They had slept back to back for three nights.
Not in anger.
Not quite.
In... distance.
A fragile, careful space between spines that had once fit like puzzle pieces.
Luna felt it more keenly than any sharp word.
The absence.
The pull with no answer.
The bond that had once been a sure, warm current between them now snagged and stuttered like a river hitting hidden rocks.
Some of it was the sickness.
The Moonstone's strain made her jagged, thin-skinned.
She could not always tell when the pain in her chest was physical, when it was fear, when it was guilt, when it was Orion's feelings bleeding into hers and getting tangled.
Tonight, the Moon hung high and cracked above the den, silver spilling through the narrow window of their chamber.
The rest of the pack settled into sleep in layers of breath and heartbeat.
Luna lay on her side, staring at the curved line of Orion's back.
He faced the wall, broad shoulders rising and falling.
He was not fully asleep.
She could feel the flickers of his thoughts humming at the edge of her awareness.
Guarded.
Her chest ached—not from the Moonstone this time.
From the way he had started holding parts of himself half a breath farther away.
Not out of spite.
Out of... wariness.
It was her doing.
Not his.
She knew that.
She had been the one pulling back.
Not in body.
In truth.
For days, since Seris had named her bloodline and the Moon had laid bare the old nets in her bones, Luna had walked around with the weight of new understanding pressed under her tongue.
She had not told Orion everything.
She had told him pieces.
About the First Alphas.
About the dam.
About the cosmic reasons her wolf had come so late.
But not the part that scared her most:
How much of their bond's fragility now was tied to *her* half.
To the ways she had let old shame and new burden twist in on themselves.
To the way she still, even now, held certain doors shut because she was afraid of what he would see—what he would *feel*—if she opened them.
She had not hidden out of malice.
Out of habit.
Out of the old story: I am too much. I must carry this alone.
Tonight, that habit felt less like armor and more like a knife pointed at the space between them.
"Orion?" she said softly.
His shoulders tensed.
He rolled slowly onto his back, then turned his head to look at her.
The moonlight cut shadows along his jaw, lit the gold in his eyes.
"Yes," he said.
His voice was not cold.
Just... tired.
"Are you awake enough to hate me if I say the wrong thing?" she asked, attempting lightness.
The corner of his mouth twitched.
"A little," he said. "But I promise I will hate you kindly."
Relief loosened something in her ribs.
She rolled onto her back as well, so they lay parallel, eyes on the ceiling.
The cracked Moon's light made fissured patterns on the stone.
"Our bond feels..." She searched for the word. "Frayed."
He was silent for a瞬.
"Yes," he said quietly. "It does."
She swallowed.
"Is it... me?" she asked.
"Partly," he answered, blunt, then added, softer, "And partly not. The Moonstone. The visions. The way the world keeps trying to tear you in half. None of that is your fault. But what you do in response..."
He trailed off.
She flinched.
"I pull away," she said. "I know."
"You... disappear," he said, the word rough. "You put walls up inside yourself and call it protecting me. Protecting the pack. And maybe, in the big, cosmic sense, it is. But from here, in this bed, it feels like you do not trust me with all of you. That what we share is... conditional. On you being strong. On you being 'okay enough' to show up."
Shame prickled hot under her skin.
"I thought I was keeping you from..." She gestured helplessly toward his chest. "From more of this sickness. Of this strain. You already took the Moonstone wound for me. I did not want to pour more into you. My wolf—my power—it is jagged. Heavy. I am afraid if I let it all flow, it will... crack you too."
He turned onto his side, facing her fully.
The gentle moonlight could not soften the intensity in his gaze.
"Luna," he said quietly, "that is not your decision to make alone."
Her breath caught.
"You do not get to ration yourself on my behalf," he went on. "Not in this. I chose to share the Moonstone. I chose the risk. Because I would rather be torn apart with you than whole without you. That is what this bond *is*. Not pretty words spoken under a nice sky. Not fate. Choice. Daily. Even when it hurts."
She blinked back tears.
