Luna. Chapter 174

(Lyra's POV)

Victor was waiting in the kitchen when we came downstairs, his expression more serious than I'd seen in weeks. Elena sat across from him, her hands wrapped around a coffee cup like she needed something to hold onto.

"We need to talk," Victor said without preamble.

"About what?" I sat down at the table, noticing how both of them seemed nervous.

"About family history you don't know yet."

Kael and I exchanged glances. "What kind of history?"

Elena spoke first. "Lyra, your father has a brother."

I felt my stomach drop. "Had. Past tense, right? Like a brother who died?"

"No," Victor said quietly. "Has. Present tense. A brother who was exiled from our family twenty-two years ago."

"Exiled for what?"

Victor was quiet for so long I thought he wasn't going to answer. Finally, he said, "For trying to steal the goddess gem."

"The what?"

Elena sighed. "Sit down, honey. This is going to take a while."

I was already sitting, but I sank deeper into my chair anyway. "Start from the beginning."

"My brother's name is Malachar," Victor said. "He's two years younger than me, and for most of our lives, we were very close."

"What happened?"

"Your mother happened."

I felt cold despite the warm morning. "What do you mean?"

"Malachar was in love with Isabella. Had been since we were teenagers." Victor's voice was carefully controlled. "When she chose me instead of him, it changed something in him."

"People get rejected all the time," I said. "They don't usually get exiled from their families."

"They do when they spend twenty years plotting to steal priceless family artifacts."

Elena pulled a small wooden box from the cabinet behind her. "This is what he was after."

She opened the box, revealing a stone that looked like captured moonlight. It pulsed with soft, silver energy that made my enhanced senses tingle.

"The goddess gem," Elena explained. "It's been in our family for generations. A direct connection to lunar power that can amplify celestial wolf abilities."

I stared at the stone, feeling drawn to it in a way that scared me. "It's beautiful."

"And dangerous in the wrong hands."

"What would Malachar have done with it?"

Victor's jaw tightened. "According to the letters we found in his room after we exiled him, he planned to use it to force Isabella to love him."

"Force her how?"

"Goddess gems can influence emotions if wielded by someone with celestial blood. He thought if he could make Isabella feel for him what she felt for me, she'd leave me and choose him instead."

I felt sick. "That's not love. That's magical assault."

"Exactly." Elena closed the box carefully. "When we discovered his plan, Victor had to make a choice. Turn his own brother over to the supernatural authorities, or exile him and hope he'd never come back."

"Which option did you choose?"

"Exile." Victor's voice was heavy with old pain. "I gave him twenty-four hours to leave the territory and told him if he ever came back, I'd kill him myself."

The kitchen was quiet except for the sound of Asher playing in the living room. Normal childhood sounds against the backdrop of family betrayal.

"Where did he go?"

"I don't know. And until recently, I didn't care."

"What do you mean, until recently?"

Victor and Elena exchanged another look. "Some of the supernatural attacks on our family have been too coordinated to be random," Elena said carefully.

"You think Malachar is behind them?"

"We think Malachar might be working with whoever is behind them."

I thought about the cursed objects, the systematic way our family had been targeted, the knowledge whoever was attacking us seemed to have about our vulnerabilities.

"An inside source," I said quietly.

"Someone who knows our habits, our security measures, our emotional weak points." Victor nodded grimly. "Someone who's been watching us for years."

"But why now? Why wait twenty-two years?"

"Maybe he wasn't strong enough before. Maybe he needed allies. Or maybe..."

"Maybe what?"

Elena looked at my father, who sighed heavily. "Maybe he was waiting for you to come home."

"Me? Why would my return matter to him?"

"Because you're Isabella's daughter. And according to the letters we found, he blamed her rejection of him on you."

I felt confused. "That doesn't make sense. I was barely born when you exiled him."

"You were born eight months after Isabella chose me over Malachar. In his mind, if Isabella hadn't gotten pregnant with you, she might have eventually chosen him instead."

The logic was insane, but I'd seen enough unstable people to recognize the pattern. Blame someone else for your problems. Obsess over what might have been. Spend decades nursing a grudge until it became the center of your entire existence.

"So he sees me as the reason his life didn't go the way he wanted."

"That's our theory."

"And now I'm back, married to a king, pregnant with a powerful child, living the kind of life he probably thinks should have been his."

"Yes."

I rubbed my temples, feeling the beginning of a headache. "Is there any proof? Anything concrete that connects him to the recent attacks?"

"Not yet. But we're working on it."

"Working on it how?"

Victor hesitated. "We've hired a private investigator to track him down. Find out where he's been living, who he's been associating with, whether he has the resources to coordinate supernatural attacks."

"When will we know?"

"Soon, hopefully."

I looked around the kitchen, thinking about how safe I'd felt this morning. How peaceful our life had seemed just a few hours ago.

"Is the house protected against him specifically?"

"The general wards should keep out anyone with malicious intent," Elena said. "But Malachar knows our family magic. He might be able to find ways around protections that would stop other threats."

"So what do we do?"

"We stay alert. We don't take unnecessary risks. And we prepare for the possibility that our enemy has a very personal connection to our family."

Kael, who had been quiet throughout the entire conversation, finally spoke. "Victor, is there anything else about your brother we should know? Any other family secrets that might become relevant?"

Victor was quiet for a long moment. "Malachar always believed he was the more powerful brother. The one who should have inherited our family's supernatural legacy."

"Was he right?"

"Maybe. He certainly had stronger raw abilities than I did. But power without wisdom or compassion just becomes destruction."

I thought about the way I'd felt this morning, energy flowing through me like liquid starlight. The baby was enhancing my abilities, but what if that power attracted Malachar's attention?

"If he comes back," I said quietly, "will I be able to protect our family from him?"

"I don't know," Victor admitted. "But you won't have to face him alone."

Somehow, that didn't feel like enough.