By midday, Luna's hands were raw.
The morning had been one long blur of orders and errands, each demand snapping at her heels like a nipping hound.
"Faster, Luna."
"Mind the plates, runt."
"Selene wants the blue gown pressed, not the silver. Do it again."
She obeyed. She always obeyed. But obedience did little to blunt the edge of Selene's attention.
"Clumsy," Selene had murmured when Luna's fingers brushed too near her wrist while fastening a bracelet. "You're like a draft of cold air—always where you're least wanted."
Later, in the corridor, when no one else was around:
"Did you think about what we spoke of yesterday?" Selene's tone had been made of silk wrapped around a garrote. "About your place? About who keeps you here?"
Luna had made the only answer she could. "Yes, Selene."
"And?"
"I... understand."
Selene had smiled that slow, satisfied smile, her teeth just visible between pretty pink lips.
"Good girl."
The words still scratched under Luna's skin like fleas.
By the time the sun tipped past its peak and shadows began to stretch long and thin across the yard, Luna's own shadow felt too tight. She finished stacking the firewood behind the kitchens, waited until Mara's attention was firmly fixed on a new recruit mishandling a knife, and slipped away.
Her absence, she knew, would not be noted for at least a little while. An omega missing a moment was just someone else's extra work. But Selene did sometimes keep count, in subtle ways. Luna had learned to make her stolen breaths of solitude short and precise.
She cut along the back of the compound, past the kennels and the old storage sheds, until the last of the buildings fell away behind her and the forest reached out with thin, twiggy fingers.
The air changed at the tree line. The ever-present scents of too many wolves—sweat and leather and smoke and bodies—thinned, replaced by damp earth, old leaves, and the faint iron tang of some long-rotted thing hidden beneath the underbrush.
Luna inhaled deeply, letting the forest fill her.
Here, among the trees, the pack's hierarchy felt less suffocating. The pines did not care that she was a runt. The oaks did not know Selene's name. The crows, perched high and watchful, recognized only movement and the chance of food.
She stepped into the shade and kept walking.
Branches snagged at her sleeves, trailing burrs and bits of leaf. The ground rose and fell beneath her thin-soled shoes, knotted with roots and softened by decades of fallen needles. Sunlight filtered through in slanting bands, warm where it touched her skin, cool where shadows pooled.
Luna followed the path her feet had worn into the earth over years of stolen escapes.
Left at the split birch, its white bark scarred by old lightning. Straight past the moss-humped rock shaped almost like a sleeping bear. Down the gentle slope where tiny white flowers clustered in spring, now only dried stalks whispering underfoot.
With every step, the sounds of the pack receded: distant shouts, the rhythmic thud of fists against training dummies, the clatter of pots, the occasional echo of laughter. In their place rose the softer chorus of the wild—birdcalls, the rustle of small creatures in the underbrush, the sigh of wind through branches.
By the time she reached her clearing, Luna's shoulders had eased a fraction, the tight line of her jaw loosening.
The clearing was much as she'd left it the night before. The ring of birch and pine watched in silent attendance, their trunks pale and dark in alternating bands. The grass in the center was flattened in places where she had sat so many times before, a faint impression of her small body pressed into the earth.
The flat rock jutted up from the ground like a waiting altar.
She climbed onto it and folded her legs beneath her, the stone cool through the thin fabric of her trousers. Overhead, the sky was a bright, cloudless blue, the sun a white coin slightly off-center. The moon was not visible yet, but Luna knew it was there somewhere, faint and pale against the daylight.
She closed her eyes and breathed.
In.
Pine. Earth. The ghost of smoke carried on a wind that had brushed the pack's chimneys.
Out.
Tension. Heat. The taste of Selene's perfume clinging stubbornly to the back of her throat.
"Moon Goddess," she said, voice barely above a whisper. "It's me again."
The words slipped into the open air and disappeared between the trees. Saying them always felt strange—half like talking to herself, half like knocking on a door she was never sure would open.
