The Rejected Luna: The Bond That Refused to Break

CHAPTER 7: The Mark in the Memory

~SARIA'S POV~

The silence he leaves behind feels like another rejection.

My pulse stumbles as I stare into the darkness where he disappeared.

I should walk away.

My feet refuse to move.

Part of me still believes he'll come back.

Inside me, my wolf gives a low, restless sound, like she only now realizes he is really gone.

I keep searching the trees anyway.

A cold breeze brushes across my skin, but it does nothing to quiet my thoughts.

My heartbeat refuses to settle. My fingers still remember his shirt.

What just happened?

The moment I touched him, everything shifted.

The pain did not disappear completely.

But for one impossible second, I could breathe without feeling like my chest was being torn apart.

My eyes open slowly.

“That wasn’t normal…”

And the way he looked at me made it feel like he knew something I didn't.

I curl my hands until my nails bite into my palms.

“And he left without a single answer.” I snap. “What kind of person does that?”

The forest gives me nothing back except silence.

The cold air suddenly feels too heavy to breathe.

I cannot hear insects. I cannot hear wind.

Even the leaves above me seem unwilling to move.

Yet the pull remains.

Not as strong as before. Just enough to feel like a thread stretched too far without breaking.

I hate admitting it.

“Nothing about this makes sense,” I say slowly.

Ice crawls down my spine immediately as another thought hits me harder.

No one can have two bonds.

Everything I have ever been taught says it's impossible.

Yet here I am.

I stare at the ground, then the trees around me, then the sky, as if I can force answers out of them.

It changes nothing.

The scent has already turned my life upside down.

How am I supposed to survive whatever this new bond is becoming?

“Why always me?”

The words leave my mouth with bitterness.

I wipe roughly beneath my eyes before the tears can fully fall. My skin feels cold where the tears have already escaped.

Suddenly, the second force jerks violently inside me.

I suck in a breath and grab my chest.

Fear flashes through me.

Not again.

The sensation drags at me like it wants to pull me back toward him.

Instead, it is followed by the memory of the night my family died.

I try to shove it away, but the force reacts and my mark heats beneath my skin.

A shout from one of the masked figures tears through my ears.

My parents stand in front of us.

My mother's arm stretches across us.

My father's voice is shouting something I can't hear.

My siblings are screaming beside me.

I hear my own voice too.

We screamed for help that night.

For the pack.

For anyone.

Nobody came.

The memory still hurts more than the attack itself.

Then another image flashes.

Someone faces me while I am bound by rope.

A wrist.

A dark-gold crescent burned into skin.

“This wrist again?”

The words come out harsher than I expect.

Nausea twists through my stomach.

For a second, the trees blur into streaks of shadow.

Tears split down my face as the memory vanishes before I can see the face attached to that wrist.

The pain hits so hard my knees give out beneath me.

I collapse against the cold ground, shaking.

The damp earth presses against my palms, cold enough to sting. Wet mud seeps beneath my fingers and clings beneath my nails as my tears fall into it.

I barely notice.

For several seconds, I stay where I am, trying to breathe through the images still flashing through my head.

“Wait.”

I freeze.

Then I brush my face roughly, trying to understand the images better.

The dark-gold.

The wrist.

They are somehow connected to the stranger I just met.

Because I remember clearly that a flash of gold caught my eye as his sleeve slipped.

I also remember the way my breath caught afterward without knowing why.

Heat flashes through me so fast my hands shake.

He could have been there that night.

Or maybe he tried to stop it.

I don't know which possibility scares me more.

My stomach drops.

No.

The forest around me narrows.

For a heartbeat, I almost convince myself he was not there.

So why did his expression change when his fingers closed tightly around his wrist?

And why did he look at my mark like he recognized it?

A faint laugh escapes my mouth.

The sound is hollow.

The damp earth suddenly feels warm beneath me.

The image of the wrist flashes again.

“He can’t be part of this,” I whisper quickly.

Please no.

The thought appears so suddenly it almost feels like my wolf speaking through me.

The memory did not show any face.

Only a wrist.

I cannot accuse someone without proof.

I do not even know his name.

And if he truly wanted me dead, he had opportunities in that forest.

Instead, he looked terrified of recognizing me.

My wolf never viewed him as a threat either.

Even through the fear.

Even through the discomfort.

She recognized him before I did.

I drag the back of my wrist across my face, trying to steady myself.

I want one normal moment.

Just one.

One evening where grief is not waiting around every corner.

One morning where nobody looks at me like a curse.

But I cannot let this go.

I cannot forget what happened to my family.

I will not.

Someone killed them.

Someone destroyed my life and disappeared afterward like it meant nothing.

The way the stranger reacted suddenly flashes through my mind.

The tension in his face.

The way he stepped back afterward.

Like answering me would have been more dangerous than walking away.

My teeth grind hard enough to hurt.

The branch beside me breaks beneath my grip as I force myself to my feet.

The c***k echoes through the trees.

My gaze drops to the broken wood in my hand.

And I didn't even realize I was holding it that hard.

My eyes drift shut.

Every instinct tells me to walk away.

To forget the stranger.

To pretend tonight never happened.

I can't.

If that mark is connected to the m******e, then tonight is the closest I have ever come to the truth.

I am done standing still while other people decide what happens to me.

If he knows something about the bond, about the m******e, I will find him again and force answers out of him myself.

For a long moment, I don't move.

The forest is silent again.

Somewhere above me, a single leaf breaks free and drifts to the ground.

I watch it land.

My breathing finally begins to steady. But my thoughts don't.

The anger fades first.

What remains hurts more.

I thought finding answers would make this easier.

Instead, I feel even more lost.

The stranger.

The m******e.

The dark-gold wrist.

They refuse to leave my mind.

Yet another ache pushes through them.

Older.

Deeper.

One I have been trying not to touch at all.

Darian.

The broken bond throbs faintly inside me.

A sharp sting runs through my neck, and the scent slowly begins to rise around me.

I have always wondered why it repels others when it never feels dangerous to me.

The thought barely forms before the ceremony flashes through my mind piece by piece.

The way Darian's jaw tightened.

The way his shoulders stiffened.

The way he looked toward the council before rejecting me, like the choice was never fully his.

They did not gather to celebrate us.

They gathered to erase me.

The truth lands like a blade between my ribs.

And then the faint connection tightens inside me.

My gaze drops to the dirt beneath my boots.

Nobody spoke.

Nobody stopped him.

A broken sound escapes my throat before I can stop it.

Darian rejected me.

The only person who seemed connected to me walked away without a single answer.

For one dangerous moment, exhaustion almost wins.

If I disappeared tonight...

Would anyone actually come looking for me?

Or would they finally have the peace they wanted?

The thought settles heavily in the silence.

Then anger follows immediately behind it.

No.

I refuse to disappear quietly for people who already decided my life means nothing.

My hand tightens over the fractured crescent.

It pulses beneath my palm.

Once.

Twice.

Then heat explodes through my skin.

My wolf whimpers inside me.

She already knows.

Something worse is coming.