She found it when she was too tired to be cautious and too heartsore to expect anything but more stone and trees.
The day had been long even by Rogue Lands standards.
She had walked from the first pale wash of dawn until the sun—what little of it pierced the cloud cover—slid west. Her legs ached with a deep, grinding fatigue; a dull throb had settled behind her eyes. The meager strip of dried meat she'd eaten at midday had done little to stop her stomach from complaining.
The land had changed as she'd moved.
The thick, tangled forest she'd become grudgingly accustomed to thinned, giving way in places to low, moss-cloaked boulders and patches of pale grass. Here and there, jagged teeth of stone thrust up through the soil, like an old jawbone pushing through skin.
The air felt... clearer.
Sharper.
Each breath tasted less of rot and wet leaves and more of something clean that made the inside of her nose sting.
She noticed it only in quick snatches between steps, at first—a hint, a whisper.
Then, as the afternoon wore on, it strengthened.
Her wolf lifted her head inside, nostrils flaring.
*Something,* that animal-sense told her. *Something... old. Watching.*
Luna slowed.
Her boots crunched softly on gravel.
The sky overhead had peeled open somewhere in the last hour; the low lid of clouds had cracked, revealing long, cold slats of blue. The sun hadn't shown its face entirely, but enough light had filtered through to paint the world in muted silver.
She scanned the horizon.
No smoke.
No scattered, half-hidden camp.
No sign of other wolves.
Only a gentle rise ahead, ringed with oddly smooth stones and a stand of slender trees whose bark, even from this distance, glowed paler than any birch she'd seen.
Curiosity pushed a little harder than exhaustion.
She angled toward the rise.
The closer she came, the stranger the ground felt under her feet.
The usual hum of the earth—the slow, deep vibration she'd grown used to when she pressed her awareness downward—grew more distinct, as if some layer of cloth had been peeled away.
She didn't even have to kneel this time.
Each step sent a faint buzz up through her soles, into her calves.
Her fingers tingled.
The air itself tasted... luminous.
She took another breath.
Moonlight.
Not real—from the thin daytime sliver just beginning to lift in the east—but remembered. Layered into stone and root and bark.
Her heart sped up.
"Goddess?" she murmured under her breath, wary of speaking too loudly in a place that made every sound feel closer.
No immediate answer came.
She crested the low rise.
The world on the other side was not what she expected.
The Rogue Lands, so far, had been variations on a theme: thick forest, raw rock, river, marsh. Dangerous in their own ways, certainly, but all part of the same rough, untamed tapestry.
Here, the pattern slipped.
A small hollow opened below her, roughly circular, encircled by slender trees whose trunks were as white as bone, their bark catching every scrap of light and casting it back in soft, pearly glows.
Their leaves were not the usual muted greens of late autumn. They shone a silvery-green, like new leaves seen by moonlight, trembling faintly in a wind she did not feel.
Between the trees, the ground was covered in low, soft moss that shimmered faintly, speckled with flecks of pale stone that looked almost like scattered stars.
In the center of the hollow stood a single, larger stone.
It rose from the moss like the tip of some buried tower, waist-high, its surface smooth and rounded. Veins of milky white and faint blue ran through it, catching the light in a way that made it seem gently luminous even in the day's weak sun.
Moonstone.
She didn't need anyone to name it for her.
Her breath caught.
Every story she'd ever heard told in whispers under blankets or over quiet hearths about sacred groves, places where the Goddess' foot had touched the earth and left a mark, whispered through her mind at once.
Moonstone groves.
Places of amplified blessing or wrath.
Places where the veil between the Goddess and her wolves thinned like worn cloth.
Places omegas like her had not been encouraged to dream of.
Her first instinct was to step back.
To bow her head.
To apologize for even looking.
Instead, she found herself stepping forward.
Down into the hollow.
One pace.
Another.
