Chapter 88: The Pull

Isadora’s POV

The wind up here did not care about anything.

It came in sharp and cold from across the valley and hit without warning, pulling at my hair, pressing against my clothes, moving through everything like it owned it. I had always liked that about this cliff. The indifference of it. The way it treated everyone exactly the same regardless of who they were or what they had lost.

I stood at the edge and looked down.

The pack spread out below me in the dark. The village with its small stone houses and their warm windows. The paths between the buildings where children ran during the day. The market square was sitting quietly now at this hour. Smoke rising from chimneys in thin lazy lines. Lanterns glowing softly and orange behind glass.

I had walked those paths for years.

Those people knew my face. They stepped aside when I passed. Lowered their eyes. Moved their children out of the way, nodded, and called me by the title that was not yet official but that everyone had already accepted as inevitable. Future Luna. The Alpha’s chosen. The woman who would one day sit beside him at the head of everything and lead them.

They had believed it.

I had believed it.

And now I stood up here on this cliff in the cold watching their warm lights from a distance, and all of them knew that everything they believed about me was already gone. That the future they had imagined had been handed to someone else. That the woman they stepped aside for was now just a woman standing alone on a cliff in the dark with nowhere left to stand.

I pressed my arms tighter around myself.

This morning kept coming back. His arms around me on the training ground. The warmth of him, familiar in a way that made it worse instead of better. The guilt in his eyes when he looked at me, that specific kind of guilt that only showed up when someone knew they had done something they could not undo and had run out of ways to apologize for it.

They say the people closest to you are the ones who know exactly where to cut. That the ones you let in are the ones who learn your weak points without even trying, just by being near you long enough. I had given him years. I had given him everything I knew how to give and I had done it willingly, without hesitation, because I believed in what we were and where we were going.

Maybe that was my mistake. Believing in something so completely that I stopped checking whether I still believed in myself.

I exhaled and watched the breath disappear in the cold air.

Something shifted behind me.

Not the wind. Not an animal in the trees. A presence. The air changed in a way that my body registered before my mind caught up with it. Not familiar. Something else was pressing against my awareness like a cold hand on the back of my neck.

My wolf stirred. Aware. Not alarmed. Just taking note of the way she did when something entered her range that she had not catalogued yet.

I did not turn. I kept my eyes on the pack below and slowly moved my right hand to my belt. My fingers found the handle of my dagger. I pulled it free without a sound, without any shift in my posture that would tell whoever was behind me that I knew they were there.

"Show yourself," I said. My voice came out flat and even.

Silence.

Then footsteps. Slow and deliberate, coming from the trees behind me. I turned.

A woman stepped out of the shadows.

She appeared to be in her late fifties, possibly older. An ordinary face. Unremarkable clothes, the kind that did not draw the eye anywhere in particular. Nothing about her should have been threatening. Nothing about her appearance said pay attention to me.

But she was standing there with a small smirk sitting on her face, watching me with the expression of someone who already knew everything about me and found it quietly, privately amusing.

I looked at her steadily. "Who are you?"

She said nothing. Just watched. The smirk stayed exactly where it was.

Her silence was deliberate. She was letting me feel the weight of it, letting me understand that she was not going to be rushed or rattled or moved by anything I said until she was ready to be.

I stepped forward. "I asked you a question," I said, letting the edge into my voice now, the one that made people remember what I was.

She finally spoke.

"You were supposed to be the true ruler," she said. Quiet and unhurried, like she was reading from something she had memorized a long time ago. "The Luna. The one beside him." A pause. "And then someone else took that from you."

I stopped.

She kept looking at me with that same calm expression. "Do you want to know how I know that? Or would you rather keep standing here pretending you are fine with losing everything?"

I studied her properly. Something cold and curious moved behind my eyes that I did not try to hide.

"What do you want?" I said. Quieter now.

"To give you what you deserve," she replied.

And then did something impossible.

She raised her hand and snapped her fingers once.

The air in front of her rippled. Like the surface of water when something moved beneath it, except there was no water and no surface and the ripple did not stop. It tore open. A dark circle formed in the air, swirling with something that was not quite light and not quite shadow, and through the center of it I could see somewhere else entirely. Another place. Stone and darkness and cold silver light. Somewhere I had never been and did not recognize.

I stepped back.

"What is that?" I asked.

"A way forward," she said. "A way to get everything back."

I looked at the portal and at the strange place visible through it. Every instinct I had was sending the same clear message. This was wrong. This was something I should walk away from right now without looking back.

But underneath that, sitting deeper and somehow louder, was the pull of everything I had lost. The life below me with its warm lights and its people who still stepped aside when I walked past, not knowing yet that they no longer had a reason to. His arms this morning. The pity in his eyes that had hurt more than anything cruel would have.

She turned and looked at me directly. "I can help you. But you have to come with me."

I looked at the pack below one more time. At the smoke and the lanterns and the paths where children ran.

"Who are you?" I asked.

She smiled. Small and knowing. "You will know soon enough."

She walked toward the portal and stepped through without looking back and disappeared into the darkness.

I stood alone on the cliff for one moment. Then I followed.

****

The world came back all at once.

A massive hall. Stone pillars stretching up into shadow so high I could not find the ceiling in the dark above. Torches burning along the walls with flames that gave light and no warmth, the air stayed cold regardless. Moonlight streaming through tall, narrow windows high above, silver and sharp, falling across the stone floor in long, pale stripes.

The stone beneath my feet was nothing like anything I knew. The air tasted different. Older somehow. As if it had been sitting in this hall for a very long time.

I turned slowly and looked at everything around me.

"Where are we?" I asked.

