The scent of home hit her like a fist.
Not the home of warm hearths and pup-laughter—as if she'd ever truly known that—but the home of stone and hierarchy and howled oaths. Moonshadow's mark still clung to the land like an old bruise.
Underneath it, something rotten writhed.
Luna crested the last low ridge before the border at dusk.
The day had been a long, grey stretch of walking. Clouds hung low, bruised with the promise of snow they'd never quite delivered. The air had grown thicker, heavier, with every mile.
She'd known the line was close when the ground's hum had shifted from wary to *sick*.
Now, from the top of the ridge, she could see the first of Moonshadow's outer sentry stones—tall, rough pillars that had once been set in a broad arc, each carved with crude moon symbols and marked regularly by patrols.
The nearest one leaned at an angle, as if something enormous had shoved it from behind and it had refused, stubbornly, to fall.
Blood darkened its base.
Not old, dried brown.
Fresh.
Black-red in the failing light, seeping sluggishly into the snow.
The smell of it rode the wind, thick and metallic, cutting through all the familiar scents like a blade.
Luna's throat tightened.
Her wolf bristled under her skin, hackles lifting, tail stiff.
*Ours,* it snarled, voice low and half-panicked. *Pack. Blood. Wrong.*
Not *our* pack, she almost corrected, on habit.
The words stuck.
Ours or not, they were hers to face.
She swallowed hard, forcing her legs to move.
Snow crunched under her boots as she descended the slope toward the border.
Every step closer peeled back another layer of old scent: the sour-sweet tang of pups, the musk of warriors, the softer, flour-and-smoke perfume of omegas.
Under all of it, like oil floating on water, lay the stink of the curse.
Heavy.
Smothering.
Rot under polished stone.
The outermost line of territory had always been kept neat.
Patrols had worn clear paths between the sentry stones. Underbrush was kept low. Any signs of struggle—skirmishes with rogues, the occasional hunted deer—were tidied quickly, buried or burned so Moonshadow would not "look weak" to passing eyes.
No one had cleaned here in days.
Dead leaves and broken branches tangled with churned-up snow, making a grey, trampled mess.
Blood soaked it in patches.
Some of it had sprayed in fine arcs across the nearest trees.
Gouges scored the bark at shoulder-height from claws raking hard enough to strip it.
Luna's lungs stalled.
She dropped to a crouch beside the leaning sentry stone, fingers hovering over a smear of dark, drying red.
The scent hit her full.
Wolf.
Male.
Young.
Not a stranger's wild tang.
Moonshadow-born.
Her brain tried to place it among the faces she remembered: lanky adolescents sparring in the training field, pups tripping over their own paws.
A flash of memory surfaced: a boy with too-big ears poking clumsily through shaggy fur, eyes wide with the awe of watching Orion demonstrate a move in the yard.
"Reed," she whispered, the name startling her with its suddenness.
He'd trailed after warriors, begging for tips, even as they cuffed him away.
She'd slipped him extra stew more than once when he came in late to the meal hall, bruised and panting from extra drills he hadn't asked for.
His blood painted the stone she'd scrubbed as an omega.
Her stomach lurched.
She turned her head and retched into the snow.
Nothing came up but bitter spit.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, breath coming in short, fierce bursts.
"You're late," a dry voice murmured behind her.
Luna whirled, heart leaping to her throat, power snapping to her fingers on reflex.
Lightning tingled.
Wind coiled.
She only just stopped herself from flinging both at the shadow that stepped from behind a frost-stiff bush.
It was no shadow.
A small, wiry she-wolf in human form stood there instead, arms wrapped around herself against the cold, silver-streaked dark hair tangled around a thin, lined face.
Elia.
Luna's breath caught.
"Elia," she said, disbelieving.
The older woman's mouth twitched—a fraction of a smile or a grimace, hard to tell in the half-light.
"You remember," she said. "I wondered if the Rogue Lands had knocked sense of us out of you."
Her tone was rough as ever, but there was something softer under it.
Relief.
Fear.
