The Stolen Mate

Chapter 4 - Captured

The forest had gone too quiet.

No insects humming. No owls calling. Just the sound of my breath, ragged and uneven, tearing through my lungs.

And then - movement. A blur to my left, another to my right. Shadows detached from trees. I spun, heart slamming against my ribs, but before I could run again, something heavy crashed into my back.

I hit the ground hard enough to the world went white for a heartbeat, then a hot pain fanned across my thigh. Something sharp had cut me when I fell - a slashing, not clean, a blade grazing flesh as someone shoved me through the brambles. I tasted iron at the back of my throat.

“Don’t move.”

I froze.

A massive paw - no, a hand, fist-like and calloused - pressed between my shoulders. The weight of a wolf in human form. Warriors.

“She crossed the border,” another voice said, sharp and clipped.

“She smells wrong,” came a third.

I twisted, trying to lift my face from the dirt. “I’m not... I didn’t mean to-”

“Shut her up.”

They didn’t slow. Hands hauled me up, rope biting into raw skin as they tightened the bindings. One of the men shoved me forward with careless force; my damaged leg buckled and the torn hem of my dress stuck to the wound. When I stumbled another time, a boot planted into my shoulder to keep me upright. A laugh - low, ugly - ripped from one of them.

“Light as a feather,” someone said. “Bare as a nest.”

They dragged me onward, the forest path rattling with the crunch of branches and the steady thump of my blood in my ears. Torchlight loomed; the fortress walls climbed out of the treeline like a sudden cliff. My breath came shallow, each inhale a stab. My palm slipped across my thigh and came away sticky and red; I pressed it there out of instinct, as if pressure would stop the leak, but the rope at my wrists pulled the arm tight and I could do little but watch my own blood darken the torn silk.

They shoved me into the yard - men in leathers, half-shifted wolves flaring their nostrils at me like hounds. Someone yanked my head back so I had to face them, the torches throwing red-gold highlights across their faces.

One of the scouts spat. “East-blood,” he muttered, as if that explained everything.

They didn’t bother with words for long. A larger hand snapped the cell door open and shoved me inside like I was nothing more than a sack. I fell forward, chest smacking the cold stone floor. Pain lanced through my thigh like a white-hot brand. I bit back a cry, tasting blood - my own - again, and couldn’t stop the single sob that slipped out.

The iron door slammed. The echo took the edges off the sound, but the blunt finality of it hit me like a blow. My wrists throbbed from the rope, my shoulder ached where the boot had shoved me, and my leg - my leg burned with the deep, spreading knowledge of a wound that would not be soothed by sleep. I rolled onto my back, breath hiccuping, and saw the shadow of the barred window cutting slashes of moonlight across the floor.

I forced myself to sit up, every motion a fresh spike of pain. The hem of my dress stuck to my thigh; when I tugged at it, the fabric resisted, glued to my skin with blood. I tore it free in a frantic motion and the world went a shade sharper - my palm came away coated, and the sting of salt made me gasp. I had nothing to staunch it with. No herbs. No water. Just the cold, dry stone of the cell.

My fingers fumbled, slick and clumsy, for something - anything - until I remembered the strip of silk tied at my waist. I ripped it free with teeth I didn’t know I had left, working through tears as the world tilted. The fabric smelled like smoke and the faint perfume of the hall, and as I pressed it against my leg the heat of my blood soaked through in seconds. It was a poor bandage, but it was better than nothing.

Even bound as I was, I couldn’t stop the shaking. Panic kept skittering just under the skin, a trapped animal. I pressed my forehead against my knees and whispered Luna’s name like a prayer. No answer. Nothing but the distant murmur of voices outside, muffled and uninterested. No steady, familiar presence. The silence of my wolf punched a hole straight through me.

Time bled in the cell - no sense of minutes, only the slow, steady worsening of the ache. The wound throbbed and my breath came in small, stinging pulls. I tried to block out the thought that infection could set in, that left unchecked, this small cut might become something worse. My hands trembled as they worked the crude bandage, and I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat.

Voices passed the iron door - coarse, suspicious. I flattened my ears to the stone and listened, catching snatches

“Spying for the Blackthorns,” a man grunted. “White dress and a quiet kind of fear - no soldier’s gait.”

“She stinks of another pack,” another said. “Possibly a witch-player. If she’s a spy, the Alpha will like the gift.”

A cold prickle ran down my spine. Spy. Witch. Gift.

My throat constricted. I tried to speak, to call out, to tell them I wasn’t a spy, but the rope on my wrists bit and the sound got stuck between my teeth. I coughed instead and swallowed back a sob.

The men argued in gruff tones about what to do with me. I heard names - names I didn’t know, names of Alphas and the terms of bargains I had never thought to learn. Their indifference was a kind of violence. They spoke as though I were an object to be traded, not a person with a fear and a wound and a wolf missing from her bones.

A scraping sound at the edge of the light caught my attention - footsteps stopping outside my cell. Two pairs. One heavy, sure. One softer, quieter. The heavier voice boomed, low and curious.

“Bring her to the Alpha in the morning,” the heavy voice said. “We’ll see if she’s worth a spy.”

“And if she isn’t?” the softer voice asked.

“She’ll rot first.” Laughter, ugly and jarring, and the footsteps moved away.

Rot. The word tasted like acid. My stomach rolled. I curled up tighter, pressing my bandaged limb to my chest like a child might, trying to hold the cold away. Moonlight sliced across the floor, and for a long while I watched it, letting my mind live in the simple geometry of light and dark so I wouldn’t think about the emptiness where Luna should have been.

When the yard quieted and only faint shuffles marked the guards’ patrols, exhaustion finally took me. Pain conspired with grief; sleep came in ragged, thin breaths. I drifted into a dangerous kind of daze where memories slipped at the edges: Father’s blank face, Lilith’s smile, the smell that had been stolen from me.

Before I sank all the way under, one thought stabbed sharp and stubborn through the fog: if I had to rot here, if I had to die in a cell because of what my sister had done - then the Moon Goddess had been crueler than I could bear. But even in that thought, a small, feral thing coiled - the stubbornness that had taught me to fight and bleed and rise. I would not let this be the end of me, not without clawing through whatever came next.

The bandage shifted against my leg as I turned on my side, and a hot drop seeped through. Pain flared. I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood and let darkness finish me off - sleep arrived not with comfort, but sharpening my edges, promising pain would wait until dawn.

For a heartbeat, I almost welcomed the silence.

Then it hit me.

Damian. This was his territory.

And sooner or later, he would find me here.