Rejected by the Alpha, Chosen by the Moon

But embodied.

The pulse at the center of every Luna before her.

Across the highlands, Moonborn territory lay swathed in a crystalline stillness, not the hush of serenity, but the coiled silence of suspense.

It was the kind of silence that comes before a storm.

Or a revelation.

The hills, wrapped in silver fog, seemed to hold their breath.

The ancient trees stood rigid, their leaves unmoving, as if the wind itself had bowed to the moment and dared not stir.

Rivers ran, but their voices had faded, no babble, no splash.

Just the glassy glide of water that listened more than it moved.

Even the stars above blinked slower than they should have, stripped of their shimmer, veiled as though dimmed by reverence.

The land knew, something was coming.

Wolves moved like shadows born of the dusk, silent, solemn, sure.

Paws stirred no grass; eyes glowed with ancestral memory.

Through silvergrass meadows and torch-lit paths they drifted, carrying bundles of woven cloth, guarding the rites with quiet devotion.

Moon-threaded banners hung heavy in the air, each strand braided by hand, fingers calloused from tradition, soaked in moon water drawn only under the eclipsed sky.

The cloth shimmered faintly, not with magic, but with memory.

Across the sacred plateau, younglings knelt before stones older than even the stars above.

With bone knives and steady hands, they etched ancestral runes, deliberate, reverent.

Each stroke carved not just into stone, but into lineage. Into prayer.

And at the highest peak, where earth met cosmos, the hill known as Crownrise stirred.

It was being readied.

Not decorated, consecrated.

Prepared not for ceremony, but for transformation.

And at its heart stood Lyra.

Still.

Unmoving. Yet nothing about her was at rest.

She stood as if caught mid-breath, suspended between what had been and what must rise.

The past whispered like wind through feathers; the future pulsed hot behind her ribs.

She didn't wear her crown.

But it gleamed in the way the wolves bowed when they passed her.

In the way no one dared disturb her silence.

In the way even the sky above seemed to bend its spine and tilt its stars just slightly toward her.

The land knew her name, not in sound, but in root and stone and sky.

She was not a guest of fate.

She was its answer.

But peace, as always, was never patient.

By twilight, the sky had steeped into a deep violet, the color of thresholds.

A shade that signaled not simply the end of day, but the thinning, where the veil between the sacred and the seen wore translucent and trembling.

Torches flared to life beside towering monoliths carved with cosmic maps, at the ancient observatory stone circle

Their surfaces bore constellations etched in lines older than ink.

Wolves howling at twin moons, ancestral spirits spiraling into nebulae, celestial trails tracing fates long fulfilled and fates yet to wake.

It was here, beneath the rising dark and the memory of stars, that the Moon Reading would begin.

Elara stood at the circle's heart, barefoot against the sigil-carved stone.

Lyra's healer. Her seer.

Her blood-kin by choice, if not by birth.

Her hands moved with solemn precision as she lit the ceremonial incense.

Lavender-silver smoke unfurled upward in slow, hypnotic coils, spiraling like breath offered to the heavens.

It smelled of earth after rain and distant myrrh, sweet, sharp, laced with something almost electric, like starlight ground into dust.

Lyra stood at the perimeter, arms folded tightly across her chest, every inch of her taut with anticipation.

Her cloak stirred faintly in the breeze, silver embroidery catching the firelight in tiny constellations.

Though the air was warm, a chill prickled along her skin, premonition, not temperature.

Elara's eyes rolled back.

The whites of them gleamed with otherworldly shine, pupils vanishing into a sea of ancestral light.

Her hands hovered above the runed basin, a wide, shallow bowl hewn from a single moonstone slab.

Its water shimmered with light caught from the sky above, refracting like galaxies caught mid-spiral.

Beneath the surface, ancient glyphs began to pulse, slowly at first, then with an urgency that mirrored the beat of a war drum.

Then, a sharp intake of breath.

A sound like the first crack of thunder.

Elara's body arched violently, back taut as a drawn bow.

A crack, like bone snapping under truth, echoed from her chest.

Her knees gave out.

"Elara!" Lyra was at her side in a heartbeat, catching her just before her head struck the stone.

The seer writhed in her arms, breath ragged, eyes wide with something far older than fear.

Sweat beaded across her brow, her skin cold and luminous.

Her lips moved in quick, soundless horror, until finally, voice tore loose like a curse breaking:

"There's… a shadow…" she choked.

"A true-blooded Alpha… but not Kael. Not rogue.

Something… something older than the first bite of winter."

The words hit Lyra like frostbite, slicing clean down her spine.

A dagger of knowing.

Of warning.

And then, a jolt.

Her Moon System flared behind her ribs like a second, wild heart.

Not a pulse, a detonation.

Power surged through her veins, too sharp to bear.

Her vision cracked, lines of code lacing across her sight, electric and invasive, like prophecy filtered through a storm.

[System Alert: Unknown Entity Detected]

Location: Eastern Ridge – 3.4 leagues from Moonborn borders

Class: Aberrant Alpha

Status: Extinct (???)

Power Rating: ???

The runes beneath the starlit basin blazed suddenly, too bright to look at.

Then shattered.

A chorus of glowing fragments erupted into the air like glass catching fire.

---

Kael's fingers gouged the arms of his throne, splinters biting into his palms as the blackwood groaned beneath his grip like a beast dying slow.

Across the chamber, Selena prowled in tight circles, her heels striking the obsidian floor with a sound like cracked bone.

Venom-black nails drummed along the edge of the altar, rhythmic, deliberate, ritual.

"She humiliated you," she said softly, but the words cut like a blade dipped in acid.

Her fingers traced the jagged curve of a ritual dagger, its surface etched with runes that pulsed faintly, hungry.

"The pack whispers now. The elders bow. Even the moon tilts toward her like a lover."

Kael's snarl came from somewhere low and animal. "We are not finished."

Selena's smile flashed, feral, sharp. "No. We're becoming what she fears."

She pressed her hand flat against the altar, and old blood, thick and black as oil, welled up from its seams.

The glyphs etched into the stone flared, not with light, but with motion, shifting, twisting, remembering.

"You once told me strength was all that mattered," she murmured. "So let's see what happens… when we borrow strength from something older than the gods."

The chamber shuddered. Dust rained from the vaulted ceiling.

The torches flickered wildly, then warped, their flames curling into screaming faces that twisted in agony before vanishing into smoke.

Kael tensed. His heart pounded, not with fear, but hunger.

His mind went back to the faces of all the Elders who went on Lyra's side. In his mind, their heads were stripped off with just a single claw.

A thrill coiled in his gut like a predator scenting blood. "You broke the seal?"

Selena didn't answer at first. When she did, her voice was hollow. Distant. Almost reverent.

"I didn't break anything. I bled. And it listened."

Her eyes caught the failing light, depthless, like something vast and starving looked out through them. "She woke it. Or called it. Or reminded it what we are."

Kael leaned forward, the throne creaking beneath his weight. "What did you do, Selena?"

"Nothing," she whispered, smile fading to something colder. "But something moved. Something that remembers Lunas. The way wolves remember the first fire."