Elia's scent knifed through the bloody air: herbs, kitchen smoke, pup-milk, and the faint, sharp tang of worry-sweat.
It hit Luna like a wave.
Home—not pack, not safety, but the closest thing she'd had to a mother's arms.
Her chest tightened painfully.
"What are you—" Her voice came out cracked. She swallowed and tried again. "What are you doing out here? You should be inside the walls."
Elia snorted, the sound cutting across the gathering gloom.
"Inside?" she said. "With *that* crawling the halls? No, thank you. I'd rather risk claws at the border than shadows at my door."
Her gaze flicked to the bloody stone, then back to Luna's face.
Her eyes were sharp, far too clear for someone who'd lived this close to the curse for so long.
"You took your time," she said.
Guilt flared, ridiculous and immediate.
"I—" Luna began, then closed her mouth.
She could not apologize for not knowing.
For surviving.
Still, standing there with Reed's blood at her feet and Elia's tired gaze on her, every storm she'd bent and valley she'd saved felt small and far away.
"I came as soon as I could," she said quietly.
Elia's shoulders sagged, the hard line of her mouth softening.
"I know," she sighed. "I heard the winds whining about you two days ago. 'She's coming, she's coming,' like pups with a secret." She shook her head. "Never thought I'd see the day the Moonshadow runt would make the elements gossip."
Heat crawled under Luna's skin.
"I'm not—" she started, out of reflex—that old denial, that flinch from the word runt.
She cut it off.
She was small.
She had been weak.
That was truth.
It did not cancel what she'd become.
Elia's eyes narrowed, studying her in the dim light.
"You're… different," she said slowly.
Luna managed a rough, humorless laugh.
"Almost dying several times will do that," she said.
Elia stepped closer.
Close enough that Luna could see the fine lines fanning from the corners of her eyes, deeper than they'd been when Luna left. Close enough that the few grey hairs at her temples glinted.
Close enough to touch.
She didn't.
Her hands stayed firmly tucked under her arms.
But her gaze traced Luna's face, her stance, the way the air seemed to hum faintly around her.
"I know that look," Elia murmured, almost to herself. "Saw it on an Alpha's face once, seasons before you were born. Saw it go out when his own pride turned on him." Her lips twisted. "Yours looks… steadier."
Luna swallowed.
"I don't feel steady," she admitted.
"Good," Elia said shortly. "Only fools are certain in times like these."
A faint, distant howl split the air then.
Weak.
Frayed.
Luna's head snapped toward the sound automatically.
Not welcoming.
Not any structured signal she recognized from patrol calls or hunting cries.
This was… raw.
A torn sound.
Pain and terror ground together.
Another voice answered it, from closer in.
Then another.
The chorus that followed had none of the grace of a pack's usual nightly greeting of the moon.
It was chaos.
Out-of-time.
Some voices cut short in mid-yelp.
Others rose in a feverish, too-high pitch.
Her wolf whined under her skin.
*Pack,* it said. *Ours. Wrong.*
Luna's hands curled into fists.
"What's happening?" she asked Elia, eyes still on the distant tree line where Moonshadow's outer buildings would just be beginning. She could see the faint glow of firelight there, a sickly orange smear against the darkening sky.
Elia's jaw clenched.
"Borders are falling," she said. "Patrols don't come back from their rounds. Cracks in the walls let in more than wind now. Rogues have been testing, more of them every night. Bloodfangs, mostly."
At the name, Luna's back went rigid.
She'd heard it spoken in the Rogue Lands, spat with equal parts fear and disgust.
Bloodfangs.
A vicious, loosely organized pack of aggressive rogues who took what they wanted from anyone too weak to stop them—land, food, mates.
They'd been a rumor when she was in Moonshadow.
A distant threat used to scare pups into obedience.
"They're here?" she asked, voice dropping.
Elia nodded once, short and bitter.
"They smell weakness," she said. "They've circled for days. Nipped where they could. Took two from the east patrol yesterday. Left Reed half on our side, half on the line, like… like some butchered rabbit."