She was already walking ahead. "Somewhere you can get answers," she said without turning.

I followed. My boots echoed against the floor and came back to me from the walls and the darkness above in a way that made the hall feel even larger than it was.

We reached the center.

At the far end of the hall, a large stone chair sat in shadow. Dark and carved and positioned like it had always been there and had no intention of being anywhere else. Someone was sitting in it. The shadow at that end of the hall was deeper than the rest, the moonlight from the windows not reaching that particular spot, and I could not see a face. Just the outline of a figure. Still and waiting.

But I felt him.

The presence hit me before anything else. Heavy and warm and cold at the same time, pressing against my skin from across the distance between us like it was reaching for me. Ancient and patient in a way that had nothing to do with age and everything to do with certainty. The certainty of something that had never once doubted itself.

My heart beat faster.

I had not given it permission to do that.

The woman lowered her head slightly toward the chair. "I brought her, my lord."

Something pulled deep in my chest. Below the ribs, in a place I could not point to or explain. Like something on the other side of the room reaching across the distance and finding me without any effort at all. My skin prickled from my arms to the back of my neck. Every part of me was suddenly and completely aware of the figure in that chair.

My wolf did nothing.

That was the part that made no sense. Whatever this pull was, my wolf should have reacted. Should have stirred or howled or done something. But she was completely silent inside me. Still in a way that felt almost deliberate.

I stared at the shadow where he sat and could not look anywhere else.

He stood.

The shadow shifted with him as he rose. He stepped forward and the moonlight from the windows above found him as he walked, catching him in pieces. His boots first. Then the width of his chest. Then his face as he stepped fully into the silver light.

My breath stopped.

He was young. That was the first impossible thing. The presence that had hit me from across the room belonged to something far older than the face now walking toward me. Dark hair falling to his shoulders. Features arranged so perfectly that they looked like someone had made a very deliberate decision about every single one of them. Brown eyes that caught the moonlight and held it like they had a right to.

He looked the same age as Rhydor. Maybe slightly younger.

That should not have been possible.

He noticed me staring. The corner of his mouth moved just slightly and his eyes stayed completely steady on mine.

He walked toward me and stopped a few feet away.

"Isadora," he said.

Soft. Almost gentle. My name in his voice did something to my chest that I had not been prepared for. I looked at him sharply.

"You know my name," I said.

"I know many things," he replied.

I held his gaze. "Then you know what I lost."

He looked at me for a moment, those eyes moving slowly across my face like he was reading something written there that I could not see myself.

"I know what you can still have," he said.

Through all of it, the pull sat under my ribs, warm and persistent, completely ignoring my instructions to stop. My wolf was still silent. That was the part I kept coming back to. If this man were my mate she would be reacting. She would know before I did. She would be howling inside me loud enough to drown out everything else.

There was nothing.

So what was this? What was this feeling that had no name and no explanation and no business being there?

I pushed it aside and focused.

"You can give me back my place," I said. "My future. The life I was supposed to have."

"Yes," he replied simply.

I looked at him steadily. "Just like that? You do not want anything in return?"

He smiled. Slow and deliberate, the kind of smile that knew exactly what it was doing. "Of course I want something from you."

"What?" I said.

"Information," he replied. "Eyes inside your pack. You watch. You listen. You tell my servant what moves there." He glanced briefly toward the woman standing behind me.

I looked at him. "What made you think I would do that?"

He stepped closer. Close enough that I had to work to hold my ground. He leaned down slightly, his eyes level with mine, and the pull under my ribs pulled harder without asking.

"Because you will do anything to get what you want," he said.

I held his gaze. "You seem very sure of that."

He did not answer. He did not need to.

He straightened without acknowledging the comment. "I want to know what happens in that pack. Nothing more. You see something unusual, power stirring, strangers, anything that does not belong, you report it to my servant. She will find you."

I kept my eyes on his face. "Power stirring? Is there something happening in Crescent Moon?"

"You just do as you are told," he replied.

I looked at him for a long moment. "And if I refuse?"

That small smile returned. "Then you go back to the cliff. Alone. Watching the life you should have had from a distance." A pause. "But I do not think you will refuse."

I stood there and looked at this impossible man who spoke my name like he had known it forever and made my body react in ways I had no explanation for. The pull was still sitting under my ribs, warm and patient and completely uninvited.

My wolf was still silent.

I thought about this morning. About my relationship with Rhydor.

I lifted my chin.

"I will do it," I said.

He inclined his head. Just slightly. Like he had expected nothing else from the beginning and had simply been waiting for me to catch up.

With that.

The woman stepped forward behind me. The portal opened again, darkness swirling in the air, and through it I could see the cliff edge exactly as I had left it. The same wind. The same cold. The pack below with its warm lights and its life going on without me.

I started walking toward it.

"She does not even know what she feels."

I froze.

His voice was quiet. Almost to himself. Like he had not meant to say it out loud.

I spun around.

He was looking directly at me. Standing half in shadow, that small unreadable smile sitting on his face like he had all the time in the world and every intention of using it exactly as he pleased.

"What did you say?" I asked.

But then, the portal moved.

It lunged forward like something alive and swallowed me whole. The world twisted, the hall vanished, and the last thing I saw was his smile, still there in the dark, before everything went black.

I was on the cliff again.

Same wind, cold, and everything else, exactly as I had left it.

Except nothing was the same.

His voice was still sitting in my ear, low and quiet and completely certain.

She does not even know what she feels.

I pressed my hand flat against my chest. Right where that pull was still sitting, quieter now but still there, like an ember that had decided not to go out.

"Who was he talking about? Her? Me?"