The door to the vault hissed as I turned the rune key—my mother's old one, burned into wolfbone and hidden beneath the floor for years.
It clicked once, then again and opened.
The vault was cold and dark, lined with iron drawers and oaken shelves stacked to the ceiling. The air reeked of lunar herbs, dried bloodroot, and dust older than me. I held my breath as I stepped inside, closing the door behind me. No one was allowed in this room alone—not even ranked healers.
But I wasn't just hunting medicine tonight. I was hunting proof. I moved quickly, my fingers ghosted across labeled bottles, jars, and sealed satchels. I ignored the usual ingredients—healing blends, poultices, sedatives. What I needed was rarer and more dangerous:
Moonvine powder.
Ashroot oil.
A binding catalyst.
My hand stopped on a row of velvet-lined vials. Three were full, one was half-empty. Its seal was cracked, the stopper glistened wet. I lifted it to my nose, it was:
Lavender.
Moonflower.
My scent.
Not all of it, just the edge. Like a memory left out in the sun too long. I staggered back, 'she really did it.'
Cassia hadn't just masked her scent. She'd used mine—extracted it, diluted it, and weaponized it. No wonder Kael's wolf had reacted—No wonder Darius thought he'd found a mate. They had been chained to a lie.
I opened the satchel hidden behind the vials. Inside: a dried blood-soaked cloth. My blood. Dried and wrapped around a bundle of crushed moonvine root and silver bark. The spell anchor.
I gasped and then— A voice, his voice, Kael.
"You shouldn't be in here."
I dropped the satchel, it hit the stone floor with a soft thud. My heart stuttered. Kael stood in the doorway, half in shadow, arms crossed. His expression was unreadable—but his scent hit like a thunderclap in my chest.
"How did you find me?" I whispered.
"I didn't." His voice was low, dangerous. "I was walking the grounds. And then I smelled something that didn't belong."
He stepped into the room. I took an involuntary step back. His eyes flicked to the open satchel then to the vial in my hand. He didn't speak for a long time. When he did, his voice was quieter—but no less sharp.
"That's not yours."
"No," I said, lifting my chin. "It used to be."
A flicker crossed his face in recognition. His nostrils flared as he walked closer, until we were barely a foot apart. He reached out—not to grab the vial, but to gently press two fingers beneath my chin, tipping my face toward his. He sniffed me once, slow and deliberate.
His wolf surged into the air around us like heat through winter fog. "You," he murmured, voice rough. "This scent is you."
I couldn't breathe.
He looked down at the stolen blend. "She's using this to bind them?"
"To fake the bond," I whispered.
"To me?"
I didn't answer. He let go of my chin, but not before I saw it—rage, brief and dark, streaking through the amber fire of his eyes. Not at me but at her, at what she has done. He exhaled once, sharp. Then leaned in again—closer this time, so that my lips nearly brushed his cheek.
"Tell no one what you found," he said, voice deadly soft.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because power like this burns its owner first." He turned, and vanished into the dark without another word.
They came for me at dawn. No warning. No summons. Just heavy boots and the sharp click of iron restraints.
Three warriors stormed the healer's ward. One grabbed me by the throat, the other two dragged me out while I struggled, barefoot and half-asleep, still in my linen night robe.
"By order of the Alpha," one of them barked, "you are hereby detained for public insubordination, attempted slander of the Luna, and violation of healer neutrality."
I laughed. Couldn't help it. "What slander?"
"You accused the Luna of scent corruption," the taller one growled. "It's written in the report."
"I never said her name." I explained.
"But you meant her."
Cassia, of course she did this, she didn't need evidence. She had power, that was enough. They bound my wrists in silver cuffs. The metal hissed against my skin, i bit my tongue until I tasted blood. They didn't drag me to the holding cells. No, this wasn't for questioning—this was punishment.
They took me below the packhouse, to the dungeon. The air was colder than stone, damp, sharp with mold and the scent of old blood. They shoved me into the last cell, one with no light, no straw. Only dirt and rusted rings embedded in the wall.
I didn't scream when they shackled me to the stone. I didn't ask for help but when they lit the wolfsbane brazier and shut the door, I started to shake. The smoke hit fast. Wolfsbane didn't just weaken the body.
It scrambled the mind. Cut off the wolf. Seeped into the lungs and made every memory taste like poison. I pressed my forehead to the wall and tried to breathe shallowly, it didn't help.
Minutes passed, hours, or days. Time didn't exist here, just pain and the scent of everything I'd lost. Then… something shifted, the air rippled, walls blurred and the chains burned cold instead of hot. I looked up, and I wasn't in the dungeon anymore.
I stood in a ruined forest, ash falling like snow. The sky was black. The moon was blood-red. Trees had been torn from the ground and scattered like bones. Wolves lay dead in twisted shapes all around me, but they weren't just dead.
They were 'burned clean of scent.' I turned, behind me stood a tree of silver and bone, its trunk pulsing like a heart. Hanging from its branches were strands of light—like threads; Mate bonds, hundreds of them, all tangled, torn and in the center of the roots—A woman waited. Tall, cloaked in midnight. Her face was half-shadow, half-star. Her eyes were moons.
The Moon Goddess.
I fell to my knees without meaning to. She tilted her head, voice both thunder and whisper. "Why do you kneel, child?"
"Because I'm nothing."
She stepped forward. "You are what they fear most. A bondless wolf with memory."
I shook my head. "They said I was broken. Rejected."
"You are not broken. You are not rejected. You were taken… Stolen."
She raised her hand. The bond threads behind her 'twitched', and one severed strand of light floated toward me. It hovered inches above my chest, my skin burned.
"This is what was yours."
The thread sank into me like a blade. I screamed. I woke up choking on smoke, back in the dungeon, body slick with sweat. Something was glowing beneath my skin—silver lines across my forearms, curling like branches, burning cold.
I gasped, the chains hissed. The wolfsbane brazier snuffed itself out, and in the silence that followed, I heard it—My wolf. Awake, growling, and alive.