Crown of Moonstone Lies

Phoebe

“It’s a death sentence.”

The words hang in the air of my small cabin, thick and heavy as winter smoke. Alpha Marcus says them with a finality that’s supposed to end the conversation, but my eyes stay fixed on the impossible thing lying on my table. The invitation glimmers, its iridescent parchment shifting from silver to violet to a pale, watery blue in the low light of the hearth. It seems to breathe, pulsing with a magic our quiet woods haven’t seen in a century. It’s beautiful. And it’s addressed to me.

“It’s an honor,” I say, my voice quieter than I intend. I trace the elegant, looping script of my name. *Phoebe of Silent Creek.* It looks wrong. We’re never called ‘of Silent Creek.’ We’re just the Creek-pups, the backwater pack, the ones forgotten by the Moon Goddess at the edge of the world.

“An honor?” Marcus scoffs. His heavy boots scrape against my floorboards as he paces. The sound grates on my already raw nerves. “They’re culling the weak, Phoebe. That’s all the Iridian Games have ever been. A way for the great Alphas to flex their power and thin the herds of packs they deem… inconvenient.”

He stops pacing and plants his scarred hands on the table, leaning over the shimmering invitation as if its light physically pains him. He’s my Alpha, but he’s also the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father. His scent, a mix of pine and damp earth, has meant safety my entire life. Right now, it feels like the walls of a cage.

“Look at us,” he says, his voice dropping to a low rumble. “We have enough to eat. We have our territory, small as it is. We don’t have enemies because we don’t have anything worth taking. We survive because we are silent. And you want to go to the heart of the world and scream your name from the rooftops?”

“I don’t want to scream,” I counter, my gaze finally lifting from the invitation to meet his. His eyes are a deep, worried brown. “I want to compete. I want to see something more than these same trees I’ve seen every day for twenty years. Is that so wrong?”

“It is when it will get you killed.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he insists, his voice rising again. “Do you know who competes in these games? The heirs of the great packs. Kaelen of Stormfang, whose father can level a forest with his rage. The twins from Sunstone, who are said to be faster than the wind. Rogues and mercenaries who have spent their lives killing for coin. And then there’s Valerius.”

He says the name of the Iridescence Alpha like a curse. The Game Master.

“They say he can bend light itself,” Marcus continues, his lip curling. “That he can make you see things that aren’t there. They say he enjoys the games more than anyone. What chance does a girl from Silent Creek have against monsters like that?”

My hand instinctively flies to my throat, my fingers searching for the smooth, cool comfort of the stone that always hangs there. It’s a nervous habit, one I’ve had since I was a child. The moonstone amulet was my mother’s. It’s the only thing I have left of her. My fingers brush against my skin, finding nothing but warmth.

I frown. That’s not right.

My hand pats my collarbone, then sweeps to the side, my heart giving a single, hard thump against my ribs. It’s not there. The leather cord is gone.

“No,” I whisper.

“No, what?” Marcus asks, his frustration momentarily forgotten as he sees the look on my face. “Phoebe, what is it?”

I don’t answer. I stand so fast my stool clatters to the floor. My hands fly to my neck again, frantically searching. “It’s gone. It’s gone.”

“What’s gone? Your nerve?”

“My amulet,” I choke out, spinning around to scan the small cabin. “My mother’s amulet. It’s gone.”

The room is tiny. A bed, a table, two stools, a cold hearth. There is nowhere for it to be. I would have felt it fall. I never take it off. Never.

“You probably took it off before you slept,” Marcus says, his voice softening. He rights the stool. “Calm down. It has to be here.”

“I don’t take it off. Not to sleep. Not to wash. Never.” My breath starts coming in ragged bursts. The shimmering invitation on the table seems to mock me, its beauty suddenly sinister. It’s the only thing out of place. The only new thing that has entered my life in years.

I begin tearing my small home apart. I rip the thin blanket off my cot, shaking it out with a violence that feels foreign to my own body. Nothing. I drop to my knees, my hands sweeping through the dust and stray leaves under the cot. Nothing.

“Phoebe, stop,” Marcus says, his hand landing on my shoulder. “You’re panicking. We will find it.”

“You don’t understand,” I say, my voice cracking. “It’s all I have. It’s all that’s left.”

His hand tightens. “I know.”

He does know. He was there the day she died. He was the one who carried her back to the pack, the one who pried the moonstone from her cooling fingers and placed it around my neck. He knows it’s more than a stone to me. It’s her last touch. Her last breath.

My eyes land on the invitation again. It arrived an hour ago, delivered by a hawk with feathers like polished silver. It fell from the sky and landed on my doorstep, already glowing. A personal summons. An impossibility.

