The SilverCrest kitchens were quiet long after nightfall.
Most of the pack had turned in, exhausted from training drills and border patrols. Aria lingered, barefoot on the cool tile, watching the steam rise from a cracked teapot. She hadn’t meant to be awake this late, but the ache in her limbs from training made sleep impossible.
She poured herself a cup, then poured a second out of habit.
As if she was expecting someone.
The door creaked open behind her. She didn’t turn around.
“I figured you’d come,” she said softly.
Zara stepped into the warm glow of the kitchen, dressed in a threadbare hoodie and socks. Her braid was slightly undone, loose strands clinging to her cheek.
“You always know,” she murmured.
Aria offered her the second cup. They sat in silence at the worn wooden table, the kind that had survived generations of spilled wine, sharpened claws, and whispered secrets.
Tonight would add one more.
Zara stared into her tea. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Aria didn’t respond. Just waited.
The air tightened between them, not hostile—but bracing, like the moment before a blade strikes. Zara’s knuckles whitened around her cup.
“I should’ve told you months ago,” she whispered. “But I didn’t know how.”
Aria exhaled slowly, steadying her heart.
Some truths you could feel coming long before they arrived.
“I knew what they were planning,” Zara said.
Aria’s spine straightened.
Zara didn’t look up. “Not all of it. Not the final ritual. But I knew Evelyn was meeting with council elders behind Kael’s back. That they were gathering signatures to revoke your Luna status before the mating was finalized.”
Aria said nothing. She wasn’t sure she could.
Zara kept going. “I thought—if I intervened too soon, it would make things worse. I tried to warn Kael. He brushed me off. Said I was being paranoid.”
Her voice cracked. “I let it drop. And by the time I realized how far it had gone, it was too late.”
Aria clenched the edge of the table. “So you stayed silent.”
“I tried to tell you,” Zara said quickly. “The night before the council summoned you—I came to your room. But you were already gone. Kael had called you early. I stood outside your door with every word in my throat and no way to reach you.”
She finally looked up.
“I failed you.”
Aria stared at her, trying to process the layers. She remembered that night. The strange urgency in the summons. The missing page from the council docket. The cold look in Evelyn’s eyes.
“You weren’t the only one who failed me,” she said finally.
Zara flinched.
“But you’re the only one still here,” Aria added.
They sat in silence, the space between them shifting. The sharp edge softened—not forgiveness, not yet. But something closer to understanding.
“I’ve had to carry it every day,” Zara whispered. “Watching you train. Watching you fight. Knowing I should’ve stood beside you sooner.”
“You’re here now,” Aria said, her voice low.
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No,” Aria agreed. “But it makes it possible.”
Zara blinked. “Possible?”
“To heal. To fight. To make sure no other Luna ever gets discarded like I was.”
Zara swallowed hard. “You really think we can change the way it works?”
“I don’t care about changing the way it works,” Aria said. “I want to burn the whole system down.”
Zara gave a half-laugh, half-sob.
“Then I’m with you,” she said. “All the way to the ash.”
The tea had long gone cold, but neither of them moved.
Outside the kitchen window, the moon hung low and wide, casting pale light across the snowy courtyard. The shadows of the old pines shifted in the breeze like ghosts whispering of all the secrets this house had held.
Aria stood slowly and crossed the kitchen to the old cupboard in the corner. She pulled out a faded leather-bound book — an old SilverCrest combat ledger.
She placed it on the table in front of Zara.
“You’ll help train the others,” she said. “The young, the discarded, the ones who’ve been told they’re too soft.”
Zara nodded slowly. “Of course.”
“And I want records,” Aria added. “Names. Skills. Strengths. Weaknesses.”
Zara opened the book, running her fingers over the worn pages. “You’re building more than an army, aren’t you?”
Aria’s gaze didn’t waver. “I’m building a future.”
For a moment, neither of them said anything. Then Zara reached into her hoodie pocket and pulled out a small silver pin — the old Luna’s crest from the council.
She placed it on the table and slid it across.
“I stole this,” she said. “The day they voted to sever you.”
Aria stared at it. The crescent moon symbol glinted under the lantern light, polished and cold.
“They didn’t even notice it was missing,” Zara added.
Aria picked it up, turned it over in her palm, and then dropped it into the fire burning low in the hearth.
It hissed, twisted, and vanished into flame.
The moment was quiet, but something inside Aria shifted.
Not healed. But aligned.
The path was still long. The council still loomed.
But she wasn’t walking it alone anymore.
