Moonlit Bond

CHAPTER 6: THE NAME I DON’T KNOW

Vexa’s POV

I don’t know when he started living in my head.

That’s the frightening part, not the fact that he’s there, but that I can’t trace the moment he arrived. He isn’t a memory with edges. He’s more like a stain that soaked into fabric before I noticed it was wet.

Sometimes it’s his eyes. Sometimes it’s the way his presence felt like standing too close to fire: warm, dangerous, impossible to ignore. And sometimes, it’s nothing at all. Just a pull. A quiet, insistent tug beneath my ribs, as if my body remembers something my mind refuses to name.

I hate it.

I hate that a stranger has a place in me when my own pack still looks at me like I don’t fully belong.

I tighten my fingers around the edge of the training staff as the morning fog lifts from Silverclaw’s training grounds. Dirt clings to my bare feet. The air smells of pine sap and old sweat. Warriors move around me, some sparring, some sharpening blades, some watching.

Always watching.

Rhea catches my eye from across the clearing. Her dark hair is tied back, her shoulders squared, jaw set in that way she gets when she’s pretending not to worry about me. She gives me a small nod, the kind that says I’m here without saying anything at all.

I nod back.

That’s all we can do these days.

“Again,” barked Elder Morven from the stone steps near the armory. His voice is gravel and age, sharp with impatience. “You hesitate, Vexa. Hesitation gets warriors killed.”

I swallow and lift the staff again.

I hesitate because my head isn’t empty.

I hesitate because when I close my eyes, I see a stranger’s face instead of my own fear.

I move this time faster. The staff swings. Wood meets wood. Sparks of pain ripple through my arms when I block a strike from Joran, one of the younger warriors. He smirks like he expects me to fail.

I don’t.

I twist, duck low, sweep his legs. He hits the ground with a grunt, surprise flashing across his face.

The watching murmurs rise.

Good.

Let them murmur.

But the victory doesn’t settle in my chest the way it should. Instead, something else stirs an echo of another presence, another moment. Green eyes. A voice I can’t remember clearly, only the way it made my pulse jump.

Focus, Naira murmurs inside me.

Her voice is quieter lately. Watchful.

“I am,” I whispered back, breathless.

But even as I say it, I know I’m lying.

—

It happens near the forest edge, just after midday.

The air shifts first. Not wind something sharper. Wrong.

Naira stiffens so suddenly it makes my skin prickle.

Rogues.

The word barely forms in my mind before the scream cuts through the trees.

Steel rings. Someone shouts. Another scream closer.

Everything erupts at once.

“Positions!” someone yells. “Protect the den!”

Rhea is already moving, sword flashing as she runs past me. I grab my staff and follow, heart pounding, thoughts scattering like startled birds.

Three of them break through the underbrush ragged, eyes wild, scent thick with hunger and desperation. One lunges at a healer’s apprentice, a girl named Sella, who freezes where she stands.

I don’t think so.

I move.

The staff connects with bone. The rogue stumbles. Another slashes at me, claws grazing my arm. Pain blooms, sharp and hot. I gasp but don’t stop.

Naira surges forward not fully, not completely, but enough.

Now, she urges.

I strike again, harder. Something inside me snaps into alignment. The world sharpens. The sounds become clearer, the movements slower.

For one terrifying second, I feel powerful.

Then it’s over.

The rogues retreat, dragging their wounded with them. Silence crashes down, heavy and shaken. Blood stains the dirt, some of it mine.

Hands grab my arm.

“Vexa, are you hurt?”

Rhea’s face swims into view, eyes frantic. Behind her, Elder Morven mutters prayers. Healers rush forward.

“I’m fine,” I say automatically, though my arm burns and my legs feel unsteady.

But it isn’t the pain that’s making me tremble.

It’s the aftermath.

Because in the middle of the fight, right between fear and instinct, I felt it again.

That pull.

Not Naira.

Him.

Like he was watching. Like some invisible thread tightened around my chest, steadying me, anchoring me.

It makes no sense.

It scares me more than the rogues did.

—

Later, when the moon begins to rise and Silverclaw settles into uneasy quiet, I sit alone near the healer’s den. My arm is bandaged. My thoughts are not.

Rhea wanted to stay. I told her to go.

I don’t trust my voice tonight.

You’re unraveling, Naira says gently.

“I know,” I whisper.

I press my fingers into the dirt, grounding myself. I should be thinking about the attack. About how close it came to the den. About the way Elder Morven watched me afterward, not with praise, but with calculation.

Instead, my mind betrays me.

Green eyes.

A stranger’s presence, calm and heavy and far too familiar.

Why do you feel like something I lost?

I don’t even know his name.

The thought makes my chest ache in a way that has nothing to do with wounds.

I’m angry at myself for it for letting someone who doesn’t exist in my life take up space in my heart. For craving a connection when I can barely hold onto my place here.

Voices drift from the council hall. Kale’s voice among them was controlled, unreadable. I don’t look toward the sound. I don’t want to wonder what he thinks of me now. I don’t want to measure myself against his expectations.

I’m tired of being measured.

Something is coming, Naira says quietly.

“I know.”

Not a vision. Not a prophecy.

Just a certainty that settles into my bones.

The stranger in my thoughts isn’t a coincidence. The pull isn’t imagination. And whatever is awakening inside me doesn’t care whether I’m ready or not.

I draw my knees to my chest and stare at the moon as it climbs higher, pale and watchful.

I don’t know who I’m becoming.

I only know that whoever he is, whoever that stranger might be, he's already tangled in my fate.

And I have a terrible feeling…

…that when I finally meet him again, everything I’m fighting to hold together will shatter.