The air cooled perceptibly as soon as she passed the first ring of pale-barked trunks. Not the biting chill of oncoming winter. A soft, enveloping cool, like stepping into shadow on a hot day.
The ever-present ache in her ribs lightened a fraction.
The tightness in her shoulders eased.
Her lungs filled more easily, as if the air here had more to give.
The ember in her chest flared.
Not wildly.
In recognition.
"Goddess," she whispered, voice barely more than breath.
The moss under her boots gave softly, springy and dry despite the season. No dead leaves cluttered it. No fallen branches lay strewn.
Nothing here seemed to *rot.*
Decay belonged outside the ring of white trunks.
Here, the cycle had... slowed.
Stilled.
She stopped a few paces from the central stone, suddenly unsure how close she was allowed.
It hummed.
She felt it in her teeth.
A low, steady vibration that seemed to sync with her heartbeat.
Thrum.
Thrum.
Thrum.
She swallowed, throat tight.
"Is this... for me?" she asked the quiet grove, the pale trunks standing like silent sentries.
No voice answered in words.
The buzzing under her skin intensified.
The air seemed to thicken around her, not in a suffocating way, but like water around a stone in a stream—carrying, noticing.
She took another tentative step.
Then another.
She came within arm's reach of the central stone and lifted a shaking hand.
Her fingers hovered a breath's width above its surface.
It was beautiful in a subtle way: smooth and cloudy, shot through with faint blue-silver veins that, up close, seemed to move—slowly shifting, like mist drifting through glass.
"May I?" she whispered, though no one else stood here to grant permission.
The coal in her chest pulsed.
Yes.
She let her palm fall.
The stone was cool.
Not dead-cold, the way a rock in permanent shade felt, but living-cool, like water pulled from a deep well.
A shiver ran up her arm to her shoulder, then straight into her spine.
She gasped.
Light flared behind her eyes.
Not blinding.
Sudden.
She held on.
Images bloomed in the darkness behind her lids—not like the jagged, chaotic dreams that came with sleep, but clear, layered glimpses that she felt as much as saw.
Wolves, countless seasons ago, moved through this same hollow. Their fur gleamed with health. Moons of different shapes—fat and full, slim and new—hung overhead, painting their coats in silver.
An old she-wolf—muzzle white, eyes bright—stood where Luna now stood, her paw resting on the stone. Silver lines traced up her leg from it, pulsing faintly with each of her heartbeats. Pups darted around her, yipping, their small paws making no sound on the moss. Every time they brushed against her, a spark of light jumped from her fur to theirs, and they giggled, tails wagging.
The scene shifted.
Another season.
Snow dusted the outer trees, but none clung to the grove itself. A young Alpha paced before the stone, anger and fear tightening his jaw. His aura crackled—Luna felt it like static brushing her fur, even in the vision.
He pressed both forepaws to the stone and threw his head back, howling loud enough to make the pale trunks tremble.
Light rose from the moonstone in a column, enveloping him. His rage stuttered. His shoulders sagged.
When he lowered his head again, his eyes shone with wetness.
He turned away from the grove, strides smoother, lighter. The pack waiting beyond the pale trunks watched him, wary.
He walked through them.
They sniffed.
Relaxed.
Their howls, when they rose, were joyful, not fearful.
Time blurred.
Faces changed.
Seasons spun.
The grove remained.
Sometimes throngs of wolves came—whole packs pressing close, their scents muddying the air. Sometimes only a lone figure slipped into the hollow, ragged and wary, drawn by something they couldn't name.
Sometimes the stone flared bright, its blue-white veins glowing like captured moonlight.
Sometimes it lay quiet, dormant.
Always, it felt... anchored.
A point where the Goddess' attention rested a little heavier on the earth.
Luna's hand remained on the cool surface.
Her breath had settled into the same slow rhythm as the stone's hum without her noticing.
The ember in her chest beat in time with it.
"Stormroot," a voice said, close and far all at once.
Her eyes flew open.
