It was extraction.
The doors to the chamber groaned open behind me. Footsteps echoed across the stone floor—unhurried, deliberate.
“Still trying to cling to something you were never meant to keep?” a familiar voice said lightly.
I twisted around.
Lyra stood framed in moonlight, her long raven braid resting neatly over her shoulder, her pale eyes glowing faintly gold—the sign of forbidden rites touching the blood.
My best friend.
My former sister.
The woman who had once sworn she would stand at my side when I became Luna.
“Lyra… what are you doing here?” My voice trembled despite my effort to steady it. “This chamber is sealed. Only the Alpha and his mate—”
“—and the one who controls the blood-keys,” she finished, lifting her hand. A sigil flared across her palm, crimson lines twisting into a pattern I had never seen before.
My stomach dropped.
Blood-keys were older than pack law. They predated the Moon Goddess herself—relics of the age when wolves stole power instead of earning it.
“You shouldn’t have those,” I whispered.
Lyra smiled.
“You always were too devoted to tradition, Elira. That’s why you were never fit to sit beside Kael.”
The rune circle pulsed violently.
Pain exploded inside me.