The den had never been this quiet.
Not after a battle.
Not after a funeral.
Not after the rejection I'd thrown like a knife in this very stone.
Silence pressed into the old shrine room until it felt like a third presence between us—me, Luna, and the unspoken.
Candle smoke curled in the cold air. Wax dripped slow rivers down old carvings of the Goddess, now half-buried under stacks of scrolls, herbs, and the strange chalk sigils Luna had marked on the floor.
She sat cross-legged on a worn fur in the center of the room, bare feet against the stone circle she'd claimed as hers. Shadows clung under her eyes; a thin, dark tracer ran along the veins at her wrist, like ink under skin.
The curse she'd dragged into herself.
Because I hadn't been strong enough to stop it in the walls.
Because I hadn't listened to the moon when She'd tried to give me the one wolf who might have saved us sooner.
My hands were sweating.
It was ridiculous: I'd faced rogue alphas, Bloodfang teeth at my throat, walls shuddering under curses.
But nothing had ever made my palms sweat like this—standing in the doorway of the shrine, watching Luna, and knowing I was about to put my throat where she could bite it.
She didn't look up when I stepped in.
The wards she'd chalked at the threshold prickled along my ankles, recognition and faint warning both.
"Orion," she said without turning. "You're heavy on your feet."
The corner of my mouth twitched—the ghost of amusement, quickly smothered by the weight in my chest.
"I thought I was quiet," I said.
"Not to the stone," she murmured.
Her fingers moved over a scrap of parchment, copying one of Kerran's scroll diagrams, lightning-bright eyes tracking lines of old ink. The faint silver in her irises caught the candlelight, making it hard to tell where pupil ended and glow began.
I'd always thought of eyes as windows.
Hers were lanterns now.
"Should I come back later?" I asked.
I heard how small it sounded.
How unlike an Alpha.
She finally looked up.
Just her eyes at first, lifting from page to me.
They flicked over my face, down to my hands, back up.
Whatever she saw there made her shoulders tighten the barest fraction.
"I'm not expecting anyone else," she said. "You may as well say whatever you came to say."
I swallowed.
The words jammed against the back of my teeth.
I'd rehearsed them.
On patrol.
In half-sleep.
Muttering them like prayers into my own fur when no one was listening.
They still froze.
She watched me in that patient, almost expressionless way the Goddess statues did—like time moved differently for her now.
I stepped closer, the stone circle's edge humming under my bare soles.
Something in the floor resisted.
Her wards.
Her power.
Her fear.
I didn't cross the chalk.
Not yet.
"I won't take long," I lied.
A flicker of something—bitterness?—touched her mouth.
"You said that the night you rejected me," she said quietly. "You were right. It didn't take you long at all."
The words hit full-force, no cushioning.
I deserved them.
Every spike.
"I remember," I said hoarsely.
"Good," she replied. "I'd hate to think I was the only one who still hears it."
Silence stretched.
I had two choices.
Turn around and leave.
Or step in and drown.
I stepped.
The chalk tingled as I crossed it, an almost electric buzz up my legs.
Luna's storm tasted me.
Measured.
Didn't throw me back.
I moved slow, like approaching a wounded animal.
She was more dangerous than any cornered wolf, and more breakable.
"I wanted to speak before the council drags you into whatever mess they're planning next," I said. "Before the other packs come howling. Before Selene starts... twisting what happened in those halls and at the nursery into a story that serves her."
A muscle jumped in Luna's jaw at Selene's name.
"I can handle Selene," she said. "I've had practice."
"I know," I said. "You shoulder too much of everyone's weight. You always have."
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
An old scar on my cheek pulled as I tried to find the next words.
"I watched you die," I blurted.
It wasn't what I'd intended to start with.
She stilled.
I pressed on, because if I stopped I wouldn't start again.
"In the hallway," I said. "At the nursery. When you—when you pulled that—thing into yourself. Your skin went cold. Your eyes... I felt the wind go out of you like someone had cut the cords. I called your name and you didn't answer."
My throat tightened.
"I've seen wolves die from the curse," I forced out. "I've seen them slip. Fade. But watching it reach for you was different. It felt... like the moon was turning Her face away. Like the last light was... going."
I laughed once, short and bitter.
"And all I could think," I said quietly, "was that you were going to die cleaning up the mess I helped make. And you'd never know that I—"
My voice broke.
Luna's eyes softened.
Only a fraction.
She looked away first, gaze dropping to her hands.
We'd fought Bloodfangs together.
Stood at cracking walls together.
It still unnerved me how much courage it took to meet her eyes without flinching now.