She was still in the grove.
The pale trees.
The moss.
The central stone under her palm.
And across from her—
The Moon Goddess.
Not in the vast, cosmic form Luna had seen in the silver sea, towering and formless, all light and presence.
Here, She wore a shape closer to Luna's own.
A woman with hair the color of deep night, shot through with strands of starlight, falling in waves around shoulders cloaked in something that looked like woven mist. Her skin glowed with a soft, inner radiance, like the underside of clouds lit by a full moon.
Her eyes were her only constants: vast, silver, reflecting not Luna's face but the curve of the world, the slow dance of tides, the countless small lives moving under Her gaze.
She stood on the opposite side of the stone, bare feet sinking into the moss without disturbing it.
No scent came from Her. Or rather, all scents. Pine, water, smoke, wet fur, pup-breath.
Luna's mouth went dry.
She dropped to her knees so fast they jarred on the moss, head bowing of its own accord.
"Goddess," she whispered, voice shaking. "I—I didn't mean to intrude. I just— I felt—"
"Hush," the Goddess said gently.
The sound of Her voice was a caress and a command both. It slid over Luna's skin, sank into her bones.
"Stand, little storm," She said. "You are not an intruder where your blood remembers the path."
Luna forced herself upright, knees trembling, hands curling and uncurling at her sides.
"I didn't know this was here," she managed. "I was just... walking."
"As you have been since you left stone walls," the Goddess agreed, tone neither approving nor condemning. "Your feet know the way My light pulls them, even when your mind is full of other worries."
Luna swallowed.
"Is this—" She glanced around the grove, at the pale trees, the faintly glowing moss. "Is this Yours?"
The Goddess tilted Her head.
"This place is *itself,*" She said. "As all places are. But it has bent to Me more willingly than most. Long ago, paws and prayers wore a path here. Stones listened. Roots remembered. Now, when My attention passes over this land, it slows, here, the way water slows in a pool before continuing downstream."
The words settled like a stone into Luna's chest, displacing some of the churning there with heavy clarity.
"So it's... a place where You're... closer," she said slowly. "Where the world lets You speak louder."
A small smile touched the Goddess' lips.
"Yes," She said. "You have always been quick to name things, even when others tried to tell you otherwise."
Heat flared under Luna's cheekbones.
Praise.
It felt almost more dangerous than any scorn.
"I— I thought..." She swallowed, the question she'd tried to press down since the first night she'd howled alone in the Rogue Lands clawing its way up. "I thought maybe You'd... left Moonshadow. After what they did. After he—" Her voice cracked. "After Orion rejected Your choice."
Pain lanced through her, fresh and sharp despite the weeks.
The Goddess' gaze softened.
"I do not leave where My wolves howl My name," She said. "Even when they stop listening. Even when they turn their faces from the path I laid in front of them."
A shadow crossed Her features, not dimming Her light but shading it.
"But I am not the *only* thing that listens," She added quietly. "When wolves cry out in anger and pride and desperation with their backs turned to Me, other ears prick."
"The curse," Luna breathed.
The Goddess inclined Her head once.
"A hunger older than packs," She said. "A shadow that used to haunt the spaces between my sisters and I, when the world was young. It knows the cracks in stone walls and in stubborn hearts."
Luna's hands clenched at her sides.
"Can You stop it?" she asked, the question tearing from her before she could temper it. "Can't You just— push it away? Tear it off them? Off him?"
The word him tasted like blood in her mouth.
The Goddess' eyes, vast and silver, held an ache that made Luna's throat close.
"If I rip shadows by force from where they have sunk their teeth," She said slowly, "I tear what they have wrapped around, too. Souls are not cloth, child. They do not mend the same way when ripped."
She gestured, and mist rose briefly around Her hand, twisting into a crude shape: a wolf, bound in dark threads. When Her fingers plucked at the threads, the shadow-stuff tore—and so did pieces of the wolf's outline, scattering into nothing.
