The Soul’s Chorus

Chapter 9

The Hunter’s Moon Festival was not for quiet reflection. It was a roar. A wave of sound, scent, and motion that crashed against the stones of the Grand Courtyard. Torches, fueled by pungent, oily resin, stabbed at the twilight, their light leaping and wild. The smell was overwhelming: roasting meat, spiced wine, sweat, and the musky-sweet scent of hundreds of wolves gathered close.

For Chloe, it was a new circle of hell.

She stood on a raised wooden dais beside Corbin’s throne-like chair. She was on display, a living part of the decor. Her dress was deep crimson tonight, the color of the coming Blood Moon. It was heavier than any before, the sleeves long and tight, the collar high enough to hide the red line the silver chain had carved into her skin, though its burn was a constant, screaming whisper. Her hair was pinned up with cruel, beautiful silver pins, forcing her to hold her head at a stiff, regal angle. The silver streak was fully visible, a badge she did not want to wear.

Corbin sat beside her, a king holding court. He drank from a horn cup, laughed with his advisors, and accepted tribute from pack membersa basket of late apples, a finely tanned hide, a newly forged blade. Each time a gift was given, his hand would come to rest on Chloe’s arm, just above her wrist. A claim. A reminder. See what is mine.

Kaelen stood at the base of the dais, two steps to the left. His position was strategic, a pivot point where he could watch the crowd and watch her. He was a statue of dark leather and quiet intensity. His eyes never stopped moving. They tracked the flow of the crowd, noted unfamiliar faces, judged the level of drunkenness. But again and again, against his will, they were pulled upward to the dais. To the rigid line of Chloe’s back. To the faint tremor he could see in her pinned-up hands when Corbin’s grip tightened on her arm.

The festival swirled around them. Drums began a deep, pounding rhythm that vibrated up through the stones into Chloe’s feet. A flute joined in, a wild, sharp sound that seemed to cut the night air. The dancing began.

It was not a gentle dance. It was a mimicry of the hunt. Wolves paired off, moving in circles, advancing and retreating, their steps syncopated with the drumbeats. There were whoops and howls that were not quite human. The energy was contagious, animal, and it made Chloe’s own blood itch beneath her skin with a trapped, frantic feeling.

“They celebrate the old ways,” Corbin said, his mouth close to her ear so she could hear him over the din. His breath smelled of wine. “The strength of the pack. The clarity of the chase. You will dance with me later. We will show them unity.”

The thought of being in his arms, moving to this primal rhythm, made her stomach turn. She gave a small, stiff nod, her eyes fixed on the whirling crowd.

A group of young warriors, energized by drink and dance, began a more aggressive, leaping version of the steps. They bumped into others. A woman shrieked with laughter as she was spun too fast. The ordered chaos tipped toward true chaos. The press of bodies near the dais grew thicker, hotter.

Kaelen took a step up, putting himself half on the dais, his body a barrier between the revelers and the platform edge. He didn’t look at her. His shoulder was close to her leg. She could see the tension in the corded muscle of his neck.

Then, a drunk, laughing man stumbled backward from the dance circle, his arms flailing. He crashed into the side of the dais, right near Kaelen. The platform shuddered. Chloe’s balance shifted. Instinctively, her hand shot out, grasping for stability.

Her fingers did not find the wooden rail. They brushed against Kaelen’s shoulder.

It was the briefest touch. Through the leather of his vest, she felt the solid, unmovable strength of him. He didn’t flinch away. Instead, his own hand came up, not to touch her, but to brace against the post beside her, his arm creating a sudden, firm wall between her and the stumbling man. The drunk righted himself, apologizing slurrily before being swallowed by the crowd.

The moment lasted three heartbeats. Her fingers on his shoulder. His arm, a barricade beside her. The noise and chaos seemed to fade into a muffled roar. All she was aware of was the heat coming off him, so different from Corbin’s controlled coolness. A heat that spoke of a living, breathing person, not a monument.

She snatched her hand back, her face flushing. He lowered his arm, his gaze sweeping the crowd again, his jaw tight. But she saw the rapid pulse beating at the base of his throat.

Corbin’s hand landed on her other shoulder, pulling her attention back. “Clumsy fool,” he muttered, his eyes on the crowd, not on her moment of panic. “This is why we need guards. To keep the chaos at bay.”

The drums reached a frenzied peak. The dance became a swirling stampede of bodies. The tide of the crowd surged again, pushing more people toward the dais. Kaelen was forced to step fully onto the platform now, standing close, his back to them as he faced the pack, a definitive human shield.

Chloe was trapped between two forces. Corbin’s possessive hand on one shoulder. And the solid, silent presence of Kaelen just inches from her other side, a wall against the storm.

And then, in a lull as the music shifted, Kaelen half-turned. It was a small adjustment of his stance, a check on her, on Corbin, on the space behind them. As he turned, his eyes met hers.

It was not a planned look. It was a collision.

In the flickering, angry light of the torches, his green eyes held none of the cold calculation of the festival, none of the blank duty of the guardian. They were wide, intense, and full of a mirrored understanding. He saw her crimson prison of a dress. He saw the forced poise, the hidden tremor. He saw the suffocating display.

And she saw him. Not just the Lunarth, but the man isolated in a different way. The soldier used as a piece of scenery. The keeper of borders who was now tasked with guarding a gilded cage he clearly hated. She saw the frustration in the tight line of his mouth, the protective anger in the set of his shoulders, and beneath it all, a shared, desperate loneliness.

The spark from the garden was not a spark this time. It was a current. A silent, screaming recognition passing between them in the crowded, noisy dark. I see you. You are trapped. So am I.

It lasted only a second. Less. But it was a lifetime.

Kaelen’s gaze broke away first, snapping back to the crowd, his professional mask slamming down so hard she almost felt the click. But his chest rose and fell with a deep, unsteady breath.

Chloe felt her own breath catch, a lump of raw emotion stuck in her throat. The burn of the silver chain, the grip of Corbin’s hand, the press of the crowd it all melted into a single, sharp point of clarity. She was not alone in this.

Corbin chose that moment to lean in again. “You see the strength of your new pack, my dear,” he said, his voice dripping with satisfaction. “All this vitality. All this power. Soon, it will all be for you. To enjoy. From the proper place. At my side.”

He meant it to be a promise. It sounded like a life sentence.

The music swelled again. Chloe kept her eyes forward, on the chaotic dance, but she no longer saw the dancers. She saw the afterimage of that look. A flicker of green in the firelight. A look that was not about duty or sentiment, but about something older, truer. A look that felt, for the first time, like a key.