He Rejected His Broken Luna. Now His Mad Wolves Beg for Her Touch

The first thing I register is the smell of blood. Not mine. Too sharp, too metallic, too wrong. It’s everywhere—on my tongue, in my nose, soaked into the sheets underneath me. For a moment I’m sure I’m still in that alley, pinned under a stranger’s weight while claws tear through my side. Then the light above me hums, soft and steady, and the ceiling is white, not sky. House. Packhouse. Safe. My heart doesn’t believe it. It hammers anyway. “Lys.” Roenan’s voice pulls me sideways, out of the dark. I blink hard and my vision snaps into focus: the familiar pale walls of the infirmary room, the heavy curtains drawn half-closed, the faint glow of warding runes along the doorframe. Roenan sits on the edge of the bed, forearms braced on his knees, fingers laced so tightly his knuckles are white. Meren stands at the foot of the bed, quiet and watchful. Garrik leans against the opposite wall, arms folded, jaw clenched. Three sets of eyes on me. Three different kinds of fear. My throat is raw when I try to speak. “Who’s… hurt?” Meren exhales, relieved I’m lucid, and comes closer. “You are. A little.” They gesture at my forearm. It’s bandaged, stinging under the tight wrap. “Mostly scrapes. You shifted halfway. Then back. Your wolf tried to take the hit and you pulled her off too fast.” I stare at the bandage. Not the blood I smelled. My stomach turns. “Then whose—” “Corren’s fine,” Roenan cuts in quickly. His voice is too controlled. “Nyla too.” The names hit me like another blow. Corren. Nyla. The last images rush back in fragments—sunlight in the courtyard, the ring of training swords, someone laughing, then a clang of metal too close to my ear and— Screaming. My screaming. I squeeze my eyes shut, but the memory pushes through anyway. The clang becomes the clash of that night months ago, when the rogue wolves came out of nowhere. The smell of their rage, the way the asphalt burned under my blood. The sound of Roenan’s howl over my own. My wolf had snapped awake and gone for the nearest shape that looked like a threat. This time that shape was tall and lanky and fourteen years old. I force my eyes open. “Tell me what I did.” Garrik snorts softly, a sound with no humor in it. “You don’t remember, then.” “Garrik,” Roenan warns. “No,” I rasp. “Let him. I need— I need to know.” Silence stretches, thick enough to choke on. Meren’s gaze flickers between us and then drops. Garrik looks at Roenan, gets the barest nod, and pushes off the wall. “You were helping Selvi run drills,” he says. “Kids were watching. Somebody dropped a blade near you. It hit the stone just wrong. Loud.” He snaps his fingers. “You froze. Then you weren’t you.” My fingers curl into the sheet. “I shifted?” “Halfway,” Meren says quietly. “Eyes, claws. Your human side wasn’t calling the shots.” I see flashes: Nyla’s bright braid, Corren’s grin fading into a flinch. My own hands, not quite hands, flexing. “I didn’t touch them,” I say. If I say it as a fact maybe I can make it true. Roenan’s jaw works. “You didn’t hurt them.” A beat. “You pinned Corren to the wall. Your claws were at his throat. You didn’t break skin.” “Because you got there,” Garrik adds. “Not because she stopped herself.” My chest caves in around his words. I can’t breathe past the image: Corren, eyes wide, back hitting stone, my shadow over him, my wolf convinced he’s a rogue breaking into our yard. I hear my own voice, from who knows when: I would never hurt one of ours. Apparently I already tried. “I heard you,” I whisper. “In my head. Ordering me down.” Roenan’s eyes flicker, something raw surfacing for a second. “You hesitated.” His tone is careful, but I hear the crack underneath. “You came back. Slowly. But if I’d been one second later—” He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to. Meren rests a hand lightly on my ankle. “This is the third time, Lysandra. The episodes are getting stronger, not weaker. Your nervous system is still reacting to— “—to the attack, I know.” I cut them off, because I’ve heard the words a dozen times: trauma response, misfiring triggers, the wolf taking control to keep us alive. Only she doesn’t know we survived. “But I didn’t touch him.” My voice sounds small even to my own ears. Garrik’s mouth flattens. “Tell that to the mothers who saw our luna with their pups under her claws.” My stomach swoops. I look at Roenan, needing him to contradict that, to say Garrik is exaggerating, that no one really sees me that way. He doesn’t. “I’m talking to them,” he says instead. “Making sure they understand this isn’t—” “Isn’t what?” The words scrape their way out of me. “Isn’t dangerous? Isn’t happening?” His gaze snaps to mine. For a heartbeat I see it all—love, fear, a helpless fury that has nowhere to go. “It is happening,” he says, voice low. “And it is dangerous. To you. And to them.” The air leaks out of me. I look away, blinking hard, focusing on the faint glow of the runes by the door. “I can learn to control it,” I say, because the alternative is unthinkable. “We can adjust training, I’ll stay away from the kids until—” “Until what?” Garrik’s tone sharpens. “Until you wake up with more than a bandage on your arm and don’t remember which pup you tore into?” “Enough,” Roenan snaps, alpha-steel in the word. Garrik falls silent, but the damage is already done. The picture is lodged behind my ribs now, jagged and cold. My wolf whines softly in the back of my mind, confused, ashamed. She thought she was protecting. I swallow hard. “If I leave,” I manage, “if I go to the outskirts for a while, it would be safer. For them.” The idea eats at me even as I say it. No pack, no bond hum under my skin, no familiar scents in the hallways. Just me and a wolf that won’t stay where she’s put. Roenan’s hand closes gently, firmly, around my wrist. His thumb strokes the inside where our bond mark lies, dimmer than it used to be but still there. “You’re not leaving,” he says. “We’re going to find a way to manage this. Together.” I want to believe him. But I can still feel the ghost of Corren’s throat under my claws, and the way the courtyard went silent when Roenan roared my name. And under his promise, I hear the unspoken edge that makes my skin go cold: If we can’t manage it, I don’t know what I’ll have to do.