"I can *hold,*" She said. "I can slow. I can whisper. I can shine light into corners so that those bound may see the knots for themselves and unknot them. But I cannot—will not—tear My children's own spirits in My haste to soothe them."
Luna's chest ached.
"So you're... waiting?" she asked. "Watching them... choke?"
Rage slipped under the words, uninvited.
The Goddess' gaze sharpened for a heartbeat, not offended, but keen.
"I am watching," She agreed. "And I am weaving. With light. With pawsteps. With choices, large and small."
Her gaze dropped pointedly to Luna's mud-stained boots.
"You, Stormroot, are one of those threads."
Luna's breath left her in a shaky exhale.
"I'm *one girl,*" she protested, the same tired indignation she'd carried since the first whisper of destiny in Her dream surfacing again. "One runt. One... almost-wolf. I can barely keep myself alive some days."
"And yet," the Goddess said, eyes brightening, "you have already coaxed ice from running water. Called wind into new paths. Asked earth to hold when it wanted to slide. You walked into a fire's teeth and made it pause. You stood against rogues and bent the ground under their paws rather than yielding your throat."
Heat flushed Luna's skin.
She shifted, looking down.
"I was terrified," she said.
"Power does not require the absence of fear," the Goddess replied. "Only the choice to move *with* it instead of letting it drown you."
The pale trunks around them seemed to lean in, listening.
Luna swallowed hard.
"Why... here?" she asked, gesturing weakly to the grove. "Why now? I've been stumbling through the wild for weeks. Why show me this place?"
The Goddess stepped around the stone.
Her presence made no sound, but Luna felt the air change with each movement, as if the world itself leaned to make way.
She stopped within arm's reach, close enough that Luna had to fight the instinct to step back, to bow further.
Cool fingers—light as mist, sure as moonrise—touched Luna's cheek, just at the corner of her eye where dried tear-salt had left a faint crust.
"Because your heart cried loud enough last night that it shook branches all the way here," She said softly. "And because even storms need harbors."
Luna's throat tightened painfully.
The Goddess' thumb brushed a small, comforting circle on her skin, then dropped away.
"You are learning to carry loneliness without letting it hollow you," She continued. "That is harder than shifting bone or calling flame. You came here with your chest open, not clenched like a fist. The grove opened in answer."
Luna blinked, vision blurring.
"I don't feel... open," she whispered. "I feel like I'm fraying."
"That is another way of saying the same thing," the Goddess said, a hint of wryness in Her tone.
She gestured toward the central stone.
"Lay both hands on it," She instructed gently. "And close your eyes."
Fear flickered.
Of what, exactly, she wasn't sure.
Of being seen too clearly.
Of being... changed.
Of not being.
Still, her hands lifted.
She placed both palms flat against the cool, faintly pulsing surface.
The hum intensified, flooding up her arms, down her spine, into the coil of power in her chest.
Her knees wobbled.
"Breathe," the Goddess murmured. "Do not *take.* Let it *touch.*"
Luna obeyed.
In.
Out.
The ember in her chest flared as the grove's energy brushed it—two currents meeting, testing each other.
For a terrifying heartbeat, she thought she'd lose definition—that she'd be swallowed by that mingling, her own self washed away like a sand pattern under a wave.
Then the contact settled.
Instead of consumption, there was... amplification.
Her awareness, already more sensitive since her first dream, blew outward like pollen on a wind.
She felt the stone under her hands—not just as cool surface, but as layers of old heat and pressure and time, compressed and patient.
Below it, she sensed threads of root, twining around buried shards of the same milky stone, carrying faint pulses of light to the pale trunks circling the grove.
Each tree whispered in its own slow cadence: growing, drinking, arching toward the sky.
Beyond their ring, the forest thinned into harsher ground, where her steps had been. Stones jutted sharper. The hum of the earth was rougher, unsoftened by moss.
