The Rouge Luna's Retribution

The Name I Used to Carry

I was on my feet before I'd finished deciding to move, ignoring the sharp protest from my healing shoulder as I crossed the chamber and pushed the door open.

Malakai stood in the corridor with Rhea, his expression carved from the same black stone as the fortress walls around him — utterly still, utterly controlled, in a way that frightened me far more than open fury would have. I'd learned enough about him in these past weeks to know that his calm wasn't the absence of rage. It was rage with nowhere left to go, banked and waiting, the kind of stillness I imagined settled over him right before every decisive strike I'd watched him land in that courtyard.

Behind them, warriors moved through the corridor in quiet, purposeful lines, carrying wounded toward the healers' wing, and the smell of blood and smoke still clung to everything despite the hours that had passed since the fighting stopped. Nobody looked at me with the curiosity I'd grown used to over these past weeks. Tonight, everyone's attention belonged entirely to the aftermath.

"Ashwood," I said, and the word tasted like ash in my mouth. "You're certain."

Rhea nodded, grim. "One of the hunters we captured alive talked before he died of his wounds. Said the contract came through an intermediary, gold and silver both, enough to outfit an entire strike team. Traced the payment back through three different parties, but it lands on Ashwood territory every time." She hesitated, glancing between Malakai and me like she wasn't sure which of us the next part would hurt more. "He also said the contract specifically named the target. Not the empire in general. You."

The floor seemed to tilt beneath me. "Me."

"They didn't come here hunting the Lycan King's territory at random," Malakai said quietly, and I heard, underneath the careful control, something that sounded almost like guilt. "They came here hunting a Moon-Wolf rumored to be hiding in Darkwood. Someone in Ashwood knew exactly what you'd become, Aria. And they decided that was a problem worth paying hunters to solve."

I thought of Killian's face in the pack circle, the cold certainty in his voice as he recited pack law over me. I thought of the two years since — years I'd assumed he'd spent with Selene, building the life he'd chosen over me, probably not sparing a single thought for the rogue he'd cast out to die. I'd made my peace with that assumption, or told myself I had. It was easier to imagine him simply forgetting me than to imagine him actively wishing me dead.

Apparently I'd been wrong about that, too.

"Why now?" I asked, forcing my voice steady even as everything in me wanted to shake. "Two years, and suddenly he decides I'm worth the expense of hiring silver-wielding hunters? That doesn't make sense. If he'd wanted me dead, why wait this long?" My mind raced through every possibility, each one worse than the last — that Killian had somehow been tracking rumors of me all along, waiting for confirmation before acting, or that something had changed recently enough in Ashwood to make my continued existence suddenly, urgently intolerable.

"Maybe he didn't know until recently," Rhea offered. "Rumors about a Moon-Wolf in Darkwood have been spreading for months now — hard to keep something like you quiet forever, not with warriors talking in border towns, not with the empire's reputation growing the way it has. Maybe word finally reached Ashwood, and someone there put together who the rumors were actually about."

"Or maybe," Malakai said, and something dark moved behind his eyes, "your former Alpha finally realized what he threw away, and decided he'd rather see you dead than see you become something more powerful than he ever gave you credit for."

The thought settled over me like a physical weight. I didn't want to believe Killian capable of that particular kind of cruelty — not because I still cared what he was capable of, but because believing it meant accepting that the boy I'd once loved, however briefly, however foolishly, had curdled into someone who'd rather erase me than face what his own rejection had accidentally created.

"There's something else," Rhea said, quieter now, glancing at Malakai like she needed his permission to continue. He gave the smallest nod.

"Say it."

"The hunter mentioned a name before he died. Not Killian's." Rhea's eyes found mine, careful and steady. "A woman's name. He said the contract was authorized by the Alpha's mate."

Selene.

Something cold and clarifying moved through me, cutting through the haze of pain and shock alike. Killian had rejected me, humiliated me, cast me out to die in a forest that was supposed to kill me — but even in his cruelest moment, some small, stubborn part of me hadn't quite believed he'd actively hunt me down two years later. Selene, though. Selene, who'd stepped into my place without so much as a glance in my direction, who'd built her entire position in Ashwood on being the stronger, more valuable choice — Selene had every reason in the world to want a rumored Moon-Wolf erased before that rumor could ever threaten the life she'd claimed.

I remembered the way she'd looked at Killian during the ascension ceremony, golden and composed and utterly certain of her place, and wondered now how much of that certainty had ever been real. A woman that secure in her position didn't usually need to hire hunters to erase a rival who'd already been banished, powerless and presumed dead. Unless, somewhere along the way, Selene had learned exactly how untrue that presumption actually was.

"If it was her," I said slowly, working through the implications even as I spoke them, "then Killian might not even know. Might not have authorized any of this at all."

"Does that matter?" Malakai's voice was hard, edged with a protectiveness that made my chest ache in a way I didn't fully understand yet. "His pack sent hunters to kill you. Whether he signed the order himself or simply failed to stop his own mate from doing it, the outcome is the same. You almost died tonight. So did I, if you hadn't—" He stopped himself, jaw tight, and I watched him wrestle visibly with whatever he'd been about to say.

"So what happens now?" I asked, when the silence stretched too long to bear.

Malakai's black eyes found mine, and whatever softness had lived there during the quiet moments on the balcony was gone entirely now, replaced by something harder, more resolute — the look of a king calculating exactly how far he was willing to go for the people under his protection. I recognized that look. It was the same one he'd worn crouched over the dirt in the training yard, sketching the Bound Door, absolutely certain I could become something more than what Ashwood had decided I was. He wore that same conviction now, aimed instead at an entire pack.

"Now," he said, "Ashwood learns exactly what it means to hunt something they don't understand." He turned toward Rhea, voice dropping into the clipped, efficient tone I recognized from the battlefield. "Assemble the war council. Tonight."

I opened my mouth to ask what that meant — whether war council meant the careful, measured retaliation I hoped for, or something far more absolute — and that was the moment a warrior burst into the corridor, breathless, blood still fresh on his hands from the courtyard battle.

"My King," he said, bowing hastily. "A messenger's arrived at the outer gate. Ashwood colors. He says he carries a message meant only for you — and he says it can't wait until morning."

The corridor fell utterly silent, every warrior within earshot going still, waiting to see how their King would answer a messenger arriving from the very pack that had just tried to burn their city to the ground.