The storm came with no rain.
Only wind.
It rose at dusk, a low moan through the trees, gathering itself around Moonshadow like something with intent. The air thickened, heavy and electric, pricking at Luna's skin until she felt like a furred creature rubbed the wrong way.
She stood alone in the Moonstone Grove, palms flat against the pillar of crystal, eyes closed.
Behind her ribs, the Moonstone pulsed in its now-familiar, uneasy rhythm.
Her sickness had settled into a rough pattern: days of bearable ache, nights of sudden, sharp flares. Elia had learned to read the tension in Luna's shoulders before a wave hit. Orion had grown even more stubborn about hovering.
They had both wanted to come with her tonight.
She had told them no.
"I will only be a little while," she had said, touching Orion's cheek. "If I need you, I will howl."
"You never howl," he had muttered. "You stagger back in looking noble and half-dead."
She had promised.
He had not liked it.
He had let her go anyway.
Now, as the wind twisted tighter around the grove, breathing in and out in long, uneven gusts, Luna knew she had been lying to herself as much as to him.
She had not come here "for a little while."
She had come because Seris' words and the Moon's crack and the constant, low-grade burn in her chest had shaken loose old questions she had tucked away:
Why had her wolf never come?
Why had shifting, the most basic birthright of their kind, always hovered just out of reach until the moment with Selene, when she had been more goddess and storm than fur and bone?
If she carried the blood of the First Alphas—to say nothing of star-Seed and Moonstone—why had she spent most of her life trapped in skin?
"You are thinking too loud," the Moon murmured.
Her voice slid in on the wind, cool and frayed.
Luna did not open her eyes.
"You left that part out," she said. "In all Your riddles. In all Your nudges. You never told me there were... cosmic reasons my wolf stayed caged."
*Would it have helped, then?* the Goddess asked mildly. *To know that your struggle was writ in the fabric of the sky, not only in your muscles? Or would it have given your tormentors better metaphors to throw at you? 'Half-wolf. Sky-broken. Goddess' mistake.'*
Luna's hands tightened on the stone.
Memories stirred at the edge of her mind.
Old voices.
Old jeers.
Weakling.
Wrong.
Broken.
The wind gusted again.
Leaves rattled, a thousand dry tongues.
"I need to know now," she said. "I cannot keep... leading without understanding the shape of myself. Not when everything seems to be circling that missing piece."
The Moon was quiet for a瞬.
Then:
*Very well,* She said. *You asked to see behind the veil. Remember that I warned you it would not be... tidy.*
The world shifted.
Not in the sudden, disorienting way of a waking vision.
In a slow, sliding overlap, like one sheet of glass being laid over another.
With her eyes closed, Luna felt the Grove fall away.
The damp earth under her feet became hard-packed dirt.
The hum of the Moonstone thinned.
Other sounds rushed in to fill the space.
Pups' high voices.
The crack of training sticks.
The low murmur of adults gossiping at the edge of the sparring ring.
Luna's eyes flew open.
She was small again.
She knew it instantly, not because she looked down and saw thin legs or small hands, but because of the way the world felt *big*—every tree a tower, every older wolf a looming presence.
She stood at the edge of the training yard of her youth, the familiar circle of dirt worn smooth by generations of paws and boots.
The air smelled of dust, sweat, and the faint, always-present tang of old blood.
"You coming, Luna, or are you going to stand there looking stupid?"
Selene's voice, younger and still lacking the full, icy weight she would one day wield, sliced across the yard.
Luna flinched.
She turned.
Selene was a shade younger than she was in most of Luna's memories here—no crown, no queen's mantle. Just a powerful young she-wolf with cold silver eyes and a smile too sharp for a child.
She leaned against the fence, arms folded, watching.
In the ring, pups around Luna's age wrestled and lunged, half in human form, half in an awkward, shifting state that made their bones pop and skin crawl.
Their first true shifts.