Farther, farther—the sensation spread like light through fine veins.
She felt, for the briefest moment, the tug of a distant wall of stone.
Moonshadow's boundary.
A weight sat there, thick and oily, pressing into the earth in a way that made the land flinch.
The curse.
Her heart lurched.
Reflexively, she reached toward it, power tensing, teeth baring in a snarl that never made it to her lips.
The Goddess' voice cut through that instinct.
"Easy," She said, firm. "Do not rush your fangs into plague-sick flesh. You will only infect yourself."
Luna drew back, trembling.
The grove's energy held her gently, cushioning the sudden retreat.
She forced her attention closer.
Back to roots.
Back to the slow, patient stretch of bark.
Back to the small currents of water winding through the soil nearby, oblivious to distant darkness.
Her breathing steadied.
"That's better," the Goddess murmured. "Feel the *near*."
Luna did.
She felt the way the moss cradled her boots, tiny structures knitting together in damp shade.
She felt a beetle crawling under a leaf three paces to her right.
She felt her own blood pulsing, each heartbeat a small thunder through capillaries and veins.
She had never been so acutely aware of being alive.
Of inhabiting a body.
Of *belonging* in it.
"I'm... here," she breathed.
"Yes," the Goddess said. "Utterly. And the world around you knows it."
She let the words soak.
In that suffused awareness, the isolation that had gnawed at her for days shifted.
The edges of her self did not blur in a way that erased her.
They touched other edges.
Stone.
Root.
Water.
Light.
She was not pack.
But she was not absent.
She pulled in a slow breath, filling lungs that now seemed to echo with more than just air.
"Why does it feel..." She groped for the right word. "Bigger? *I* feel bigger."
"Because you are remembering the parts of you that were always more than flesh," the Goddess replied. "You are not a vessel I have poured something *into.* You are a door I am helping you open."
Luna's eyes stung.
She kept them shut, afraid that if she saw this, her, all at once, she'd shatter.
"So this is... what? A blessing?" she asked, voice rough.
"A touchstone," the Goddess said. "A place where the threads in you can untangle and retie more cleanly."
She paused.
"And, yes," She added. "A blessing."
Warmth poured through Luna's palms.
It soaked up her arms, into her chest, into the bruised places in her ribs, into the sore knot at the base of her skull.
It wasn't a dramatic, bone-crackling surge.
It was a steady seep, the way warmth from a hearth slowly fills a cold room.
Pain dulled.
The constant, low buzz of fatigue in her muscles quieted.
The ember in her chest swelled.
Its edges, once ragged and too-sharp, smoothed, becoming a more defined, singing core.
Luna let out a shuddering breath.
Tears slid down her face again—this time without the choking, wounded sound that had accompanied them the night before.
She didn't wipe them away.
They fell onto the stone, tiny warm splashes on cool surface.
The veins of light in the moonstone brightened where each tear landed, drinking them in.
"You carry much alone," the Goddess said softly. "Grief. Anger. A love half-snatched and bound. A destiny you never asked for. You have been very brave, little storm."
Luna's throat closed.
She shook her head, unable to speak around the lump.
"Bravery is not never falling to your knees," the Goddess continued. "It is standing when you are still weeping."
Silence folded around them, thick but not suffocating.
Luna finally managed a ragged whisper.
"Will it always... feel like this?" she asked. "This... empty, under the power? Will I always be... half a wolf without a pack, half a goddess' tool?"
The Goddess made a small, sad sound.
"You are not My tool," She said. "You are My *answer.* To a question the world asked when it let pride twist love into cruelty. When an Alpha chose stone over flesh. When a pack chose silence over truth."
She stepped closer.
Her cool fingers touched Luna's heart—not physically, but through the bond that was no longer just mate-thread, but something vaster, silver-gold and humming.
"You will not always be this empty," She said. "Your heart is stretching to hold what it must. It hurts in the meantime. But it is making room for more than one kind of pack. For wolves. For world. For fire and flood. For those who will follow you, even if they do not yet know your name."
