CH5 Do Not Run From Me
1171 Words
Run.
The word entered the road like a blade.
Every rider froze.
Every horse trembled.
And I stood three steps from Aric Draven while the thing wearing his face smiled at me with hunger in its eyes.
I should have obeyed.
I had spent my whole life learning when to move, when to kneel, when to lower my gaze before a stronger wolf decided my breathing offended them. Running should have been easy.
But my feet stayed planted in the dirt.
The black moon watched through the trees.
My marked palm burned bright enough to silver my fingers. The pain no longer felt like pain. It felt like a door opening from the wrong side.
Veyra’s voice cut across the road. “Kaia, back away.”
The rogue in Aric’s grip hung limp now, his throat crushed beneath fingers that were no longer fully human. Aric’s shoulders rose and fell once, slowly, as if whatever lived inside him was learning the shape of his body from the inside.
His silver-veined gaze stayed on me.
“Run,” he said again.
Rougher this time.
A warning.
A plea.
I swallowed. “No.”
The riders shifted.
Veyra cursed under her breath.
Aric tilted his head, and the movement was too wolf to belong to a man. “You do not know what you are refusing.”
“I know what running looks like.”
His mouth curved. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
My voice shook. I hated that. So I steadied it.
“I ran inside my own skin for twenty years. I am tired.”
Something flickered behind his eyes.
Not enough.
The black lunar wolf stepped around him, almost flesh now, its shoulders high as a horse, silver fire burning along its spine. Its gaze pinned me where I stood.
Not prey.
Not mate.
Something older.
The mark on my palm pulsed once.
The wolf lowered its head.
Veyra saw it. Her face changed.
“Alpha,” she said carefully. “Your wolf is responding to her.”
Aric’s jaw tightened. “I know.”
“Then let her command it.”
“No.”
The refusal was instant.
It struck harder than the growl.
I looked at him. “Why not?”
“Because you do not know what a command costs.”
“Then tell me.”
His eyes flashed. “A command is not a word, Kaia. It is blood. It is surrender. If you reach for my wolf and fail, it will tear through you to find the part of you that called it.”
The riders went silent.
The remaining rogues had stopped attacking. Two lay dead on the road. The others crouched between trees, watching me with wet yellow eyes.
Moon-blood.
She wakes the old curse.
Their words clung to me like smoke.
My palm burned again.
The black wolf took one step closer.
Aric growled. “Do not.”
The wolf ignored him.
For the first time since I had met him, Aric Draven looked afraid.
Not of the rogues.
Not of death.
Of me touching the wrong part of him.
That should have sent me backward.
Instead, it pulled me forward.
One step.
Then another.
The wolf’s lips lifted.
Aric’s voice broke low. “Kaia.”
My name in his mouth stopped me more effectively than his warning.
Not moonless.
Not anomaly.
Kaia.
“You asked what I was,” I said. “I do not know. But I know what I am not.”
Silver light crawled up my wrist.
“I am not running.”
Aric’s face hardened. “Stubborn girl.”
“Yes.”
Then I placed my marked hand against the black wolf’s muzzle.
The world stopped.
No sound.
No road.
No trees.
No riders.
Only cold so deep it felt ancient.
Something opened beneath my palm.
Not a mind.
A hunger with memories.
I saw flashes that were not mine: a child locked beneath Draven Keep while men in silver masks chanted around a blood circle. A boy with Aric’s eyes chained to a stone floor. A wolf too large for any body, forced into human bones. A woman screaming, Hide the moonless one before his bloodline finds her.
Then the wolf looked through me.
Not at me.
Through me.
For the first time in my life, something inside the dark answered.
Not with a howl.
With a heartbeat.
My knees buckled.
Aric caught me before I hit the road.
The moment his arms closed around me, the black wolf collapsed into shadow and rushed back into his body. Aric jerked as if struck. His hand gripped my waist. His breath hit my face, sharp and unsteady.
The silver veins beneath his skin faded.
Not completely.
Enough.
Veyra exhaled. “Moon above.”
I barely heard her.
Aric’s face was too close.
His eyes searched mine with a fury that did not know where to land.
“I told you not to touch it.”
“I heard you.”
“You disobeyed me.”
“I did.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth for half a breath.
Then snapped back to my eyes.
The air between us changed.
Danger did not leave.
It became something with heat.
He released me as if control had cut his hands open.
“Get on the horse.”
I should have been grateful.
Instead, anger rose, sudden and clean.
“You do not get to order me after I stopped your wolf from killing everyone.”
Veyra went very still.
One of the riders made a sound like a swallowed prayer.
Aric stared at me.
Then, to my shock, he laughed once.
Quiet.
Dark.
Almost unwilling.
“You stopped it once,” he said. “Do not mistake that for safety.”
“I never do.”
His expression shifted.
He had not expected that answer.
Neither had I.
A rogue moved in the trees.
Veyra threw a blade without looking. It struck the creature through the throat. The others scattered into the dark.
“Let them run,” Aric said.
Veyra looked at him. “They saw her mark.”
“They were meant to.”
That chilled me more than the black moon.
I turned to him. “What does that mean?”
Before he could answer, the dead rogue at our feet twitched.
Its broken mouth opened.
A voice came out that was not its own.
“The hidden blood has crossed into Draven shadow.”
The riders raised their blades.
Aric stepped in front of me.
The corpse smiled.
“The old debt wakes.”
My mark flared.
Pain folded me in half.
Aric caught me again, but this time his touch did not steady me. Something under my skin pulled toward the corpse, toward the black moon, toward a place I had never seen and somehow remembered.
The dead rogue’s yellow eyes turned silver.
Then it spoke in my mother’s voice.
“Kaia, do not trust the wolf who carries you.”
- Writer