Her voice cracked on the name despite the steel she tried to wrap it in.
Luna's gaze dropped again to the blood on the ground.
"Where are the others?" she asked softly. "The—" She swallowed. "The elders. The omegas. The pups?"
"Inside," Elia said, scowling, as if the word tasted foul. "Huddled in the inner halls. Orion's got the strongest wolves holding the courtyard and the outer rooms." Her scowl deepened. "Those that are *left*."
"And the curse?" Luna pressed. "How far—"
"Everywhere," Elia cut in, voice low. "In the mortar. In the rafters. In the *wolves*."
She shuddered once, a small, involuntary motion.
"I've seen warriors freeze mid-step and just… stand there," she went on. "Eyes gone pale, like standing water. Breathing. Heart beating. But gone. Like someone blew the candle out and left the wax."
Luna's stomach knotted.
"What happens to them?" she asked, though she wasn't sure she wanted to know.
Elia's lips thinned.
"They walk," she said. "If you can call it that. Slow. Purposeful. Toward the cracks. Toward the shadow. Like they're being… reeled in. And if you try to stop them…" She shook her head once. "They look at you like you're the stranger in your own den."
Luna thought of Orion's dream-eyes.
Silvered.
Empty.
Walking toward a darkness that had smiled at her.
Her throat closed.
"And the pups?" she forced out.
"Some fought it," Elia said. "Some… didn't. It likes the tired ones. The ones no one notices. The ones already pressed quiet."
Her gaze flicked, hard and brief, to Luna's face.
Old knowledge passed between them in that look.
Luna had been one of the pressed-quiet ones.
"A few of us keep to the outer halls now," Elia said. "We keep the fires going. We… watch. Pull who we can back from the cracks. But…" She shook her head again, shoulders sagging. "It's like bailing a sinking boat with a cracked bowl."
Silence stretched.
Punctuated only by distant, disjointed howls and the crackle of some unseen fire.
Luna's hands were shaking.
She hadn't realized it until now.
She clasped them together to still them.
"I can't… cleanse it all at once," she said slowly, almost to herself. "Even the Goddess said She can't just rip it out without tearing souls. And I'm not Her."
"Good," Elia muttered. "One over-dramatic deity in our lives is enough."
Luna huffed a breath that might have been a laugh.
It died quick.
"I can hold fronts," she went on, thinking aloud. "I can shift elements. Break attacks. But this—this thing is in *them.* I don't…"
"Know where to bite," Elia finished, unexpectedly.
Luna nodded, swallowing.
"Yes."
Elia stepped closer.
This time, she did reach out.
Her hand, work-rough and scarred, landed on Luna's shoulder.
The touch was light, but it grounded her more than any stone or wind.
"You're not here to be perfect," Elia said quietly. "You're here because no one inside those walls can see past their own fear and pride long enough to admit they're drowning. You're already ahead of them for that alone."
Luna fought the sting in her eyes.
"I don't know if that's comforting," she managed, voice shaky.
"It wasn't meant to be," Elia snorted. "It's meant to be a slap. You always did move better after someone smacked sense into you."
Images flickered in Luna's mind: Elia, years ago, swatting the back of her head when she'd drifted too close to the hearthfire with a tray. Elia bustling between long tables, serving wolves who barely glanced at her.
"Why are you out here?" Luna asked again, quieter. "Really. It's not just to… greet me."
Elia's gaze slid back to the treeline, to the faint orange glow of torchlight beyond.
"Borders are thinning," she said. "Not just to rogues. To… everything. I've seen shapes in the mist along the tree line that don't belong to any pack or beast I know. Old things. Hungry things. They smell the same wrongness as the Bloodfangs and come sniffing."
She shivered again, her hand tightening briefly on Luna's shoulder.
"I can't… fight them," she admitted. "Not the way you can. But I can… warn. Show pups where not to step. Light fires. Keep out as far as I dare so someone hears the scream when the line breaks."
She hesitated.
"And," she added, softer, "I was hoping you were real."
Luna blinked.