Luna's breath caught.
"Follow me?" she echoed, startled enough that it almost dislodged the grief.
The Goddess smiled, small and knowing.
"Storms do not ask leaves if they want to dance," She said. "They simply move, and others move with them. You are learning the steps now. Later, they will look like leadership."
Luna huffed a damp, shaky laugh.
"That sounds like a terrible idea," she croaked. "Me. Leading."
"Most true leaders think so," the Goddess said dryly. "That is why they are safer."
The grove hummed around them.
Luna's hands, still on the stone, began to tingle not with incoming warmth, but with a returning current.
The blessing's flow gentled, shifting.
Instead of simply *receiving*, she now felt a circling.
Energy moving from the stone, through her, into the air, into the ground, back.
A loop.
She realized, with a start, that she had been clinging.
White-knuckled, in some part of her spirit, to the ember, to the power, to this touch of divinity, afraid that if she loosened even a fraction, it would evaporate.
The grove did not let her hoard.
It taught her, in the steady rhythm of its pulse, that energy was not meant to be dammed.
It was meant to move.
To cycle.
Inhale.
Exhale.
"Let it go," the Goddess whispered. "Not away. *Around.*"
Luna released a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding.
She loosened her fingers.
She imagined the power in her chest not as a hoardable flame, but as a spring.
The tight knot there unwound a little.
The light that had swelled in her didn't vanish.
It flowed.
Out along her arms.
Through her palms, into the stone.
Into the roots.
Out through the moss, through the pale trunks.
Into the air itself, where it vibrated like a song too low for ears but not for bones.
Luna swayed.
She felt... lighter.
Not because anything had been taken from her, but because she was, for the first time, not trying to hold everything all at once.
She opened her eyes.
The grove glowed.
Not visibly brighter, not in a way someone untrained might see as different.
But to her sharpened senses, the white trunks shimmered with inner light, like bones under thin skin.
The moss-cradled moonflakes of stone sparkled, each a tiny echo of the central monolith.
"Beautiful," she whispered.
"Yes," the Goddess agreed, though Her gaze, when Luna met it, was on Luna—not the grove. "You will remember this feeling when the world darkens again."
The words landed like both promise and warning.
Luna's jaw tightened.
"Will it get... that bad?" she asked quietly. "Worse than rogues and rockslides and fire?"
The Goddess' eyes dimmed, just a fraction.
"Yes," She said simply.
Honesty.
No sugar.
No soft lie.
Something in Luna appreciated it, even as her stomach clenched.
"You will face wolves who wear shadows like second pelts," the Goddess went on. "You will walk in halls where the air tastes of old blood and older vows. You will be asked to break chains that did not start with you. And you will be tempted, many times, to let fury choose for you."
Images flared, quick and half-formed: Orion's blank eyes. Selene's sharp smile curdling into something pitted. A hall full of bowed heads, some in chains she could see, some in chains she could not.
Luna's hands curled once more, leaving faint imprints on the stone.
"I don't trust my fury," she admitted in a whisper. "It scares me. It—" She swallowed. "It wants to burn everything. To *hurt* the way I was hurt."
The Goddess did not look away.
"Good," She said softly.
Luna blinked.
"Good?" she echoed, thrown.
"Because you know that fear," the Goddess explained. "It means you will put a leash on that part of you when you must. Those who are unafraid of their own rage are the ones who drown in it and call the flood 'justice.'"
A shiver ran down Luna's spine.
She thought of Selene, of her cutting tongue and cutting eyes. Of how satisfied the other woman had looked every time Luna flinched.
"Will I..." She hesitated, hating the neediness of the question. "Will I still be alone? When it gets that bad?"
The Goddess' gaze softened again.
"No," She said. "Not always. Not in the ways that matter most."
She lifted Her hand.
