THE LUNA THEY BURIED

Chapter 3: Something Is Wrong With Me

I woke up with a headache that felt like a hot nail being driven straight between my eyes.

I dragged myself upright, pressing the heels of my palms against my temples, but the pain didn't lessen. It pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat, thick and suffocating.

And then the noise hit me.

It wasn't just the morning wind against the windowpanes. It was everything.

Through the thick plaster wall of my bedroom, I heard Mrs. Gable three doors down talking softly to her cat. Down on the street, rubber tires sloshed violently through standing water on Main Street. Further south, somewhere near the boardwalk, a dog barked—a sharp, frantic sound that felt like it was echoing inside my own skull. I could hear the faint, steady drip of a leaky kitchen faucet on the floor below me.

I clamped my hands tightly over my ears, squeezing my eyes shut.

The sounds didn't stop. They didn't even dull. It was as if someone had turned the volume knob of the entire town to maximum while I was sleeping.

Panic clawed at my throat. I stumbled out of bed, my feet tangled in the damp blankets, and rushed into the tiny bathroom. I gripped the edges of the porcelain sink and splashed freezing tap water onto my face, desperate to shock my system awake.

When I wiped the water from my eyelids and looked up into the mirror, my heart stopped.

For a fraction of a second, my reflection didn't look like me.

Around the pupils of my hazel eyes, a vivid, glowing ring of pale silver flared to life. It burned with an ethereal, metallic light that had nothing to do with the dim bulb overhead.

I blinked rapidly, taking a gasping breath.

The silver vanished. My eyes were hazel again, tired, bloodshot, and wide with terror.

"It's exhaustion," I whispered aloud to the empty room, my voice shaking. "You haven't slept in two days. The lighting in here is terrible. You're losing your mind."

I forced myself to breathe through my nose until the pounding in my ears dulled to a low, manageable buzz. But as I looked down at my trembling hands, I knew I was lying to myself. First the stranger with the impossible healing, then his knowledge of my name, then the intruder who left an ancient symbol hidden behind my childhood photo.

Now this.

I needed answers, and there was only one person in Briar Cove who might have them.

Twenty minutes later, I stood on the porch of the small cedar-shingled house near the tree line. The air was thick with the scent of damp pine and ocean salt.

Before I could even knock, the wooden front door swung open.

Marianne stood in the doorway holding a steaming mug of tea. She wore her usual oversized knit sweater, but the second her eyes landed on my face, her posture turned rigid. Her knuckles turned white around the ceramic mug.

She didn't say good morning. She didn't offer a warm smile. She simply stared at me, her eyes darting over my face with a terrifying, wild panic.

"Elara," she breathed, her voice tight. "What are you doing here?"

"I need to talk to you," I said, stepping past her into the warm, cluttered living room.

Marianne closed the door quickly, turning the deadbolt with a sharp clack. "You look pale. Are you sick?"

"What's happening to me, Marianne?" I asked, turning to face her.

She froze midway through setting her tea down on the wooden coffee table. "What do you mean?"

"I woke up this morning and I could hear a dog barking somewhere near the boardwalk," I said, my voice rising as the fear I'd been pushing down flared back up. "I could hear the water dripping in the apartment downstairs. And when I looked in the mirror..." I paused, swallowing hard. "My eyes were silver."

Marianne's breath hitched. Color completely drained from her cheeks, leaving her looking fragile and frail. For a second, she looked like she might faint.

Then, right before my eyes, her face smoothed into a practiced, reassuring mask.

"Oh, sweetie," she said softly, taking a step toward me and reaching for my hands. "You're just overwhelmed. You've been working too hard on those design deadlines, and this storm has everyone on edge. Lack of sleep does terrible things to the mind."

I looked at her hands holding mine. She was trembling.

"I'm not hallucinating, Marianne," I said quietly.

"You aren't hallucinating, you're just exhausted," she insisted, her tone almost desperate in its sweetness. "Sit down. I'll make you some chamomile tea. You need to rest."

She was lying.

I had known Marianne Whitlock since I was five years old. She had raised me, scraped her knees beside mine, and patched every scrape I'd ever gotten. I knew the exact cadence of her voice when she was worried, and the exact pitch when she was trying to hide something.

She wasn't trying to comfort me. She was trying to quiet me.

A cold, heavy weight settled in the pit of my stomach. The person I trusted most in the world was looking me in the eye and treating me like I was hysterical.

"I don't want tea," I said, pulling my hands back from hers. "I'm going home."

"Elara, wait—"

"I'll call you later," I said, stepping backward out the front door before she could stop me.

Fifty miles north, inside the quiet gloom of the Blackthorne Manor study, Lucien Blackthorne suddenly slammed both palms onto the mahogany desk.

Dorian Ashford dropped the stack of territorial reports he was holding, his sharp Beta instincts flaring instantly. "What is it?"

Lucien didn't answer. He couldn't.

A sudden, violent disturbance slammed straight through his chest, snapping tight across the thin, invisible thread connecting him to Briar Cove. It was like a dormant electrical wire suddenly carrying a live current, a sharp spike of pure shock and raw panic radiating from her end of the bond.

Deep inside his mind, Veyr reared back, a ferocious roar tearing through Lucien's skull.

She is waking! the wolf snarled, clawing frantically at Lucien's ribs. The barrier breaks! Go to her!

Lucien gripped the edge of the desk, his knuckles turning stark white as he forced his Alpha authority to suppress Veyr's wild impulse. His breath came heavy and shallow.

"Lucien?" Dorian pressed, stepping closer, his eyes scanning his Alpha's rigid frame. "Is it the Council?"

"No," Lucien rasped, his pale grey eyes darkening to charcoal.

He felt the tremor lingering in the bond, something ancient and dormant stirring within her, fracturing whatever force had kept her power hidden for twenty-three years. He didn't know how or why the barrier was cracking now, only that her awakening had begun.

"Something is breaking," Lucien whispered, his jaw setting hard. "She's awakening."

By ten that night, the rain had stopped, leaving Briar Cove bathed in a thick, eerie fog.

I lay on my bed in the dark, staring up at the water-stained ceiling. Every light in the apartment was turned off, but sleep felt miles away. Every nerve ending in my body felt raw, prickly, and humming with an electric static that wouldn't let me rest.

The apartment was dead quiet.

Then, out of the silence, a voice spoke.

It didn't come from the hallway. It didn't come from outside my window.

It resonated from somewhere deep behind my ribs, low, ancient, and unmistakably real.

Run.