As everything went to hell on the little shore, Cybele grabbed Will's arm in a rush of breathless panic, dragging her along as far away as she could.

She could feel her heart racing, so quickly she felt nearly dizzy. There was something about the source, the source currently shoved haphazardly into her pocket — it sparked a dangerous sort of adrenaline rush, even for someone who didn't have rana magic. That must have been why Will had been so off since they arrived at the festival, Cybele realized belatedly — for an actual hibri, it undoubtedly had far more severe consequences.

That, or she was just avoiding Cybele after that failed kiss.

Cybele closed her eyes, fighting to clear her head. If there was ever a time not to get distracted, it was now.

Because she was growing more and more unsure she even wanted Cynth to have the source.

Before she could contemplate it any further, the patrias spotted her. Swearing beneath her breath, Cybele shoved the near-comatose Will off to the side before backing away as quickly as she could. For the first time, she wished she hadn't thrown away Cynth's backup gun as soon as she'd had it. She was ultimately defenseless now — and several of their attackers were heading straight for her.

The lion maxi who appeared to be the leader approached her first, eyes locked on the source within her pocket. Though she was clearly well-armed, she didn't draw any weapons on Cybele just yet; instead, she kept her distance and began to speak, her voice sharp and commanding. "Give it to me."

Cybele swallowed, biting back the urge to run as fast and far as she could. Will was vulnerable right now; she couldn't leave her. She needed to buy time. "What... what if I don't?" A painfully idiotic question, but she was struggling to maintain her bearings as it was.

The hibri smirked, gesturing toward the rock beside Cybele. Biting the inside of her cheek, Cybele's gaze flicked over to reveal that while she'd been distracted by the first threat, another had been moving even closer. There was a second maxi on the rock, and this one looked particularly poised to fight. And, she realized with a jolt of further apprehension, a faber was quickly approaching on her other side.

Shit, shit, shit.

"Cybele Valloma," their leader said, deliberately dragging out the syllables, eyes sharp and cool. "A daughter of humans just as prominent as your friend over there."

She lifted her hand, ready to grab the source from Cybele's pocket. "I can let you go home, you know," she added, and gave a flat sort of smile. "You don't need to be locked up like she does."

Cybele slowly backed away, hands clutching the source in a futile attempt to keep it contained.

"You're not a threat, Cybele. Not really. You're just a pampered little human who has no idea what she's gotten herself into."

Cybele realized distantly that she'd run straight into a tree, the other maxi and faber on either side of her, and felt another flare of panic. Cornered.

"And yet you have the fate of our world in your hands. Is that really fair?"

Before Cybele could think of a response, before she could gather any of her bearings, there was a sudden shot. The jaguar maxi by Cybele's side collapsed paralyzed to the ground, and the other maxi sharply spun, attention immediately shifted to Cynth — and just like that, Cybele was forgotten. Her two remaining attackers both stalked away, leaving her with precious seconds to figure out what the hell she was going to do.

You're not a threat, Cybele.

Cybele forced herself to push off from the tree, source clutched so tightly in her fingers that she thought she might get burned. Her eyes swept the clearing before finding Will, handcuffed on the ground.

You're just a pampered little human.

Relaxing ever so slightly with the decision, Cybele took a step toward the hibri.

With no idea what you've gotten yourself into.

And that was when the world lost all coherence.

The whole clearing doubled, tripled, duplicates of its contents stretching as far as the eye could see. Suddenly, Cybele had no idea what she was doing — her gaze, which had settled so confidently on Will, now had no idea which way to look.

You have the fate of our world in your hands.

Cybele needed to leave while she still had the chance. Forgetting Will, she backed to the edge of the clearing. Cynth could fend for herself, she was sure — Cybele was the one with the source, the one with the power to change the world.

She drew in a shaky breath as the enormity of her circumstances sunk in. This — this was what would prove her to be the daughter her parents had always wanted, what society expected. A hibri-hater. This was who she was always meant to be, and if she came back with the very source the humans were searching for in her grasp, she would be hailed as a hero. She would open limitless possibilities for the humans of Selino, hand them an entirely new level of control.

Is that really fair?

But that wasn't what she wanted. Not after meeting Will. Not after working alongside Cynth, knowing first-hand just how that felt.

I can let you go home, you know. But Cybele didn't want to go home. She didn't want to fade back into the unremarkable girl she was before, a quietly traitorous human who would never accomplish anything more than what her parents allowed.

Cybele Valloma.

And so she ran.

She ran, legs scraping past the thick bramble as she raced from the clearing, catapulting herself over the tree that had brought them there, source still clutched in her hand.