She opened her eyes and squinted up at the swathe of blue above.
"You must be tired of hearing from me," she went on. "All I ever bring you are... complaints."
She let out a weary, humorless huff of a laugh.
"But I don't have anyone else to bring them to," she added. "So you're stuck with me."
A crow cawed from a nearby branch, as if in dry commentary. Luna glanced its way.
"You can leave if you like," she told it solemnly. "This isn't going to be entertaining."
The crow cocked its head, preened once, and stayed.
Luna took another breath, deeper this time, and let the weight of the morning settle fully on her chest.
"I thought I understood how things worked," she said slowly. "I knew where I stood. I knew I was low. I knew people thought I was... less. But yesterday, and today... Selene is showing me there are... levels I didn't see."
Her fingers dug unconsciously into the edge of the rock, nails scraping over old lichen.
"She says I'm only alive because I make Orion look good," Luna continued. "Because he kept a promise to his father. Because throwing me out would be messy. Complicated. That as soon as it's easier to be rid of me than to keep me, I'm gone."
The words, spoken aloud, felt heavier than they had when she'd heard them.
"I want to say she's wrong," Luna murmured. "I want to say you wouldn't let that happen. That you put me there for a reason that's... bigger than her. Bigger than him. Bigger than all of them."
A breeze stirred the leaves overhead, making a shiver of silver on the birch trunks.
"But what if she's right?" Luna whispered. "What if the only reason I'm alive is because I'm a convenient story to tell at feasts? 'Look how noble we are, keeping the stray pup.' What if that's all I am—a story that suits them, not... me?"
Her throat thickened. She swallowed, the motion rough.
"Is that why you put me there?" she asked the empty blue. "Did you...?"
The question snagged, sharp and jagged. She shook her head, frustration burning behind her eyes.
"No," she muttered, correcting herself. "You don't put people places so they can be used. That's not—" She stopped, uncertain. "That's not who you are. At least, that's not who I thought you were."
The uncertainty in that last word cut her more deeply than she'd expected.
Growing up, whenever things were too hard, too cruel, too senseless to bear, she had retreated into the idea of the Moon Goddess as a kind of distant, silent mother. One who saw her, even when no one else did. One who, for some reason, had plucked her from a border soaked in blood and set her on this path.
That belief had been less about faith and more about survival. If no one on earth held her, perhaps something in the sky did.
Now, though... now Selene's poison had seeped into that belief, too.
"Do you see me?" Luna asked, the words a little sharper than before. "Truly? Or am I just a side effect of someone else's test? Some lesson for Orion, or for this pack? 'Look what happens when you take in rogues' child.'"
The thought made her stomach churn.
"I know I'm small," she said. "I know I'm not... important. Not compared to Alphas and Betas and wars and borders. But I still..." Her voice thinned. "I still hurt. That has to matter to you. Doesn't it?"
The crow ruffled its feathers and hopped to a higher branch. Somewhere under a nearby bush, something small rustled—a rabbit, perhaps, or a mouse.
Luna forced in another breath, deeper, slower. The air tasted faintly sweet, like sap.
"Selene says she can decide whether I stay or go," Luna went on, quieter now. "That the pack listens to her. That she can make them afraid of me if she wants. That she can twist their eyes until they see me as a... threat. Even when I've never done anything but serve."
Her hands unfurled from the edge of the rock, palms stinging.
"I thought," she admitted, "that maybe, if I kept my head down, if I worked hard, if I stayed quiet... eventually, something would change. That someone would see me." She laughed, bitter and soft. "Not like that. Not like a problem to solve. Just... see me."
The words trembled at the edges, threatening to break.
"But Selene says if I even *try* to stand taller, she'll cut my legs out from under me. And when I look at her, at how everyone adores her, at how Orion... listens to her, I..." She exhaled slowly. "I believe her."
A long silence stretched. The forest moved around her, the world continuing in its indifferent rhythm.
