Thursday, October 24th | New Moon
The moon was gone.
Not hidden. Not veiled. Gone entirely, leaving the sky empty in a way that felt deliberate. Liora noticed it the moment she woke, the absence pressing more heavily than moonlight ever had.
The certainty beneath her ribs had not faded overnight.
It had organized. It had found a place to be.
She lay still, cataloguing sensations and feelings the way she always did. Tightness along her spine. Weight settled low in her hips. Heat pooled too deep to be exertion and too steady to be nerves.
Nyx was awake.
Not restless.
Not urgent.
Present in a way that felt watchful. Like she was guarding something.
Beneath that watchfulness, something else lingered.
It didn't stir or stretch or test the edges of her awareness. It simply was, low and dense, as if it had chosen a place inside her and intended to remain there.
Liora dressed more carefully than usual, choosing loose clothing, fabric that would give if her body decided to misbehave. She braided her hair tight against her scalp, fingers steady despite the faint tremor running through her hands.
At breakfast, Jonas glanced up from his plate, for once not reading from his tablet. For once showing signs of noticing the things around him. As he looked back to his plate he causually said "You look tired."
Liora responded, perhaps too quickly, "I didn't sleep well."
Marta studied her for a moment, a momento too longe, then slid an extra piece of toast toward her without comment. There was nothing to say. Saying required acknowledging and that was too dangeruous to do so.
Training was lighter that morning.
Not from mercy, but design. The week demanded balance. Endurance days followed by labor rotations. Bodies needed to be worked, not broken.
The yard filled with controlled movement as the pack assembled. Partial shifts flickered through ranked bloodlines without ceremony.
Claws slid free and retracted.
Canines lengthened briefly, then pulled back.
Eyes flashed with unnatural color before settling again.
Partial shifting was allowed.
Encouraged.
Only those of higher ranks could do them. They were, after all, another way to show dominance. Endurance. Control.
Felix Frost flexed his hands, claws extending with practiced ease, the movement smooth and deliberately showy. Silas followed more subtly, posture sharpening, eyes narrowing just enough to suggest focus. Cassian Thorne's shift was quieter still, visible only in the way his balance adjusted and his attention narrowed.
Liora kept her hands loose at her sides.
She didn't try it. She didn't need to try it.
They were assigned balance work first.
Narrow beams set low to the ground. Weighted poles meant to be crossed at a steady pace. Inclined platforms that forced careful foot placement without allowing a full climb. The drills were meant to train control rather than strength. How to move cleanly when the ground refused to cooperate.
Liora stepped onto the first beam without hesitation.
Her feet found purchase where others wobbled. Her hips adjusted instinctively, weight redistributing without conscious thought.
Too easily.
Heat gathered beneath her skin as the morning wore on. Not the diffuse warmth of exertion, but something tighter. Focused. Coiling with each movement.
Sweat broke along her spine despite the cool air.
Nyx shifted inside her.
Uneasy. Unsteady. Vigilant.
Slow, came the sense. Not a command. Caution.
Liora shortened her stride, focused on rhythm instead of speed. Breath in. Step. Breath out. Reset.
It didn't help. It didn't ease.
The pressure climbed faster than before, surging up her spine in a way that made her teeth ache. Her vision blurred briefly at the edges, the world sharpening and flattening all at once.
She stepped off the beam.
Not abruptly. Not enough to draw attention.
She bent as if adjusting her boot, grounding herself with the cool earth beneath her fingers. Drawing strength from it's soundness.
Liora kept one hand grounded to the soil and placed one on her stomach, just beneath her ribs. Something pressed back.
Not Nyx.
This presence did not circle or surge or reach outward. It didn't follow instinctual pathways or flare in response to stress.
It settled. It aligned itself inside her. And it waited.
Low and heavy, like a second spine pressing into place beneath her own. Like something built to hold ground rather than yield it. Like something that observed and rarely took interest in acting.
Nyx recoiled from it—not in fear, but in recognition. As if she knew this presence was not meant to move when commanded. Not meant to follow when ordered.
Her hips throbbed with a deep, insistent pull. Her shoulders burned, heat pooling beneath her shoulder blades — wrong and disorienting.
This wasn't a shift.
It was close.
Too close.
"Vale."
Crowe's voice cut through the noise, low and sharp.
She straightened slowly, heart beginning to race. "Yes, Enforcer."
His gaze swept her with practiced efficiency. "You're off rotation."
"I'm fine."
"You're flushed," he said. "And you're shaking."
She hadn't noticed. She hadn't realized there were visible manifestations of her inner turmoil.
