CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Wake Between Worlds
Everything was... blue.
Not the inviting blue of the sea, nor the deep blue of the stunning gowns Luna used to wear during Solstice. This was the cold, lifeless blue of death. Of silence.
Of forgetting.
Luna floated.
No breath. No heartbeat. Just a heavy stillness.
She thought about Dominic's kiss. The blade. How her blood had poured over the altar stone like a solemn promise.
And now—this.
A vast emptiness.
"Luna."
The voice wasn't from above or below; it surrounded her. Ancient. Female.
Familiar.
Her eyes shot open.
Now she was standing, barefoot on a path of shimmering silver roots beneath an endless night sky. The stars looked like open wounds, bleeding light. Off in the distance, wolves howled, but their cries sounded like songs.
And at the path's end, under the Moon Tree, stood her mother.
"Mamma?" Luna gasped, stumbling forward. "How—?"
Rhea Ferro turned to her, her long silver hair flowing, eyes sparkling with tears. "I told you, figlia mia. When the blood calls, I'll find you."
Luna fell into her mother's arms, sobbing like a child. It had been years since she cried like this.
"He killed me," she whispered.
"I know," Rhea replied softly. "Now, you have to decide if you want to go back."
They sat together beneath the Moon Tree, its branches teeming with memories. Faces flickered in the bark—Alphas, Queens, Healers, Traitors.
"I thought I'd feel peace," Luna said, gazing across the shadowy lake. "But it feels... wrong. Like I wasn't meant to be here yet."
"That's because you aren't," her mother said gently. "You still carry the bond."
Luna glanced down at her chest.
A mark burned over her heart, shaped like a crescent and a crown.
"He branded me with love," she said bitterly.
"No." Her mother's tone turned sharp. "He branded you with truth. And now the goddess demands a price."
Luna asked, "What kind of price?"
Rhea's expression was serious. "You've broken the curse. But to return, you must decide what you'll let die within you… forever."
Luna felt tightness in her stomach.
"You mean I have to give something up?"
Her mother nodded. "What will you surrender to rise again?"
Luna clenched her fists. The answer sprang from a deep, primal place.
"My self-hatred," she said hoarsely. "My guilt. The belief that I'm too broken to be loved."
The wind howled through the trees.
The Moon Tree shimmered.
And one by one, the stars above blinked out.
Back in the mortal world...
Dominic knelt over Luna's body.
Blood soaked the altar, staining his hands, his knees, his very soul.
He whispered every prayer he could think of. From the old gods. From the wolves. Even from the Catholic church.
Nothing worked.
She lay still, her skin turning cold, her lips pale.
He kissed her. Again and again. "Come back, amore mio. Please... don't do this. You said you'd fight."
A harsh sound echoed behind him. Cruel.
It was Matteo.
The brother he had cast out.
The wolf he couldn't kill.
"Did you really think," Matteo sneered, stepping from the shadows, "that love could bring her back? You're a monster, Nico. You don't get resurrection. You get ruin."
Dominic stood, expression blank, voice hollow.
"Then ruin it is."
They clashed.
Fangs bared. Claws tearing. Magic cracking the stone floor. Dominic fought like a man who had nothing left to lose, pure rage, no mercy.
Matteo slashed open his chest.
Dominic stabbed a blade through Matteo's ribs.
Blood splattered. Bones cracked. Outside, the wolves howled in a frenzy as the air split with alpha fury.
Then—
Luna gasped.
Her eyes flew open, glowing silver.
She sat up.
And the mark on her chest flared.
Dominic turned, bloodied and breathless, dropping to his knees.
"You came back," he whispered.
She looked at him, really looked, and for the first time saw not just the killer or the beast, but the boy who'd never believed he was enough.
"I always come back," she said softly, "for the ones who need me."
Dominic crawled to her, resting his forehead against hers.
"I thought I lost you."
"You almost did."
Then, she kissed him, slow and deep, grounding.
It wasn't about sex this time.
It was resurrection.
Later…
Luna stood over Matteo's lifeless body. "Bury him far from the pack. But don't forget him."
Dominic blinked. "You're sparing him?"
"I'm sparing us. Revenge is a cycle I'm ready to break."
He looked at her as if she was a whole new world.
And maybe she was.