"You're not responsible for all of it," she said. "The curse. The cracks. The Bloodfangs. The Goddess's timing. She plays with bigger pieces than you."
"I'm responsible for *you,*" I said, too sharply.
The torches flickered, wind in the room shifting with my raised voice.
Her head snapped up.
I forced myself to breathe slower.
"To what I did to you," I said. "In this den. In front of these wolves. Before any of this. That's mine. No one else's. I can't keep hiding behind 'duty' and 'pack politics' anymore."
Her mouth pressed thin.
"You stood where you're standing now," she said. "The pack watching. The moon watching. Our bond humming under my skin like a live wire. And you said I wasn't enough. Not the right choice. Not the smart choice."
"I said 'I reject you,'" I whispered.
The words felt like glass in my mouth.
I had wielded them like a weapon back then.
Now they cut *me* more than her.
Her eyes flashed with remembered hurt.
"Yes," she said softly. "You did."
I exhaled slowly, feeling my hands tremble despite everything in me that wanted to still them.
"I told myself it was right," I said. "That I was sacrificing my own... whatever it was I felt for you... for the pack. That Selene's alliances, her knowledge, her position, mattered more than some runt the Goddess had, somehow, inexplicably, tied me to."
I almost couldn't say her name.
Luna's name.
Guilt clenched my stomach.
"I told myself you'd be better off without Moonshadow too," I went on, voice low. "That the den would eat you alive. That you'd be safer if I pushed you out before it could."
She stared at me like she'd never seen me before.
"Is that what you told yourself when you watched Selene shove me?" she asked. "When you heard them laugh? When you saw me drop your plates and flinch because I was more afraid of your temper than I was of my own wolf?"
The memory stabbed, sharp and clear: a girl with too-big eyes and too-thin arms, balancing trays and bruises, standing path-crossed between my ego and my fear.
"No," I said, voice thick. "In those moments, I just... looked away. Because every time I really saw you, it got harder to keep telling myself the story I'd chosen. And I was a coward."
Her breath hitched.
She hadn't expected that word.
I hadn't, either.
But once spoken, it fit.
"Yes," I said again. "A coward. I thought being Alpha meant never hesitating. Never showing weakness. Choosing the cruel thing if it served the bigger picture. I thought rejecting you was the 'strong' choice."
I shook my head, bitter.
"I didn't understand that strength isn't refusing the bond the moon offers you," I said. "It's trusting it when everyone else says it's madness."
Silence swelled.
The candles crackled.
Somewhere deep in the den, a pup laughed—a quick, high sound—and was shushed.
The sound punched air from my chest.
I thought of Lina, coughing in the nursery fog.
Of Luna, collapsing in my arms after dragging that darkness into herself.
"You left," I said softly. "And I watched you go. Told myself I'd done the right thing. That you'd be someone else's problem. That the ache in my chest was just... habit. Not a bond tearing at its own threads."
Her eyes glinted, wet at the edges.
"You didn't come after me," she said.
"No."
My voice was barely a sound.
"I should have," I whispered. "I should have run after you. Fallen at your feet in the snow. Begged. I knew it even then. But pride—my pride—is a thick, stupid thing. I let you walk into the dark with nothing and told myself the Goddess had made a mistake, and I was just correcting it."
She sucked in a sharp breath.
"That night," she said slowly, "in the clearing... when She came to me. When She told me I was Hers. That I was more than anything moon or pack could mark me as. I asked Her why She hadn't answered me before. Why She let me *beg* for so long."
Her mouth twisted.
"She said," Luna continued, voice almost a whisper, "'Because those you begged Me to change had already made their choice. And I do not unravel free will just because it breaks My heart.'"
Shame punched through me.
My stomach turned.
"That 'choice' She meant," Luna added, watching me, "was you."
My throat closed.
"I know," I managed.
"And now?" she asked softly. "Why are you here now, Orion? To tell me you... regret it? That you're sorry? Make yourself feel a little better before the next crisis crashes down?"
Her words were sharp.
They cut where they should.
I stepped closer.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Until I stood just at the edge of the stone circle, close enough that I could see the fine, almost invisible web of new scars along her knuckles.
"No," I said. "I'm here because every night since you came back, I've lain awake in a den that feels less and less like mine, listening to the storm hum in the stones and thinking, 'She's doing what *I* should have done from the start. Protecting them. Standing between them and the dark. And I threw her away.'"
I swallowed.
My voice shook for the first time in years.
I let it.
"You terrify me," I said.
Her brows lifted.
I pushed on.
