42 – Iris
“So first, we will talk about your role,” Ione said. She was partially seated on a table, her legs crossed, and her arms folded on her chest. Her dark eyes bore into me, but they lacked any venom or malice. I let out a breath of relief, Zahila could no longer torture me.
“Your role is simple, you will be his Luna for a time.” She said. “By his side, you have to act like a Luna, even within the castle walls. Even when the
pack–folk are not present.
Confusion took over my face. “But am I not only a figurehead? Would it not be… inappropriate to begin acting like a Luna to… his inner circle. They are well aware of my role. They know it is not real.”
“That is their prejudice’s fault. According to the law of the Moon goddess, in whose presence you exchanged your vows, you are his formal wife and now pronounced Luna to his pack.” She elaborated. “Whatever prejudice they have towards you is their business, not yours. He made vows to you which he must uphold. Likewise, you made vows to him which you must uphold. Else you cross the moon goddess.”
I looked at her, her words settling into me. I had more clarity already, and we had just begun our classes.
But I still had plenty of questions. “Then why make a werewolf a Lycan king’s wife and Luna, when he could have just made me a breeder to bear his
heir?”
“It is not that simple,” she sighed. “According to traditional laws, only the wife and Luna of an Alpha can bear an heir for him. If you were kept as a breeder, you would simply bear a child for the Alpha, but not the heir that he needs to break his curse.”
There had been a question that had been burning me for a while. The way that Ione regarded me told me that she knew what I was thinking.
“You must be wondering how we know how to break his curse,” she said.
When I said nothing, she took my silence as an affirmation.
Her expression became grave as she took a long sigh. “I am a seer,” she revealed, but she did not say it like it was a gift from the moon goddess she served. Instead, she said as though it was a curse like Cassian’s deadly touch. “I see visions of both the past and the present by touching a person or an object. And I can commune with that moon goddess.”
My jaw unhinged and fell. It took a moment before I could finally recover my senses. But when I did, I only had more questions. “You speak with the moon goddess?”
“Not in the typical way people talk and have conversations but in more of a manner that she conveys her will and messages through visions and signs. The meaning came to me like an inkling, but a seer’s inkling is a fact.” She explained, her voice softening. “It’s not a direct conversation but rather an understanding that comes to me. When I touch someone or something significant, I receive glimpses of the past, present, or even the future.” She explained.
“Please, could you tell me your vision of the breaking of Cassian’s curse.
Ione’s eyes became distant, as though she was looking into a realm beyond the physical, “I saw a child in Cassian’s arms in a vision. He called the child
his heir. He carried the child with joy and looked at it with so much love.”
My eyes widened. “He carried a child without killing it!” I gasped.
“Yes, and the black veins on his arms were gone. The black veins only appeared after he became Alpha and took on the Alpha’s curse.” She said. “And
beside him was a woman, his wife.”
I held my breath. “His wife.” I wanted to ask ‘Was it me?‘ but I could not summon the courage to ask.
But Ione read the question in my eyes. “It was not you,” she said. Her tone was reassuring.
Yet, my heart dropped and I felt anything but reassurance. What was wrong with me? Because of a single moment in a garden, I suddenly yearned to make this strange place my permanent home. It was no wonder Kavriel had made such a fool out of me. I had to snap out of it.
“The woman was strange,” Ione said. “She was unlike anyone I have ever seen before.”
I snapped myself out of my conflicting thoughts and feelings. “How so?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“It was her hair. She was a young woman from what I saw, but she also had the whitest hair and the child took after her. It had white hair as well.”
My heart stopped as her words sunk in. “Are you sure she had white hair,” I tried to feign doubt.
“I am positive. The child had white hair like hers as well.”
My thoughts raced. White hair? That could only mean one thing…
“Could she be from another pack?” I asked, trying to hide my unease.
Ione shook her head slowly. “No, she did not have the aura of an ordinary werewolf. She was something else entirely. And that is what scares me the
most.”
“Why does it scare you, lone?” I asked, dreading the answer. I held my breath.
“Because the only pack whose inhabitants all had the same pure white hair are extinct. They are all dead. Only the Lunaris Pack had white hair.”
It was completely outlawed in our pack to speak about the Lunaris Pack. To even tell stories about them was a taboo. Anyone caught would be severely punished. I always wondered why. But they did not have a good reputation, they were not loved but feared and hated. But because no one was allowed to speak about them, I had no idea why. Our archives had nothing on them, and it was said that books about the Lunaris Pack had been burned. Pages that had relayed their history and existence and been torn out of the history books. It was as though Ashfall wanted to erase their
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existence.
It was the same in other packs as well. So it surprised me that lone would speak so freely about the infamous pack. But the implications and the suspicions that I had had all my life were dawning on me.
“I don’t know much about them.” I told her truthfully.
Her eyes focused on me as she began to narrate. “The Lunaris Pack were the most powerful pack that ever existed. But it says that their wolves had been tainted by dark powers. They partook in a dark art, they practised Shadow Lycanthropy.”
It was the first time that I was hearing such a term, and I was intrigued. “What is it?”
