The decision didn’t come easily.
SilverCrest was finally hers again. The council fractured. Evelyn gone. The wolves rallying behind her not as a substitute Luna, but as their future.
And yet Aria stood at the border with her heart cracking open.
She was leaving.
Not because she wanted to.
Because she had to.
Greenwood wasn’t going to wait.
Neither would she.
Kael arrived quietly behind her. Not in uniform. Not in authority. Just… Kael.
He looked at the two packed bags at her feet and the map in her gloved hand.
“Doesn’t feel like the right time to leave,” he said.
“Which means it’s probably the perfect time,” she replied, not looking at him.
His eyes flicked to the bundle strapped tightly to Zara’s back—Elara, swaddled and asleep, blissfully unaware her mother was about to walk into enemy lands.
“You could send someone else,” Kael tried.
Aria turned, storm-gray eyes hard.
“Would you have sent someone else to the trial that nearly ended your pack?”
He flinched, just a little.
“This is personal,” she said. “They killed my mother. They tried to kill my child. This doesn’t end with Evelyn’s exile.”
“Then let me come.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because your presence turns it into a war,” she said. “Mine keeps it clean. Political. Quiet.”
Kael clenched his fists. “You shouldn’t go alone.”
“I won’t be.”
Zara stepped forward, sword strapped across her back.
“And me,” came a voice from the trees.
Rannoch.
The rogue-turned-ally melted into view, his lean figure dressed in traveler’s leathers, eyes calm but alert.
Kael’s jaw tensed. “You trust him now?”
Aria didn’t hesitate. “I trust his hatred for Greenwood more than I trust your guilt.”
Silence.
Zara gently placed Elara into Kael’s arms.
The child stirred but didn’t cry.
Kael held her like a secret, like a wound reopening.
“You’re asking me to protect her while you chase ghosts,” he said.
“I’m asking you to be her father,” Aria corrected. “Not the Alpha. Not the lover I lost. Just… the man who will keep her alive while I do what you couldn’t.”
That stung.
She saw it in his eyes.
He nodded once.
“I’ll guard her with my life.”
“I know.”
They didn’t hug.
Didn’t kiss.
Just a long look. One filled with history, bitterness, grief—and something older than all of it.
Respect.
Aria turned, nodded to Zara and Rannoch.
They walked into the trees together, shadows swallowing them one step at a time.
Traveling with Rannoch was like walking beside a living storm. He didn’t speak unless necessary. When he did, it was low and flat.
“We stay off the main paths. Greenwood scouts patrol past the river. And we’ll need to cross under the old hunter’s bridge—feral territory.”
Aria nodded.
Zara grunted. “Feral wolves give me hives.”
“You’re allergic to fleas,” Rannoch said dryly.
“Same difference.”
The banter eased the tension—slightly.
But Aria never dropped her guard.
Three days into the journey, they camped beneath a crumbling watchtower from the last war. Aria studied maps by firelight while Zara snored beside her, and Rannoch sat sharpening his blade across the flames.
“They’ll come for you,” he said without looking up.
“Let them.”
“You underestimate how far Greenwood’s rot spreads.”
She raised a brow. “I think you underestimate how much I’ve changed.”
He met her gaze then—measured her not as an enemy, but as something harder to define.
“You remind me of someone.”
“Let me guess,” she said. “A lost queen. A warrior. A ghost from your past.”
He smirked faintly. “No. A girl who didn’t flinch when the world bled.”
Aria folded her map. “Then let’s make it bleed again.”
By the end of the week, the trees turned sickly.
The borderlands near Greenwood were marked by unnatural silence. No birdsong. No rustling prey. Just wind and bones and the occasional whisper of something not quite alive.
Rannoch led them through an overgrown tunnel beneath an old outpost.
“We’re inside Greenwood now,” he said. “We find the meeting point, deliver the message, and get out.”
“Deliver?” Zara asked. “I thought we were here to threaten them.”
“Better,” Aria said. “We’re here to make them confess.”
The plan was simple: leverage what they knew. The assassination attempt. The proof Evelyn was sent by Greenwood. The council’s letters. And more.
What they needed now was pressure.
Which came the next day—when Aria made sure one of their scouts “found” her.
She didn’t fight when they dragged her to the outer court.
She didn’t flinch when they bound her hands.
Zara and Rannoch remained hidden.
Aria stood tall before the Alpha of Greenwood: Lord Edrik.
A thin man with silver hair and teeth too white for his age.
“I expected an army,” he said, amused. “Instead I find a girl.”
“I’m the storm you prayed wouldn’t come,” Aria said.
Edrik’s smile faltered.
And behind him, courtiers whispered.
Because SilverCrest’s Luna—the one cast aside, the one who rose from the ashes—was standing in their halls.
And she wasn’t there to beg.
