Luna. Chapter 176

(Rayn's POV)

I couldn't sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Malachar standing over my bed with a knife twenty-two years ago. Every time I started to relax, I remembered Isabella's terrified face when she realized my brother was capable of murder.

The memories I'd shared with Lyra were only part of the story. The sanitized version designed to help her understand the threat without traumatizing her completely.

But lying in bed at two in the morning, I couldn't avoid the full truth anymore.

Malachar hadn't just been obsessed with Isabella. He'd been obsessed with owning her. Controlling her. Making her into his personal possession.

I remembered finding the journal he'd kept during those six months of stalking. Page after page of detailed observations about Isabella's daily routine. What she wore, who she talked to, where she went. But worse than that were his plans.

Plans for isolating her from friends and family. Plans for convincing her that I was wrong for her. Plans for gradually wearing down her resistance until she accepted him as her only option.

The journal read like a predator's handbook. And the most terrifying part was how methodical it all was.

Malachar wasn't some lovesick teenager acting on impulse. He was a calculating stalker who saw Isabella as a prize to be won through manipulation and persistence.

The night he'd tried to use the goddess gem on her at the library, Isabella had told me things I'd never shared with anyone. Not Elena, not Lyra, not even my closest friends.

She'd said Malachar didn't just try to make her feel false love. He'd tried to implant specific thoughts and desires. Make her crave his touch, need his presence, feel empty without him.

"It was like someone was rewriting my mind," she'd told me, shaking in my arms. "Like he was trying to erase who I really was and replace it with some fantasy version of me that would worship him."

The magical assault had been even more violating than I'd let Lyra believe.

And the night Malachar broke into our house with a knife, Isabella's conversation with him hadn't been as successful as I'd made it sound.

Yes, she'd talked him out of killing me immediately. But she'd done it by pretending to consider his proposal. By acting like she was finally ready to hear his side of the story.

For two hours, my brave, brilliant Isabella had played the role of a woman wavering between two brothers. She'd let Malachar think he was winning her over while slowly, carefully talking him down from violence.

When he finally left that night, he'd been convinced she was going to leave me for him. That all he had to do was wait for her to make the transition gracefully.

Isabella had saved my life by lying to a delusional stalker. And the guilt of putting her in that position had haunted me for twenty-two years.

"Are you awake?" Elena's voice was soft in the darkness.

"Yeah."

"Bad memories?"

"The worst ones."

She rolled over to face me. "You're thinking about what you didn't tell Lyra."

"How do you know?"

"Because I know you. And I know this family's history better than anyone."

Elena was right. She'd been Isabella's closest friend, the person Isabella had confided in about things she couldn't even tell me.

"How much worse was it?" I asked quietly.

"Bad enough that Isabella made me promise to kill her if Malachar ever got his hands on her."

I felt ice in my veins. "She what?"

"She was terrified of what he might do with the goddess gem if he had unlimited time and access. The mental manipulation, the forced emotions, the complete erasure of her free will."

"She never told me that."

"She didn't want you to carry that burden too."

I stared at the ceiling, thinking about the promise Isabella had extracted from her best friend. Death rather than psychological slavery.

"Elena, what if he comes back for Lyra?"

"Then we stop him."

"What if we can't? What if twenty-two years have made him too powerful, too prepared?"

Elena was quiet for a long moment. "Then we trust that Lyra is stronger than her mother was. And that she has resources Isabella never had."

"Like what?"

"Like a mate who's a king. Like a family that won't abandon her. Like celestial wolf abilities that are growing stronger every day."

"And like the knowledge of what Malachar is really capable of."

"Exactly."

But even with all those advantages, I was terrified. Because Malachar had had twenty-two years to plan his revenge. Twenty-two years to develop his abilities and his hatred.

And now Lyra was pregnant with a child whose power would make him an irresistible target for someone like my brother.

"Elena, there's something else I never told anyone."

"What?"

"The night before I exiled Malachar, he said something that's been bothering me ever since."

"What did he say?"

"He said Isabella's rejection was just the first part of his plan. That he was playing a longer game than any of us realized."

"What kind of longer game?"

"I don't know. But he seemed confident that he'd get everything he wanted eventually."

"Maybe he was just trying to save face."

"Maybe. Or maybe he was telling the truth."

Elena reached for my hand in the darkness. "Rayn, whatever Malachar is planning, we'll face it together. All of us."

"What if that's not enough?"

"Then we'll find a way to make it enough."

I wanted to believe her. But lying there in the dark, remembering the cold calculation in Malachar's eyes, I couldn't shake the feeling that my brother had been preparing for this moment for decades.

And that we were already behind in a game we didn't even know we were playing.

The worst part was knowing that Isabella would have understood the threat immediately. She'd had an instinct for dangerous people that had kept her safe from everyone except the one person who should have protected her.

My own brother.

If Malachar was really behind the recent attacks on our family, then he'd already proven he was still the same calculating predator he'd been twenty-two years ago.

Only now he was focused on Isabella's daughter.

And this time, I might not be able to protect the woman I loved from the monster my family had created.