Silver Howl

Moon-Tied Hearts

“You will be tended to,” he said, voice flat. “You will not remain in the yard.” She tried to stand, and the chains tugged at her wrists as if they might pull her from the wall. Selene had learned to breathe through pain. She kept her eyes on Dante. “I am no burden,” she said. “And I do not want your pity.”

He crouched and placed his palm against the cold metal on her wrist as if assessing something only he could feel. Up close, his jaw was cut and shadowed, and there was a tiredness in his eyes she had not expected. She looked away at first because she feared what she might see reflected there. Pride, survival, the terrible loneliness of a leader. For a moment, she imagined him alone on the ridge, howling until the stars grew thin.

“You are not under my pity,” he said softly. “You are under my claim.”

The words landed like a stone. Around them, murmurs rose and fell. Some faces hardened into staunch agreement. Others tightened with suspicion. The pack elders exchanged glances that spoke of duty and of old laws. Selene felt the heat rise in her cheeks, a burning shame that she could not place.

“Claimed?” Garrick’s voice cut across the yard. The headhunter had returned from the skirmish and looked at her with the sourness of a man whose world had been altered. “This is madness. We saved this place. She is a stranger.”

“You are a hunter,” Dante said without disrespect. “I am the Alpha. The choice lies with me.”

“There are rites,” the oldest elder said. He had the slow, bitter cadence of someone who had watched too many seasons. “You cannot simply announce a claim in the open. There are obligations and consequences. The council will have to be consulted.”

Dante did not answer at once. He rose and turned, eyes sweeping the yard as though weighing each soul there. Then he looked back at Selene, and the hardness softened fractionally. “I will call the council,” he said. “But until then, she will remain under my protection.”

People stepped closer as if that phrase might be a charm or a danger. Selene felt hands on her shoulders, not unkind but not entirely gentle. A healer led her toward the longhouse where the wounded were laid out on straw. The healer’s fingers examined her arm, the cuts and the angry rawness, the bruises blossoming like flowers under the skin.

“You should lie down,” the healer said. “We will clean you and bind you.”

Selene’s jaw tensed. She had always been the one to patch others, not to be softened into helplessness. Yet the muscles in her legs had a fatigue that was more than physical. She let the healer guide her to a straw pallet and lay back. The healer worked with steady competence and conversation that was more ritual than news.

“He is an old wound,” the healer observed, breathing warm near her ear. “But he is a strong one. An Alpha that holds. Blood runs deep in his veins. It is rare for an outsider to touch him so.”

Selene did not answer. She listened to the murmur of the village outside. She felt watched and exposed and strangely tender in a way that made her teeth ache. The memory of Dante lifting a fallen Bloodfang from the stones, the fierceness that had turned the tide of battle, sat behind her ribs like a strange, dangerous ember.

When the healer finished, she slipped a coarse blanket over Selene’s shoulders. The iron on her wrists remained, but they were loosened. Someone had taken pity on the marks of her struggle.

Later, when the sun rose higher and the pack had settled into an uneasy routine of cleanup, a guard brought a message from Dante. He had a private room for her to rest in until the council met. It was not a cell.

“You do not have to,” the guard said, his voice uncertain as if his loyalty was split. “He insists.”

Selene wanted to say no. She wanted to keep her distance. The thought of being alone with him and his dominating presence made the back of her knees weaken. But the morning had stretched thin around her; she had slept little, and her body had no appetite for more tests. She agreed more from necessity than trust.

The chamber was simpler than she expected. A pallet, a basin, a small carved chest that smelled faintly of cedar and smoke. There were tokens of Dante’s life she did not expect to see. A worn scarf with his scent still woven into it. A leather-bound ledger stamped with the Shadowfang sigil. It was neither ostentatious nor cruel. It was the room of a man who had fought to keep a place for others.

He waited there, standing by the shutter, not addressing her at first. When he turned, the lines of his face softened. He moved close enough that she could see the fine scar that streaked from his ear to his jaw. He could have towered and threatened, but he chose stillness.

“You will sleep,” he said. “You will eat. You will not wander.”

“I can manage my own mind,” she said sharply, because she could not say anything other than that. She could not say that his presence unspooled something in her that she had kept wrapped for years.

He nodded, not offended, only acknowledging the truth of her words. His hand hovered near the bowl of water, and then he dipped his fingers into it and lifted his hand to her mouth. She took the water because her throat felt like sand. He watched her drink, and when she swallowed, his gaze did not leave her face.

“You are more than a hunter,” he said in a voice that did not seek to flatter. “You are a crossroads. The Bloodfangs came not by chance. There are forces at work that predate your village and mine. For that reason, I will claim you. I will keep you. I will not let you be used.”

His certainty trembled something loose in her chest. She had spent years pretending that she wanted nothing tied to her. The life of a tracker had been a deliberate solitude, a line she told herself would protect others. Yet when his words folded around her like a blanket, the line blurred.

“You will not have my obedience,” she said, and yet she did not pull away from the small warmth of his fingers on her chin.

He smiled then, something close to admiration and something older. “I do not want your obedience. I want your truth.”

A knock sounded on the shutter then, and the guard’s voice carried in from the corridor. The council had been called. Voices rose and fell like a tide. Outside the longhouse, the pack gathered in a ring. A decision will be made.

Dante’s hand tightened at her wrist for a heartbeat, not rough but owning. “When they ask the questions, you must answer honestly,” he said. “If you hide, they will tear you apart. If you stand with me, you will keep standing.”

She met his gaze. In the gold of his eyes, she saw not only a claim but a promise that both thrilled and frightened her. The moment stretched until they both heard a distant murmur swell into clarity.

“Bring her forth,” the elders cried. Selene rose, the chains heavy and warm. She walked toward the ring of faces that had watched her with suspicion since the night she walked into their fight. Dante walked beside her, a shadow and a guard and something far more complicated.

The council’s questions would come. The truth would be pried and measured, and judged. And under the naked light of the morning, she felt something tender and dangerous stir. It was not love, not yet. It was the beginning of a pull she could not name and did not want to fight.

When she stepped into the center of the ring, the elders leaned forward. The pack held its breath. The future narrowed to one slow, inevitable thing. What she would admit next would change everything.