That frightened her more than the attention.
"I just need water."
Crowe hesitated. His nostrils flared once.
Not in confusion.
Not in hesitation.
Recalculation.
Her scent wasn't wrong — but it wasn't singular either. Something beneath it pulsed slowly, dense enough to register even without shifting. But remained unidentifiable.
His eyes flicked briefly toward Alpha Thorne before returning to her. "Go."
Relief hit hard enough to make her sway.
She moved toward the edge of the yard, steps careful and measured. Each movement sent ripples of sensation through her body, as if something inside her were testing the limits of skin and bone.
Nyx pressed close now, no longer calm.
Not yet, came the sense. A plea. To whom, Liora couldn't quite say.
Liora barely reached the shade of the storage shed before the pain spiked.
It hit low first, a sharp pull across her hips that stole her breath. Her knees buckled, and she caught herself against the rough wooden wall, palms burning.
This wasn't wolf pain.
Wolf shifts burned evenly. Heat spread outward, instinct guiding muscle and bone into alignment.
This was jagged. Localized. Wrong.
Her spine arched involuntarily as pressure surged upward, something trying to re-align itself where it didn't belong. Her ribs ached with deep, grinding discomfort that made her gasp.
She bit down hard to keep from making a sound.
Inside her head, Nyx circled — frantic, restrained. The wolf's instincts reached for familiar pathways and found them blocked.
And beneath that —
Certainty.
Broad. Still. Unyielding.
It didn't push.
It waited.
Liora slid down the wall of the shed until she was seated on the ground, knees drawn in, arms wrapped around herself. The earth was cool beneath her, grounding in a way nothing else was.
The contact mattered.
The pressure eased faster once she was fully grounded, weight settled, spine pressed to wood and dirt. Whatever pressed at her bones seemed to approve of stillness.
Of claiming space rather than escaping it.
"Breathe," she whispered, unsure which part of herself she was addressing. Or if ti even mattered.
Gradually, the pressure eased.
Not gone.
Contained.
The pain receded to a dull throb, heat dissipating into an uncomfortable warmth that lingered beneath her skin.
She finished the day on light duty in the pack house, assigned to the cool storage and backroom prep work. Sorting supplies. Labeling herbs. Measuring dried roots for the kitchen. The air stayed dim and cold enough to keep her steady. To keep her grounded.
Still, every movement felt deliberate.
Cassian passed her once in the corridor. His gaze flicked to her face, then to the way her hand braced briefly against the wall.
Concern crossed his expression.
But he didn't stop. He didn't ask. He didn't offer confort.
By evening, exhaustion settled deep into her bones. Not the satisfying ache of work completed, but a hollow fatigue that made her feel brittle.
At home, Marta handed her a cup of tea without comment. Jonas asked how training had gone.
"It went fine," Liora said, because she didn't have better words.
That night, sleep came in shallow fragments.
Every time she drifted close to rest, heat flared beneath her skin, sharp enough to drag her back to wakefulness. Her dreams fractured into weight and motion and shadows that never resolved into shape.
Near dawn, she woke with her muscles locked tight, breath shallow and fast.
The darkness outside the window was complete.
Liora pressed her palm to her abdomen, ritually grounding herself.
Nyx was there. Shaken. Restless. Protective.
Something else stayed farther back.
Watching from a place that did not speak, did not move, and did not need permission to exist.
Patient.
Unmoved.
-----------------------------
Marta Vale POV
Marta noticed the heat first.
Not the kind that came from fever or illness, but the wrongness of it — too even, too contained, like warmth held on purpose instead of escaping.
She had gone in Liora's room to leave the tea by the bedside table and stayed longer than necessary.
Liora slept on her side, knees drawn slightly in, breath shallow but steady. Her brow was furrowed, not in pain exactly, but concentration. As if sleep itself required effort. And as if even in sleep she could not find relaxation.
Marta stood there with the cup warming her hands and did not touch Liora.
Touching felt like crossing a line she couldn't uncross. It felt wrong in ways that should have not.
Liora had always carried herself carefully. Too carefully. Like balance was something she maintained instead of possessed. Even as a child, she'd moved that way — deliberate, quiet, never letting momentum take her somewhere she hadn't already decided to be.
Tonight, even at rest, she looked braced.
Marta set the tea down and stepped back. Left it there as a token of her remembrance.
She did not wake her.
She did not ask questions.
In the morning, she decided, she would make something grounding. Soup, maybe. Something heavy. Something meant to sit in the body and remind it where it was. Where it should be.
You didn't fix what you didn't understand.
You protected it.
For now.