MOONLIGHT REBOUND: The Rejected Luna's Return

ARIA VALEN POV

The dream always comes back like a wound that forgot how to scar. I'm standing at the center of a circle of faces, my pack, while a laugh cleaves the air, I shift, at last, and the world opens like a throat. Then a hand, his hand, pushes me away and the sound of it breaking is the kind of silence that hollows you out.

I wake with that silence still in my mouth. The sheets smell faintly of iron and old linen, my fingers go straight to the moon-shaped mark on my shoulder before my brain can remember it's supposed to be a scar. Muscle remembers what thought denies, the ache is a herald, full moon next week, and whatever part of me that's not entirely human is moving under the surface.

Someone's been in my room.

At first I think it's the dream lingering, then the window frame catches at my sleeve when I stand, the latch is scratched, splinters are gone from the wood as though a desperate animal has tried it. On the worn rug by the foot of my bed, there's a smear of something dark and rust-red, half-wiped away, my breath comes sharp, this is no prank, this is a message.

Pinned to the pillow with a straight pin is a scrap of paper, my name, no, the name they used to use for me, Valen is smeared across it in a hurried hand, below it, someone has written, neat and cruel.

Dead girls don't shift, apparently you forgot.

Every rational part of me tells me to leave, go now, erase footprints, bury myself under a thousand roads. The other part, the part that survived cold and knives and exile, peels the paper from the pin and curls the edge under my thumb. The wolf in my chest stirs like it recognizes an old collar being offered.

I slip the scrap into my pocket, I make myself do the small, sensible things: wash my face, braid my hair, fold the blanket neatly. Routine stabilizes the edges, I dress in the school blazer and trousers like armor and tell myself no one will read the bruise under my sleeve because no one will look that closely. Hope and fear both wear the same face today.

Lycanridge's dining hall is already a river of bodies and noise when I step inside. Different packs, different colors, all merged into one glowing mass of privilege and hunger. I move as a shadow moves, trying to be nothing more than a traveler on a busy street. It's easier to disappear among other lives.

He finds me.

It happens at the far corner table, where the light thins and the couches hold people like they hold stories. I've just taken my first bite of bread when a presence slides into the seat opposite me, and I know, without looking up, that it's the kind of presence that would be easy to rust if trust weren't a dangerous