Rowan heard the scream before anyone told him what was wrong.
It tore through the council wing like a blade, raw with magic, sharp enough to make his wolf slam against his ribs. Chairs scraped. Voices broke. By the time he reached the doors, he was already running, lungs burning, the scent of scorched stone and blood pulling him forward.
The ritual grounds were unrecognizable.
Fire crawled over the circle in feral tongues where the brazier had overturned, magic shuddering out of control. At the center of it all, Lyra knelt in the ash, her gown shredded, silver soot streaking her hair and skin as if the flames had tried to claim her and failed.
And a few steps away—
Serena.
She wasn’t retreating. She wasn’t crying.
She was standing there as if she had been carved into the scene.
Rowan didn’t remember crossing the space between them. One moment he was staring, the next he was hauling Lyra out of the burning ring, her aura flaring so violently it blistered his arms. He pulled her against his chest, bellowing for healers until his voice shook the trees.
Only then did he look back.
Serena had not moved at all.
Her face was pale, expression unreadable, like she had already stepped outside herself.
“What did you do?” Rowan roared.
She said nothing.
“You jealous, spiteful—” he spat, advancing on her, Lyra’s blood smeared across his hands. “You’ve always been barren, Serena. Broken. Unfit to be Luna. And now you dare to hurt her?”
Each word struck like a lash.
Barren.
Broken.
Unfit.
Serena felt them slide into the spaces where her bond had once lived — not tearing her open, but hollowing her out until there was nothing left to bleed.
Lyra whimpered in Rowan’s arms. “She did it on purpose,” she whispered. “She’s always hated me. She can’t stand that you chose me.”
Rowan didn’t look away from Serena. “You disgust me,” he said quietly.
It was worse than shouting.
Something in Serena loosened.
Not pain.
Freedom.
That night, while the healers chanted over Lyra’s burned aura and the council convened in frantic whispers, Serena returned to her den for the last time.
She packed nothing.
She only took the pendant Rowan had given her at her first Blood Moon — the one engraved with the Luna crest — and the cloak her mother had woven for her before the sickness took her voice.
Then she went to the ravine.
The same ravine where her scout had died.
She had chosen it deliberately.
The terrain was unstable, riddled with jagged stone and blind bends where patrol scents tangled uselessly. She cut her palm deeply with a shard of rock and let the blood flow freely, soaking the fabric of her cloak until it was heavy and dark.
Then she shifted.
Her wolf tore free, silver and white, sprinting through the underbrush with calculated desperation. She crashed through brambles, ripped her flank on thorns, and let her scent scatter wildly through the gorge.
When she reached the deepest drop, she tore the cloak from her shoulders and left it tangled on a blood-slicked boulder.
She did not leap.
She slipped sideways into a hidden waterway and let the river carry her down into darkness.
By sunrise, the ravine was swarming.
Search parties howled her name. Scouts traced her shredded trail to the cliff’s edge and found only blood, fur, and the Luna pendant lodged between stones.
“She’s gone,” someone whispered.
Rowan stood at the brink long after the others stepped back, staring into the churning water below.
He felt nothing.
Only inconvenience.
The funeral was held before dusk.
The council chamber was draped in mourning black, incense thick in the air. Lyra sat beside Rowan, her arm wrapped in glowing bandages, her expression carefully stricken.
“Luna Serena gave her life in a moment of madness,” Rowan declared. “Let her death remind us of the dangers of unchecked emotion.”
No one questioned him.
By nightfall, emissaries from Lyra’s clan arrived with condolences and quiet offers of alliance.
And deep in the forest, hidden beneath a stranger’s scent and a body that no longer answered to a bond, Serena watched the flames of her own pyre from the shadows.
She felt nothing.
Not grief.
Not fear.
Only fire.
If he wanted her gone so badly…
He should have made sure she couldn’t rise.
