POV: Caspian
I ran.
Not walked. Not jogged. Ran — full speed through the trees, branches snapping against my arms, lungs burning, feet pounding the ground so hard the earth shook beneath me. I ran because if I stayed one more second in that clearing, looking at her, I was going to do something that would end my life.
My wolf was screaming.
Not growling. Not pacing. Screaming — a sound so loud and so desperate inside my chest that it drowned out everything else. Every thought I had, every rule I knew, every line I was not supposed to cross — all of it was being swallowed up by one single word that my wolf would not stop repeating.
Mate. Mate. Mate. Mate.
I slammed my fist against a tree trunk as I ran. The bark cracked under my knuckles. Pain shot up my arm, sharp and real, and for one second it was loud enough to drown out my wolf. One second of quiet. Then it started again.
Mate.
I had known the moment I saw her. Not suspected. Not wondered. Known. The way you know the sun is rising — certain, absolute, impossible to deny. The first time her scent hit me at dinner two nights ago, my wolf had let out a sound I had never felt before. A howl of recognition so deep it vibrated through my bones. Like something ancient inside me had been waiting my entire life for that exact moment, and it finally arrived.
Moonflower and winter rain. That was what she smelled like. I could still smell her on my skin from standing so close to her by that stream, and it was making everything worse.
I burst through the back door of the mansion and slammed it shut behind me. My hands were shaking. I clenched them into fists and held them at my sides until my knuckles turned white.
Think, Caspian. Think.
She is your father's wife. The Alpha's chosen bride. To want her — to even look at her the way I just did — was not just wrong. Under pack law, it was punishable by death. My father would not hesitate. Garrick Ravenclaw had killed wolves for less. I had watched him do it.
I pressed my back against the door and closed my eyes, trying to breathe, trying to calm down, trying to push my wolf back into the cage where it belonged.
But then I saw it again behind my closed eyelids. The thing that had made me run in the first place.
When I looked at her chest — when I felt the pull toward her — I saw it. A glow. Faint, barely there, hidden underneath her skin like an ember buried in ash. I had seen that glow only once before in my life. I was twelve years old, and my mother was still alive. One night, when she thought no one was watching, the glow appeared on her chest — bright silver-gold, pulsing in rhythm with her heartbeat.
My mother had been a Luna.
A wolf queen. The rarest kind of wolf that exists. A Luna's power is equal to an Alpha's. They are not servants. They are not trophies. They are royalty — born once in a generation, chosen by the Moon Goddess herself.
And Sable had the same glow.
My eyes flew open. I pushed off the door and started pacing, running my hands through my hair, trying to make sense of what I had seen. It was not possible. Sable was supposed to be human. That is what my father told everyone. A human bride. A purchased wife. No wolf blood. No power. Nothing.
But what I saw in that clearing was not nothing.
It was everything.
If Sable was a dormant Luna — a Luna whose wolf had been locked away somehow — then my father did not buy a human bride. He bought something far more valuable. Something that, if it woke up, would change the entire power structure of this pack.
And my father knew.
The realization hit me like a punch to the gut. Garrick knew exactly what Sable was. He did not stumble into this by accident. He planned it. He bought her on purpose — a dormant Luna he could bind before her wolf ever woke up. A Luna in chains. Pure power, completely under his control.
My wolf snarled so loud inside my chest that my vision went blurry for a second.
I punched the door frame. The wood cracked, splintered, and a chunk of it fell to the floor. The pain in my hand was sharp and grounding.
"Stop it," I whispered to my wolf. "Stop it."
My wolf did not stop.
And the worst part — the part that terrified me more than any of it — was that I did not want it to.
I wanted to go back to that clearing. I wanted to stand in front of her again and tell her everything I knew. I wanted to protect her from my own father.
I wanted her.
And now I understood exactly why my wolf would never, ever let me forget it.
Because she was not just my mate.
She was a Luna. And if my father completed that binding ritual before her wolf woke up, she would be enslaved forever.
I had to stop him.
Even if it meant destroying my own family.