“Shadow Lycanthropy is a forbidden form of dark magic that intertwines with a werewolf’s essence, enhancing their physical abilities, senses, and power to unimaginable levels.” She explained. She took a long breath before she continued. “However, this strength comes at a grave cost, as it taints the very soul of the werewolf, leading to sinister manifestations and a constant struggle with their darker nature.”
I gasped. It was no wonder they were hated and feared.
“If they were so powerful, how did they go extinct?” I asked.
“They tried to wage war on the other packs. They wanted to rule… everything. But even with their dark powers, they could not manage to take down the other Alphas and their armies. So they weakened them first.”
“How?”
Ione’s face took on a strange, ominous expression. “They sent the fever curse.”
I gasp tore through my throat. “They…”
“Yes, it is said that they cursed the other packs to weaken them before the war.”
It was appalling to think that a singular pack had been responsible for so much suffering. It makes my blood run cold with dread.
“But the other packs had a plan. Ione continued with a somber tone, her gaze distant as if recounting a tale of ancient horrors. “During the harvest moon celebration, when the Lunaris Pack was least vigilant, spies from the other packs infiltrated their ranks. They dosed them with a potent poison, which incapacitated them, and then they were slaughtered.”
My breath caught at the brutality of the revelation. “That’s… horrific.”
“It is said that it was a necessary evil,” Ione said gravely. “The Lunaris Pack posed a threat to the balance and safety of all werewolf kind. Their lust for power and mastery over dark magic had to be stopped.”
I struggled to process the implications. “And now… you believe that Cassian’s wife, the one from your vision, is somehow connected to this extinct pack?”
Ione nodded slowly. “The signs are there. White hair, a mark of the Lunaris bloodline. The child with similar features.”
“But why would Cassian’s curse be connected to them?” I asked, my mind racing with questions.
“The phenomenon that made us come to be the way we are now was the fever curse.” She told me. Without the Lunaris Pack curse, werewolves would not have become ill, become Cravens before finally transforming into Lycans. Which is what we are. If the fever curse did not come to be, our ancestors would not have been exiled. The Grimmoon pack would not have been created and the Alpha curse would not have been placed on that
Alpha of the Lycans.”
“The name of your kind is drawn from the name of the dark art that they practiced even,”
Ione nodded, then she looked at me. “But all of this is speculation. Cassian’s wife having white hair does not automatically make her a descendant of an extinct pack. It has to be something else.” Her eyes narrowed on me. “There are a few answers but many questions. But what will be will be. What I do know for a fact is that for Cassian’s curse to be broken he needs to sire an heir.”
“But it is alarming, how can you be so….”
“Calm?” Ione asked. She sighed deeply. “I might have the ability to see things beyond many people’s comprehension, but it does not mean I have power over them, or I can completely decode what I do see. It has to play out. As the moon goddess herself had willed. If we keep pondering on the future, we will never truly relish the present.”
She sounded too wise and far removed. But there was a deep sadness that she could not hide behind her words of history and visions.
“What effects do your abilities have on you?” I asked. “Do they hurt you?”
She froze. She became so still that she could have been a statue. Then she raised her eyes slowly to me. She looked at me strangely, like she was seeing me for the first time. Her eyes were wide, her skin suddenly pale. Then she looked away just as her eyes began to fill with tears.
My heart shattered. “Ione…” I moved towards her, but she stopped me with a hand.
“You can leave…” She croaked. “The lesson is over.”
But I just went to her and wrapped my arms around her. I expected her to push me away, but instead she sat in a chair so she could bury her head in my shoulder.
“Let it out,” I cooed, rubbing her back. By the way, she was shaking, she had been holding in the negative emotions for a long time. She had refused to show it, yet if someone paid attention to her enough, they would know that she was not alright. It had something to do with her family, but there was something else that was eating at her.
“It’s…not a blessing,” she mumbled through her tears. “It’s a curse.” She told me. I pulled away and looked into her dark, despair–filled eyes. “It is a curse that consumes me, eats away at my soul,” Ione confessed, her voice strained with emotion. “Every vision, every touch that grants me sight into
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the unseen, it takes a toll. It’s like carrying the weight of centuries in my mind.”
Theld her tighter, feeling her pain resonate within me. “Ione, I am here. I hurt you once, and I promise that from now and on, even if you have no one, you will have me.” I had to hold myself back from crying because she was such a kind soul. She deserved only happiness but here she was, a lovely person in every sense of the word, but filled with so much heartbreak from the weight of the ‘gift‘ that she had not even asked for, “I’m here for you, lone,” I reassured her, squeezing her hand gently. “Whatever you need, I’ll do my best to support you.”
Her eyes softened with gratitude, and for a moment, the weight seemed to lift from her shoulders, She sniffled, “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “It means more than you know,”
I wiped her tears. “I am here,” I reassured her again.
“Sorry for the cold shoulder,” she mumbled.
“Nonsense, you had
every right to be wary,” I dismissed.
She looked at me, her eyes filled with gratitude and I felt deep in my soul as our broken bond repaired itself.