"I'm so tired of being afraid," Luna whispered at last. "Afraid of her, afraid of them, afraid of wanting things I'm not supposed to want." She closed her eyes. "Afraid of hoping for more."
Her next breath shuddered.
"I don't know how to ask this the right way," she said. "I'm not an Elder. I don't know the old prayers. I don't have the right words. But I'm asking anyway."
She slid off the rock and onto her knees, the ground damp and cool beneath the thin fabric of her trousers. The position felt instinctive, humbling and honest.
Fingers curled into the grass, she bowed her head.
"Moon Goddess," she said, voice raw. "Lady of Night. Mother of Wolves. If you are there—if you hear even the smallest voices—hear me now."
The wind held its breath.
"I can't stay like this," she confessed. "Half-alive. Half-hoping. Waiting for Selene to decide I've made one wrong move too many. I can't keep waking up just to be stepped on." Her shoulders shook once. "It's... breaking me."
The tears came now, hot and unapologetic, slipping down her cheeks and dripping onto the earth. She didn't bother to wipe them away.
"I'm not asking you to smite her," she said, the absurd image almost making her laugh through her tears. "I'm not asking you to burn the pack to the ground or hand me power I don't deserve. I'm asking for... an opening. A door. A path. Something."
Her fingers dug deeper, nails biting into the soil.
"Give me a way out," she pleaded. "Or a way *up.* A way to not be so... small. So easy to crush. Give me a chance to be something more than this."
She sucked in a breath that hitched halfway.
"If I'm meant to leave them, show me how. If I'm meant to stay and change something, give me whatever I need to survive long enough to try. Courage. Strength. A thicker skin. I don't care. I'll take anything you give."
Her voice roughened.
"And if I was a mistake," she whispered, the most terrifying possibility of all, "if I really wasn't meant to live that night at the border... then tell me. Make it clear. So I can stop... fighting you. So I can stop... asking for a future that isn't mine."
The words ripped out of her like something pulled from the root.
She bowed lower, forehead pressing into the damp earth, the scent of loam and crushed grass filling her nose. Her shoulders shook with held-back sobs, the sound escaping in small, strangled bursts.
"I don't want to die," she choked out. "I don't. But I can't keep *not living* like this. Not when every day feels like another stone closing over my head."
Her throat burned. Her chest ached. Her fingers trembled where they clutched the ground.
"Please," she whispered into the dirt. "Change *something.* Change me. Change them. Change the wind. I don't care what. Just... don't leave everything the same. Don't leave *me* the same."
Silence fell.
Not the casual quiet of an untouched forest, but something deeper, more intent. The kind of stillness that comes when every leaf on every branch pauses, listening.
The hairs on the back of Luna's neck lifted.
She raised her head slowly, heart thudding in her ribs. The clearing looked as it always did—the same ring of trees, the same rock, the same scattering of leaves—but the shadows felt... sharper. The light, clearer.
A faint tremor ran through the ground, so subtle she might have imagined it. Her palms tingled where they touched the soil.
High above, the bright sky had shifted almost imperceptibly. A thin veil of cloud began to drift across the sun, softening its glare. As the light dimmed, the air cooled, and there—faint, ghostly—Luna could just make out the pale suggestion of the moon.
It hovered low and washed-out, nearly invisible against the bright day, but once she'd seen it, she couldn't unsee it: a fragile crescent, looking down on her.
Her breath caught.
"You're... there," she murmured.
Of course the moon was always there, whether visible or not. She knew that. Every pup did. But in that moment, after her plea had spilled raw and unpretty into the clearing, the sight of that faint, stubborn arc felt like something more than coincidence.
The wind stirred again—not a sharp gust, but a slow, circling movement, as if unseen hands were drawing a spiral through the air. It brushed over her damp cheeks, cool and soft, and curled around her shoulders, around her back, before slipping away.
Warmth bloomed, sudden and startling, behind her sternum.
Luna sucked in a breath.
