POV: Luna Alira Vire
The moonlight spilled like ash across the stone floor.
Alira Vire stood barefoot at the window, her long silver robe pooling around her ankles. Her fingers curled lightly around the frame, and her breath clouded the glass with every exhale.
The forest was still.
Too still.
Behind her, the chamber remained untouched. Theron hadn't entered it in weeks, not since before the Red Moon had begun to rise. He led with certainty, but not with closeness. His silence came gilded in command and hers came carved from choice.
Since the Red Moon, the silence has changed. Not empty, but loaded, like the world was holding its breath just beneath the surface.
"Ione," she murmured, voice barely more than a breath.
"I'm listening." her wolf answered gently. The words moved like fog rolling through Alira's chest, low, calm, ancient. Familiar.
"You've been quiet." Alira said, pressing her palm flat to the chilled stone of the window.
Ione's voice carried a note of knowing, "I've been quiet for years."
"Because I asked you to."
There was a pause. Then Ione replied, softer this time, but certain. "Because you were afraid."
Alira's throat tightened. She looked down at her hands, the faint veins beneath the skin like buried rivers. "Not for myself," she whispered.
"No," Ione agreed. "For him."
They didn't say his name.
They didn't have to.
Alira closed her eyes, the warmth of her wolf curling beneath her ribs. Ione had been with her longer than anything, longer than Theron, longer than Ironfang. She'd stopped speaking aloud to her years ago. Not because she didn't trust her, but because trusting anyone out loud had become dangerous.
But now…now the silence felt heavier than it used to. She turned from the window, pacing softly across the lunar-etched floor. Her chamber was cold. Always had been. The Alpha's warmth rarely touched it.
She liked it that way. Theron hadn't asked how she felt after the Red Moon. He hadn't asked much of anything in years and his silence was louder than most arguments.
The Red Moon had risen two nights ago and yet its weight lingered. Not in the sky, but in her bones. She hadn't dreamed in years but since the ritual, she'd woken twice in the dark with a taste of iron on her tongue and silver vines growing across her memories. Vines she couldn't name.
Her thoughts drifted to the girl; Everly.
The one no one spoke of. The one who should've collapsed beneath her life and didn't.
Alira remembered when they brought her in. Small. Quiet. Covered in grime and starlight. Others saw a child, but she had seen something else.
A question; one the Moon Goddess hadn't answered. "You knew," Ione said. "And you helped."
Alira didn't answer.
A pause. Then, aloud, "Only in the ways I could." She had helped quietly and always without credit. A word to the old healer about keeping Everly's tasks near the gardens. A silent dismissal of a punishment once ordered. A look, held too long, until a cruel hand dropped before it struck. Never enough to seem protective, but always enough to keep her breathing.
And Spirit had known. They'd never spoken, not truly, but once, in the hall just after dusk, Spirit had walked past Alira without bowing. She'd met her gaze and something old had passed between them.
Not words.
Not power.
Permission.
The wind pushed at the shutters. The room sighed.
Alira moved to the altar in the corner of her chamber. Not for prayer. She didn't believe in prayers anymore, but she believed in omens.
She lit the single candle in the center, its flame catching with a faint flick of blue.
"You're changing," Ione whispered.
"So is everything," Alira replied. She thought of Lyra's eyes at the ceremony; wild with triumph, hollow with something else. She thought of Kyran's silence afterward. Of the way Thorne no longer looked at her through her son's eyes. He was pulling away and she couldn't stop it.
She knelt at the altar, the candlelight painting soft gold across her face. "I don't know how much longer I can stay quiet," she admitted.
Ione's voice was steady, "then don't."
A rustle broke the air with the scent of pine and river wind. Alira rose slowly and at the open window, a figure stood across the clearing, half-shadowed beneath the trees.
Cloaked.
Watching.
Spirit.
She didn't move.
Didn't wave.
Didn't speak.
Neither did Alira.
The moment passed and the wind shifted. Inside, the flame on the altar flickered sideways. "It's almost time," Ione whispered.
Alira didn't answer, but she didn't blow out the candle either.