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

Chapter 8 – The Cut She Hears Coming

By the time I get back to the cabin, my clothes stink of smoke and my arms hum with the good, solid ache of work.

For the first time in months, I feel almost… steady.

The fire’s out. No one died. I stood in the heat, heard the crackle, smelled the burn, and I didn’t disappear into that alley. I stayed.

My wolf is tired, but she’s here. Present. Proud, even.

I’m halfway up the steps when I feel it.

A ripple down the bond, sharp and wrong, like someone plucked the thread between my chest and the pack with claws instead of fingers. The hair on my arms lifts.

“Roen?” I murmur, reaching for him along the tether.

His answer comes a second later, but not the way I expect.

Not as a thought, not as an emotion. As absence.

The hum that’s always there, low and warm at the back of my ribs, stutters. For one heartbeat, it goes thin. Whisper-faint. As if something—or someone—is pressing against it from the outside, testing for weak spots.

My breath catches. “No. No, no—”

“Lys.”

I spin.

Roenan stands at the edge of the clearing, not on the path but in the shadow of the trees. He looks like he did the night he pulled me out of that alley: bone-white under soot, eyes too bright, shoulders braced against an invisible storm.

“Talk to me,” I say. My voice comes out too sharp. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” he snaps, then flinches like he’s just lied to both of us. “Not yet.”

The bond flickers again, a sick, flicking lightswitch feeling under my sternum.

Pain lances through my chest, brief and hot. My knees nearly buckle.

“Roenan.” My vision blurs at the edges. “What is that?”

His throat works. For a second, I think he won’t answer.

Then the words rip out of him, raw.

“They forced a preliminary rite,” he says. “In the council. Without you. A… a first cut. To show me it can be done. To show me what happens if I don’t choose it myself.”

I stare.

“You let them touch our bond,” I whisper.

“I didn’t let them—” His hands fist at his sides. “They ambushed. Vessira invoked old law. I shut it down as fast as I could, I swear to you, but for a moment—”

“You felt it too,” I breathe.

He nods once, jaw clenched so tight I hear his teeth grind. “It was a demonstration. A threat. ‘See, Alpha? This is how easy it would be. This is how much cleaner she breaks if you cut now instead of later.’”

My stomach turns. The clearing tilts.

“Cleaner,” I repeat, dizzy. “Like I’m a bone they’re setting. Or a limb they’re willing to lose.”

He takes a step toward me, hand half-raised. “Lys, listen—”

The bond jumps again.

This time it’s worse. A tearing sensation, deep and bright, like someone hooking fingers into the center of my chest and tugging just enough to bruise the connection, not enough to snap it.

My wolf screams.

I choke on a sob I don’t remember starting. My hands fly to my sternum, as if I can physically hold the bond in place.

“Stop,” I gasp. “Make them stop—”

“It’s not them,” Roenan grinds out. He’s shaking now, too. “It’s backlash. The ritual hit the field and recoiled. Our link’s… raw.”

Every inhale feels like breathing glass. Every exhale drags over the place where our souls knot together.

“I told them no,” he says, hoarse. “I told them if anyone severs this, it will be my hands or no one’s. I swore—”

“Your hands,” I echo, numb. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

His eyes slam shut. “I’m not going to do it.”

But his scent betrays him: scorched fear and the bitter tang of someone standing at the edge of a cliff, praying the ground doesn’t give out—and knowing it might.

Another jolt slams through me.

This one is small, a tremor instead of a quake. But under it, something frays. A single thread in the braid of us unravels, fine as hair, snapping with a tiny, awful ping I feel all the way down my spine.

I stagger back a step.

“Lys—”

“Don’t touch me,” I rasp. “If this rips, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

His hand freezes inches from my arm.

We stand there, two wolves in a clearing that suddenly feels too small, while the bond between us shivers and steadies, shivers and steadies, like it can’t decide whether to hold.

In the distance, far down the mountain, I hear the faint hum of the pack field. It feels… strained. Watchful. Like a hundred hearts waiting for a verdict.

Vessira’s voice floats back to me, from earlier:

There is a way to dull its edge.

My wolf curls against my ribs, trembling.

“What if they’re right?” I hear myself say, my voice not my own. “What if the only way I survive this is without you?”

Roenan goes very, very still.

The bond gives one last, warning flicker—sharp as a blade kissed by flame.

And then, with a soundless, blinding snap of pain behind my eyes—

—everything goes white.