"Not because of your power," I clarified. "Not the lightning. Not the way the trees lean when you walk. That awe... that part feels almost right. Like I've been craning my neck toward the wrong thing all my life and finally turned to face the moon."
She watched me, unblinking.
I forced the next words out past the stone in my chest.
"You terrify me," I said, "because you have every reason in this world and the next to turn your back on me and let me drown in the mess I made. And I don't know if I know how to be Alpha, or... a man... without this chance to make it right with you."
Silence.
I'd never heard stone *listen* before.
It did now.
"Luna," I said, her name a prayer and a plea. "I love you."
The words left me and I felt something tear.
Not in pain.
In... release.
Three syllables I should have given her years ago, when the moon first burned our bond across my ribs.
Three syllables I'd swallowed again and again to keep up a lie.
Her breath stopped.
Her whole body went very still.
Every instinct screamed at me to rush forward, to touch her, to prove it with hands and mouth and scent.
I didn't.
I made myself stand there, hands open at my sides, throat bared—not literally, but in every way that mattered.
"When you first walked back into the courtyard," I said, softer now, "I thought you were a ghost. Or a punishment. Or some test the Goddess had set for me: 'Here is what you threw away. Can you bear to look?'"
I swallowed.
"I watched you heal Lina," I went on. "Watched you stand at the west wall. Challenge Raze. Walk into the curse for pups who don't even know your story. And I realized... the girl I rejected—the one I'd told myself was too small, too weak, too omega to stand at my side—had grown into the kind of leader I'd spent my whole life pretending to be."
My voice roughened further.
"I don't love you because you're powerful," I said. "Because the trees bow or the elders flinch. I loved you before I even knew what that feeling was—when you smiled apologetically after I knocked that water bucket out of your hands and made a joke instead of crying. When you bound Rhea's hand in the training yard before any healer bothered to look up. When you looked at the moon like She was the only one who ever really heard you."
Her eyes were shining now.
Not with power.
With something human.
Pain.
Hope.
Fear.
"You were... good," I said simply. "In a place that did not reward goodness. I didn't know what to do with that. So I broke it. I broke *you.* I have been watching you put yourself back together ever since, out there in the Rogue Lands, in storms and in scars I never saw."
My hands flexed uselessly at my sides.
"Now you stand here," I said, "shot through with the Goddess' light and the curse's shadow both, and I—"
My voice cracked.
I forced the words out anyway.
"I would do anything," I whispered, "anything She asked, anything *you* asked, to stand beside you while you face what's coming. Not as your Alpha. Not as the one with the final say. As your... partner. Your... mate."
The last word came out raw.
Luna flinched like it had struck her.
I deserved that, too.
"I know what I gave up," I said quickly. "When I said it back then. I know you don't owe me another chance. The moon might have written our bond, but you have teeth. You can tear it. You can refuse."
Fear clawed up my throat.
The real, gut-level terror wasn't of Bloodfangs or cracks.
It was of hearing her say *no.*
Of feeling the bond that still hummed faintly between us snap for good.
I made myself face it.
"If you tell me to leave you be," I said, "I will. I won't push. I won't sulk. I won't play games through the council or the pack. I'll stand at your borders and fight whatever comes, and I will do it as your warrior, as your Alpha by title only, and nothing more."
My eyes burned.
I didn't look away.
"But if there is even the smallest part of you," I whispered, "that still... wants me. That still wonders what it would be like to have a mate who *sees* you—truly, this time, for everything you are and everything you're becoming—then I am begging you: let me try."
Silence fell so thick I could hear my own pulse.
She stared at me.
I could feel her wolf pacing behind her eyes, feel my own pressing against my ribs, tail low, ears back, waiting.
"I know better than to ask you to forget," I added, when she still didn't speak. "I'm not asking for that. I don't *want* you to forget, Luna. That hurt—what I did—shaped you. Your strength, your refusal to bend for anyone now, grew in that crack. I will carry the knowledge that I caused it until my last breath."
I drew a breath that felt like dragging air through gravel.
"And I know better than to say 'Trust me' and expect you to obey," I said. "Trust isn't commanded. It's earned. Over and over. I haven't earned it. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But I want to. More than I've ever wanted a title, or a border, or the approval of a council full of old wolves who never bled for what they demanded."
Her hands slowly curled into fists on her knees.
My voice dropped.
"You asked me, at the wall," I said, "if I'd let you drown again. If I'd stand by and watch Selene or the elders tear you down to keep their comfort. I didn't answer."
Her jaw clenched.
"I couldn't," I said. "Because I hadn't decided yet which wolf I was going to be—the one who hid behind excuses, or the one who finally put you above my own fear."
