Mate Me in Moonlight

Chapter 97

POV: Adeline

Without Ronan, Ironclaw crumbled.

I watched it happen over the next few hours, still half-dazed from blood loss and exhaustion, as Aiden's wolves swept through what remained of the enemy forces. My shoulder had been bandaged—hastily, by Freya's steady hands—but the wound still throbbed with every heartbeat, a constant reminder of how close I had come to not surviving at all. Some Ironclaw wolves surrendered the moment they learned their Alpha was dead—dropping weapons, lowering eyes, accepting capture with something that looked almost like relief. Others fled into the darkness, scattering in every direction like leaves torn from a dying tree.

None of them stood and fought. Not one.

"Fear," Luca explained as we made our slow way back toward Willow Ridge, dawn painting the eastern horizon in shades of rose and gold. He walked beside me, close enough to catch me if I stumbled, his earlier wariness long since transformed into something steadier. "Ronan ruled through fear. Once he was gone, there was nothing holding them together. No loyalty. No cause. Just terror of a dead wolf who couldn't hurt them anymore."

"That's not a pack," Freya added from my other side. Her voice was hoarse from hours of coordinating the aftermath, but satisfaction threaded through the exhaustion. "That's a prison. Prisons empty fast when the warden dies."

The siege was over. The war was over. We had won.

The words echoed in my head like bells struck in an empty room. We had won. After everything—the running, the hiding, the losses that had accumulated like stones in my chest—we had actually won.

It didn't feel like victory.

Willow Ridge came into view through the morning mist, and something inside me clenched at the sight. The packhouse still stood, smoke rising from its chimneys like gentle promises of warmth and safety. The cabins that ringed the clearing showed signs of damage—scorch marks here, broken shutters there, a wall partially collapsed on the far side—but they were intact. They could be repaired. Wolves moved through the open spaces, some carrying supplies, others tending to wounded, all of them alive and breathing and here.

So many alive.

But not all.

Aiden's hand found mine as we approached the main gate. His grip was strong, steady, everything I needed it to be. He hadn't left my side since Ronan's command post, not even when his Beta and Gamma had insisted he was needed elsewhere. "Later," he had told them. "She needs me now."

I hadn't argued. I didn't have the strength to argue. I barely had the strength to keep walking.

The packhouse doors opened as we approached, and wolves spilled out to meet us. Faces I recognized—Marcus, Elena, Jonah, a dozen others whose names I had learned over months of belonging. Their expressions held the same strange mixture I felt inside: relief tangled with grief, victory shadowed by loss.

We had won. But victory tasted like ash.

"The wounded are in the medical wing," someone reported. "Elara's been working through the night. She says most will recover."

"Most," Aiden repeated quietly. The word carried the weight of everyone who wouldn't.

"How many?" I asked. My voice sounded distant, disconnected from my body.

The silence that followed told me everything.

"Thirty-seven," Marcus finally said. "Thirty-seven confirmed. There may be more we haven't found yet."

Thirty-seven wolves. Thirty-seven lives ended because a monster decided that love was weakness and destruction was the only lesson worth teaching. Some of them I had known—had shared meals with, had trained beside, had called family in the strange new way Willow Ridge had taught me family could be.

Gone.

My knees buckled. Aiden caught me again—he had been catching me all night, it seemed, every time the weight became too much—and guided me to a bench against the packhouse wall.

"Breathe," he murmured. "Just breathe."

"Thirty-seven people." The words scraped out of my throat. "Because of him. Because of me."

"Because of him," Aiden corrected firmly. "Only him. You didn't bring this war to us, Adeline. Ronan did. He made his choices. He lived by them. He died by them. The wolves we lost—they died protecting their home, their pack, everything they believed in. That's not your fault. That's his."

I wanted to believe him. But the guilt was a familiar weight, one I had carried since Ash Hollow. It settled back onto my shoulders like an old coat, heavy and suffocating and impossible to shake.

"We won," I said, tasting the word again. "It doesn't feel like winning."

"No." Aiden sat beside me, his shoulder pressing against mine. Around us, the pack moved through the motions of recovery—wolves reuniting with loved ones, medics rushing to and fro, scouts reporting the all-clear from the perimeter. "It feels like surviving. Winning comes later, when we've had time to grieve and rebuild and remember why we fought in the first place."

I turned my head to look at him. He was filthy—blood and dirt and exhaustion layered across features that had become more familiar to me than my own reflection. The scar along his temple stood out pale against the grime. His black eyes were shadowed with weariness, but beneath it burned something unbreakable.

He had fought for this. For me. For his pack. For the future we had promised each other in stolen moments between battles.

"We made it," I said.

The words felt too small for everything they contained, but they were the only ones I had.

Aiden's mouth curved—not quite a smile, but something close. Something that held promise despite the grief surrounding us.

"We made it," he agreed.

Around us, Willow Ridge began to breathe again. Wolves embraced. Medics moved with purpose. Somewhere, a child's laugh rang out—bright and impossible and real.

The war was over.

The healing could begin.

I leaned into Aiden's warmth, letting his presence anchor me as the sun continued its climb above the treeline. There would be funerals to attend, names to honor, grief to process in all its terrible forms. But for now, in this moment, we had survived.

And sometimes, that was enough.