LUNA POV
I threw myself between Lily and the lead Void Walker without thought.
"Get away from her!" I snarled, my beta wolf rising to the surface. The creature’s empty eyes fixed on , and for a mont I felt like I was looking into an endless black hole. Terror tried to freeze my muscles, but I refused to back down.
This was not how I’d planned to spend my evening. An hour ago, I’d been plotting ways to get rid of Lily so I could take my rightful place as the next Luna. Now I was actually putting my life on the line to protect the girl I’d hated for so long.
"Luna, what are you doing?" Lily gasped behind .
"Sothing I should have done months ago," I answered, not taking my eyes off the Void Walker. "Standing up for what’s right instead of what I want."
The thing tilted its head like it was studying an interesting bug. "You would sacrifice yourself for the one who took your destined place?"
"My destined place?" I laughed, but there was no fun in it. "I’ve been such an idiot. There was never a set place for with the triplets. I just told myself there was because I was too scared to figure out who I really was."
Around us, more Void Walkers flickered into life. The basent was filling up with animals that looked like holes cut out of reality itself. But sothing strange was happening - they weren’t attacking. They were just... waiting.
"Luna," Aiden said slowly, "what’s your plan here?"
"Honestly? I have no idea," I admitted. "But I’m tired of being the an girl who makes everyone else’s life harder just because I’m unhappy with my own."
The lead Void Walker spoke again, its voice like wind through a graveyard. "Your feelings are irrelevant. The change cannot be stopped."
"Maybe not," I said, taking a step closer to the thing. "But it can be changed."
That got everyone’s attention. Even Elena stopped her dinsional flashing to stare at .
"What do you an?" Sage asked.
I took a deep breath, finally understanding sothing that had been bugging since this whole ss started. "Everyone keeps talking about Lily becoming a Void Walker like it’s the end of the world. But what if it’s not? What if it’s exactly what’s going to happen?"
"Luna," Caleb said urgently, "they don’t have feelings. If Lily becos like them—"
"She’ll lose everything that makes her human," I ended. "Yeah, I heard. But what if she doesn’t have to?"
I turned to face Lily, who was still stuck between her dinsional energy and the growing void transformation. "Lily, when you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?"
"What?" She looked confused by the odd question. "I... I wanted to help people. Take care of them."
"Exactly. You never wanted power or fa or recognition. You just wanted to make other people’s lives better."
"How is this relevant?" Viktor snapped.
"Because," I said, feeling pieces click together in my mind, "Void Walkers exist to keep balance between realities, right? They’re supposed to be neutral, emotionless guards of dinsional stability."
"Yes," the lead thing confird.
"But what if the dinsions don’t need emotionless guards anymore? What if they need soone who actually cares about the people living in those realities?"
A strange silence fell over the basent. Even the Void Walkers seed to be considering my words.
"That’s impossible," Elena said, but her voice held uncertainty. "Emotions make people unstable. They cause chaos."
"Do they?" I challenged. "Or do they cause growth and change and improvent?"
I looked at each person in the room. "Aiden beca a better leader when he started caring more about individual pack mbers than just following custom. Brock beca a better protector when he learned to see power in gentleness. Caleb beca a better planner when he started fighting for love instead of just duty."
"Your point?" the Void Walker asked, though it sounded less certain than before.
"My point is that Lily with feelings could be a better Guardian than any emotionless Void Walker has ever been. She could protect realities not because it’s her job, but because she truly cares about the people living in them."
Prince Ash stepped forward, his ice magic sparking with excitent. "Luna’s right. The Triple Moon Mark isn’t disappearing because Lily’s transformation is unfinished. It’s staying because her oga bonds are ant to be part of her developnt!"
"A Void Walker with pack loyalty," Dmitri thought. "A dinsional guardian who fights for love instead of duty."
"It’s never been attempted," the lead Void Walker said, and for the first ti, it sounded almost... curious.
"Because it’s dangerous," Elena warned. "Emotions in a being with that much power—"
"Could save us all," I interrupted. "Or did you forget that Lily’s feelings are what got her into this ss in the first place? She beca a Guardian because she loved this pack enough to sacrifice herself for it."
I turned back to Lily, who was looking at with sothing like amazent.
"What?" I asked.
"You’re defending ," she said softly. "After everything..."
"Yeah, well," I shrugged, feeling my cheeks heat up. "Turns out jealousy makes you really stupid. I spent so much ti hating you for having what I thought I wanted that I never noticed you were the only person who was actually trying to help ."
"I was?"
"Rember when I fell off my horse during training? Who stayed with until the pack doctor arrived?"
"That was just—"
"And when my father was sick last winter, who brought soup to our cabin every day without being asked?"
Lily’s eyes widened as she rembered.
"And when I was crying in the forest after Aiden started showing interest in other girls, who found and listened to rant for two hours without judging ?"
"You needed a friend," Lily said plainly.
"Exactly. You were being a friend to soone who was being terrible to you. That’s not oga weakness - that’s the kind of strength the dinsions actually need."
The Void Walkers began moving closer, but not in an attacking way. They seed to be studying Lily with new interest.
"The young beta speaks wisdom," the lead creature said slowly. "Perhaps evolution requires not the removal of emotion, but its integration."
"You’re actually considering this?" Elena asked in shock.
"We are," another Void Walker responded. "The balance has been... imperfect. Perhaps it is ti for a new thod."
But just as hope started building in my chest, Elena’s expression changed to sothing desperate and dangerous.
"No!" she scread. "If I can’t have the power, then nobody can!"
She launched herself not at Lily, but at , her void energy crackling with deadly purpose.
"Luna!" Lily shouted.
I tried to dodge, but Elena’s attack was too fast. The void energy hit square in the chest, and instantly I felt sothing horrible happening.
My mories started disappearing.
Not just recent events, but everything. My youth, my family, my own na - all of it draining away like water through a broken cup.
"Stop!" Lily cried, dinsional energy exploding around her.
But as she tried to help , sothing unexpected happened. The void energy that Elena had used to attack started flowing into Lily instead, and with it ca all the mories Elena had stolen from everyone.
Including mories that weren’t from this world.
"Oh," Lily gasped, her eyes going wide with recognition. "Oh no. Luna, you’re not just a beta wolf."
"What?" I managed to whisper as my sense of self continued disappearing.
"You’re my sister," Lily said, terror and understanding flooding her face. "Not Elena. You. We’ve been reincarnated together lifeti after lifeti, and Elena has been taking you away from every single ti."
The last thing I saw before my mories disappeared totally was Elena’s face twisting with rage and sothing that might have been jealousy.
"If I can’t have either of you," Elena snarled, "then I’ll make sure you never find each other again."
And as darkness took my mind, I heard Lily scream my na with a pain that echoed across dinsions.
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