Rise Of The Fallen Luna

Chapter 15

••• Matthew’s POV •••

The wind had turned bitter by the time we returned to the Whitemaw Tails Pack. Lydia was now wearing my coat, still naked underneath, and her footsteps sounded loud in the hallway as if she was stomping.

Emma trailed behind us, her face blotchy with tears, clutching the bandaged side of her neck, a makeshift one from a tatter of Lydia’s torn clothes, where the syringe had pierced her skin.

Silver… How foolish of her to use a silver needle filled with wolfbane. She would need medical attention because of it now.

Inside, the pack house felt colder than before.

“You didn’t tell me,” Lydia snapped the moment the door shut behind us. “You didn’t say she was that strong. You never mentioned anything about her wolf!”

“She’s never used it before like that,” I muttered, shrugging off my jacket. Or had she?

“That wasn’t just strength, Matthew. That was a monster. You saw what she did—what her wolf did. Everyone dropped. Everyone! Even the damn Alpha Prince struggled to stay upright!”

“She’s not a monster,” I blurted out automatically, then clenched my jaw, knowing my mistake.

Lydia narrowed her eyes. "Oh, so you are defending her now?"

"No. I’m defending logic. She didn’t attack anyone unprovoked. She pulled her wolf back before someone got killed." I tried to reason with her. Or was I reasoning with myself?

Emma let out a sob and suddenly spoke, “She nearly killed me! She stabbed me with my own needle!”

I was glad for once that she had disrupted my conversation with Lydia because I was still in shock myself after seeing Leicia’s physical strength and Belle’s power.

I turned to her, the exhaustion finally catching up to my voice. “Why did you try to stab her in the first place, Emma? Silver needle? And the wolfsbane? A full syringe of it? Are you insane?”

Emma pushed past us and stormed up the stairs, wailing dramatically. “She tried to kill me! She nearly killed me!”

From the upper floor, a weak voice called out, frail and cracked, “Emma? What happened?”

“Mother!” Emma cried, bursting into Hilda’s room. “She stabbed me! Leicia tried to kill me!”

Hilda was sitting up in bed, her shoulders hunched under a blanket. Her hands trembled. “W-What do you mean stabbed?”

I arrived just in time to see Emma clutching her arm dramatically. I grabbed her wrist and yanked her gently but firmly back from the bed.

“Nothing happened, Mother,” I said tightly. “Emma is just being dramatic.”

“She was going to inject me!” Emma insisted.

“She tried to stab Leicia first,” I snapped. “Do you want to send Mother to her grave with this nonsense? You know she’s frail. She doesn’t need this stress.”

Hilda blinked between us, her confusion deepening. “Emma… is that true?”

Emma sniffled. “I was just—she humiliated me!”

“That’s enough,” I said, dragging her into the hallway. “Go cool off. Now.”

“She’s evil! She threw me out again!” she kept wailing.

I rounded on her. “Be grateful she didn’t inject it. Leicia spared you. Remember that.”

Emma blinked, then turned away with a strangled sob.

Lydia crossed her arms. “So what? Now we’re supposed to cower before her? She stood there like a goddess—everyone stared like they forgot she was a traitor who left this pack.”

“She didn’t leave,” I gritted out. “She was thrown out.”

I ran a hand down my face, trying to find a scrap of calm in the chaos. “Lydia, I’m not defending her. I’m telling you we have to be smart. You don’t just go picking fights with someone who can knock an entire courtyard flat with an aura.”

“You’re scared of her,” Lydia accused, her voice quieter now.

I didn’t answer.

She scoffed. “Unbelievable. Just because she flexed her power a little—”

“She’s not just anyone, Lydia,” I said, my voice sharper than I intended. “She’s the last daughter of the Dawn Guardians Pack. The werewolf community respected her Father. Her brothers. Her family was deemed heroes. If you kill her, the world will spit on us.

We’ll be exiled. Or worse.”

The silence that followed was suffocating.

I exhaled. “Lydia, clean yourself, and please calm yourself before calming Mother and Emma. I need to think.”

I left before I exploded, heading to my study. I needed to be somewhere quiet. A place that could give me a sliver of sanity in this chaotic situation.