"What?" she asked, thrown.
Elia huffed.
"The winds gossip," she said. "The Goddess sticks Her nose in. But there's no guarantee either of them are more than old magic bored on long nights. I've seen too many 'chosen ones' amount to nothing but ash and echoes. I needed to see you with my own eyes. To make sure the runt with storms in her bones wasn't just a story to make pups sleep quiet."
Luna didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Her body chose a shaky mix of both.
"I'm real," she said. "I bleed, ride the winds, and complain like everyone else."
"Good," Elia said. "Now bleed for the right reasons."
A low growl, carried faintly on the wind, floated to them from the east.
Not wolf.
Thicker.
Harsher.
Bloodfang.
Luna's attention snapped toward it.
Further along the border, beyond the leaning stone, shapes moved between trees.
Not many.
Three, maybe four.
Wolves in their fur, shoulders wide, pelts ragged and scar-scored.
Their eyes glinted in the dim light as they paced just beyond the line where Moonshadow's scent began to thin.
Testing.
Prowling.
Hunting.
One stepped forward and lifted his head, nostrils flaring.
His gaze snagged on Luna and Elia.
He froze, tail lifting in interest.
"Well, well," he called, voice a rough purr. "What do we have here? A tired old omega and a little stray. Moonshadow sending the scraps to hold the line now?"
His accent bore the rough cadence of the Rogue Lands, but his teeth held Alpha-arrogance.
Luna felt Elia tense beside her.
Instinct.
Fear.
Exhaustion.
Years of being deemed "less" pressed into her posture.
The Bloodfang's lip curled in a half-smile.
He stepped one paw over the invisible line.
Luna's wolf surged.
Power, already simmering from anger and fear and the weight of the land's wrongness, snapped to attention.
Her stormgift leapt.
Her healer's thread woke.
She stepped forward, away from Elia's anchoring hand, putting herself directly in the rogue's path.
Her boots sank a fraction into the slushy, blood-tinged snow.
Lightning prickled under her skin.
The air around her tightened.
The Bloodfang's nostrils flared again.
His smirk faltered.
"You're not Moonshadow," he said slowly.
Luna tilted her head, new calm sliding over old nerves like a cloak.
"No," she agreed. "I'm what comes *back* when they throw their own away."
Wind rose at her back, subtle but insistent, combing her hair forward around her face like a mane.
The leaning sentry stone hummed faintly under her feet, as if recognizing the hand that had once scrubbed its base now standing over Reed's blood.
Behind the Bloodfang, his companions shifted, suddenly uncertain.
"Whoever you are," he growled, masking his unease with bravado, "you're standing on dying land. Why not step aside and let it fall faster? We'll take care of the rot. Maybe we'll even leave you a corner to curl up in."
His eyes gleamed.
Invitation.
Threat.
Luna remembered the pup in the hall, eyes gone still.
She remembered Reed's eagerness, his quick grin when she'd slipped him a second bowl of stew.
She remembered Orion standing proud and blind while he cast her aside.
She remembered Elia's hand, rough and warm on her shoulder.
Rage rose in her.
Not the wild, uncontrolled fury of old.
A colder thing.
Sharper.
"I'm not here to bargain with carrion," she said softly.
The Bloodfang's ears pricked, insult flashing across his face.
She let her storm rise.
Not as a shout this time.
As a breath.
The wind that had been at her back rolled around her, curling at her feet, lifting snow in a lazy spiral.
The air sang softly with static.
Snowflakes suspended for a heartbeat in the charged field, each one catching the fading light like a tiny star.
The rogue's fur lifted along his spine.
He swallowed.
"Back," Luna said.
She didn't raise her voice.
The word carried anyway, softened and amplified by the wind.
The Bloodfang bared his teeth.
"Or what?" he spat. "You'll snarl at the sky for me?"
Lightning flickered faintly under Luna's skin.
"I'll show you," she said, "what happens when you bite a wounded pack whose runt learned to bite back."
Elia made a low, warning sound behind her.
