Moon's Debt

Chapter Two :The Forbidden Forest

Sera'sPOV

I walk for what feels like hours before my legs give out.

The forest floor is cold and damp beneath me when I fall, and I don't try to get up immediately. I just breathe. Long, ragged breaths that are not quite crying, not quite not. The kind of breathing that happens when your body is processing something your mind hasn't caught up to yet.

He rejected me.

Even thinking it feels wrong. Like a word in the wrong language. Three years. I cooked in his kitchen and argued with his council members and learned to navigate his pack's political landscape like it was my own backyard. I loved him—not the idea of him, but the actual complicated, sometimes infuriating, always magnetic man. I loved him, and he stood in front of three hundred wolves and dissolved me like I was a contract that had expired.

Unverified bloodline.

I pull my knees to my chest. My wolf is very quiet now, in a way that frightens me. Not gone. I can still feel her, faintly, but something is wrong with her. The bond severance took something. I don't know how much yet.

I reach into my coat pocket.

The elder's paper is folded four times, soft with age. I open it carefully under the thin moonlight filtering through the canopy. It's a hand-drawn map, rough but readable. A route through this forest, marked in faded red ink, ending at a symbol I don't recognize: a hollow circle with a line through it.

Below the symbol, in handwriting so small, I have to hold it close: Obsidian Hollow. Tell them Thessaly sent you. Do not shift. Whatever you feel, do not shift.

I stare at this for a long time.

The Obsidian Hollow. Even inside the Ashveil packhouse, spoken at low volume and only when necessary, the name landed with a specific weight. The pack that lived beyond the cursed border. The wolves that other wolves refused to name in the daylight. They were called feral, dangerous, and isolated by choice. Nobody crossed into their territory and expected a welcome.

I look back at the map.

Then I look at the darkness behind me, the direction of the Ashveil lights, the music, and the life that just ended.

I folded the map and put it back in my pocket.

I get up.

The map is good. Whoever drew it knew this forest; it routed me around the worst of the undergrowth and away from the creek beds that would have soaked my boots. I walk through the night without stopping, partly because stopping means thinking, and thinking means feeling, and I am not ready for the full weight of what I am feeling.

The cursed border is not marked by anything I can see. But I feel it.

It hits like walking through cold water, a full-body pressure that makes my wolf slam against my ribs in sudden panic. She wants out. She wants to shift, to run, to deal with this physically, the way wolves deal with everything that frightens them.

Do not shift. The elder's words.

I press my hand against my sternum and walk through it.

On the other hand, the forest changes. Same trees, but older. The air smells different, darker, of woodsmoke and pine and something electric underneath, like the atmosphere before lightning. The moonlight falls differently here, heavier somehow.

I make it another mile before my body runs out of agreement.

The ground comes up fast.

I wake up to the sound of voices above me and the distinct sensation of being carried by someone very large.

"Brought her across the border on foot. In the dark."

"I can see that, Ren."

"The bond severance is recent. I can smell it on her. Someone threw her out."

A pause. Then, closer: "Which pack?"

"Ashveil markings on her bag."

Another pause. Longer.

The arms carrying me are not exactly gentle; they are careful, which is different. Carefully, it suggests the person holding me has thought about it and decided I'm worth the consideration. I file this away without opening my eyes.

"She's awake." The voice is low, close, and completely level. Not a question.

I open my eyes.

The man looking down at me is carrying me like I weigh nothing, which is both impressive and slightly insulting. He is dark, with dark hair, dark eyes, and dark everything, with geometric tattoos running from his left jaw down his neck and disappearing under his collar. He looks at me the way I imagine wolves look at things they haven't classified yet: direct, assessing, giving nothing away.

"Can you walk?" he asks.

"I could have been walking this whole time," I say, which is an absolute lie, but I feel strongly about establishing this.

Something crosses his face. Not quite a smile. More like the ghost of one, passing through and leaving no trace.

He sets me down. I don't fall, which I consider a personal victory.

"Who are you?" he asks.

"Sera," I say. "Seraphina Cole. Someone told me to come here. An elder, he said to tell you Thessaly sent me."

Every wolf around us goes still.

The man watching me, the one who carried me, goes very, very quiet in a way that is different from the others. It isn't a surprise. It's something older than a surprise.

"Get Thessaly," he says, to no one in particular.

Nobody moves for a second.

"Now," he adds, and they move.

He looks back at me. "I'm Dax," he says. "This is my pack."