I crawl back towards the table, my movements stiff and clumsy. I stared at the thing. It felt wrong from the start. We don’t get invitations. We get warnings. We get demands for tribute from the larger packs. We don’t get invited to the most prestigious, dangerous competition in the world.

“It’s a trap,” Marcus had said the moment he saw it.

Now the words echo in my head with terrifying clarity. I reach out a trembling hand and pick up the parchment. It’s heavier than it looks, and warm to the touch. As I lift it, a tiny piece of folded paper, no bigger than my thumb, flutters from between its folds and lands on the wooden table.

It wasn’t there before. I would have seen it. It’s plain, rough paper, a stark contrast to the magical invitation it was hiding in.

Marcus moves closer. “What is that?”

My fingers feel like lead as I pick it up and unfold it. The script is messy, jagged, a complete opposite of the elegant writing on the invitation. There are only five words.

I read them out loud, my voice a dead thing.

“Win the game, win it back.”

The silence that follows is heavier than any words. The truth of it crashes down on me, stealing the air from my lungs. This isn’t an honor. It isn’t a random selection. It’s a threat. A ransom.

They took her. They took the last piece of my mother and they are holding her hostage.

“By the Goddess,” Marcus breathes, taking a step back. The scent of his fear, sharp and acrid, fills the room. “They knew. They knew what it meant to you.”

He snatches the note from my fingers and reads it himself, as if he can’t believe what I said. He crumples it in his massive fist.

“This changes nothing, Phoebe. It only proves my point. This is a trap, designed just for you. They’re using your grief, your love for your mother, to lure you in. Don’t you see? You’ll be walking into the wolf’s den with a collar already around your neck.”

I stare at the invitation, at the shimmering lie of it. All the wonder I felt an hour ago has curdled into a cold, black fury. They didn’t just invite me. They didn’t just threaten me. They reached into my past and are using my dead mother to control my future.

The grief that has been a quiet ache in my chest for ten years ignites. It’s not sadness anymore. It’s rage. Hot and pure.

“This changes everything,” I say, my voice perfectly level. The shaking has stopped. My hands are steady. A strange calm settles over me, the kind that comes when every other option has been burned away and only one path remains.

“Don’t be a fool,” Marcus growls. “You can’t win. They won’t let you. This is just a game to them, and you are the pawn.”

“Then I’ll be the pawn that takes the king,” I reply, meeting his gaze without flinching. “What choice do I have, Marcus? Let them keep it? Let some monster, some arrogant Alpha-heir, hold the last piece of my mother as a trophy? Let it sit in their treasure room and collect dust? No.”

I push myself to my feet, my spine straight, my shoulders back. I feel taller. Something inside me has shifted, solidified. The girl who dreamed of seeing the world is gone. In her place is a she-wolf with a singular purpose.

“They think they’ve found my weakness,” I say, my voice low and dangerous. “They think they can manipulate me with this. But they’ve made a mistake. They haven’t found my weakness. They’ve given my grief a target. They’ve given my anger a name. And now they’re inviting me into their home.”

“Phoebe, listen to me. This is what they want. They want you angry. They want you reckless.”

“I’m not reckless,” I say calmly. “I’ve never been more focused in my life. You said it yourself. We survive because we are overlooked. Because no one expects anything from Silent Creek. They won’t see me coming. They’ll be looking for a scared little Creek-pup who is mourning her mother’s memory. And that’s what they’ll get. Right up until the moment I take back what is mine.”

I reach for the shimmering invitation and fold it carefully. The magic in it hums against my fingertips, no longer feeling beautiful, but like a weapon I have yet to understand.

“You can’t forbid me from going,” I state. It isn’t a question. “An Alpha cannot refuse a summons from the Game Master for one of their pack. It’s ancient law.”

Marcus lets out a long, slow breath. The fight drains out of him, replaced by a profound, heavy sadness. He looks at me, and I know he sees my mother in my eyes, in the stubborn set of my jaw. He saw that same look on her face the day she went into the woods and never came back.

“No,” he says, his voice rough with defeat. “I cannot forbid you. But I can tell you that you are walking the same path your mother did. A path of pride. And I can beg you not to.”

“She walked her path for her reasons,” I say softly. “I’m walking mine for her.”

I slip the invitation into the small pouch at my belt. I have nothing to pack, nothing to prepare. My worn clothes, my hunting knife, and the fury in my heart are all I own. It will have to be enough.

He doesn’t try to argue anymore. He just stands there, the crumpled ransom note still clenched in his fist, watching me as if I’m already a ghost. As if I’m already gone.

“They’ve made a grave mistake, Marcus,” I say, my hand resting on the hilt of my knife. “They think they’ve stolen my most precious possession.”

I turn and walk out of my cabin, leaving him standing in the flickering firelight. I don’t look back.

“They’re wrong. They’ve just given it back to me.”