"Luna," she murmured. "Not yet. Save it for inside—"
Luna heard, but the line had already been drawn.
This was Moonshadow's border.
Broken.
Bleeding.
Everything in her insisted that the *first* thing she do was reassert it.
Not with old rules.
With new teeth.
She reached down, through her boots, into the ground.
The border stones had been set deep, their roots in the earth anchoring the invisible line.
They remembered.
Her fingers flexed at her sides.
"Help me," she thought to rock and soil and old scents. "Just here. Just now. Stand with me one more time."
The hum beneath her feet strengthened.
Shallow cracks spidered out from the base of the leaning stone—old fault lines shifting.
Snow along the border jumped as the ground trembled.
The Bloodfang's paws spread instinctively to balance.
His eyes went wide.
Wind coiled tighter around Luna.
She lifted one hand slowly, palm facing out.
A faint, pale light arced between her fingertips in thin, dancing strands—tiny lightning that snapped and hissed quietly.
Not enough to burn fur and flesh.
Enough to sting.
To warn.
"To stay on *your* side," she said, voice low and edged, "is to live a little longer. To cross onto *mine* without leave—" Her lips lifted, showing teeth. "Is to see how fast I can call the sky down on your head."
Silence fell.
Even the distant, chaotic howls from the heart of Moonshadow seemed to dim for a heartbeat.
The Bloodfang held her gaze.
Weighed.
His ears flicked back—just a fraction.
His tail dropped a handspan.
A growl rumbled in his throat, but he took his lifted paw and set it back behind the invisible line.
"Storm," he muttered, as if naming a familiar beast. "Didn't think Moonshadow would be hiding one of *those*."
"They weren't," Luna said. "They threw me out."
His lip curled again, but there was grudging respect in his eyes now.
"We'll see how long you can hold that wind," he said. "Rot goes deep in there. We can smell it from our dens. When it bursts, we'll be waiting to pick clean whatever you don't save."
With that charming promise, he turned, jerked his muzzle at his companions, and melted back into the trees.
Their scents lingered—greedy, watchful, patient.
Luna held her stance until she could no longer hear the crunch of their paws.
Only then did she let her arm drop.
The small lightning threads winked out.
The wind, which had been tense and sharp, softened, slipping back into a more natural flow.
Her knees almost buckled with the release.
Elia's hand was there again, gripping her elbow hard.
"Show-off," she grumbled, though her eyes shone.
Luna huffed a weak laugh.
"I didn't call lightning all the way down," she said. "I showed them a spark."
"Sometimes a spark is louder than a storm," Elia replied. "Especially at a broken border."
Luna looked again at the leaning stone.
At Reed's blood.
At the faint, damp groove her own thumb had worn there years ago.
She laid her fingers flat against its rough side, just for a heartbeat.
"I'm here," she whispered, not sure if she spoke to the stone, to the land, to the Goddess, or to her own younger self. "And I'm not leaving this line to carrion and cracks."
The stone hummed under her fingers, a low, throbbing answer.
The border would not magically seal because she'd stood there and threatened a rogue.
The curse would not recoil in fear of one runt's storm.
But this was the first step.
A line, once crossed and forgotten, redrawn in blood and will.
Behind her, Moonshadow's howls rose and fell, a discordant, desperate song.
Ahead, the smell of smoke and shadow grew thicker.
Luna straightened, rolled her shoulders back, and turned away from the stone at last.
"Come on," Elia said softly, falling into step beside her. "If you're going to walk into that mess, you might as well have someone who knows where the floors creak."
Luna's lips twitched despite the weight pressing on them.
"Lead the way, then," she said. "Just… be ready to duck."
Elia snorted.
"I've been ducking arrogance and flying crockery in that hall since before you were weaned," she said. "Storms are just louder bowls."
Together, they stepped past the last of the old markers and into Moonshadow's failing territory.
Blood on the border.
Cracks in the walls.
A storm at their backs.
And ahead, a pack on the edge of breaking, about to meet the runt it had made—and the power she now carried in her howling heart.