"I thought..." She swallowed. "All those years without my wolf, I learned to survive by... folding. By tucking parts of myself away. Rage. Want. Need. It kept me from breaking. Or getting killed. It is... hard to stop."
"I know," he said.
He did.
He had seen her then.
He had *helped* hurt her then.
Regret flickered through the bond, still sharp even after all their work.
She reached for his hand in the dark, fingers tracing the calluses she knew by heart.
"I owe you... everything," she said.
He made an impatient sound.
"No," he said. "You do not 'owe' me for loving you. For standing beside you. That is not a debt. If you turn our bond into some ledger where you must stay strong or pay me back, we are already lost."
Her throat tightened.
"I am afraid," she whispered. "If I tell you everything—about my wolf, about the nets, about how much of my life I spent hating her, hating myself—you will look at me and see... a mistake. A broken vessel. A dangerous... experiment."
He inhaled sharply.
"Luna," he said, voice strained. "I was there when you were at your weakest. Your most... jagged. I saw you cough blood in the snow. Shake from visions. Barely hold yourself upright while the Moon and the world pulled at you. Did I leave?"
"No," she said, barely audible.
"Did I flinch?" he pressed.
"Sometimes," she said honestly. "Inside."
"Good," he replied. "Because this is terrifying. Loving you is terrifying. Loving anyone truly is. You are not porcelain, to be admired and kept on a shelf. You are a storm in a skin. Of course I fear losing you. Of course I fear being broken by what you carry. But I *chose* that fear. I choose it again. The only thing that hurts worse is when you decide, for both of us, that I cannot handle you."
Silence pressed around them for a heartbeat.
Luna rolled fully onto her side, facing him.
Moonlight caught the faint lines of exhaustion at the corners of his eyes.
"How do I stop?" she asked, voice rough. "From doing that. From... caring for you by cutting you out."
He reached up.
Brushed a strand of hair from her face.
"Start by telling me," he said. "Everything. Not just the parts you have already washed and made polite. The ugly bits. The shame. The things you are afraid will make me look at you differently. Because whether *you* tell me or not, I feel the shape of them. Like bruises in the bond I cannot see."
Her chest hurt.
Not with sickness.
With the sheer weight of what he was asking.
What she owed.
What she *wanted* to give.
Her wolf stirred, closer now than she had ever felt her in human skin.
Not pressing to shift.
Leaning, ears pricked.
Listening.
"All right," she whispered.
She took a breath.
Let it out slow.
"Do you remember," she began, "the first time you watched me try to shift?"
His expression closed, then opened.
"Yes," he said. "In the training ring. You... screamed. Fell. I thought..." He swallowed. "I thought you were weak. Or cursed. I did not ask which. I did not want to know."
She nodded.
She had known that, even then.
"Inside," she said quietly, "it felt like... being torn between two tides. My body trying to compress, find its wolf-shape. Something *else* trying to... expand. A storm. A river. Light. It hurt. Not just the bones. The... mismatch."
She told him, then, about what she had seen in the storms of memory.
About the old net woven through her blood.
The way the Moon had nearly burned her through as a child.
The First Alphas' fear.
The dam that had held her wolf and power and even the Moon's voice back—not as punishment, but as clumsy mercy.
She told him how, all those years, she had interpreted that restraint as failure.
How every insult had sunk deeper because it echoed a belief she already carried: that she was lacking at the core.
She spoke haltingly at first.
Then, as he listened without interruption, the words came faster.
Hotter.
"I hated her," she confessed. "My wolf. Or the lack of her. I thought—if she wanted me, she would come. She did not. So clearly I was... unworthy. I told myself I did not need her. That I could be enough as I was. That shifting was overrated. But every patrol, every spar, every full moon—I felt like I was... pretending. Wearing a skin that did not quite fit, knowing everyone else had one that did, that they could slip into at will."
She blinked away tears.
"Even after I began to call storms," she went on, "after the elements answered me, I *still* felt that lack. You saw it. On the mountain. In the rogue lands. I could crack stone and bend rivers, but I could not run beside you as a wolf. Part of me always thought—he is mated to half a creature. A strange, lopsided thing."
