Mate Me in Moonlight

Chapter 104

POV: Adeline

Elara was up and moving again sooner than anyone expected, which didn’t surprise me once I remembered how many times she’d treated others while ignoring her own pain. The healer’s stubbornness was a quieter thing than Luca’s, but no less formidable.

I found her in the healing room, moving slowly between tables, checking on bandages and herbs, her steps careful but determined. The faint lines of strain at the corners of her eyes were deeper than before, but there was a calmness to her movements that made the space feel steadier just by virtue of her being in it.

“You shouldn’t be on your feet this long,” I said, slipping inside and closing the door softly.

Elara glanced over her shoulder, gray-streaked hair pulled back in a loose knot, wise eyes assessing me in one sweep. “And you shouldn’t be hovering at the door like a guilty pup,” she replied, tone dry but not unkind. “Yet here we are.”

I crossed the room, reaching for a stack of folded linens near her elbow. “Let me help,” I said. “You lost blood too. You fought. You were hurt.”

“I’ve survived worse,” she said, waving a hand as if dismissing a mild inconvenience. Then, without warning, she pointed at a chair near the shelf of jars. “Sit.”

“I came in here to tell you that you shouldn’t—”

“And I am here to tell you that you will sit,” she interrupted. “There’s more I need to teach you, and I prefer you upright, breathing, and not pacing while I do it.”

I hesitated, caught between the instinct to argue and the realization that this battle was already lost. Elara’s authority in this room was as absolute as Aiden’s on the field. With a resigned sigh, I sank into the chair.

She moved toward the shelves, hands deftly picking out jars, bundles of dried herbs, small carved tokens. “You’ve learned the basics,” she said. “Binding wounds, brewing teas, calming panicked minds. But there are deeper rituals you’ll need to know now.”

I watched her hands as she spoke, the way her fingers traced patterns on the wood before lifting each object, as if she were reading something only she could see. “Deeper rituals?” I asked.

“The mating blessings,” she said. “The Luna ceremonies. The rites you perform for your pack when they are not just wounded, but changed—by joy, by grief, by recognition of bonds that go beyond the everyday.”

My throat tightened, not at the mention of mating, but at the quiet certainty in her tone when she said Luna, as if the role already sat on my shoulders whether I acknowledged it or not.

She laid a small bundle of herb-laced cloth in my hands, the scent of rosemary and something sweeter rising from it. “This,” she said, “is used in the Mating Pledges. You’ll learn how to bless it, how to bind scent and intention into it so that it carries more than just smell.”

I turned it between my fingers, feeling the texture, the weight of something that was both simple and deeply significant.

“There are words you’ll need,” Elara continued. “Not complicated ones. The moon doesn’t favor long speeches. She likes truth more than poetry. But you must know how to stand before your pack and speak them without your voice shaking.”

I thought of all the times my voice had shaken already, of how standing in front of wolves with blood still in their fur had felt more natural than standing in front of them with joy in my hands would. “I don’t know if I’m good at blessing anything,” I admitted.

“You are still here,” Elara said, as if that were answer enough. “You have survived what should have broken you. You have chosen to love again after losing everything. That, child, is a blessing all on its own.”

The word child would have irritated me from anyone else. From her, it felt like a gift.

She taught me then, in the fading light of the afternoon, the cadence of the old words spoken in Luna ceremonies, the way to lay hands on bowed heads and call down the moon’s grace, the difference between blessing a union and recognizing a bond already written into the bones. She showed me where to draw simple symbols on cloth to mark a couple’s first hunt together, how to arrange stones around a shared fire when a new pup was presented to the pack.

“You’ll need these soon,” Elara said at one point, eyes narrowing slightly as she watched my face. There was a knowing glint in her gaze that reminded me that she saw more than most.

My cheeks warmed. “You don’t know that.”

“I know enough,” she said. “I’ve seen the way your wolf looks at him. I’ve seen how his gaze finds you in a crowded clearing like everything else is just noise around you. The moon doesn’t waste that kind of attention on accidents.”

I swallowed, fingers tightening slightly around the blessed cloth.

“Thank you,” I said, the words coming out more quietly than I intended. “For everything. For seeing me when I couldn’t see myself.”

Elara’s expression softened, the lines around her eyes deepening with something like affection. “I see what the moon shows me,” she said. “She showed me you from the beginning. Before you knew you’d stay. Before he let himself hope you would.”

The idea that anything—anyone—had seen me as part of this place before I had allowed myself that thought made my chest ache in that strange, bittersweet way I was beginning to recognize as the feeling of healing around still-tender wounds.

We went on until the light thinned and the room turned gold, then dusky gray. I repeated the words she’d given me until my tongue knew their shapes, until my hands could trace the gestures without conscious thought. When she finally dismissed me, I felt tired in a different way—not the exhaustion of battle or grief, but the weight of responsibility settling more comfortably, like a cloak that had been waiting for me to grow into it.

The knowledge had passed from her hands to mine.

The lineage continued.

And for the first time, I could see myself not just as the girl who had fled a burning pack, but as a Luna who might one day stand before her wolves and bless something other than survival.