The Unmarked Luna

Chapter 4 The Drying Spring

(Kael's POV)

A scream woke me. Pain ran from the back of my neck into my chest, and the bond inside me snapped shut around an empty space.

Severed.

The word came with the last pulse of pain.

*Elara.*

How dare she cut my mark? I threw off the blankets, crossed the corridor, and forced open her door. I meant to drag her out of bed and demand an answer.

But the room was empty.

Her moonpetal-and-rain scent had faded. The shelves were bare, and the open closet held nothing. Even the chest under her bed was gone.

One thing remained.

A parchment lay in the center of the desk. I snatched it up. *Contract Dissolution and Pack Withdrawal Statement.* Her signature and a dark thumbprint stood at the bottom.

She thought one signature let her leave after everything I had given her.

My Beta broke into the mind-link before I could call the guards.

*Alpha! The Sacred Spring! Something is wrong!*

I shoved the parchment into my tunic and ran into the predawn cold. The Sacred Spring supplied the territory's vitality and healing magic.

At the grotto, my boots sank into mud that had never been there before.

The silver water had turned brown and thick. Centuries-old glowing moss crumbled black along the stones, and the grotto smelled of rotting leaves.

Nothing in the pool answered my power.

"It began fading at midnight," an Elder said. "Selene has prayed for hours. It keeps getting worse."

The old pack healer pushed through the Elders. He was well over a hundred years old, and his cane struck the stones twice before he steadied it.

"Selene never sustained the Spring, Alpha."

"What are you talking about?"

He gripped his cane. "Elara fed it a few drops of her blood every week for three years. Her life force entered the Spring's magic. She left, and the magic left with her."

I remembered every time I had praised Elara's patience and sent her away smiling. While I kept her waiting for a title, she had been bleeding into this pool.

The withdrawal parchment crackled inside my tunic.

"Find her! Send every tracker. Bring her back, wherever she has gone."

As the trackers scattered, my Beta approached with a document sealed by the royal crest of the Capital.

"Alpha, a royal courier just delivered the confidential report you requested weeks ago. It came from the Royal Medical Archives."

He held it out to me.

"It's about Selene."