She ran, away from Cynth Leeyung and the things she represented, breath hitching in her throat as panicked indecision swirled through her chest. What the hell was she going to do?

She ran, abandoning Will — she left Will Fen lying there, vulnerable to whoever those attackers were and, worse, the wrath of a blindsided Cynth. What the hell had she done?

She ran — right into two hibri.

Cybele crashed to a stop just before barreling into them, trying and failing to catch her breath as she scrambled a step back. Shit. She couldn't deal with another fight, not right now.

But this was the Almoons Festival, and they were probably just friends who happened to be wandering around the leafy outskirts of Monsum while waiting for the gates to open. They would assume her a particularly humanoid rana-human hibri, a reverse Will of sorts, and she would manage without any further altercation.

Just to be sure, she instinctively pushed a hand into her pocket. It was safest to conceal the source as much as possible; for all she knew, a glow had been escaping from some little crease in her warm brown skin.

It was then that she fully comprehended the hibri before her.

The first one must have been half caela, with brown skin and a spiky undercut. He was apologizing, Cybele realized belatedly, for nearly crashing into her — which was nice, she couldn't help but note, considering it was entirely her fault. She smiled politely and prepared to move forward —

— just as the second hibri, a part-anguis who looked distinctly more familiar, grabbed the first boy's arm. "Damon," he hissed in warning.

Cybele fought to keep from blanching. It was him — the hibri who'd tackled her at Tercy Cess's gravestone. The one who seemed familiar in a way she couldn't quite place, a relentless itch in the back of her mind.

And in the time it took her to register it, the hibri evidently named Damon had pulled a gun on her.

Startled, Cybele stepped back, immediately running through the situation in her mind. The anguis hibri had already proven his strength at the grave, but if she tried to run, Damon could easily shoot her. And even if he had his gun at the lowest setting, for the minutes Cybele would be paralyzed, the hibri could take the source from her with no conflict whatsoever. She wasn't sure what she would do with the source, but at the same time, blindly handing it over to violent hibri she didn't know... that could not be the plan.

The best choice she had now — the only choice — was to reason her way out.

"Wait," she managed, mind still darting through ways to try and get out of this. "Don't — don't shoot me!"

"You're the Valloma, aren't you?" the anguis said, voice tinted with mistrust. He truly was familiar, Cybele couldn't help but think again. Where the hell had she met him before?

"Cybele," she answered, with as much grace as she could muster. "I — " Focus, she told herself fiercely, and slightly lifted her chin. "I swear I'm not with Cynth."

Damon stiffened, his hold on the gun visibly tightening.

The anguis frowned; a bit of confusion had seeped into his expression the moment Cybele spoke her name. "Damon, wait. She — might not be lying."

"Addy — "

Addy. That struck a bell too, in an infuriatingly distant part of Cybele's mind. Before Will, when had she ever actually met a hibri?

Addy, or whoever he might have been, warily took a step in her direction. "We have backup," he warned, "so don't even try." He paused, seeming to carefully weigh his next words. "What... what are you doing here?"

And it was that.

Those words.

That tone of voice.

That wary kindness.

That hesitation.

It was only now that she realized, with startling clarity, who this boy was.

The hibri who'd saved her life.

She felt her legs go weak, long-buried memories suddenly returning in a new light.

Eight years ago, when she was only nine. Odo, a small human city in the east of Altiu with a large human hibri population, had become more lax with their hibri punishments. A pro-patria mayor candidate was gaining traction, and her father had decided to go to the city and meet publicly with like-minded politicians as a show of rebuttal. At least that was what Cybele vaguely recalled — she and her mom had only gone because the aristocratic woman had craved a change of scenery from the 'monotone of city life.' To a smaller, less impressive city. Cybele was likely remembering it wrong; they'd gone on countless trips before.

It had been pouring the day that changed the entire direction of her life. The candidate whose policies Valin liked was hosting a fundraiser gala, and Cybele was restless, surrounded by adults. So she snuck out into the rain, eager to explore Odo City on her own.

Cybele could remember, now, in vivid detail, the dress she'd been wearing. A willowy peach gown with a light lacy brocade, her hair up in a tight twisted bun that made her head itch. The bun had gotten ruined in the rain, of course; the dress, too, but for different reasons entirely.

It was dark out — only evening, but the rain seemed to blur the whole atmosphere. The Vallomas had been in the city a day or two already, and Cybele was used to the human sector. She wanted to explore further, maybe glimpse a patria from afar if she could. Which was an incredibly idiotic idea. The species were evil and twisted and unnatural. Cybele knew that — and it only made them more interesting.

