Moon Crown After My Alpha’s Moonvein Theft

"Leave this slaughterhouse, little wolf."

The ancient voice vibrated through the damp stone floor.

I gripped the edge of the silver basin. The thick crimson liquid rippled. Deep within the mirrored surface of my own extracted blood, the golden eye blinked.

"Who are you?" I demanded, my throat raw.

"Leave." The command hit my skull like a physical blow.

My inner wolf threw herself against my ribs. Bone cracked. Pain flared, sharp and blinding. Without Kael's pine scent to anchor the change, my beast remained trapped inside, thrashing blindly. She wanted to shift. She needed to tear through the cavern and rip the throats out of the wolves who had betrayed us. But the physical transformation refused to trigger.

I coughed, spitting a wad of dark blood onto the stone.

I snatched my silver High Warden badge from the floor. The metal felt freezing against my palm. I turned my back on the golden eye and walked out into the biting night wind.

The wooden doors of the Moon Temple stood wide open.

Inside, a woman swept gray dust from the obsidian floor. She wore robes of deep indigo.

"You bleed on my clean floor," she noted, leaning on her broom.

"Iona," I read the name stitched on her collar. "I need sanctuary."

"Silvercrest Lunas do not need sanctuary," Iona replied, her gaze dropping to my stomach.

"I am no longer Luna." I tossed the silver badge onto the altar steps. It clattered against the stone. "I severed the bond. I have nowhere else to go."

I pulled back the torn remnants of my shirt.

Three years ago, I sat at the Moonwell for seventy-two hours, bleeding my Moonvein dry to hold the barrier against a shadow-stalker siege. Three hundred and twelve Silvercrest members survived because of me. Three hundred and twelve tiny silver dots had tattooed themselves across my ribs in gratitude.

Now, only smooth, unblemished skin remained. The broken Luna bond had wiped away every trace of my sacrifice.

Iona stepped closer. She ignored the discarded badge. She stared at the glowing golden cracks webbing across my abdomen.

"You saved three hundred and twelve lives," Iona said, her voice flat. "Where are they tonight?"

"Sleeping safely in their beds," I replied. "Following their Alpha's orders."

"Loyalty is a fragile currency." Iona pointed to the stone bench. "Sit."

I collapsed onto the hard surface. My wolf rammed my ribs again. I grabbed my chest, gasping for air.

"My beast is trapped," I rasped. "The mate bond is gone. I cannot shift."

"You severed a twelve-year bond. Your wolf is in mourning." Iona turned to a wooden cabinet. "She will tear you apart from the inside if she does not find a new anchor."

"I do not want a new anchor. I want to survive."

"Survival requires understanding the weapon inside you." Iona pulled out three oval glass panes framed in tarnished bronze. Moon mirrors.

"Hold still," she instructed, arranging the mirrors in a semi-circle around my torso. "Let us see what your Alpha actually left inside you."

"He took my Moonvein. He gave it to Selene."

"Did he?" Iona adjusted the left mirror.

The glass flared with a blinding white light. Instead of reflecting my ruined shirt, the mirror showed the inside of my abdominal cavity.

I stared at the reflection. A thick, glowing golden root pulsed in the center of the wound. It was not bleeding out. It was moving.

"What is that?" I asked, my voice tight.

"Your second vein," Iona murmured, tilting the right mirror. "But it is not just sitting there."

The second mirror magnified the image. The golden tendrils were wrapping around the lingering pockets of black, necrotic blood left by Kael's bone-blade. The gold light hissed, dissolving the dark fluid and absorbing it into the root.

"It is eating the dead blood," Iona said.

"That is impossible," I countered. "A Moonvein only channels energy. It does not consume."

"Clearly, you do not know your own bloodline." Iona adjusted the third mirror, angling it over the core of the golden light.

"What do you know of my bloodline?" I challenged, gripping the edge of the bench.

"I clean the temple floors. I listen to the prayers of hypocrites. I see many things." Iona tapped the bronze frame. "This vein is hungry."

A high-pitched whine split the air. The bronze frame of the first mirror fractured.

A jagged line split the glass.

The second mirror shattered, showering the stone floor with glittering shards. The golden light from my stomach flared, rejecting the scrying magic.

Iona threw a hand over her eyes and kicked the third mirror away before it could explode.

"Your power is volatile," Iona stated, brushing glass dust from her indigo sleeves.

"Can you stabilize it?" I asked. The heat radiating from my core felt like a furnace.

"I am a temple keeper, not a god." Iona walked back to the wooden cabinet. She rummaged through the lower shelves.

My inner wolf clawed at my chest cavity again. The sheer force of her panic threatened to snap my sternum. I doubled over.

"Make it stop," I gritted out.

"I cannot soothe your wolf," Iona said, turning back around. She held a brass hourglass filled with shimmering black sand.

She walked over and slammed the hourglass onto the stone bench beside me.

"What is this?" I stared at the falling sand.

"A timer," Iona replied.

"For what?"

Iona flipped the brass hourglass over, resetting the black sand. "If you do not let the gold vein complete its first cycle within seventy-two hours, your heart will burn first."