Killian found me in the garden three days after the reunion, his expression carrying a tension I recognized immediately, the same controlled stillness he’d had the morning the border patrol burst into my room with news of Hellfang scouts.
“They’re being brought in,” he said.
“Both of them. Alive, unarmed, no resistance.”
“You caught them?” I stood too fast, my hand pressed instinctively against my stomach even though there was nothing yet to protect there, not really, just the idea of it.
“They weren’t hard to catch. They weren’t hiding especially well, and I don’t think they expected us to actually cross the border to get them.” Something flickered across his face, almost grim satisfaction.
“Come. Roman wants you there when we question them. Not seen — just present, where you can hear everything yourself instead of secondhand.”
I followed him through the compound, my heart working harder than the walk should have warranted, every step bringing me closer to the first direct contact with Hellfang since the night I left it bleeding.
I didn’t know what I expected to feel.
Some part of me had assumed distance would have dulled it by now, four days and a lifetime of revelations later.
It hadn’t.
My hands were shaking again by the time we reached the room where they were holding the two men.
They knelt on the floor, restrained but not harmed, and I recognized one of them immediately — a low-ranking guard who used to stand near the gates when I was still Luna, someone whose name I’d never bothered to learn because I hadn’t thought I’d needed to.
The other I didn’t know at all.
Roman stood over them, arms crossed, and something about his stillness reminded me of the way Killian had gone quiet and dangerous the day of the pregnancy reveal.
“You’re on Dreadmoon land,” Roman said.
“Explain yourselves, and I might let you walk back out.”
“We were sent to confirm a rumor,” the guard I recognized said, his voice unsteady.
“That’s all. Word reached Hellfang that a woman had turned up alive near your northern border. Given everything, we were told to find out if it was true.”
“Given everything,” Roman repeated, flat. New chapters come out on g.com first.
“The rejection.” The second man spoke this time, quieter, like he understood he was on dangerous ground.
“The exile who was cast out. There were rumors she survived the rogue attack. Our Alpha wanted to know.”
My stomach dropped even though I’d known this was coming, known it the moment the border patrol had burst through my door three days ago.
I stayed where Killian had placed me, half-hidden near the doorway, listening to two strangers discuss my survival like it was a piece of intelligence to be confirmed and reported rather than a woman’s life.
“And what will you tell him,” Roman asked, “when you go back?”
Neither man answered immediately.
I watched the guard’s eyes move past Roman, scanning the room almost without meaning to, and I understood a half-second before it happened that he was going to see me.
His gaze caught on my face and stopped.
“That’s her.” His voice dropped, disbelieving.
“That’s the rejected Luna.”
The room went very still.
I felt Killian shift beside me, a small, protective movement, like he was deciding whether to put himself between me and two restrained, unarmed men who posed no immediate threat at all — except the threat of recognition, which was somehow worse than a physical one.
“She’s alive,” the guard said again, mostly to himself now, like the fact of it hadn’t fully landed until he’d said it out loud a second time.
“She is.” Roman’s voice carried an edge I hadn’t heard from him before, cold and absolute.
“And you will go back to your Alpha and tell him exactly that. Tell him Maeve is alive. Tell him she is under Dreadmoon’s protection, and that this pack does not take kindly to scouts crossing our border to spy on our people.”
“We weren’t spying, we were just—”
“You were gathering information about a woman under my protection without my permission,” Roman said.
“On my land. That is spying, whatever softer word you’d prefer to use for it.”
I stood there absorbing the moment, watching my father speak with an authority I hadn’t fully witnessed until now, and something in me settled slightly even through the fear — not comfort exactly, but the recognition that I finally had someone standing between me and Hellfang instead of standing beside them while they hurt me. The source of this chapter is NovelPing.
“Let them go,” Roman said finally, and Killian moved to release the restraints himself.
“Let them walk back across the border and deliver the message word for word. I want no confusion about where Maeve stands now.”
The two men left under guard, and once they were gone, Killian turned to me, his expression carefully neutral in a way that told me he was watching for my reaction before he let himself react at all.
“You’re all right?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet.” My voice came out smaller than I wanted.
“They know I’m alive now. That’s not something I can take back.”
“No,” Roman agreed, joining us.
“But it’s not something you needed to hide either. Hiding would only work until the next patrol wandered too close to our border, or the next rumor traveled fast enough to reach them anyway. Better they hear it from scouts we caught and released ourselves than from some distorted version that reaches them sideways.”
I understood the logic even as my chest tightened around the fear underneath it — the fear that Darius would hear this, that Astra would hear this, that whatever calm I’d found in the last few days was about to be tested by two people who had already proven exactly how far they’d go to hurt me.
Roman must have seen some of that on my face, because his expression softened, though the steel underneath it didn’t fully leave.
“Come,” he said.
“There’s something I want to do, and I want you there for it.”
He led me out to the courtyard where the ceremony had happened days earlier, and this time when the pack gathered, it wasn’t for a test or a reveal.
Roman stood at the center of it with Killian at his side, and when he spoke, his voice carried clearly across the crowd.
“Let it be known to every member of this pack, and to anyone who carries word beyond our borders,” Roman said, “that Maeve is under the full protection of the Dreadmoon Pack, as my daughter, and as kin to every person standing here. Anyone who threatens her, threatens all of us.”
The crowd’s response was immediate, a wave of agreement rolling through the courtyard, and I stood there with my hand pressed to my stomach again, understanding that Roman had just done something far larger than protect me from two scouts.
He’d drawn a line Hellfang would have to notice, whether they wanted to or not.
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