Orion inhaled, a sharp, wounded sound.
"Luna," he said.
She held up a hand.
"I know," she said. "I know you never said that. You never made me feel that on purpose. That is the point. These stories... I wrote them myself. In the dark. With the voices of my pack as ink. They lived inside me. And because I never named them aloud, they slipped into our bond like smoke. You felt my shame. My terror that you would wake up one night, look at me, and see only... lack. And it made you... hesitate. Without you knowing why. Without me knowing why. That is how we got here. Frayed."
He looked stricken.
"And on top of that," she said, voice softening, "the Moonstone sickness came. The visions. The goddess' games. I started protecting you from *that* too. Pulling back when the pain was bad. Hiding it. Because I thought—if he feels this *and* my old self-loathing, it will... break him. Better to carry as much as I can, shield him, take the hits. It is what I always did. As a runt. As a rogue. As a Queen."
He shut his eyes.
"Do you trust me?" he asked quietly.
She stared.
"Yes," she said, without hesitation.
"Then trust me enough," he whispered, eyes opening, bright with unshed tears, "to let me hurt with you. To let me be afraid with you. To share the *weight* of your shame, not just the fine, noble pieces. Because as long as you keep carving off the 'ugly' parts and trying to carry them alone, our bond will always be... partial. Bright where you think you are admirable. Dark where you hide yourself."
Her throat closed.
"I do not... know how," she admitted. "Not fully. When the Moonstone flares, my first instinct is to shut down. When the visions come, to go still. If I let all of that pour through the bond, I am afraid it will... drown you. Drown us."
He took her hand.
Brought it to his chest, pressing her palm over his heart.
"You remember when I took the Moonstone wound from you," he said. "How it felt?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"It was agony," he said bluntly. "Like swallowing the sun and ice at once. I thought it would tear me apart. But under it, through it, was *you.* Your scent. Your heartbeat. Your stubborn, infuriating refusal to let go. That is what I anchored to. Not the pain. *You.* That is how I lived. Our bond is not a pipe that fills with whatever you pour. It is... cells. Membrane. It can filter. We can learn to let more *you* through without flooding me with raw fire."
She let out a shaky breath.
"I am afraid," she said again. "Not of you. Of me. Of how much there is. How deep this goes. My blood. My wolf. My goddess. My sickness. The world. It is... a lot to hand anyone."
He smiled, so gently it hurt.
"That is why there are two of us," he said. "Not so I can stand under it *all* instead of you. So we can stand under it together. And when it is too much, we can step back. Together. Call in others. Elia. Kerran. Rhea. The Council. The point of a bond is not to isolate us further. It is to weave us more firmly into the web."
She searched his face.
Looking for even a flicker of resentment.
Of that old, poisonous line: You are too much.
She found fear.
Honest.
She found weariness.
Shared.
She found love.
Stubborn as granite.
"I do not want to lose you," she whispered. "Not to the Moon. Not to this power. Not to my own... damage. I would rather cut pieces of myself off than risk that."
His jaw flexed.
"And I do not want to spend the rest of my life half-bonded to a shadow," he said hoarsely. "Sleeping next to you and feeling you miles away. Walking into battle knowing you are hiding pain because you would rather break in silence than 'burden' me. That is a slow kind of death. Quiet. Polite. I choose the noisy, messy version, if it is all the same to you."
A laugh tore out of her, wet and incredulous.
"Noisy and messy," she repeated.
He nodded.
"The kind where you wake me in the middle of the night because the visions are bad," he said. "Where you tell me when you feel the old shame creeping in and let me push back against it. Where I tell you when the Moonstone in *me* flares and scares me, instead of pretending I am made of stone. Where we... argue. Cry. Make up. Break down. Instead of drifting further apart behind a polite wall of 'I am fine.'"
The bond between them—frayed, thin—thrummed at his words.
Responding.
Hungry.
Her wolf pressed closer, within.
Paws restless.
Tail low.
Tentative.
"You sound like Elia," Luna said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
"I threatened to bite her if she did not stop using me to send messages to you," he said. "But I listened."
Of course he had.
