Chapter 12: Lies Beneath the Moonlight

Selene woke just before sunrise.

Her mother was asleep in the chair beside the bed, one hand still wrapped around hers.

Kane sat on the floor against the opposite wall.

He hadn't slept.

"Kane," Selene whispered.

He was beside her instantly.

"I'm here."

"Open the curtains."

He did.

Moonlight still lingered in the fading darkness, pale against the floor.

Selene watched it quietly.

"Funny," she murmured. "So much of our life happened under moonlight."

Kane sat beside her.

"The first kiss."

"The fake betrayal."

"Moon Spring."

"And now this."

She smiled.

Kane took her hand.

"I love you."

For seven years, he had imagined saying those words again with anger, accusation, triumph, or revenge.

In the end, they came out as a whisper.

Selene's eyes filled with tears.

"I know."

"I should have told you every day."

"You did once."

"It wasn't enough."

"It was enough for the girl I was then."

Her fingers weakly tightened around his.

"And I love you too."

Kane bowed his head over her hand.

Selene's mother woke at the sound of his broken breathing.

She moved to the other side of the bed and touched her daughter's hair.

"Mom," Selene whispered.

"I'm here, baby."

"I'm tired."

Her mother began crying.

"Then rest."

Selene looked between the two people beside her.

"No more lies after me, okay?"

Kane nodded through tears.

"No more lies."

"Promise."

"I promise."

Selene closed her eyes.

Her breathing slowed.

Kane felt every breath against his fingers.

One.

Then another.

Then a long pause.

Selene opened her eyes one final time.

She looked toward the window where the moon was disappearing into dawn.

"It's beautiful," she whispered.

Then her hand relaxed in Kane's.

The room became completely still.

Her mother made a sound Kane would remember for the rest of his life.

Kane didn't move.

He sat there holding Selene's hand until sunlight filled the room.

The pack buried Selene beneath the old oak tree.

Kane placed one of their silver rings around her finger.

He kept the other.

Vivra returned north and faced judgment from her father for the false pregnancy and the attack she had staged. Ilsa stepped away from pack affairs voluntarily. She spent the following years funding treatment for wolves suffering from silver poisoning, never asking Kane to forgive her.

Kane became Alpha two years later.

He was not the Alpha his mother had once imagined.

He was quieter.

More patient.

And whenever someone told him that duty required taking away another person's choice, he refused.

The pack built a healing lodge in Selene's name near Moon Spring. No wolf with silver poisoning was ever turned away because they lacked money or status.

Kane visited the oak tree every full moon.

Sometimes he brought flowers.

Sometimes he brought nothing.

Years passed.

The anger faded.

The guilt never completely did, but it changed shape. It stopped being a blade he used against himself and became a warning he carried into every decision.

One autumn night, Kane sat beneath the oak and turned the old ring between his fingers.

"You were right," he said to the quiet grave.

"My life belongs to me too."

The wind moved softly through the branches.

For a moment, he could almost hear Selene laughing at him for taking so many years to understand something so simple.

Kane smiled.

Above him, the full moon shone through the leaves.

Once, lies beneath that moonlight had stolen seven years from them.

But the truth, when it finally came, had given them something back.

Not a future.

Not enough time.

Just a handful of honest days.

And for the rest of his life, Kane guarded those days more fiercely than any throne.