The accounting books had been stacked on my desk, the old desk, for days—untouched since Leicia left, or maybe since I brought Lydia home. It was time to face reality now.

I pulled one open, not expecting much.

And paused.

Monthly funds were divided by category. Food. Patrol. Territory maintenance. Medicine. Warrior training. Even the pack stipends, listed by member and rank. Color-coded, tabbed. My name was beside Alpha travel expenditures, annotated with precise reasoning.

It didn’t make sense.

I flipped through more.

There were notes about emergency aid funds, pack members with debts, and subtle adjustments made to ensure no one went without.

This wasn’t my Beta’s writing. It was too elegant to be his.

It sure as hell wasn’t Lydia’s, as I hadn’t asked her to take care of it.

It had to be Leicia.

I stared at the pages.

She had handled all of it.

I turned the pages faster. Debt management plans. Long-term funding allocations. Supplies distributed by rank. A note about using her own money to support medication costs. I swallowed. The last column held Emma’s spending—spa trips, imported perfumes, custom clothes—and the final line for Mother’s medication.

Seeing those amounts made my chest tighten.

Leicia…

She’d done all this… without me knowing.

Of course, I hadn’t known. I was never around.

We only spent a few hours together before I left for war.

And I never thought to ask.

I leaned back in my chair, unsettled.

Back then, I thought she was just... reserved. She barely spoke when I left for war, didn’t cry, didn’t cling. I assumed she didn’t care.

But maybe I never gave her a chance. I hadn’t even looked deeper.

And based on how much Emma and Mother hated her, I thought she wasn’t doing anything. That she was just floating around my pack.

I ran a hand through my hair. Guilt itched at the edge of my conscience.

There was a sudden flicker of a memory—watching her in the university library during our final year. She always sat by the far window, stacks of notes beside her. I used to sneak glances while pretending to read.

Her posture was always calm and elegant. Focused.

Had she looked the same while doing all this?

I always thought I loved quiet women.

But then Lydia burst into my life like a wildfire. Fierce. Unapologetic. She fought beside me on the battlefield, bled beside me. And I thought, maybe that’s what I needed—someone who burned for me.

But this book... this quiet order... it shook something loose.

It made me realize… Leicia wasn’t quiet. She was just never given the room to speak.

Lydia walked in, freshly showered and calmer now. “Emma’s in her room. I had asked the pack doctor to check on her wound, and Mother is resting. I gave her something to calm her down.”

I nodded absently, then turned the book toward her. “You should see this.”

She approached cautiously. Her eyes scanned the clean rows of ink.

“She did all this?”

I nodded. “Looks like it.”

She didn’t respond immediately.

"Look," I said, keeping my voice even. "You're the Luna now. I need your help. You should be aware of our expenditures. Emma’s expenses are through the roof. Mother’s medication costs are climbing. If we don’t manage this carefully, the pack will collapse. You can see we are bleeding financially."

She blinked. "You want me to help with... bookkeeping?"

"And with any business proposal we got after receiving the Medals of Honor.” I continued. “You know your parents' contacts. Maybe they can help fund something short-term."

She was quiet for a long moment.

"You’ve done great so far," I added, reaching for her hand. "You took care of my mom. Emma loves you. Your cooking’s amazing. I’m not asking you to fix everything, Lydia. Just... help me keep this afloat."

Her eyes softened, the anger dimming just enough. "You're not... changing your mind about her. About Leicia?"

I didn’t flinch. “No. I chose you. I still do.”

She looked down at our joined hands, then smiled faintly. “Okay. I’ll help.”

But even as she smiled at me, something in her expression felt strained.

With a kiss on my cheek, she stepped out of the room while I remained seated, staring at the ledger.

I turned back to the books, flipping pages, calculations running through my head—but something snagged at my thoughts.

The courtyard. The way she stood. The aura.

Why had she never shown me that strength?

She could have burned the world. And yet she didn’t.

I clenched the ledger tighter.

I didn’t want to think about her anymore.

But that image—her wolf rising like the sun, knocking everyone flat—wouldn’t leave me.

I had loved a fraction of her.

And now the whole world would know her full self.

I shut the book with a quiet thud and stared at the fireplace.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t erase that moment.

Or the realization that… I never really knew her at all.