Chapter 19The Price of Ruin

Rissa's eyes opened to the Moonstone's glow, and she knew she was already dead.

The chamber swam around her—Elara's hands still pressed to her temples, Dorian's voice shouting from somewhere distant, the stone's whisper threading through her veins like roots seeking water. The black veins had reached her collarbone. Her wolf howled inside her chest, but the sound came from miles away.

*You have to trust me.*

Elara's voice was calm. Too calm. Rissa tried to focus on the elder's face, but it kept shifting—old, then young, then ancient, a woman who had watched the Moonstone devour generations.

"How long have you carried it?" Rissa heard herself ask.

Elara's hands trembled. "Seventy years. Since I was fifteen. The stone chose me as its keeper before Vance was born. I thought I could control it. I thought I could starve it." Her jaw tightened. "Instead, I fed it secrets. I fed it Vance's mate."

Dorian reached them, bloody and pale, his hand closing around Rissa's arm. "We need to move. Now."

"Listen to me." Elara pulled Rissa upright, her grip iron despite her age. "The fragment inside you—it's connected to the main stone. A tether. If you sever it, the stone dies. But the tether runs through your wolf. Through your heart."

"Then I sever it." Rissa's voice came out raw.

"You'll lose the wolf. Permanently. The Moonstone will take it as payment." Elara's eyes glistened. "And it will hurt more than anything you've ever felt."

Dorian stepped between them. "No. There has to be another way."

"There isn't." Elara's voice broke, but she didn't look away. "I've seen it done. Once. A woman who came before me—she tried to destroy the stone by cutting her own wolf out with a silver blade. She bled out before the ritual finished. The stone healed itself."

Rissa reached for the shard Elara had wrapped in cloth. It pulsed against her palm, eager and hungry.

"How?"

"You don't cut it out. You let it in." Elara's hand closed over Rissa's, guiding the shard toward her chest. "The fragment wants to become whole. It wants to merge with you completely. You let it. But when it tries to take root in your heart, you push back—not with rage, not with fear. With certainty. You tell it *no*."

The door behind them exploded inward.

Vance stood in the doorway, flanked by three enforcers. Blood streaked his face, and his eyes had gone the same black as the veins on Rissa's arm.

"Lorna told me." His voice was ragged, barely human. "She told me everything. How she found my mate's body. How she *made* it look like a poacher killed her. How she fed my grief to the stone."

Elara went still.

"You." Vance's gaze fixed on her. "You killed her. You killed my wife because you needed me angry. You needed me to feed the stone."

"She was going to leave." Elara's voice was small, but steady. "She was going to take you and run. If she had, the stone would have starved. The whole pack would have—"

"*You killed her.*"

Vance moved.

Dorian met him halfway, their bodies colliding with enough force to crack stone. The enforcers poured in behind their alpha, and the chamber dissolved into chaos—claws against claws, howls echoing off ancient walls.

Rissa gripped the shard.

*Do it now.*

But Dorian was in her way. He was bleeding, he was fighting, and every time Vance drove him back, he stumbled closer to her. If she drove the shard into her heart, the shockwave would throw them all—but it might kill him too.

"Rissa!" Elara grabbed her shoulder. "Now or never!"

Dorian took a claw to the ribs. He staggered, and Vance lunged past him, reaching for Rissa with fingers already blackening with the Moonstone's corruption.

"You'll be my vessel." Vance's hand closed around her throat. "You'll carry the stone forever."

Rissa drove the shard into her chest.

The world went white.

She felt the fragment push through skin, through muscle, through bone—and then it reached her heart, and *something* opened. A door. A wound. A choice.

The Moonstone's voice screamed inside her head.

*YES. FINALLY. YES.*

And Rissa said no.

Not with anger. Not with fear. With the same certainty she'd felt the night she'd refused to kill Dorian—the night she'd chosen to be human.

*No. I'm not yours.*

The shard exploded.

Light, heat, and sound ripped through her, through the chamber, through the mountain itself. She felt the Moonstone shatter—not just the main stone in the center of the room, but every fragment, every piece, every echo of its power that had infected the land. The blight screamed. The pack howled. And somewhere deep inside her chest, her wolf *died*.

She felt it go.

Rissa collapsed.

When she opened her eyes, she was human. Her hands were smooth. Her teeth were flat. The world smelled only of dust and blood.

And Dorian was bleeding out beside her.

His chest was torn open—Vance's final strike, meant for her. He'd taken it as Vance fell. As the stone shattered. As everything ended.

"Dorian."

She crawled to him. His eyes were open, glassy, fixed on the ceiling.

"Rissa." His voice was a whisper. "Did it work?"

"The stone is gone." She pressed her hands to his chest, but the blood kept flowing. "Elara! Elara, help me!"

But Elara was on her knees, staring at her own hands. The hunger was gone from her eyes, replaced by something hollow and empty.

"Healing won't work." Elara's voice was distant. "The wolf is gone. The pack is gone. We're all human now."

"Then find bandages. Find—"

"There's nothing to find."

Rissa looked down at Dorian's wound. At his blood on her hands. At the shard still embedded in her own chest—not whole anymore, but not gone either. A shard of a shard, buried where her heart used to be.

And it *glowed*.

Faint. Dying. But still there.

She pressed her hand to her chest, and the shard answered. Power flowed through her—not the Moonstone's hunger, but something purer. Smaller. A spark that remembered what it was to be whole.

She placed her palm over Dorian's wound.

"Please," she whispered. "Please don't leave me."

The spark jumped.

Heat, then cold, then nothing.

Dorian's wound closed. His eyes widened. And Rissa felt the shard in her chest crumble to dust, taking the last of the Moonstone's power with it.

She fell forward, her forehead touching his.

In the silence, in the dark, a faint warmth lingered where the fragment had been—a spark that refused to die.

But Dorian wasn't breathing.

And somewhere in the ruins, Vance began to laugh.