"Tell me you are angry," he added suddenly.
She blinked.
"At who?" she asked.
"Me," he said. "For the times I have pulled away. For the ways I still... hesitate to fully *enter* some of your visions. For how long it took me to stop seeing you as the girl I rejected and start seeing you as... fully mine, in every way. I know I have given you reason to doubt. Do not swallow that to spare me."
Her chest burned.
She almost did it—almost said, "It is fine. We have moved past that."
She stopped herself.
New habit.
New choice.
"I am angry," she said, voice shaking. "That when I first came back, when I was shining and terrifying, you loved the... spectacle. The power. But it took you longer to love the parts of me that were still... wounded. It felt like you were trying to bond to a goddess and skip over the girl who cried alone in the den. I am angry that sometimes, even now, when I falter, I see a flicker in your eyes that looks like *fear* of that girl. As if she might drag us back."
He flinched.
"That is fair," he whispered.
"And I am angry at myself," she added, tears spilling again, "for letting that flicker stop me from showing you more. For thinking—if I stay bright and competent and 'divine' enough, he will never have to see the pathetic pieces. The runt. The failed shifter. The child who begged the Moon for scraps. I turned myself into a pedestal to win you. And I hate that. I swore I would not do that."
He shook his head.
"You did not win me with a pedestal," he said, voice thick. "You won me when you walked away. When you chose your own life over my rejection. When you came back and treated me like someone who had to earn your trust. When you let me see you fall apart and did not send me away. It is the girl, Luna. The runt. The broken shifter. The one who survived Selene. The one who learned to love herself without a wolf. That is who I fell in love with. The goddess-fire is... extra."
She choked on a laugh-sob.
"You have a strange taste," she whispered.
"I know," he said. "Look who I mated."
Their hands were still pressed together over his chest.
He shifted them, flattening her palm there, then sliding his own hand to cover hers.
"Let us fix this," he said quietly. "Not in one grand ritual. In small ways. Starting now."
"How?" she asked, raw.
"By letting more of ourselves through," he said. "Deliberately. Here. Now. Like... opening a window. Not all the way. Enough to air out the room."
She closed her eyes.
Reached—not outward, the way she did for the Moon or the elements.
Inward.
Toward the thin, bright strand that had always linked them.
It pulsed, hesitant.
She had been keeping it toned down, dim, in some misguided attempt to shield him from the worst of her inner storm.
Now, with trembling care, she... loosened.
Stopped throttling her end.
The first rush made her gasp.
Her pain.
Her fear.
Her shame.
Her love.
They all surged, eager to flood.
But there was structure here, too.
Not the brittle net of old cosmic bargains.
The living, responsive weave of a bond they had built with their own choices.
It flexed.
Caught.
Filtered.
She felt Orion on the other side—not passively absorbing, but meeting her.
Bracing.
Opening his own doors.
His worry, sharp and tender.
His anger at the old stories that had hurt her.
His fear of losing her.
His frustration with his own hesitations.
His love.
Steady.
Stubborn.
Grounding.
They washed through her.
Not as invasion.
As... home.
She focused, sent one thing first, on purpose:
The memory of herself at ten, curled alone in the dark, certain she was broken.
Not the cleaned-up version.
The raw one.
The snot and tears and whispered, "Why will you not come?" to a wolf she thought had abandoned her.
She felt him receive it.
His breath hitched.
His chest tightened under her hand.
He did not turn away.
He did not erect some inner shield.
He *let* it in.
Let it cut him.
And sent back, through the same channel, a flood of fierce, protective love that wrapped around that small, hurting version of her like a cloak.
For the first time, she felt that moment not as solitary.
The past did not change.
But her relationship to it did.
Her wolf moved inside her chest, restless, pressing against her ribs.
Not to run.
To *lean* into his presence.
To mark him, in some in-between place, as pack.
Mate.
Anchor.
"I see you," he whispered aloud and through the bond, the words layered. "All of you. The runt. The Queen. The First Alpha heir. The girl who could not shift and the wolf who finally did. I choose all of you. Every day. Even when it terrifies me. Even when it hurts. Do you understand?"
