"You are Moonless. The bond is severed. Leave before dawn, or we hunt you as rogue."

Alpha Caderin Nightshade's rejection wasn't private—it was a spectacle. In front of the entire Silverpaw pack, beneath the full moon that should have blessed their union, Thessa Rowan felt nothing when their mate bond snapped. No warmth. No connection. Just hollow silence where the Moon's blessing should have sang.

Declared Moonless—a wolf abandoned even by the goddess—Thessa is cast out with nothing but shame and the clothes on her back. Her own sister, Maren, smirks from Cadeirin's side, the new Luna who orchestrated Thessa's downfall with whispered lies and stolen moments.

Wandering into the northern wastes where the Moon is said to have died centuries ago, Thessa expects to freeze or starve. Instead, she finds Erynd Frostborne—an immortal guardian bound by ancient prophecy to protect the balance between wolves and the divine. He's been waiting three thousand years for a sign that never came. Until her.

Thessa doesn't draw power from the Moon. She replaces it. As her presence begins rewriting werewolf magic itself—bonds snapping without rejection, pack hierarchies crumbling, wolves praying to her instead of the goddess—the revelation sends shockwaves through every territory. Packs hunt her as a heresy. Priests fear her as the End of Days. And Erynd faces an impossible choice: uphold the oath that's kept him alive for millennia, or protect the woman who proves that even the gods can be wrong.

One thing becomes devastatingly clear: Thessa wasn't rejected because she was Moonless. She was rejected because she was destined to become something far more dangerous than any Luna.
She was meant to become the Moon itself.

It's not a human laugh. Not a wolf laugh. It's something wrong and ancient that makes my bones vibrate and my teeth ache.


"What is that?" I demand, but I already know the answer won't be good.


Erynd's face has gone completely white. "The Shadow King. The first wolf to ever try stealing divine power. Before Cadeirin. Before anyone. He was the prototype. The original sin."


"The Moon sealed him three thousand years ago," the false goddess adds, backing away from the spreading cracks. "Used almost all her power to trap him in a prison beneath these ruins. And then, weakened from that battle, she was vulnerable when Cadeirin and his followers attacked. She couldn't fight them at full strength."


"So Cadeirin didn't really kill her," I whisper. "He just finished what this Shadow King started."


"Exactly." She smiles grimly. "And now you've gone and absorbed all her power, all her essence. The same power that was keeping his prison sealed."


Chapter 10 - The First Lesson