Some had already managed partial transformations—paws for hands, fur along arms, teeth lengthening.
Others flickered in and out of control, but the wolf was *there*, just under the surface.
Luna watched a boy named Dren stumble, his limbs elongating, fur sprouting along his spine, then snap fully into his wolf form with a triumphant bark.
The crowd of parents and packmates whooped.
"About time!" someone shouted.
"You see that, Luna?" Selene drawled. "Even Dren managed it. What is wrong with *you?*"
Luna felt herself shrink under the attention.
She knew this day.
It had carved itself into her memory long ago: the day of her first true attempt to shift with the others.
She had tried to forget the details.
Now they flooded back sharper than ever.
Her mother stood with the other parents, arms crossed, face a careful blank.
She did not clap for Dren.
She did not look at Luna.
The old trainer, Korrin, clapped his hands.
"Next," he barked. "Luna. Your turn."
Every head swiveled.
The circle parted.
Luna's stomach knotted.
She stepped into the ring, bare toes curling against the packed dirt.
Her heart pounded so hard she could see her heartbeat in her vision, small bursts of black at the edges.
"Come on, runt," one of the girls muttered from the edge. "Maybe you will turn into a rabbit."
Snickers.
"Or a mouse," someone else added.
"A worm," Selene said lazily. "They are small and useless too."
Heat rose to Luna's face.
She dug her nails into her palms.
Korrin's gaze was not unkind.
It was... bored.
"Close your eyes," he said. "Call your wolf. Feel for her. We have been over this."
Luna obeyed.
She *had* been over this.
Alone at night.
In the early mornings.
Any time she could slip away, she had tried to feel that flicker under her skin that everyone talked about.
The restless energy.
The itch.
She had felt... something.
A pressure deep in her bones.
A longing.
A sense of *other*.
But when she reached for it, it scattered.
Fog under her hands.
Now, standing in the ring with the entire pack watching, she reached again.
Memories within the memory rose.
Her first awareness of... imbalance.
Not in her body.
In the sky.
She remembered being very small, lying on her back outside the den, staring up at the Moon.
Other pups had seen a bright circle.
She had seen, even then, tiny, hairline cracks invisible to anyone else.
They had pulsed faintly, like distant lightning behind clouds.
She had thought it was normal.
That everyone saw the Moon as both whole and not.
Only later had she realized she was alone in that.
Now, as she reached inward for her wolf, she felt those faint cracks echo in her.
A mirror.
The same pattern, fractal and inevitable.
Her hands trembled.
"Any time this century," Selene called.
Laughter, bright and cruel.
Luna's throat tightened.
She forced her awareness down, away from the watching eyes, down below skin and muscle, into bone.
There.
A flicker.
Not fur.
Not claws.
Something... vaster.
A swirling of wind.
A glimmer of star-silver.
The deep, patient weight of earth.
The roll of distant thunder.
Too much.
Too big.
She recoiled.
The strange presence surged forward in answer, as if sensing her flinch and mistaking it for invitation.
Pain shot down her spine.
Her back arched.
Her knees buckled.
A gasp tore from her.
She pitched forward.
The world tilted.
Her vision filled with light—silver, blue, gold—rushing toward her like a river breaking a dam.
*Not yet,* a voice, half-remembered and far away, whispered.
The flood stuttered.
The light crashed against something unseen inside her chest.
A net?
A barrier?
A hook.
It hurt.
She screamed.
To the outside world, it must have looked like nothing more than a pup collapsing in the dirt, back spasming, limbs twisting.
Luna remembered the feel from the inside:
Like being pulled between two tides.
Her body wanted to compress, shift, bones realigning into a new shape.
Something *else*—that vast, storm-like presence—wanted to expand, to pour outward, to fill endless space.
The two impulses fought.
Her small frame bore the brunt.
She hit the ground hard enough to knock the air from her lungs.
The pressure in her chest peaked, a white-hot spike.
Then—released.
Not into wolf.
