“Did I,” she says again, softer this time, like she’s savoring how the words land.
“Or did you only watch what they wanted you to see?”
My legs won’t hold me.
I feel Eryx’s arm come around my waist before I even realize I’m falling, and even through the bond’s constant hum, I can hear my own heartbeat stuttering out of rhythm.
“That’s not possible,” I say, but my voice cracks on the second word.
“I was there.
I held your hand.
I watched them close the casket.”
“Did you look inside it first?”
I open my mouth.
Nothing comes out.
Because I hadn’t.
I was twelve.
They told me it was better if I remembered her whole, not the way the fever left her at the end, and I believed them, because why wouldn’t I.
Because grief doesn’t ask for proof.
Grief just wants somewhere to put itself down.
“No,” I whisper.
“I didn’t.”
The figure lowers her hood.
The face underneath is close enough to my mother’s that my chest seizes, but wrong in the small places memory usually forgives.
The nose is a fraction too sharp.
The eyes are gray like mine, but colder, like a version of my mother’s warmth filtered through glass.
“You’re not her,” I say, and this time my voice comes out steadier, because I need it to.
“You look like her.
That’s not the same thing.”
Something flickers across the woman’s face, surprise or approval, I can’t tell which.
“Clever girl,” she says.
“Your mother always said you’d see through a lie faster than anyone gave you credit for.
She was right, as usual.”
Riven has gone very still beside Jax’s chains, every muscle coiled.
“You knew her.”
“I was her sister.” The woman’s mouth curves, not warm, not cruel, just certain. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
“Which makes me your aunt, April, though I doubt that word means much to you.
Your mother never told you about me.
She made sure of it.”
“Why would she hide that?”
“Because I chose a side she couldn’t forgive.” She steps further into the moonlight, and I see now that beneath the cloak, her wrists carry the same split-crescent mark burned into the chamber walls.
“The rebellion your mother walked away from.
The one your Jax has been quietly feeding information to for the past two years.”
Jax’s head snaps up despite the blood crusted along his jaw.
“That’s not—”
“Don’t,” the woman says, almost gently.
“She deserves the truth, and you’ve lied to her long enough.”
I turn to him, and something in his face collapses before he even speaks.
“April, it’s not what it sounds like.”
“Then tell me what it sounds like,” I say, my voice shaking now, all the steadiness I borrowed a moment ago draining straight out of me.
“Because right now it sounds like you knew exactly who I was before I did.”
“I didn’t know you were the True Luna,” Jax says quickly.
“I swear that part is true.
But I knew your mother’s name meant something.
I knew the rebellion had been watching this campus for years, waiting for a bond like yours to surface.
When you showed up with no pack, no history, a scent you couldn’t explain, I reported it.
That’s all.
I didn’t know what it would become.”
“You reported me.”
“To protect you,” he says, and the desperation in his voice almost sounds real.
“The Council would have buried you the second they suspected.
The rebellion offered protection instead.”
“Protection,” Riven repeats, voice low and dangerous, “that led straight to Selene being taken and you chained to a post bleeding from the mouth.”
“That part,” the woman says calmly, “was not part of my plan.
Someone within our own ranks moved faster than they were told to.
I’ve been trying to undo the damage since the wristband was cut from your friend’s arm.”
“Where is she?” I demand.
“Where’s Selene?”
“Safe.
For now.” The woman’s eyes flick briefly toward Lucien, then Jodan, assessing them the way a merchant assesses goods before a trade.
“But safety in this kingdom is never permanent, is it.
Not for omegas.
Not for rebels.
And certainly not for a True Luna who just publicly bonded four alphas in front of the Royal Council.”
Jodan steps forward, positioning himself half in front of me without seeming to think about it.
You didn’t drag her down here for a family reunion.”
“No,” the woman agrees.
“I brought her here because the rebellion needs what she is, and because I owe her mother a debt I intend to pay before the Council finds a way to collect it first.”
“What debt?” I ask.
She studies me for a long moment, and something almost like grief passes behind her cold gray eyes.
“Your mother didn’t die of fever, April.” Her voice drops, quieter now, stripped of its earlier performance.
“She was executed.
Quietly, so the record would read differently.
Because twenty years ago, she was exactly what you are now, and the Council has spent two decades making sure no one remembered that a True Luna ever existed at all.”
The chamber tilts around me.
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.” She reaches into her cloak and withdraws something small, wrapped in cloth gone soft with age, and holds it out toward me.
“She asked me to keep this safe for you, in case the bond ever woke again in her bloodline.
I never thought I’d live to hand it over.”
My hands are shaking as I take it.
The cloth falls away to reveal a ring, plain silver, engraved with the same split-crescent symbol carved into every wall of this chamber, except this one has a second symbol beside it.
A full moon, unbroken.
Not rebellion.
Royal.
“That,” Jodan says, and for the first time since I’ve known him, his voice has lost every trace of its composure, “is the seal of the fifth royal house.
The one the Council claims was wiped out a century ago.”
The woman’s smile turns thin and sharp.
“Wiped out,” she says softly, “is what they wanted written in the histories.
But blood doesn’t disappear just because a crown says it should.
It only waits.”
Somewhere above us, faint but unmistakable, a horn sounds through the tunnels, three long notes that make every alpha in the chamber go rigid at once.
“That’s a Council alarm,” Lucien says.
“They know we’re down here.”
The woman’s expression doesn’t change, but her voice sharpens into something urgent.
“Then you have less time than I hoped.” She grips my wrist, fast, before Riven can pull me back, and presses something cold and metal into my palm alongside the ring.
“Whatever you decide to do with what you now know, April, decide quickly.
Because the Council isn’t coming down here to arrest you.”
“Then why are they coming?” I ask, though some part of me already knows I won’t like the answer.
Her gray eyes, my eyes, hold mine steady in the dark.
“They’re coming to finish what they started with your mother.”