The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 516

Chapter 516

Ellie’s POV

As it turns out, hearing your own funeral dirge is a bit of a mindfuck.

I’d died once already and never gotten to hear it. It was strange, thinking that it had happened twice now. If there was still a timeline out there where I was dead, had they sung for me at all? Or had I been buried quietly, without fanfare, and forgotten somewhere beneath a headstone?

I tried not to think about any of that as we hurried toward the town square.

The square was packed. Everyone wore black, their heads bowed, the pyre roaring at the center.

Dominic’s hand tightened around mine.

“Stay close,” he said quietly.

We pushed into the crowd.

The first person to see us was an old female near the back. She turned as we shouldered past, half-annoyed, and her flowers dropped out of her hand. Her scream cut the dirge in half.

The singing died after that, one cluster of voices at a time, as we pushed toward the pyre. People scrambled back from us. Somebody shouted about spirits.

The crowd split down the middle, and there was my father.

His cane clattered to the ground.

“Ellie-”

He crossed the square at a pace I’d never seen him move at before. I met him halfway, and his arms crushed around me, shaking, one hand cradling the back of my head like I was small again. Or like he’d never gotten the chance to do it when I was.

“You’re real.” His words came out muffled into my hair. “Goddess above, you’re real. Twice. I thought I lost you twice–”

“I know.” I was crying now too. “I know, Dad. I’m here.”

He pulled back enough to take my face in both hands, thumbs sweeping under my eyes, drinking me in. His gaze snagged on the bruises at my throat, and his brows drew together, but before he could ask, a shriek rang out across the square.

“ELLIE!”

Eli came barreling out of the crowd and hit my legs at a run, arms clamping around my waist. I folded over him, pressing my lips to the top of his head. Behind him came Nico with Amelia’s hand clutched in his.

Nico didn’t look surprised. Just relieved. And maybe a little terrified. Given his abilities, I got the sense that we both knew what was to come next.

I scanned the faces behind him. “Where’s Bastian?”

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Terence’s face crumpled. “He wouldn’t come. He’s barely left his room since they returned.”

I nodded mutely, my gaze sweeping over the crowd. There, off to the side, was Stephanie, dressed in black. Her face was pale, ashen, and it had nothing to do with mourning. I knew it. She knew it. So did Dominic. And Nico, judging from the way he followed my eyes and his jaw clenched.

“Ellie.” Dad touched my chin, drawing my eyes back toward him. “What happened up there? They told me the mountain crushed you. They told me Dominic-” He couldn’t finish the sentence, his eyes flicking to Dominic, standing whole and healthy right beside me, albeit a little bruised up like I was.

So we told him. Right there in front of the pyre and half the pack, we told him everything.

I told him about the collapse, the fall, the days in the dark. I told him how Stephanie followed us up the mountain, how she found me alone in the tunnels with a pouch of Night Root.

I pointed at her hand, bandaged, the tip of her finger missing.

“I bit her to get away,” I said. “If I hadn’t, she would have killed me.”

Stephanie’s lips parted. Her eyes went to her husband. “That’s not true.” She stepped forward. “She was delirious. She attacked me!”

“Even if that were the case,” Dominic said, voice low, angry, “it doesn’t explain why you drugged Bastian and pushed me off the mountain when I tried to go back for Ellie, does it?”

“I saw a rogue camp in the snow,” Nico said. “A man with a bottle, standing over a little girl, telling her she was the runt of a dead litter and any pups she ever had would be failures just like her.”

A sound came out of Stephanie. Small, strangled. Her good hand went to her chest, gripping her coat in a tight fist.

“I saw her pick Dad out of the whole pack because of what’s in his blood. I saw her drill Bastian, trying to form him into the perfect Alpha in order to solidify her own claim.” Nico’s throat worked, but his words stayed even and calm, which was more than I could have said for myself. “And I saw the summit. She used some kind of powder to make Bastian pass out, and then she pushed Dominic and made up a story.”

“Nico.” My father’s face had gone ashen, too, just like his wife’s. “Son-”

Nico finally looked at his mother. “You saw me there, Mom. Right at the end. You looked me dead in the eye. You know I saw it all.”

Stephanie’s lips had gone white. She was alone now, the others around her forming a semicircle, staring at her warily.

Dad turned toward her slowly. Without the cane, his whole body swayed with the effort, but he stayed upright, and when he finally spoke, it came out barely above a whisper.

“Is this true…?”

For a moment, Stephanie didn’t move at all.

And then her chest started to heave. Her hands curled into fists at her sides. Her eyes blackened. And in that moment, she didn’t look like the woman any of us thought we knew.

The snarl that ripped out of her didn’t sound like a Luna. It sounded like a rogue.

She came at me so fast the crowd didn’t even have a chance to scatter, and slammed into me, and the world tilted. Sky, smoke, screaming.

My back hit the ground as Stephanie’s claws slashed at my face, her eyes full of hate and rage.

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