From the air between them, faint lines emerged.
Silver threads, delicate and bright.
They extended from Luna's chest outward.
One, frayed and wrapped in a layer of shadow-slick, stretched in the direction of Moonshadow.
Orion.
Others—thinner, faint as cobwebs—reached in different directions she could not yet name.
"Your pack is not yet fully gathered," the Goddess said. "Some hearts are still choosing. Some are still being broken open so that they can hold you. But you will not walk every path to the end alone."
Her fingers brushed one of the faint threads.
It flared briefly, as if in distant response.
Luna's breath hitched.
"Who—?" she began.
The Goddess lowered Her hand, the threads fading back into unseen space.
"You will know them when you meet them," She said. "By the way something in you says, *Ah. There you are.*"
Luna made a small, strangled sound that might have been a laugh.
"And what about him?" she forced out. "About Orion?"
Silence.
Thicker, this time.
Not avoidance.
Weighing.
"The bond remains," the Goddess said at last. "Knotted. Dampened. But not cut."
Hope flared, sharp and painful.
"And the curse?" Luna pressed. "The... thing with empty eyes in my dream. Is it on him? *In* him?"
"Yes," the Goddess said simply.
The world tilted.
Luna's nails dug into the stone.
"And there is nothing you can do?" she whispered. "Nothing *I* can do?"
The Goddess' gaze was steady, implacable and kind all at once.
"You cannot save him as the girl he rejected," She said. "You cannot save him as the omega they overlooked. You will not be able to break that shadow's hold on him with hurt still holding your hand."
Luna's lungs refused to fill.
"You must become," the Goddess continued, voice like a bell struck in the hollow, "the storm I named you. Whole. Rooted. Able to stand in front of him not as a hungry heart begging to be seen, but as a force he cannot deny—even if he wants to."
The words landed like blows and blessings both.
Tears spilled again.
Luna let them.
"I don't know how to be that," she whispered.
The Goddess smiled, sad and proud.
"You are already learning," She said. "Every time you choose to walk rather than crawl. Every time you talk to the earth instead of only cursing it. Every time you feel your own emptiness and do not rush to fill it with the first hand offered, you grow."
Luna's laugh came out broken.
"That's... a slow kind of growing," she said.
"Strong trees are slow grown," the Goddess replied. "Fast ones snap in the first hard wind."
The grove's hum began to subside, slightly.
The intense clarity of Luna's expanded awareness softened, drawing back to inhabiting mostly her own skin.
The blessing, for now, was done.
The Goddess lowered Her hand from Luna's chest.
Warmth remained.
A deep, anchored heat that was no longer just a coal; it felt like a small, contained moon, turning in her ribs.
"When you leave this place," the Goddess said, "you will feel your connection to Me more keenly. The world will seem louder. Your powers will answer faster."
Her gaze sharpened slightly.
"And so will the shadows," She added. "You are not the only one drawn to strong light."
Fear shivered in Luna's belly.
"Then maybe I should—" She glanced around the grove, at the peaceful trees, the soothing moss. "Stay. Just... for a while. Hide. Learn here, where it's... safe."
The word felt strange in her mouth.
How long had it been since she'd truly felt it?
The Goddess' expression turned almost... rueful.
"If I let you stay," She said, "you would become a very powerful ghost. Beautiful. Lonely. Useless to the world that needs you."
The truth of it stung.
Luna dropped her gaze.
"Rest here tonight," the Goddess said, voice gentling again. "Let the grove hold you. Let your packless heart remember what it feels like to be surrounded, even if only by trees and stone and My eyes. In the morning, you will walk on."
Luna nodded, throat too tight to trust with words.
The Goddess' presence drew back, slightly.
She did not vanish in a dramatic flare of light.
She dimmed.
Stepped sideways.
Became, once more, the weight in the sky and the pulse in the stone rather than a woman-shaped figure in front of Luna.
