Twelve years ago, on the Moonstone Altar in the territory of the Crescent Hollow Pack, thirteen-year-old Elara Thorne cut her palm and let her blood fall onto the sacred stone. The Moonstone remained dark. According to pack law, this meant she was not of Thorne blood, not a member of the pack, and not even a wolf. During the same ceremony, another girl, Sera, was recognized by the Moonstone and declared the bloodline heir of Alaric Thorne, the pack's Alpha. The Moonstone had been tampered with. Sable Vance, the pack healer who presided over the ceremony, had coated the base of the altar with concentrated wolfsbane, powerful enough to suppress any bloodline response. Sera truly was Alaric's illegitimate daughter—that part was real. Only one thing was false: the true Luna bloodline had been erased from the pack's records. Selene Thorne, the former Luna and Elara's mother, discovered the residue beneath the altar that very night. The confrontation that followed ended with Selene falling from the North Cliff. Six months later, a fire—dismissed as an "accident"—destroyed the pack's old granary. Elara inhaled thick smoke and suffered severe damage to her throat, leaving her unable to produce a howl. Among wolves, a howl is identity, kinship, and the beginning of transformation. A wolf who cannot howl is forced to remain indoors even on the full moon, listening as everyone else runs free through the forest. The arsonist was eleven-year-old Sera. She had not done it to win a title or claim a higher rank. She did it because as long as Elara could still sing the melody Selene had left behind, someone might remember whose daughter that child really was. Selene had left behind the North Ridge hunting grounds and her bloodright, with the beneficiary listed as "Selene's daughter." But according to the certification ceremony, Selene no longer had a daughter within the pack. Alaric had administered the estate for twelve years, while its proceeds flowed, transaction by transaction, into accounts under Sable's name. Three years ago, Kade Ashford, the Alpha heir of the Ashford Pack, entered Crescent Hollow under an assumed identity as a guard, hoping to repay a childhood debt. When he was eight, he had been trapped in a raging wildfire. A girl wearing a white ceremonial moon cloak dragged him out from behind the wall of flames and placed a moonstone pendant in his palm. The smoke had been too thick for him to see her face. All he remembered was the scent of her cloak. After entering the pack territory, Kade caught the scent of Sera wearing that very cloak, and his belief became unshakable. The truth was that Sera had stolen it from the keepsake chest containing Elara's mother's belongings. Kade had already marked Sera on the side of her neck, but the bond had only reached its first stage: his bite had left a mark, yet their mating bond had never been completed beneath a full moon. On the day Elara chose her personal guard, she recognized the moonstone pendant hanging from Kade's collar at a single glance. It belonged to her mother, and Elara herself had given it away when she was five years old. Without hesitation, she named him as her chosen guard. Rowan Blackwood, the Alpha of a neighboring pack, was rumored to have lost the ability to shift after being wounded by silver during a hunt. In truth, his wolf form remained completely intact. He had fabricated the injury to escape the other political marriages his pack had arranged for him, buying time until he could marry the woman he truly wanted. When Rowan formally sought a bride, the woman he named had always been the same: "Selene Thorne's daughter."
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