She meant to stay just within the human boundaries, but in the hazy darkness, it was too easy to slip past the single guard posted by the hibri area's entrance. Cybele had always been too curious for her own good, and hadn't yet learned caution; it never occurred to her how bright her dress was, how clearly she stuck out.

It was hardly five minutes before a group of hibri children attacked her.

She was overpowered immediately. Unlike the Leeyungs, her family was more predisposed to teaching than fighting — something she'd always been proud of, since Cybele was never a girl who liked inflicting pain. While Cynth must have been shooting her first hibri, Cybele was reading about the distinctions between each patria species, doodling their anatomy on the margins of her assignments and wondering just what, exactly, programmed them all to be so unflinchingly wicked. What was the difference between maxis and regular cats; what had gone wrong? Her father said any sentient species that wasn't human was naturally depraved, but Cybele suspected it must have been more scientific than that. She thought she might like studying them more when she was older, trying to invent a way to curb their natural impulses and turn them into allies. Valin and his friends said that was impossible, that the only way to rule Selino was to vanquish all the patrias entirely. If it came to that, Cybele supposed it would be alright, but it seemed a shame not to at least try a different solution.

And all of that had been fine, until she was lying on the filthy wet ground with a group of hibri pummeling her and no way to defend herself. It was well and good to rationalize them within the constraints of New Earth, but she realized now her father was right. She hadn't done anything to these hibri, but in the space of one breath to the next, her new dress was in tatters and she was crying and helpless and maybe the species didn't deserve her curiosity at all.

That was when this boy came.

At first Cybele didn't see him — she couldn't. Her attackers were a blur around her, delivering inelegant slaps and shoves and shouting things at her: ingrata, traitor, filthy tide bringer.

The boy's voice was quiet, but then it rose to cut through the others'. "Nero? Don? What the hell are you doing?"

One of the hibri, a beefy half-maxi, took a step back. "Oh! Hey, Addy. Look what we found."

"Aidyn," he'd corrected, and then paused. "Trudy, this — this is a kid."

"She's a human," Trudy clarified readily, voice nearly cheerful. "They're not like us. Do you wanna help?"

One of the hibri delivered a particularly brutal kick to Cybele's side, and she squeezed her eyes and fists tight.

The rest of the conversation came in stilted bits. Of course not, and you're going to get us all in trouble, and you've taught her enough of a lesson, just let her go. Cybele tried to pull herself away from it, distance her mind. Everything hurt. She tasted gravel on her tongue — gravel and blood.

When she'd returned to consciousness, the hibri had all disappeared — the only one remaining was the half-anguis boy, looking to be around her age. He'd helped her to her feet, face hardly visible in the pouring rain. His voice was warily kind as he asked her hesitantly, "What... what are you doing here?"

Cybele stared at him, thunder bellowing in the distance. Her voice was hoarse when she whispered, "You saved me."

And that was the day that had changed everything for her. Because while five-sixths of the hibri Cybele met acted just as she'd been told they would — one had not. And that was impossible. Hibri were monstrous beasts, with no exceptions. If there was an exception, that meant everything Cybele had been taught might not be true.

She had always been interested in the species, but that was the day it shifted to something closer to fascination. An obsession, almost — a need to prove that there was something she wasn't being told, something more beyond the cardboard caricature cutouts of each patria. How could she possibly hate them when one had saved her?

Aidyn had helped her to the edge of the human sector, nervously chattering as she murmured short responses through bloodied teeth. She had gotten back to the party, somehow; it was a blur. Her father flaunted her wounds for publicity — look what the patrias did, just a poor little girl, those monsters. Her mother scolded her for hours about the foolishness of her actions — you should have known better, you could have died, those monsters. Neither asked how she'd gotten away, and she wouldn't have told even if they did. This was her secret to keep, she decided, and it became the root of something that grew and grew and grew.

And now she was here, and the boy who had saved her stood hardly a breath away, and perhaps those damned moons were the fates because their paths kept crossing and it couldn't only be coincidence.

Cybele took a long, deep breath in an attempt to steady herself. She looked at Aidyn, at his friend, at the gun. She tried to keep her expression neutral, though she was sure she'd betrayed her emotions long ago. She thought of the people she had left behind.

And then she opened her palm, allowing the source's light to spill out.

Aidyn's eyes widened at the same time Damon's brows shot up, and Cybele hurriedly began to speak, her words precarious in the air. "I — I left Cynth," she began. Hearing the indescribably dangerous statement aloud made her heart race faster, but she pushed on. "I ran with the source. And I don't hate the hibri. Please don't hurt me."