Into emptiness.
She lay panting, cheek pressed into the dirt.
The world buzzed.
Voices.
"What happened?"
"Did she...?"
"No fur. No paws. Nothing."
"Pathetic."
"Maybe she is too broken to even have a wolf."
Her mother's voice, flat and cutting, cut through the blur.
"Get up, Luna," she snapped. "You are embarrassing us."
Korrin crouched beside her.
His hand hovered near her shoulder, then withdrew.
He would remember this moment, years later, when she stood in the same ring and called down storms.
Now, he only saw a panting, trembling runt who had failed to do something half the pups managed with a bit of effort.
"Enough for today," he said gruffly. "Next."
Luna pushed herself up.
Her head spun.
Her chest burned.
Not with the clean ache of exertion.
With something deeper.
Like she had been branded from the inside.
Her eyes met Selene's over the ring's edge.
In that银 stare, she saw, for the first time, a flicker of... interest.
Not the casual cruelty of a bored bully.
Curiosity.
"Strange little thing," Selene murmured. "What *are* you?"
Luna had no answer.
She stumbled out of the ring.
The memory dissolved.
The Grove rushed back into focus around her.
Luna staggered.
Her hands slid on the stone.
The current Moonstone hum under her palms sang in dissonant harmony with the old ache in her chest.
Wind whipped her hair around her face.
"Why are you showing me this?" she demanded, throat raw.
*Because you asked why,* the Moon said simply. *And because you still think, in some deep, stubborn part of yourself, that you failed. That you did not try hard enough. That you were... deficient. I would have you see the rest of the picture.*
The wind rose.
The Grove blurred.
Another memory slid in.
Older.
Littler.
Luna sat alone behind the den, knees drawn up, chin on them.
She was maybe six, maybe seven.
The world felt *huge*.
Her feet did not quite reach the ground from the fallen log she perched on.
Night draped itself over the woods, thick and cool.
The pack's main den glowed faintly through the trees, voices a distant murmur.
Above, the Moon hung fat and bright.
Luna squinted up at Her.
"Why will you not talk to me?" she whispered.
She had heard elders speak of the Moon's whispers.
Of guidance in dreams.
Of warmth.
She had felt... something.
Prickles.
Tugs.
Nothing so clear as a voice.
Not yet.
The Moon's face shimmered.
For a瞬, the cracks Luna had always seen brightened.
Like veins of silver pulsing.
A faint, low note thrummed through the air.
Luna's ears rang.
"Hello?" she tried again.
The note swelled.
The cracks flared.
She winced.
Her teeth ached.
Somewhere deep in her chest, a tiny, dormant shard responded.
Not the Moonstone—she did not yet carry it.
Something earlier.
An echo from the First Alphas' line, coiled in her blood like a sleeping snake.
The Moon reached—without full force, a tentative caress.
The shard reached back.
For a瞬, connection snapped into place.
Luna gasped.
She saw—
Not with eyes.
With *other*.
A wolf made of stars, vast and distant, howling across a field of darkness shattered with light.
A circle of old wolves around a glowing stone, their shapes stretching, dissolving into threads.
A web of silver lines linking packs, forests, mountains, seas.
She saw herself, tiny and curled, a knot of potential.
Too much.
Too big.
It started to pour.
Power.
Insight.
A raw, wordless sense of *everything*.
The little shard in her blood flared.
Her small frame shook.
Her heart stumbled.
*Oh,* the Moon said then, startled. *You are... more open than I thought.*
The connection snapped.
The vision cut off like a door slamming.
Luna sagged.
Blood trickled from her nose.
She wiped at it, puzzled.
"Too much," a voice that was not quite the Moon's, not quite any wolf's, murmured.
A different presence, smaller, more precise, wound itself around the wild link between Luna and the sky.
A net.
Spawned from old agreements.
Laid by ancient hands.
Seris'.
Others'.
An unseen lattice of ritual and will settled over the nascent bond in Luna's blood.
