Chapter 178: Only One Carries A Moonseal

The table went quiet. The High Luna’s gaze swept the faces around it and found no allies.

"Fine. I don’t believe she’s related to an Alpha. Look at her." She waved a hand at Nova like she was gesturing at the weather. "She isn’t."

Freya shrugged, serene. "Only one Starborne sister carries a Moonseal, Elizabeth, and she’s sitting at this table. The other one does not have one. That was confirmed today as well."

"Sure, Nancy does. I’m sure she’s some long-lost princess."

Tavian had stopped counting the name violations. Nancy was now background noise. Like weather. Or the holo-table hum.

"She does." Freya reached for her wine. "I’m certain she’d show you, if you asked her nicely."

The High Luna leaned back in her chair, folding her hands over her stomach, a woman settling in to be entertained. "Go on, then, Nancy. Show us."

Nova hesitated for exactly one reason, and it was not shyness. The shoulder had opinions about being moved and intended to share them.

"Gran." A low note had entered Alpha Thunderfang’s voice. The kind of tone most men used on their crazy ex or for talking down a hostage situation.

"If the girl claims she has it, let her show the table." The High Luna lifted a brow at her grandson. "Put the whole business to bed once and for all. Unless you’d rather we take it on faith, which is a thing you’ve asked exactly no one to do about anything else tonight."

"She isn’t a party trick."

Maverick’s posture shifted forward one inch. The inch of a man preparing to intervene if the next sentence out of anyone’s mouth went the wrong direction.

"No. She’s a mystery you’ve seated at my table in jewelry and a borrowed surname, and I’d like one thing about her confirmed with my own eyes before the dessert course." The High Luna turned back to Nova. "Nancy."

Jewelry and a borrowed surname. Nova could not technically argue with the inventory.

She did not want to undermine Alpha Thunderfang. So instead of looking at the High Luna, she turned her focus to Alpha Thunderfang.

He turned his head towards her.

"I don’t mind, Alpha," she said gently. But she waited because the decision was his to give or withhold and she was not going to take it from him.

He looked genuinely upset. A muscle in his forearm fired where it rested on the table.

Then he grunted, low, and turned to face forward again, which she had become fluent enough in the dialect to translate it as ’fine’ with a side of displeasure.

Nova began to rotate her arm, slow, drawing the sleeve up over the shoulder that had been dislocated. It was this, and this alone, that made her hesitate to begin with.

Beside her, Maverick went rigid.

Alpha Thunderfang’s head came back around at the first sign of the movement, and his wolf surged beneath his skin.

"Let me." The words came out layered, wolf and man braided together, and he was not happy about any of it.

Every person at the table watched Alpha Thunderfang gently roll a sleeve from Nova’s fingers and ease it back himself.

Maverick’s throat moved once. He was watching another Alpha handle his legal wife with a care that answered a question he hadn’t asked yet and the answer kept getting more and more goddamn complicated.

Alpha Thunderfang stared at it, for a moment, then pulled his hands away, revealing the Moonseal for the table to see.

Dante leaned towards Freya and whispered something. Freya ignored him. Dante leaned back, satisfied with whatever answer the ignoring provided.

BANG.

The High Luna’s palm hit the table hard enough to rattle the glassware, and Nova started to suspect the woman had done theater in her youth, because she went enormous with everything.

"How convenient." The High Luna’s voice cooled to a temperature the wine would have envied. "A Moonseal. On the slave. Discovered just in time for dinner. Problem with this. Moonseals only are on those with a wolf. And the slave has been in silver. Celeste has confirmed that. So that is some illusion she has done with her dark magic."

Freya let out a laugh. "That’s funny you say that. The girl didn’t know what a Moonseal was, Elizabeth, until Dante and I told her yesterday."

"The mark manifests always on the Celestial Blue Moon only after a first shift," Dante cut in. "But Nova told us that she had never shifted so my wife did some intelligence gathering on the matter."

Nova turned to look at Dante and Freya, genuinely impressed and also slightly terrified by how quick both of them were.

"That is after Maria mentioned one detail to us," Freya added. "A medic had asked if Nova had a wolf because her silver scars were gone. The minimum recovery time for scarring of that nature is three months with medical intervention. Astra was equally taken aback by the timeline."

Something shifted behind Nova’s eyes. The slow, dawning recalculation of a woman who had accepted a miracle as skincare and was now being told the skincare didn’t work that fast.

Freya reached for her wine, unhurried. "It turns out, there is a well-documented phenomenon among incarcerated wolves. Silver suppression during imprisonment forces the wolf dormant. Upon release, the wolf resurfaces. It has been recorded across every pack. The suppression is temporary. The wolf was never gone. It was waiting."

The sentence sat in the room like a heartbeat everyone could hear. Freya let it land before she delivered the next one, which was harder.

"The first shift is very painful. The most common symptom is very severe muscle spasms. Fatal in some cases if left untreated."

Next to Nova, two pairs of Alpha eyes snapped towards Freya at the word ’spasm,’ both of their heads tilting by one degree. Then both straightened at the word ’fatal,’ the shift from dinner to protective Alpha in one exhale.

Nova missed the synchronization, but no one else did.

Tavian dropped his fork and stared at it, tilting his head in the opposite direction, openly fascinated, studying the two Alphas the way a wildlife researcher studies a species exhibiting new behavior. His mouth formed a word he didn’t say. The word was probably huh.