My heart hammered.
"I've decided," I whispered. "You come first. Before my pride. Before their politics. Before the story I'd built of who an Alpha is supposed to be. If they force me to choose between my rank and you, I choose you. Every time. I know words are cheap now. So let me prove it. Let me stand between you and the next blow. Let me take some of the weight you keep picking up as if pain were the only language you know."
Her lip trembled.
I hadn't meant to say that last part aloud.
It was true anyway.
"You may never forgive me fully," I said. "You may never want to lay beside me and call me 'mate' again. That is your right. The moon Herself won't override that. But I needed you to know. So if... when... you make your choice about us, you're doing it with all the truth I should have given you years ago, not the scraps I left for you like you were some omega who had to make do with whatever the Alphas dropped from their table."
My chest ached.
I realized I was shaking.
I didn't care.
I took another step forward.
The chalk circle buzzed.
I knelt.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Until I was on both knees at the edge of her claimed space, head bowed, throat bared.
Not as Alpha.
Not as someone performing humility to score points with a Goddess who'd already seen through every mask I wore.
As a wolf stripped to bone.
My voice was almost gone.
"Luna," I said softly, "I am so sorry. For that night. For every day I did nothing while you bled in these halls. For every time I looked away because seeing you hurt made the lie I was living harder to hold. For sending you into the dark with nothing but your own heart to warm you. For watching you come back carrying storms I should have helped you bear."
I lifted my head enough to meet her eyes.
They were shining now, tears making the silver there blur.
"I love you," I repeated, because once wasn't enough for the years I'd kept silent. "I love you. I want you. Not the power. Not the stories. You. The stubborn, infuriating, too-brave wolf who dares to tell elders to shut up and dares to forgive pups who never knew what was done to you. The girl who looked at me once with so much hope I couldn't bear it, and the woman now who looks at me like I'm something she has to choose to tolerate. If all I'm allowed to be is the wolf who stands between you and a blow, I will do it gladly. If you let me be more, I will spend every day proving I deserved that grace."
The last word broke on my tongue.
I dropped my gaze again.
Waited.
The terror of battle is sharp.
Clean.
This was worse.
Slow.
Suffocating.
Her silence stretched long enough that I could hear every emotion in my own breathing: fear, regret, stubborn, desperate love.
Finally, her fur rustled.
She moved.
Bare feet scuffed the stone.
I forced myself not to flinch when her shadow fell over me.
A hand—small, calloused, faintly cool—touched my chin.
Gentle.
Firm.
She tipped my face up.
I looked.
Tears tracked down her cheeks.
She didn't wipe them away.
"Do you know," she said, voice rough, "how many nights I lay under open sky in the Rogue Lands and imagined you saying some version of that?"
Shame and hope twisted together in my gut.
"No," I whispered.
"Too many," she said.
A humorless laugh escaped her.
"And in some of those dreams," she went on softly, "I let you. I ran to you. I forgave you so fast it hurt. Because I was so tired of being lonely. So tired of being my own shield. I wanted... arms. A chest to lean on. Someone else's heartbeat under my ear for once."
Her thumb brushed inadvertently along my jaw.
My heart lurched.
"In other dreams," she added, eyes darkening, "I ripped your heart out and fed it to the trees."
I swallowed.
"I deserve that," I said.
"Yes," she agreed simply.
The word didn't cut.
It cleared.
"And now?" I asked, because I had to know, even if the answer gutted me. "Which dream are you closer to?"
She studied me.
Every line of my face.
Every patch of old scar, every new worry-crease.
The silver in her eyes flickered.
"I don't know yet," she said finally.
Hope crashed into disappointment.
Relief tangled with fear.
I clung to the one shard that mattered: *yet.*
"I am still angry," she said plainly. "I still wake up some nights hearing you say 'I reject you.' I still look at you and see the wolf who let me walk away alone. I still feel that girl inside me flinch when you raise your voice, no matter what you're shouting *at.* That doesn't vanish because you've finally grown a conscience."
I nodded, throat tight.
"I wouldn't expect it to," I said.
Her eyes softened a fraction.
"And," she said quietly, "when you stood in that hall and screamed my name while I held the curse in my lungs, some part of me—some treacherous, foolish part—was... glad. Because it meant you still cared enough to fear losing me."
Her voice shook on the last words.
"I do," I said, the confession easy now because it was simply true. "More than anything."
She closed her eyes briefly.
Took a breath.
Let it out.
"You say you've changed," she said, opening them again. "You say you'll choose me over your pride, over their politics. Words are wind, Orion. And you know the thing about wind?"
I shook my head, not trusting my voice.