Not to *break* it.
To throttle it.
To limit flow.
Like a dam thrown across a flood.
Luna blinked.
The Moon dimmed.
Her head throbbed.
She hiccuped.
Tears she had not meant to shed wet her cheeks.
"Fine," she whispered to the indifferent sky. "Do not talk to me then."
She slid off the log.
Shuffled back toward the den.
The memory peeled away.
Back in the Grove, Luna clutched the Moonstone.
Her breath sawed in and out.
"My... inability to shift," she said slowly, "was not only... me. It was this... net. This... dam. These old rituals limiting what could flow."
*Yes,* the Moon said. *When you called your wolf in that ring, you were not calling only her. You were calling *all* of you. Wolf. Storm. Star. Lineage. The dam did what it was designed to do: prevented flood. But it did not know how to... sort. It held back your wolf along with everything else.*
Anger flared.
"At whose request?" Luna snapped. "Who decided that net was necessary? Selene? The old Council? You?"
*Long before Selene,* the Moon said softly. *Your lineage is older than her cruelty. Those nets were cast when the First Alphas stepped into the Stone. They understood that if even a hint of their pattern resurfaced strongly, without guidance, it could tear flesh and story alike. They asked for a brake. A... limiter. So that any child of their line would not ignite too young.*
Seris' voice echoed in Luna's mind.
I cut my palm and marked the Stone with my blood.
Our old bargains are coming due.
"So I was born with my wolf... braked," Luna said, bitter.
"Yes," the Moon agreed. *Your wolf. Your elements. Your access to Me. All of it... moderated. Your body knew, on some deep level, that if you opened fully too soon, you would burn out like dry tinder. It grew accordingly. Small. Careful. Slow.*
Luna thought of endless hours watching other pups shift.
Of bruises from failed attempts.
Of nights sobbing into her blanket, certain it was her fault.
"You could have told me," she whispered.
*You would not have understood at six,* the Moon said gently. *Or at ten. Or at thirteen. You would have heard only, 'You are broken by design.' You would have raged. Or despaired. Neither would have helped you survive.*
"Knowing might have helped me not hate myself," Luna shot back.
Silence.
Wind hissed through the grove.
Then:
*I misjudged,* the Moon admitted. *Again. I have watched so many threads. Sometimes I forget that each one feels their own friction as the only fire. I am... sorry, little wolf. For the years you carried this as shame when it was... strategy.*
Tears stung Luna's eyes.
The apology did not undo the past.
It did not erase the words thrown at her.
It did not give young Luna her shifts back.
But it slipped a thin wedge between her and the old self-loathing.
A crack in the story of failure.
"What changed?" she asked roughly. "If this net was so strong, why did I finally shift in that last battle with Selene? Why then?"
The wind dropped suddenly, leaving the grove eerily still.
The Moonstone's hum filled the quiet.
*Because,* the Moon said, *by then, you had... widened. Your body, soul, whatever word you like, had grown to meet what you carried. Rogue years pounding your muscles. Elemental practice weaving your nerves with fire and water and wind. Healing others, learning restraint. You were no longer a small vessel being asked to hold an ocean. You were... many rivers. Still risky. But less catastrophic.*
Images flickered across Luna's mind.
Her first true call of the storm over Greenwood.
The way earth had answered her feet in the rogue lands.
The night she had healed Orion with the Moonstone, her veins blazing with borrowed divinity.
Each act had stretched her.
Strengthened.
Scarred.
*Also,* the Moon added dryly, *you and your mate did something incredibly foolish and brave with the Moonstone. Sharing its burden shifted the equations. The net... slipped. The old limiters were not designed for... two hearts braided around one power. They glitched, as your scribes would say. In that opening, in that moment when your need and your readiness aligned, your wolf seized her chance.*
Luna remembered it.
The battlefield.
Fire and blood.
Selene's last stand.
The scream that had turned inside out until it was a howl.