It wasn't like the rush of adrenaline when Selene's hand came down too quickly. Nor was it the burn of embarrassment when the warriors laughed. This was... different. Gentle, but deep. As if a small, hidden ember inside her had been nudged, coaxed, asked to glow.
She pressed a hand to her chest, fingers splayed over her ribs.
The warmth pulsed once. Not painful. Not even exactly pleasant. Just... there. Present. Aware.
Her heart raced.
"Is that... you?" she asked, voice breaking on the last word.
No answer came in the form of words. But as she knelt there—mud on her knees, tears drying tight and itchy on her cheeks, hair frizzing in the damp—the sense of... attention grew.
As if something vast and ancient had turned its face, ever so slightly, in her direction.
The crow gave a low, croaking sound and took flight, black wings cutting across the pale sky. Luna watched it go, her gaze tracking its path until it disappeared beyond the treetops.
The air shifted again. A single birch leaf, still mostly green but edged in yellow, detached from a high branch and spun lazily down. It swayed on invisible currents, never quite committing to the ground, until it landed—softly, precisely—on the back of Luna's hand.
She stared at it.
A leaf was just a leaf. Leaves fell all the time. That was what they did.
But in the charged quiet of the clearing, in the echo of her desperate plea, in the lingering warmth blooming under her palm, that small touch felt like an answer.
Not a full one. Not a promise of specific things to come. But an acknowledgement.
*I hear you.*
Her throat tightened again, but this time the tears that sprang to her eyes were not only from pain.
"Is that... all you can give?" she whispered, laughter and sob tangled in one. "A leaf and a feeling?"
The wind rustled in mild reply, sliding through the grasses, making them bow and rise in a slow, wave-like motion.
Luna let out a shaky breath.
"I sound ungrateful," she admitted softly. "I don't mean to. It's just..." She looked down at the leaf, at the delicate veins branching like rivers. "I asked for a door, and you gave me... a crack. A thin line of light under it."
She rolled the leaf gently between thumb and forefinger, careful not to tear it.
"Maybe that's all you *can* give right now," she conceded. "Maybe that's all I'm able to understand."
Her gaze drifted back up to the almost-invisible crescent in the sky.
"You're there," she repeated. "And you... heard me. That's something."
The warmth in her chest pulsed again, a little stronger this time, then settled into a steady ember-heat. Not enough to burn. Enough to remind her it existed.
In her mind—so tired, so often turned inward in self-defense—a thought took root, fragile as a sprout pushing through hardened soil.
*I am seen.*
Not by Selene, who saw only a tool. Not by the pack, who barely saw her at all. Not even, perhaps, by Orion, who saw a duty and an obligation.
By something older. Wider. Colder and kinder all at once.
The knowledge didn't change her circumstances. Mara would still bark at her. The warriors would still smirk. Selene would still sharpen her tongue and polish her mask.
Nothing outside this clearing had shifted a single stone.
But inside Luna, something had.
She sat back slowly on her heels, leaf still cradled in her hand, and let herself truly feel that small, stubborn warmth. It flickered in time with her heartbeat, like a second pulse.
"I don't know what you want from me," she said quietly. "I don't know what I am—what I'm meant to be. But if you answered... even a little..." She straightened her spine. "Then I'll keep asking. I'll keep listening."
She thought of Selene's threats, of the way the future Luna had leaned in close and whispered of cutting legs.
A slow, unexpected thought unfurled in response.
*What if my legs are not all I have?*
The idea scared her. Thrilled her. Confused her.
"I'm not strong," she told the faint moon, because lying in a prayer felt pointless. "Not like them. I'm not brave. Most days I'm... just trying not to drown. But if there's... anything in me that you put there, anything that isn't just weakness and fear, then... show me. Teach me. I'll try to grow it."
The birch leaves whispered, a soft susurration like distant applause or waves on a far-off shore.
She rose to her feet, joints stiff from kneeling, and brushed off her knees. The leaf clung briefly to her finger before she set it gently on the rock.
