The first time I felt someone die, I was sixteen.
It was my first full moon shift, and while the other young wolves celebrated their newfound strength, I lay convulsing on the forest floor, drowning in the final moments of a rabbit's life three hundred yards away. Terror. Pain. The desperate need to survive. Then nothing—a void so complete it left me gasping.
"Aria!" My mother's voice cut through the fog. "Shield, baby. You have to shield."
But I didn't know how. Not then.
Eight years later, I still felt too much, but I'd learned to survive it. Most days.
"You're brooding again." Marcus's warm breath tickled my ear as his arms circled my waist from behind. The Alpha of the Silver Moon Pack moved with predatory grace even in our private moments, but his touch was gentle. "The ceremony starts in an hour."
I leaned back against his chest, letting his steady heartbeat ground me. Through our mate bond, his emotions wrapped around me like silk—pride, anticipation, and underneath it all, the fierce love that had sustained me for two years.
"Just thinking," I murmured.
"About?"
About how your mother looks at me. About how Beta Garrett whispers behind closed doors. About how the pack still calls me the Defective Luna when they think I can't hear.
"About how lucky I am," I said instead.
His chuckle rumbled through my back. "Liar. But I'll allow it." He pressed a kiss to my temple. "Tonight's important, Aria. The Northern Packs are watching. They need to see—"
"That you have a strong Luna. I know." I turned in his arms, meeting those storm-gray eyes that had captured me from the moment we met. "I won't embarrass you."
Something flickered across his face—there and gone too quickly for most to catch. But I felt the emotion beneath it: doubt. Just a whisper, like a crack in glass too fine to see.
"You could never embarrass me," he said, and on the surface, he meant it.
But underneath...
I was getting worse at hiding it. This morning, I'd collapsed in the breakfast hall when two pack members got into a heated argument three tables away. Last week, I'd sobbed uncontrollably when passing the nursery where the pups played, their joy so pure and overwhelming it left me breathless. And Marcus had noticed. They all had.
"Luna Aria." The voice made us both turn. Beta Garrett stood in the doorway, his expression carefully neutral. But his emotions weren't—disapproval mixed with something else. Satisfaction? "The Healer requests your presence. She says it's urgent."
Marcus frowned. "Now? The ceremony—"
"I'll be quick," I promised, kissing his cheek. As I passed Garrett, that strange satisfaction intensified, making my stomach turn.
The Healer's quarters sat at the edge of pack territory, where the sounds of daily life faded to whispers. Morgana looked up as I entered, her silver eyes grave.
"Sit," she commanded, gesturing to the examination table.
"Morgana, I don't have time—"
"Sit." The authority in her voice brooked no argument. As the oldest wolf in our pack, even Alphas deferred to her wisdom.
I sat.
She placed weathered hands on either side of my face, and I felt her power probe gently at the edges of my mind. What she found made her inhale sharply.
"When were you going to tell me?" she asked quietly.
"Tell you what?"
But even as I asked, I knew. The nausea I'd attributed to stress. The heightened sensitivity that had grown unbearable. The way my power had spiraled beyond my carefully constructed shields.
"You're pregnant, child."
The words hung between us like a sword.
Pregnant. I pressed a hand to my still-flat stomach, wonder and terror warring in my chest. A baby. Marcus's baby. Our baby.
"How far?" I whispered.
"Six weeks, perhaps seven." Morgana's expression remained troubled. "Aria, pregnancy amplifies a she-wolf's abilities. For most, that means enhanced strength, sharper senses. For you..."
"For me, it means feeling everything stronger." The implications crashed over me like a tide. If I could barely control my gift now, what would happen as the pregnancy progressed? What would happen to our child?
"There's more." Morgana moved to her herb shelves, pulling down an ancient tome. "I've been researching your condition. What you have isn't a defect—it's a gift that appears once every few centuries. The old texts call it the Luna's Sight."
"A gift?" I laughed bitterly. "A gift that makes me collapse in public? That makes the pack whisper about their weak Luna?"
"A gift that could make you the most powerful Luna in history." She opened the tome, revealing pages of faded text. "The Luna's Sight allows you to not just feel emotions, but eventually to influence them. To calm raging wolves with a touch. To sense threats before they manifest. To forge bonds stronger than any Alpha command."
My hands trembled. "Why didn't you tell me before?"
"Because the gift only fully manifests under certain conditions." Her eyes dropped to my stomach. "Pregnancy is one of them. The texts say the power will grow with the child. And if the child inherits the gift..."
She didn't need to finish. A wolf who could feel and influence emotions would either be revered as a prophet or feared as a monster. And in a society built on strength and dominance...