The sensation of bones rearranging, not painfully, but like puzzle pieces finally clicking into the grooves they had always been meant to fill.
White fur.
Blue crescent blazing.
Not a clumsy, adolescent first shift.
An explosion into a form that felt *inevitably right.*
"Was she... waiting?" Luna whispered. "All those years. Trapped behind this dam. Watching me flail and hate her for not coming?"
*She was never apart from you,* the Moon said. *She was you. Part of you. Shaped and reshaped by every choice you made, every beating you took and survived. She pressed against the nets. Howled. Scratched. Not to escape. To make sure that when she did step fully into form, she would not drown you.*
Memory shifted again.
Not to a specific scene.
To a *feeling.*
Luna was small.
She lay curled in her narrow sleeping niche, blanket pulled up to her chin.
Her ribs ached from a training blow.
Her face stung from Selene's casual slap.
Her heart hurt from her mother's blank eyes sliding past her at dinner as if she were a shadow.
In the darkness behind her lids, she felt... something.
A weight at her back.
Not physical.
A presence.
Warm.
Pressing, as if trying to wrap around her from the inside.
She had thought, at the time, that it was wishful thinking.
The idea of a wolf she could not see, leaning against her.
Now she revisited it with the Moon's guidance.
Saw—inside the memory—how threads of silver and storm coiled along her spine.
How a shape, not quite wolf, not quite light, curled with her.
How every time a fresh insult landed, the shape tensed.
How every time she did *not* lash out—when she chose to walk away rather than bite back blindly—the shape shifted fractionally, becoming both sharper and softer.
Training.
Waiting.
"I thought I was alone," Luna whispered in the Grove.
Tears slipped hot down her cheeks.
"You were not," the Moon said. *You were... contained. There is a difference. It is not a kindness I would repeat lightly. But it kept you alive long enough to grow teeth that could bite without breaking the jaw that held them.*
Luna laughed once, broken.
"So my inability to shift was... my bloodline. Your net. Old rituals. The Moonstone's echo. The First Alphas' fear. A cosmic safety measure. And I spent half my life thinking I just... was not trying hard enough."
*Mortals are very good at taking cosmic problems personally,* the Moon said dryly. *It is one of your more endearing and frustrating traits.*
Luna scrubbed at her face.
Wind ruffled the leaves above.
The storm that had come without rain seemed to draw a breath.
"Could it have been different?" she asked softly. "If I had been born in another age. Without these nets. Without Selene. Without... all of it. Would I have shifted like any other pup?"
Silence.
Then:
*Probably not,* the Moon said. *You would have had different problems. Your wolf might have come earlier. Wilder. Harder to shape. You might have burned brighter and shorter. Or you might have been snapped up by those who seek to use such patterns. There is no version where you are... simple. Your blood, your soul, whatever word you like, tend toward... liminal places. Edges. Gates.*
Luna thought of the visions of the broken Moon.
Of Selis in the Grove.
Of the demon wolf messenger the Goddess had hinted would come.
She shivered.
"I do not want to be only an edge," she muttered. "Sometimes I just want to be a wolf chasing rabbits in the snow."
*You can still chase rabbits,* the Moon said, amused. *You will simply do it with a slightly more complicated backstory than most.*
Luna snorted wetly.
The Grove settled around her.
The storm without rain began to ease, the wind slackening from a whip to a sigh.
The Moonstone's hum steadied.
She loosened her grip on the crystal.
Her fingers ached where she had dug them in.
As the visions receded, the sharp edges of the memories dulled a little.
She sat down slowly on the moss, back against the stone, and drew her knees up, echoing the posture of her younger self.
Her chest hurt.
Her sickness pulsed.
But under the ache, something in her had... unwound.
For years, *why* had been a raw wound.
Why no wolf.
Why no shift.
Why so much power and so little control.
Now, that *why* had at least a frame.
Not a neat answer.
Not a single point to blame.