"I am trying," she whispered back, voice breaking. "But my understanding was... shattered. Like our bond. Like the Moon. I am still picking up the pieces."
He kissed her fingers where they lay on his chest.
"Then we will piece it together," he said. "Slowly. Crookedly. It does not have to look like it did in the stories. It just has to be *ours.*"
She let out a trembling breath.
"Does it... feel different?" she asked after a moment, eyes still closed. "From your side. Now."
He was quiet, checking.
"Yes," he said finally. "Stronger. Not... smoother. There are snags. Old cuts. But the thread is... thicker. Warmer. You are closer."
She felt it too.
The distance between their spines, which had seemed like a chasm when they lay back to back, now felt like a trivial physical gap compared to the space they had just bridged inside.
Her chest ached.
Not with sickness.
With the soreness of a muscle long clenched, now cautiously relaxed.
"Orion," she said softly.
"Yes."
"If—when—this sickness worsens," she said, choosing the word deliberately, "when the power in me strains harder, when the Moon cracks wider, I will be... frightening. To you. To the pack. To myself. I need you to promise me something."
His jaw tightened.
"What?" he asked.
"Do not... love only the parts of me that look like a goddess," she said. "Love me when I am... messy. Weak. When I forget my own advice and pull away. And when I slip too far—when I start to become something dangerous, something that might hurt others—promise you will pull me back. Hard. Even if it means... breaking something."
He closed his eyes briefly.
"I already promised that," he said quietly. "In my own head. Long ago. But I will say it aloud, if you need it."
"I do," she whispered.
He opened his eyes.
Held her gaze.
"I promise," he said, voice firm. "I will not worship you into monstrosity. I will not fear you into distance. I will stand between you and the edge when you cannot see it. And I will let you do the same for me. No more saving each other without consent."
A tear slipped down her cheek.
She nodded.
"And you," he added, softer now. "Promise me you will not decide, without asking, which parts of you I 'can handle.' That you will let me *show* you where my limits are, instead of assuming them."
She swallowed.
"I promise," she said. "I will... try. And when I fail, I will tell you. Not later. Now."
He smiled, small and aching.
"That is all I ask," he said.
They lay there, closer now.
No longer back to back.
Face to face.
Hands tangled.
The bond between them, once a bright, taut rope, now a thicker, more textured cord.
Frayed in places.
Knotted in others.
Stronger for it.
Above, the cracked Moon poured her pale light over the den.
Within Luna's chest, the Moonstone pulsed.
Her sickness did not vanish.
Her divine blood still hummed.
Her wolf still shifted, restless.
Nothing out there had changed in the last few moments.
But something in here had.
She had finally taken the story of her missing wolf—the years of shame and silence—and placed it in Orion's hands.
Not as a burden he must fix.
As truth they would carry.
Together.
The bond, once shattered by rejection, patched by crisis, gilded by fate, now began to heal in a different way:
Through naked honesty.
Through mutual fear, named and shared.
Through the quiet, stubborn choice, made in the dark between breaths, to stop protecting each other with lies.
"Sleep?" Orion murmured eventually, thumb stroking small circles on the back of her hand.
Luna exhaled.
"Yes," she said.
She edged closer until their foreheads touched.
Their breaths synced.
Their heartbeats—hers double, his steady—found a rhythm.
As she drifted toward sleep, the old, familiar fear whispered:
He will leave when he sees it all.
A new voice, his, answered through the bond:
I am still here.
I am still here.
I am still here.
The Goddess watched—through crack and stone and starlight.
For the first time in many nights, She did not send a vision.
No omens.
No warnings.
Just a faint sense of approval.
Of relief.
Not because Luna and Orion were now safe from breakage.
But because they had finally stopped trying to hold their shattered pieces alone.
In the morning, the world would still be on fire.
Rogues would still gather.
The Holy Clan would still move.
Her father's messenger would still come.
The Moon would still crack.
But tonight, in a small stone room, under a fractured sky, two wolves clung to each other with the full, messy honesty of their bond.
And for a moment, that was enough.