"Stormroot," Her voice murmured, already seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. "When the shadows close around you next, remember the feeling of your hands on this stone. Remember that the world knows your name now. Not as an omega. As an element."
Luna's fingers flexed against the moonstone.
"Yes, Goddess," she whispered.
Silence settled.
The grove breathed.
Luna slowly lifted her hands from the stone.
The coolness clung to her palms.
Her arms felt oddly light, even as a humming tension lingered in her muscles, like they'd been played like strings and were still vibrating softly.
She looked around, really seeing the grove now not just with awe, but with new familiarity.
These trees knew her scent.
This stone had tasted her tears.
This moss had taken her weight and not balked.
For the first time since leaving Moonshadow, she stood in a place that felt—faintly, strangely—like it was *hers,* too.
Not claimed.
Shared.
She stepped back from the stone and, on impulse, knelt to press her palm to the moss.
"Thank you," she whispered to the grove. "For... holding me. For... amplifying. For listening."
A faint vibration answered in her hand.
Not words.
Acknowledgment.
Warmth stirred in her chest—her own, not just the Goddess'.
She set up her small camp that night within the circle of pale trunks.
No need to search for dry ground or worry over falling branches; the grove seemed to have already made space.
She built only the tiniest of fires, more for comfort than heat, respecting the grove's quiet.
As darkness settled, the moon rose higher.
Its light, thin as it was, pierced the branches here more easily than elsewhere. The white bark gleamed softly. The veins in the central stone glowed faintly, echoing the moon's curve.
Luna lay on her back, blanket pulled to her chin, and stared up through the lattice of branches.
She could feel the Goddess differently now.
Not as a distant, impersonal presence over everything.
As a rhythm under things.
Under her own heartbeat.
Under the rustle of leaves.
Under the distant call of a night bird.
Her loneliness, still a steady companion, felt... less like a void and more like a room with windows. Empty, yes, but open to something other than her own echo.
She thought of the threads the Goddess had shown her.
Of unnamed hearts somewhere under this same stretch of sky.
Of a cursed Alpha bound in shadows he'd helped call.
Of pups in Moonshadow curling around each other, unaware of the dark net stretching over their den.
Her fingers twitched toward the bond again.
She stilled them.
"Not tonight," she whispered to that frayed line. "Tonight is mine."
The ember—moon—pulled gently inside her.
Sleep came easier than it had in weeks.
No jagged dreams of empty-eyed wolves.
No half-remembered screams.
Only the slow, steady sense of being wrapped, not in fur and other bodies, but in light and quiet and old, old roots.
When morning came, she woke before the sun fully claimed the sky.
Dew jeweled the moss, each droplet catching the early light and flashing briefly like tiny moons.
She stood once more before the central stone.
Placed her hand on it, just for a heartbeat.
The hum answered.
Not as intense as before—she was in her own skin again, not widened by blessing—but still present. Still anchoring.
"I'll come back," she said softly. "If I can. When I need to remember."
No voice replied.
But a single, thin shaft of sunlight slipped through the pale branches to strike the top of the stone, lighting it from above.
She smiled.
Then she turned and stepped through the ring of white trunks.
The air changed the instant she crossed that invisible threshold.
Heavier.
Less crisp.
The hum under her feet dulled.
She paused, glancing back.
From this side, the grove still looked otherworldly—but already a little more like an ordinary stand of pale trees.
Magic dampened itself for distance.
It would not advertise its existence to every passing eye.
She squared her shoulders.
Her pack was still light.
Her heart was still, in many ways, packless.
The Rogue Lands still waited with their usual hunger.
But now, deep in her chest and in the soles of her feet and in the skin of her palms, she carried the memory of moonstone and moss and a Goddess' fingers brushing away dried tears.
Her connection to the Moon had been a faint, desperate prayer once.
Now, it thrummed like a wire.
And as she walked away from the grove, the land under her steps felt—subtly, unmistakably—more *listening* than it had before.