A web.
Old choices.
Old fears.
Old love, twisted into caution.
The First Alphas, terrified of their own descendants burning.
Seris, cutting her palm to seal a bargain.
The Moon, younger and overeager, then overcorrecting into restraint.
Her own mother, perhaps sensing something uncanny in her child and pulling away rather than face it.
It did not excuse cruelty.
It did not erase pain.
But it pulled her free of the story that she, Luna, runt of Moonshadow, had simply not been enough.
"You were too much," Orion's voice said from the edge of her thoughts.
She jerked, then realized it was a memory, not his present mind-voice.
He had said that to her once, after a fight, hands on her shoulders, eyes fierce.
Not "too much" as insult.
"Too much" as acknowledgment.
She smiled faintly.
"Are you all right?"
This time it *was* his present voice.
She had been so deep in the storm of memory she had not heard his approach.
He stood at the grove's edge, hair mussed, shirt thrown on hastily, bare feet silent on the path.
His eyes took in her tear-streaked face, her white-knuckled grip on her own knees, and softened.
"I howled," she said, voice hoarse.
"I know," he replied. "I was halfway here before the sound reached my ears."
He crossed the space between them in long strides and sank down beside her.
Not crowding.
Close enough to feel.
She leaned into him.
For a while, she said nothing.
Let his warmth, his familiar scent, his solid presence anchor her.
Finally:
"I remember," she said quietly. "More clearly than before. Why my wolf... did not come. It was not only me."
He waited.
She told him.
About the net.
The old limiter.
The First Alphas' bargains.
Seris' blood on the Stone.
Her own blood answering the Moon too loudly when she was small.
Her body's way of saving itself by staying "less" until it could safely be more.
Orion listened without interrupting.
His jaw worked once or twice, but he held any questions until she paused.
When she finished, he exhaled slowly.
"They built a dam," he said. "To keep from flooding the world. And you were born downstream of it. Of *course* the river felt wrong."
She huffed a half-laugh.
"Trust you to turn it into water," she said.
He shrugged, shoulder grazing hers.
"It is what I know," he said. "Rivers. Dams. Overflow. It helps me make sense of this... cosmic madness you keep revealing at dinner."
She tilted her head to look at him.
"Do you... hate them?" she asked. "The ones who wove that net. The First Alphas. The old priestesses. The Moon. For... choosing for me. For deciding I would be... capped."
He considered.
"No," he said slowly. "I think... they were terrified. They saw what unchecked power did. They tried to build in... brakes. They did not see the pups who would grow up hating themselves because of it. That lack of imagination hurt you. I can be angry about that. But hate?"
He shook his head.
"I save that for wolves who looked at you bleeding and chose to twist the knife," he said. "Not for old ghosts stumbling in the dark same as we are."
Luna's throat tightened again.
"You were there," she said. "When I finally shifted. You saw what it looked like from outside. I only... remember light."
He smiled crookedly.
"You were beautiful," he said simply. "Terrifying. Like watching a storm decide to take a shape. Like seeing the sky put on fur."
Heat rose to her face.
"Romantic," she muttered.
"Accurate," he countered. "And... right. It felt *right.* Like something overdue finally dropping into place. I think... if it had happened earlier, before your body and mind had been honed by all that you survived, it might have... unmade you. We would have gotten the storm without the wolf to guide it."
She thought of herself, at ten, furious and hurt, howling at the Moon.
If that child had been given this form—
She shivered.
"Maybe the net was a mercy," she said quietly.
"Maybe," he agreed. "A clumsy one. Like most."
They sat in silence a while longer.
The last tattered edges of the storm's wind faded.
Night settled properly, cool and soft.
Crickets sang.
The Moon rose higher.
Luna watched Her.
The cracks were there, as always, visible only to her.
They glowed faintly, like healing scars.
"Do you think," she asked softly, "that I could have found my wolf without all the... pain? The exile. The rejection. The wars. If I had been... loved? Supported? Would she have come more gently?"
