What The Moon Could Not Control

The Ritual

The ruins are exactly how I imagined them. Stone temples overgrown with moss and vines. Symbols carved into walls that match the ones Rhea showed me. This is where the First Wolves ruled. This is where they built their empire before the Moon Goddess came and told everyone that fate was real and love didn't matter.

My bare feet walk silently on the ancient stone as I move deeper into the ruins. I can feel the power inside me grow stronger as I get closer to the center. It feels like recognition, like coming home to a place I have never been in.

As the sun sets, it reveals the main temple, and it is massive. What would have been a ceiling is replaced with open sky. There is an altar carved at the center from a single piece of black stone; around it are more symbols, different but active and waiting.

I touch the altar and feel everything shift inside me. The bond I had with Kael breaks completely. Not the forced one. The real one. The one that was growing between us in the darkness. It shattered like glass, and I gasp from the pain.

But as it breaks, something else awakens. Something that was sleeping in my blood.

I can feel every mate bond in the pack territory now. Hundreds of them, thousands even. Some are strong, some are weak, but all of them are just wrong. Forced by a power that was never meant to exist.

The pack would implode, and the hierarchy crumble if I end it all with just a single thought.

But I can’t, not yet.

Kael finds me in the temple just before midnight. He's not alone; there's a hunting party with him. Massive wolves, all of them loyal and terrified of what he's about to ask them to do.

He shifts to human form and steps toward me. The hunting party stays back, waiting for orders.

“Don't do this,” Kael says with a broken voice. “I know what you're thinking, I felt the bond break”.

“I'm guilty of being alive,” I respond. “That's the only crime I have ever committed”.

“I know, and I'll spend the rest of my life trying to fix it, but don't destroy everything, don't become what they already think of you”. Kael says softly.

I feel the hunting party moving, like I’m being betrayed. They're receiving orders from Kael to drag me back to the pack so Morcant can complete his ritual, so he can spill my blood on the altar and bring the Moon's voice back.

I don't move. I don't run. Instead, I reach out with the power inside me, and I touch their bonds. The ones connecting them to Kael, their alpha. The ones that make them his to command. I touch them from within, and I break it.

One by one, the wolves shift back to human form. They stare at each other in confusion. The bonds that controlled them are gone. For the first time in their lives, they're free.

Kael's face goes pale.

“What did you do”? He asks, flaring up.

“I freed them,” I replied calmly.

I step closer to him, “I could do what I just did to everyone, to every bond and every wolf. But I won’t”.

“Why not”? Kael asked worriedly.

“Because you have to choose. Not because the Moon says so, not because fate demands it, but because you want to,” I reply to him.

Kael doesn't move. I can see him struggling with it, with the choice and freedom. His hands were fixed at his sides.

“If I choose you, I lose everything,” his voice sounded low.

“If you choose the pack, you lose me,” I reply firmly.

The hunting party is backing away. Without their bonds, they have no reason to stay. No reason to fight. They shift and run back into the forest. Kael is alone now. Just him and me, and the ruins quiet around us.

“I can't give you what you want,” Kael says. “I can't be the person you need”.

“I'm not asking you to be perfect, I'm asking you to be real. I'm asking you to choose without anyone forcing you”.

Kael reaches out and touches my face, his hands shaking. Suddenly, behind us, the altar begins to glow. The power inside me reaches out and touches the ancient magic in the stone.

The Moon appears above us, not the one from the pack territories, nor the one that's been silent, but a different moon. An older moon, a pale gold color. The one that existed before the Moon Goddess came and told everyone how to live.

Kael pulls back, staring at the sky, but his hand is now in mine. His grip is tight like he's afraid I'll disappear.

“What's happening?” he asks, concerned.

“Something is waking up”. My hands are glowing as I feel the power surging more and more.

As I see what is happening, I can feel how wrong it is.

The temple is responding to more than just my power. Just below the ground that we are standing on, it shakes like something that has been sleeping for far longer than anyone has been alive, has just awakened.

The altar begins to glow brighter, and the symbols on the walls shine like a light ember, older than the pack, older than the Moon Goddess, and anything I could even understand.

I can feel the power in my blood responding to it like they recognize each other. Like they've been waiting for this moment for centuries. But this feels wrong somehow, completely unstable.

Kael's grip on my hand had released, as his fear radiated off his face while he stepped back.

“We should leave,” he says with panic in his voice. “We should leave now”.

But we both know it's too late.

The temple is changing, and somewhere in the darkness, under the ancient ruins, something that felt buried deep has finally been awakened.