"It shifts," she said. "It howls one way one night, another the next, and the trees are the ones left bent by it."
She leaned in closer.
I could feel her breath on my face—cooler than it once was, laced with that faint, wrong cold of curse and moon mixed.
"I won't bind my heart to a breeze again," she whispered. "If you want it, you will have to show me you're stone. That when the other Alphas call a council and sneer at me, you stand with me, not an inch behind. That when Selene whispers in the dark, you don't listen, even when she offers the easy path. That when I make a choice that terrifies you, you tell me, *to my face,* and we fight about it together instead of making it in secret and forcing me to live with the cost."
"I will," I said immediately.
She lifted a brow.
"*Show* me," she repeated.
I swallowed my reflexive assurances.
Nodded instead.
"Then... for now," she said slowly, "you may stand at my side. In council. At the walls. In the shrines. As my... ally. Maybe, someday, more."
The word "maybe" hurt.
It also healed.
A little.
Because it meant the door wasn't shut.
Not yet.
My eyes burned again.
"I'll take it," I said roughly. "Gladly."
She huffed a faint, watery laugh.
"You don't get to be 'glad' yet," she said. "You're on thin ice, Alpha."
She tapped my jaw once with two fingers, then let her hand fall.
Slowly, I lifted mine.
Let it hover in the space between us.
She hesitated.
Then, after a heartbeat that felt like an entire winter, she reached out and placed her palm against mine.
Our fingers curled.
Not fully.
Not tight.
Just... touching.
The bond between us flared.
Not sealing.
Not yet.
But warmer, brighter, threads knitting cautiously where they'd once been torn ragged.
Heat flooded my chest.
I closed my eyes briefly, soaking in the sensation: her skin against mine, the faint crackle of lightning in her pulse, the cool edge of borrowed curse in her veins, my own heart pounding so hard it felt like it might break bone.
"I will earn you," I whispered.
Her fingers tensed.
"Don't say that," she murmured. "I'm not a prize."
"You're not," I agreed. "You're a *choice.* One the moon made once and I threw away. I'm asking for a chance to choose you back. Every day, in ways you can see. And if you ever decide you're done giving me those chances, I won't take another step toward you without permission."
She searched my face.
Whatever she saw there—fear, chastened pride, the nakedness I'd never shown anyone—made her shoulders drop a fraction.
She squeezed my hand once.
A test.
A warning.
A strange kind of comfort.
"Then start now," she said.
"How?" I asked.
She let go of my hand and leaned back slightly.
"In three days," she said, "the other Alphas will call a council when word of the wave that rolled out of our den reaches them. They'll demand explanations. They'll circle like crows. Selene will whisper in their ears about a 'runt drunk on Goddess power.' The elders will flinch. The pack will watch to see whether you stand in front of me to shield me... or beside me to *share* the blow."
Her eyes held mine.
"In three days," she repeated, "I will walk into a room full of wolves who would happily see me as a warning, a weapon, or a problem conveniently removed. I will stand there whether you come or not. If you want to show me you've changed, you'll be there. Not as my handler. Not as the wolf who explains me away. As the mate who says, 'If you want her, you go through me. If you want *me,* you accept *her.*'"
My breath caught.
"I will," I said, the promise settling into my bones.
Not because it was easy.
Because it was right.
She nodded once.
"Then go," she said softly. "Rest while you can. Learn to carry this new fear. I have some letters to write to a Goddess who thinks She's subtle."
I almost laughed.
Instead, I rose slowly to my feet, joints aching.
At the doorway, I paused.
Looked back.
She was watching me, an unreadable mix of things in her gaze: caution, lingering hurt, a small, stubborn ember of something that might one day—if I didn't crush it again—grow back into trust.
"I meant it," I said quietly. "I love you."
Her throat worked.
"I know," she whispered.
She looked away, down at the scrolls and sigils, lashes hiding her eyes.
"Now show me," she added.
I stepped out into the corridor.
The den's cracks hummed less violently now, muted by whatever she'd dragged into herself and blasted out through the stone.
The air smelled faintly of ozone and cold.
My wolf pressed forward, tail low, voice low in my chest.
*Ours,* he said. *Not yet. But maybe.*
"Maybe," I murmured back.
For the first time since the night I'd thrown her away, the word didn't feel like a sentence.
It felt like a beginning.
A thin, fragile bridge stretching over a gorge I'd dug myself.
I would cross it.
Carefully.
Bleeding, if need be.
Because the storm had come back to the den I'd once thought I could protect alone.
And this time, I intended to stand in it, not hide from it.
With her.
If she let me.