Orion made a low, thoughtful sound.
"I hope so," he said. "For others, in the future. Pups like you. With too much inside. Who do not have to be broken to be... opened. That is part of why you needed to know this, is it not? So you can see them when they come. So you do not treat them the way you were treated."
She nodded.
"First Alpha blood," she murmured. "Moon's Heir. Stone's conduit. All of it feels less like titles now. More like... responsibility. To interrupt the old pattern. To say: 'We will not create another Luna who thinks she is wrong for what she carries.'"
He bumped her shoulder gently.
"You are allowed to be angry too," he reminded her. "Not just noble. Angry at the years stolen. That is also... holy, I think."
She allowed herself, for a瞬, to lean into that anger.
To feel the unfairness of it—of being born with a dam in her bones, of being mocked for what was, in truth, restraint written in her flesh.
She felt it flare.
Then ebb.
Not gone.
No longer poison.
Fuel.
"I cannot change what happened to me," she said. "But I can change what story I tell about it. To myself. To pups. To any wolf who feels 'too much' and 'not enough' in the same breath."
Orion nodded.
"And I can stand next to you," he said. "Looking scary enough that anyone who tries to use that story against them thinks twice."
She smiled.
"Violence as emotional support," she said. "How romantic."
He grinned.
"You knew what you were getting into," he said.
Her smile faded as another thought rose.
"One more thing," she said. "In all this... cosmic explanation. Is there any way to... ease this net? To adjust it now that I am... larger inside? Or am I stuck with this... friction forever?"
She directed the question both to Orion and to the Moon.
The Goddess answered.
*The old nets have already frayed,* She said. *Your bond with Orion, your trials, your sharing of the Moonstone—they have rewritten some of the terms. You feel it as sickness. As strain. That is the... recalibration. There will always be... tension. But we can... tune it. Together.*
Luna snorted.
"Translate that into wolf-speak," she murmured.
Orion, hearing only her half of the conversation, raised a brow.
"She says," Luna translated, "that the dam is cracked. That the river is learning new banks. That it will always tug, but we can... shape the flow."
He laughed softly.
"That is not really simpler," he said.
"No," she agreed. "But it is... enough. For now."
She let her head rest on his shoulder.
For the first time since childhood, when she thought of her younger self huddled alone in the dark, she did not see only a pathetic, broken thing.
She saw a pup holding back an ocean.
Without even knowing she was doing it.
She saw the wolf curled along her spine, patient and fierce.
She saw the cosmic hands that had shaped her into a vessel, clumsy and well-intentioned and careless.
She saw herself now, white wolf finally loosed, standing in the wreckage of old stories, choosing, deliberately, what to carry forward.
"I forgive you," she whispered, surprising herself.
Orion stirred.
"For who?" he asked.
She looked up at the Moon, cracked and bright.
"At all of them," she said softly. "The old ones. The nets. Even You. A little. And... myself."
The Goddess' presence went very still.
Then a soft, aching warmth brushed Luna's thoughts.
*Thank you,* the Moon said simply.
It did not erase the storms of her past.
It did not mend all cracks.
But as Luna sat there—wolf and woman, mortal and divine pattern intertwined—she felt something inside her shift.
Not a dramatic unlocking.
A subtle reweaving.
The memory of not shifting, once a sword turned inward, dulled into a scar she could touch without bleeding.
Storms of memory had rolled through and done their work.
Washed away lies.
Left bare the strange, twisted truth:
She had never been unable.
She had been holding back a storm large enough to drown worlds.
Now, with her wolf finally at her side, with nets frayed and reknotted, with Orion's hand wrapped firmly around hers, she knew the real challenge was not calling that storm.
It was learning, every day, how to live with it.
Not as a curse.
Not as an excuse.
As part of who she was.
And to help others, when their own storms rose, to see themselves not as broken—
But as rivers still carving their way to the sea.