing coals. Standing in a line across the valley.

And at the center, draped in black, stood Selene.

She smiled, and the pack behind her knelt.

Ronan cursed. “She’s declared herself Luna.”

“But she hasn’t completed the bond.”

“She doesn’t need to if no one survives to challenge her.”

My hand tightened around the pendant.

“She’s going to start the binding during the next full moon.”

Ronan nodded. “Which gives us six nights.”

I looked at the rising smoke curling above the trees.

And in that moment, I knew.

If I wanted to survive, I could no longer run from the wolf inside me.

I would have to become her.