THE ALPHAS LOST LUNA

Chapter 2

KEALS POV

The bond snapped taut so hard I staggered.

I was halfway across the training yard when it hit. Raw. Panicked. Wrong. Not the usual quiet pull under my ribs. Something that tasted like lightning and blood and the exact moment before a storm breaks open the sky. My wolf surged hard against the inside of my skin, claws scraping at the edges of my control. I spun toward the forest without thinking, heart slamming against my ribs hard enough to hurt.

Heaven.

Her name was the only clear thought left in my head. I was already running.

The night air tore past my face. Behind me someone called my name. Lila, maybe, her voice sharp with surprise. I didn’t stop. The bond was screaming in a way it never had before, a raw edge of fear mixed with something brighter, something that felt like it was tearing open from the inside. I hit the tree line at full speed and kept going. Branches whipped across my arms. Roots tried to catch my boots. I didn’t slow. The forest was darker under the canopy, the moonlight broken into thin white blades, but I didn’t need light. The bond was a live wire under my sternum, pulling me deeper, faster, until my lungs burned and my wolf was half-shifted and furious behind my eyes.

I found the place where the path narrowed. Disturbed earth. A dark smear of blood on a low root. Her bag half-spilled across the leaves. I did not find her. The bond was still there, still pulling, but the direction had gone strange. Distant. Muffled. Like someone had wrapped it in thick cloth and dragged it somewhere I couldn’t reach.

I dropped to one knee and pressed my fingers to the blood. Still warm. Still hers. My wolf howled inside my chest, a sound that never made it past my teeth. I stayed there longer than I should have, breathing hard, staring at the empty path while the night settled back into silence around the place where she had been.

Something had taken her. Or something inside her had finally woken up and taken her with it.

I rose with the bag in one hand and the scent of her blood sharp in my nose, and turned back toward the pack house with the kind of cold that settles in the bones and doesn’t leave. Lila was waiting at the edge of the trees, arms crossed, eyes wide.

“Kael? What happened? You just—”

I walked past her without answering. The bond was still pulling, weak and wrong and far away. Every step toward the lights of the pack house felt like another failure I didn’t know how to name.

I had spent weeks putting careful distance between us. I told myself it was safer. That if I stayed close, if I let the bond pull the way it wanted to, I would only end up hurting her more. There were things she didn’t know. Things I had sworn I would never tell her. I thought keeping her at arm’s length would protect her. I was wrong. The space I built became the thing that drove her into the dark alone. And now the bond was fraying in my chest and I had no one to blame but myself.

Somewhere out there Heaven was gone, and for the first time since the bond locked into place between us, I had no idea how to find her. I should have gone after her earlier. I should have said something. Instead I let her walk into the trees alone, and the trees took her.