"I have to go back," she said, more to herself than to the watching sky. "If Mara notices I'm gone, she'll tell Selene. And Selene..."
She didn't need to finish that thought.
She took one last look at the clearing—at the ring of trees, at the flat stone that had become her altar, at the leaf resting like a small, deliberate mark—and then back at the faint curve of the daytime moon.
"I'll come back tonight," she promised. "When you're brighter. When they're sleeping. I'll talk until you're tired of me. Until I'm tired of myself." A hint of wryness edged her tone. "Maybe if I say the same things enough, they'll start to sound like something... braver."
The warmth in her chest flared, almost in amusement, then steadied.
She turned and started back toward the pack.
The forest received her without comment. Birds resumed their ordinary songs. A squirrel scolded her from a low branch as she passed, tail flicking indignantly. A gust of wind chased her footprints, scuffing the edges so they blended back into the common earth.
By the time the first roofs of the compound came into view through the thinning trees, Luna's face was once again smoothed into its practiced neutrality. Her shoulders rounded, automatically making herself smaller. Her steps shortened to the brisk, efficient pace of someone who knew better than to dawdle.
But inside, under the bruises and the weariness, under the layers of fear and practiced obedience, the ember remained.
It did not make her stride bolder. It did not miraculously straighten her spine.
Not yet.
What it did was this: when Mara snapped at her for being "slow as sap in winter," the words landed on something that was no longer entirely hollow. When a warrior clicked his tongue and said, "Out of the way, runt," she stepped aside, but a tiny, secret part of her thought, *For now.*
And when, later that night, after she scrubbed the last pot and closed her door gently behind her, she looked up at the square of sky through her small window, the sight of the moon—fuller than the night before, its light clearer—did not feel quite so far away.
She lay on her back, thin blanket pulled up to her chin, and whispered into the dark.
"Thank you," she said simply. "For the leaf. For the... feeling. For seeing me."
The ember warmed in quiet answer.
She closed her eyes.
In her dreams that night, she stood once more in her clearing. But the trees were taller, their trunks impossibly wide, roots digging deep into a ground that pulsed faintly with soft light. The moon hung huge and low overhead, its silver face veiled in drifting clouds.
Something moved in that bright veil. A half-seen figure, more impression than shape—tall and slender, eyes like two full moons in a dark, starless sky.
Luna reached out, fingers trembling.
Before she could touch, the figure lifted a hand—not in rejection, but in benediction—and the earth beneath Luna's feet shivered. Cracks spiderwebbed out from where she stood, not breaking the ground, but tracing lines like glowing veins.
Light poured up through those lines, bathing her ankles, her knees, her hands. It didn't burn. It hummed, low and ancient, a note that settled somewhere behind her heart.
*Rise,* a voice said—not in her ears, but in her bones.
She jolted awake with a small gasp, heart racing, hand pressed automatically to her chest.
Her room was dark, the only light that same pale strip from the window. The hum had faded, the cracks in the earth gone with the dream.
But the warmth in her chest was there. Stronger now. Not a blaze. Not yet. But more than an ember.
Luna lay back slowly, eyes wide open in the dark, pulse thudding against her palm.
"A dream," she whispered. "Just a dream."
Outside, the moon hung serene and silent.
Inside, the runt beneath that moon listened to the echoes of a voice that had not used words and felt, for the first time in her small, burdened life, that something in her was not just reacting to the world—but answering it.
She did not yet know that the ancient power humming faintly in her blood was older than the pack that scorned her. She did not yet know that the cracks she had seen in her dream mirrored fault lines running through her own destiny, ready to be widened by choice and fire and pain.
She only knew this: she had cried to the Moon Goddess, and the moon had not turned away.
Somewhere far above, in the cold, star-bright dark beyond mortal sight, an old presence—tired from centuries of indifference and worship and war—shifted a fraction more toward a single, stubborn spark glowing in the body of a fragile girl.
The world, for now, remained unchanged.
But the tide within Luna had begun, invisibly and irrevocably, to turn.