Damon turned to Aidyn, eyebrows still raised. "Does this mean I'm not allowed to shoot her?"

Much to Cybele's apprehension, Aidyn only replied, "Maybe later." His eyes traveled from the source in Cybele's hands back up to her face. "I know you, don't I."

Cybele swallowed. "You saved my life," she replied, and hesitated. "A long time ago. You — probably don't remember."

But judging from the way the hibri's eyes widened once again, he did remember. "You... you're the girl from the gate."

"The gate?"

Aidyn nodded. "I walked you to the human gate, remember? And you stopped the guards from punishing me, for getting too close." He let out a puzzled breath. "Hm. I forgot about that."

So had Cybele. The gate part, at least — it only seemed like common courtesy; what would the alternative be? Even as she wondered, she knew: taking his help then leaving him for the wolves, or — worse — capturing him herself. If she were Cynth, all of the hibri she encountered would have been dead in seconds, Aidyn included. But that wasn't who she was. And it wasn't who she ever wanted to be.

"Aidyn, what's happening?" Damon hissed, clearly on-edge. "This girl is a human."

Cybele could nearly hear that Trudy girl's voice in the back of her mind. They're not like us. A flipped version of the lie she'd been taught all her life. Humans and patrias weren't the same, but they weren't that damn different either.

"I think she's telling the truth," Aidyn said, still closely watching her face with some hesitation. "And she has the source. Cybele, right? What do you — what were you going to do with this?"

"I'm not sure," she answered after a long moment. "But I know I don't want the humans to have it. Honestly."

"Can you give it to us, then?" Aidyn asked.

In the same moment, Damon announced, "We need to take you to Ryne."

They stared at each other for a few beats before Aidyn relented. "Yeah. Okay. Ryne. But you should probably give us the source first, so she doesn't see you as a threat. And if you're not actually working for the humans, it should be fine."

Cybele stiffened, source clutched protectively between her fingers. This was her bargaining chip. Without it, they could do any number of things to her. No matter what she was doing right now, there was no way in hell it involved relenting possession of the little pearl.

"I'd — rather not," she forced herself to say, praying they wouldn't see it as an invitation to attack. Run, a voice in the back of her head urged, but she knew Damon could still shoot — and though Cybele wasn't one for signs, there was something more than coincidental about meeting Aidyn again. Like the damned moons had been plotting this.

Damon frowned, mistrust evident in every line of his face, and turned to Aidyn. "Yeah, that's it. Can I talk to you? Alone?"

"Sure," Aidyn responded, taking a step away. "Cybele, don't move."

Cybele nodded, heartbeat still pounding, and tried not to think about what she was getting herself into. She was going against her parents, her society, everything she'd been taught — but for nearly her entire life, hadn't she already been doing just that? This would only make her stance known, a declaration that could very well get her killed, but she realized she didn't care. This had to be better. Not for her isolated world of humans — for everyone. She was entering a new chapter of this screwed-up quest, and she was going to make it worthwhile.

Unbidden, her mind suddenly flashed back to Will, lying handcuffed and helpless on the meadow ground. And then Cynth, fighting hundreds of illusions at once. Despite herself, Cybele couldn't help but wonder: What would happen to them?

She had done the right thing. Deep down she knew it, knew she'd made the right choice.

But then why couldn't she quiet the question pressing into the edges of her thoughts, the unshakable premonition that pounded ceaselessly in her head, that made her wonder —

What would be the cost?

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OH SHIT?????????? THOUGHTS??????? WHAT IS YOUR *REACTION*??????

TO THIS EXCELLENT CHAPTER??????

SPEAKING OF...

...what an excellent chapter! You are probably thinking "oh wow Volt did so great"! Right! Right! 

Well haha funny story! It was actually me! 

Ref! 

I wrote this chapter!

I mean Volt helped so like some credit to -lightsabove but nah it was ME food_is_my_jam I would like to take the GLORY on account of Volt being BUSY and deadlines being UNMISSABLE

But yeah okay what do you think is coming?????? After this????????? Because this was the 37th of 40 chapters...

And as one final thing this is actually my last Almoons chapter I post cuz I'm going away and I'm so sad I hope you MISS ME and my EXCELLENT AUTHORS NOTES :((

With virtual hugs, purple Google features, and Cybele the Hex kinnie,

Guess Foreshadowing Clues (such as the ones sprinkled throughout the whole book about Aidyn and Cybele fOr tHiS vErY cHaPteR)

(G.F.C.)