Elira's POV
The wind howls over the blackstone cliffs like it remembers something I don't.
They call me Oracle. Reverently. Carefully. Like I might shatter if they speak too loudly, but I am already shattered.
I sit in the center of a ceremonial chamber carved from obsidian, bathed in silver light that pours in through a high, domed skylight. Around me, warriors kneel. Not out of love. Out of fear. Their auras scream obedience.
At the front, the High Alpha stands. Eyes like coal. Smile like a knife.
"You are radiant tonight, Elira," he says. I flinch at the name. I know it. But it doesn't feel like mine.
He steps forward. Every movement is calculated, possessive. "The Moon has blessed you. You're meant to stand beside me. Soon, your soul will remember it."
I keep my gaze steady. My voice doesn't tremble when I lie. "I'm honored."
Inside, I am screaming. Because every time he says my name, it feels like someone's slicing through my ribs with ice.
I dream of wolves. Silver-eyed. Bleeding in moonlight. Calling for me. I never see his face. Only feel the pain he carries... like it belongs to me.
I'm not allowed to leave the inner sanctum without an escort. The guards call me "Lady Oracle." But they watch me like I'm a blade they don't trust themselves to hold.
The High Alpha, Rael, says he found me near death, floating in a river of blood. He says I was broken. That he healed me.
That I belong to him now.
My fingers brush the crescent-shaped scar behind my ear. It burns when I think too hard. When I hear the name, I don't remember screaming in my dreams.
Kael.
I write the name in ash when no one is looking. On the floor. On my arms. On the inside of my skull, and every time I do, I see a glimpse of something. Not a memory... something deeper.
A voice, raw with pain: "Don't let go, Elira. Please... stay."
That night, the chamber is full of chanting. Moonlight streaks through the skylight like knives. Rael holds a silver chalice filled with crushed lunar bloom and blood.
A bonding rite. I don't remember agreeing to it. He lifts the cup to my lips. "This will awaken what lies dormant."
I drink. I choke. Fire explodes in my veins.
My knees slam to the floor, palms burning with ancient runes that rise from my skin in molten white light. My wolf... buried so deep I forgot she was there... screams in agony.
"Something's wrong!" I cry, clutching my chest.
Rael's eyes flash. "No...it's working."
But it's not. My body jerks backward, and in the light, I see him. Silver eyes. Chained. Broken. Bleeding. Kael," I whisper.
The entire chamber freezes. Rael grabs my arm, fury hidden behind his false calm. "What did you say?"
My head throbs. My mouth moves without permission. "He's alive."
Rael releases me, just barely. "Then he'll die."
Kael's Journey Begins. I follow the rumors like a scent trail only I can smell.
Whispers from passing wolves speak of a Seer Queen in the north, a fortress carved from mountain obsidian, and a High Alpha who claims her heart.
My claws dig into bark as I scale the frost-bitten ridge above the fortress walls. She's there. I know it.
For three years, I've hunted through ruin and rage. But nothing has ever gripped my instincts like this.
Until I see him. Darren. Waiting by a fire below the cliff. He smells like guilt and rot. "Kael," he croaks as I drop in front of him.
I waste no time. I slam him to the wall of stone, claws to his throat. "Where is she?"
He gurgles a laugh. "She doesn't belong to you anymore." "Liar." "She doesn't remember you," I growl, low and lethal. "Then I'll remind her."
Darren's eyes flick up toward the fortress. "She wears white now. He calls her Oracle."
I pull away. Leave him alive. For now. Not because he deserves it, but because I want him to see what happens when I break the chains he helped forge.
I stalk the fortress from the trees. Below, on a moon-silver balcony, she stands.
Elira. My heart stops. She's dressed in ceremonial robes, hair braided with lunar thread. She looks like a goddess. But her aura... muted. Changed.
Deadened. Like someone buried her soul and left the body behind.
I move closer. Every step feels like fire crawling up my spine.
She turns. Our eyes meet, and nothing. No recognition. Not hope. Not love. Just a quiet, cold confusion. Then the guards move.
Shouts. I leap down... too slow. Steel clashes with claws. My blood hits the floor.
They drag me back, and she doesn't scream, but just before I'm taken from sight, her voice cracks through the air. "Why… why does his pain feel like mine?"
The guards freeze. Only for a second... but it's enough. Enough to make them hesitate, glance at each other. Enough to remind them I'm not just a half-dead shadow of an Alpha.
I twist.
My elbow drives into the ribs of the wolf on my left, his breath leaving him in a sharp grunt. I spin, low and fast, kicking the other one in the knee. Bone snaps. He goes down screaming.
But there are more. Too many. They swarm like insects... trained, fast, relentless.
A net of silver chains drops from above, wrapping around my arms, shoulders, and throat. I thrash. Snarl. My wolf rises in a surge of rage, but the chains bite deep, lined with moon-forged runes. My strength vanishes like steam.
"Enough!" a voice shouts. Not Elira. Rael. He descends the balcony steps like he owns the sky.
He doesn't even look at me. Only at her. "Elira," he says smoothly, too smoothly. "Come away from the edge."
She doesn't move. Her hands tremble at her sides. Her eyes are still locked on mine.
Gods, those eyes.
They're the same... and yet wrong. Clouded. As if someone has buried a storm inside her and sealed it with silence.
"Elira," Rael says again, more forceful now. "Your visions are bleeding into the waking world. This is not real." "He's real," she says, but it's more question than answer.
I want to speak. Scream her name. Beg, but the chains choke the sound from my throat. One of the guards steps forward. "Shall we kill him?"
"No." Rael's voice is calm, calculated. "The Oracle has seen him. That makes him valuable."
His gaze flicks to me then. Cold. Flat. "Put him in the lower cells."
A blow lands behind my ear. My vision explodes into stars, before the blackness takes me, I see Elira step forward, just a little.
As if something in her wants to follow. As if a thread between us still holds.
That night, I can't sleep. I sit in the shrine chamber where the Moonlight leaks in through the crystal dome. My skin is still burning from the vision. From his presence.
Kael.
The name scratches at the edges of my mind like claws on stone. I press my hand to my heart. It's racing, wild, unruly.
Like it's not mine. The High Alpha found me broken, he said. Reforged me. Taught me how to see. How to interpret the will of the Moon, but what if he also taught me to forget?
I pace the chamber, moonlight catching on the silver stitching of my robes. The image of that man won't leave me.
His pain. His eyes. That name. Kael. Why does it feel like I'm the one bleeding?
I fall to my knees, clawing at the stone. Not praying. Searching. For something I lost. For someone I once was, and in the back of my mind, a whisper stirs like wind through dying leaves: Find him before the Moon forgets you both.