Chapter 4 Her Mother's Blood

Thalia

The wind carried a strange scent through the ruins, earth, rain, and something sharp beneath it. Memory.

She couldn't sleep. Not after Cassian had come. Not after hearing Veyr call her "one of us." The ache in her chest pulsed with the mark's dull burn. Her body didn't know whether to run, fight, or reach for him again.

But the girl who once trusted too easily had died at the Moon Festival.

Now, she wanted answers.

"Tell me about her," Thalia said. The fire between them had burned low to embers. Veyr sat opposite her, sharpening a curved blade. His silver eyes flicked up.

"Your mother?"

Thalia nodded. "You said she was Syndicate. That she left."

Veyr finished one stroke and set the blade down. "Your mother was born into the Blackridge Syndicate. She was trained as a healer, same as you. But she wasn't just talented. She was powerful. Special."

Thalia frowned. "How?"

He tilted his head. "Magic runs in bloodlines. Not the pretty crystal-shop kind. Real magic. Ancient. Unstable. Your mother was gifted... but marked."

"Marked?"

He pointed to his chest. "Blood oath. She took one when she was your age, swearing to protect a prophecy tied to the Luna Flame."

Thalia blinked. "The what?"

He chuckled dryly. "You think Moonridge teaches you the real history? They don't even know what they buried."

Thalia leaned forward. "Tell me everything."

---

Cassian

He sat on the edge of the river with Roran, staring at the water like it might rewrite time.

"She didn't even flinch," Cassian muttered. "She looked right at me like I was a stranger."

"She's not the same girl you marked," Roran said. "You left her to become someone else."

"I didn't mean to."

"But you did. You let the Council speak louder than your bond."

Cassian didn't answer. The water moved on, indifferent.

Finally, he said, "There was a man with her."

Roran raised an eyebrow. "A threat?"

Cassian's jaw clenched. "He thinks he knows her."

"Well," Roran said after a long pause, "maybe he does. You knew the girl who smiled at you from the healing tent. He knows the one who survived alone in the wild."

---

Thalia

"She never told me," Thalia said, staring into the fire. "About the Syndicate. About magic. About any of it."

Veyr shrugged. "She couldn't. The vow bound her. And when she fell in love with your father, someone from outside our blood, she knew she'd never go back."

"But why did she leave the Syndicate in the first place?"

His eyes darkened. "Because she saw what power does to wolves."

Thalia sat very still.

"What happened to her?" she whispered. "Really?"

Veyr was silent for a moment. Then he stood, turned, and reached into his coat. He pulled something out. A leather-wrapped bundle, and placed it in her lap.

She unwrapped it slowly.

It was a journal. Old. Worn. Pages stuffed with pressed herbs, inked diagrams, scribbled notes.

Her mother's handwriting.

Her throat closed.

"She gave that to me before she died," Veyr said. "Told me to give it to you when you were ready."

Thalia looked up, heart hammering. "And how do you know I'm ready now?"

"Because the bond is awake. And the Council knows you're alive. You won't be hidden much longer."

---

Cassian

He returned to Moonridge before dawn, worn and furious.

The Council greeted him with silence.

Kael stood by the gates. "You find her?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"She's not ready to come back."

Kael's mouth twisted. "Or she doesn't want to."

Cassian didn't respond.

But later, alone in his chambers, he lit a candle and stared at the bond mark on his chest. It is faint and flickering, but still there.

She was still his mate.

Even if she never chose him again.

---

Thalia

She spent the night reading her mother's journal. The pages were filled with a healer's careful detail-remedies, rituals, coded warnings. But woven between the practical notes were flashes of a different voice.

"The Luna Flame is awakening."

"The Council fears what they cannot control."

"If she inherits it, she must not bend to the Alpha bond."

She froze on that line.

The ink was darker there. Like it had been written in haste.

She read it again.

If she inherits it, she must not bend to the Alpha bond.

Thalia stared at the fire, her hand unconsciously covering the mark Cassian left.

Her mother hadn't just run. She'd protected her from something bigger than exile.

From being controlled.

---

Veyr

He watched her read until dawn.

She looked like her mother, same fire behind the quiet eyes, same stubborn tilt of the chin. But there was more in Thalia. Something unshaped. Raw.

The bloodline had waited long enough.

"You need to see it," he said when she looked up.

"See what?"

He stood. "The place where she died."

---

Cassian

"Moonridge can't hold," Kael said. "Crescent's pushing again. Elira's stirring the younger warriors."

Cassian rubbed his temples. "Let her stir. I'm not replacing Thalia."

"You already did. When you left her in the woods."

Cassian's head snapped up.

Kael sighed. "She's not coming back because you didn't fight. But if you want her here, you'll have to prove to her and the pack that she's more than a mistake."

---

Thalia

They reached the site by midday.

A stone altar, overgrown with moss and brambles, sat in a clearing that pulsed with old energy. The trees around it bent slightly inward, like they bowed toward the center.

"This is where she was killed?" Thalia asked.

Veyr nodded. "By a Council blade. They said she violated her oath. But we both know what scared them, it wasn't betrayal."

He pointed to the altar.

"It was you."

She stepped forward slowly. The mark on her shoulder flared hot.

The altar's surface bore a symbol, two crescent moons mirrored in flame.

She gasped.

She'd seen it in her mother's journal.

She pressed her fingers to the stone, and the symbol glowed faintly beneath her touch.

A whisper stirred in the wind:

"You were never meant to be Luna. You were meant to burn the title down."