Moonbound Rivals

Chapter 2: The Bound Calls

Lila stormed through the trees, her boots slapping wet earth with every furious step. The rain had eased into a miserable drizzle, but her blood still boiled hot enough to steam. Marcus kept pace behind her, nursing a split lip that was already healing.

“You let them walk away,” he growled. “We had them.”

“I let him walk away,” Lila corrected, voice tight. “Kael Blackthorn doesn’t show up in person unless he’s making a point. If I’d pushed, it would’ve turned into a full skirmish. We can’t afford that right now.”

Marcus spat blood into the ferns. “Since when do we care what we can afford? They killed Tommy and Sara. Kids, Lila.”

The names hit like silver bullets. She clenched her fists, nails biting into her palms. Two eighteen-year-olds on their first solo patrol. What was left of them had been found three days ago, arranged in a clearing like broken dolls. Eclipse scent had been all over the scene. Or so the trackers claimed.

Yet something about tonight nagged at her. Rylan’s smugness. The way Kael had looked at the bloodied deer carcass, almost… displeased.

They reached the Nightfang compound just as the clouds began to thin. The pack’s territory sprawled across an old logging camp reclaimed by the forest—sturdy log cabins, a central longhouse, and reinforced fences laced with silver thread and wolfsbane wards. Lights burned in the windows. Word traveled fast in a pack.

Alpha Elias Voss waited on the longhouse steps, arms crossed over his broad chest. Lila’s uncle. Her father’s brother. The silver in his hair and the hardness in his eyes made him look like a blade left too long in the rain. He didn’t speak until she stopped at the bottom of the steps.

“Report.”

“Eclipse scouts on the west creek,” she said flatly. “Poaching. We bloodied them. Kael himself intervened.”

Elias’s expression didn’t change, but the temperature around him seemed to drop. “Blackthorn showed his face?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t rip it off?”

Lila met his gaze. “Not without starting a war we might lose.”

A low murmur rippled through the dozen pack members gathered nearby. Some nodded. Others—younger hotheads—looked ready to shift and run the border right now.

Elias descended the steps slowly. “Your father would have torn his throat out on sight.”

“My father is dead,” Lila snapped, then caught herself. She softened her tone. “Because of them. But we’re down six wolves in the last two months. Not all of those kills smell like Eclipse. Something else is out there.”

Elias studied her for a long moment. Then he jerked his head toward the longhouse. “Inside. The rest of you—double patrols. No one hunts alone.”

The interior smelled of woodsmoke, roasted venison, and wet fur. Pack members nodded respectfully as Lila passed. She was the alpha’s niece and the best enforcer they had, but respect wasn’t the same as warmth. Not since her father’s death had elevated her status and isolated her in equal measure.

In the war room—little more than a big table covered in maps and old claw marks—Elias poured two glasses of whiskey. He slid one to her.

“Talk.”

Lila downed half the glass before speaking. “The Rogues. I think that’s what we’re dealing with.”

Elias froze mid-sip. “Fairy tales. Stories to scare pups.”

“Stories that match what’s happening. Bodies torn apart with more than wolf strength. Scents that don’t belong to any known pack. And the way the kills are displayed—like offerings. Dad used to tell those stories. Vargen. The First Wolf. The ones who never learned to control the beast.”

Her uncle’s face darkened. “Your father filled your head with too many old ghosts. The Eclipse killed him. That’s the only enemy we need to worry about.”

Lila slammed her glass down. “Then why did Kael warn me tonight? He said there are worse things in the woods than old grudges. He looked… concerned.”

“Concerned,” Elias sneered. “Or playing you. Blackthorns are cunning. They’ll say anything to weaken us.”

She wanted to believe him. The hatred was simple. Clean. It had kept her going through every lonely night since she watched them lower her father’s mangled body into the ground. But the memory of Kael’s storm-gray eyes lingered like a brand.

Later, alone in her cabin at the edge of the compound, Lila stripped off her damp clothes and stood under the scalding shower until her skin turned pink. The bruises from the fight were already fading. Werewolf healing was a gift and a curse—it erased evidence but never the memory.

She collapsed onto her bed, naked except for the thin silver pendant around her neck—an old family heirloom said to suppress the wilder urges of the shift. Sleep claimed her quickly.

The dream came fast and violent.

She stood in an ancient forest, older than Silver Hollow, older than any map. Massive trees with trunks wider than cars rose around her, their bark carved with crude wolf figures devouring men. The air reeked of blood and wet stone.

A shadow moved between the trees—huge, wrong. Not a normal wolf. Its fur seemed to drink the moonlight, and when it turned its head, red embers glowed where eyes should be. It opened its maw and laughed, a sound layered with human voices screaming.

Lila tried to shift, but her body wouldn’t obey. The creature padded closer, claws gouging furrows in the earth. Behind it, more shadows stirred. Dozens. Hundreds.

A voice whispered on the wind, ancient and hungry: The packs have grown soft. The bond calls. Blood will wake us.

Then the beast lunged—

Lila woke with a gasp, heart hammering. Sweat cooled on her bare skin. The pendant around her neck felt burning hot. She tore it off and stared at it, breathing hard.

A sharp knock sounded at her door.

She pulled on a tank top and shorts, grabbed the knife from under her pillow, and cracked the door open.

Kael Blackthorn stood on her porch.

Impossible. The wards should have screamed. Pack sentries should have torn him apart.

He looked as startled as she felt, rain dripping from his dark hair. His chest rose and fell rapidly, like he’d run the whole way. His eyes—those damn storm-gray eyes with the golden ring—dropped to the knife, then slowly traveled up her body before locking on her face.

“You,” she snarled, opening the door wider but keeping the blade ready. “How the hell did you get past the perimeter?”

“I don’t know,” he said, voice rough. “One moment I was in our territory. The next… I was here. Dreaming. Then running. Something pulled me.”

Lila’s dream flashed behind her eyes. The voice. The bond calls.

She stepped back, heart racing for entirely different reasons now. “Get off my land before I gut you.”

Kael didn’t move. His gaze held hers, intense and conflicted. “I saw it too. The ancient one. Vargen’s get. If we keep fighting each other, they’ll pick us off one by one.”

For a heartbeat, neither of them spoke. The air between them crackled. Enemy. Killer. Yet the pull was there—magnetic, dangerous, undeniable. Her wolf stirred with something far more primal than hate.

Lila raised the knife. “Leave.”

Kael’s hand shot out, faster than she expected, catching her wrist. Not hard enough to hurt, but firm. His touch burned.

“We don’t have time for this war anymore, Voss.”

His scent—cedar and wild earth—filled her cabin. Her pulse thundered in her ears. She could kill him right now. Or she could drag him inside and see what happened when two rival wolves stopped pretending they only wanted blood.

Instead, she twisted free and shoved him back a step.

“Next time I see you on my land, I won’t hesitate.”

Kael’s lips curved in a ghost of a smile—bitter, challenging. “Same, Little Wolf.”

He melted back into the trees, vanishing like smoke.

Lila slammed the door, chest heaving. She touched her wrist where his fingers had been. The skin still tingled.

Outside, the wind rose again, carrying a distant howl that didn’t sound like any pack wolf she knew.

Something ancient was waking.

And whether she liked it or not, Kael Blackthorn was now tangled in it with her.