Luna Lost

14. The Protector

Before Luna’s mother ever knew him as a father, she knew him as the safest man she had ever met. It certainly didn’t hurt that he was beautiful. Not soft or pretty, but the kind of handsome that made people look twice. He was tall and broad through the shoulders, with dark hair that never seemed to stay where it belonged, a strong jaw, and eyes that always seemed to notice things everyone else missed. He carried himself with an effortless confidence that bordered on intimidating, and when all that attention settled on her, she felt it everywhere.

His looks were what made her notice him. The way he made her feel was what made her stay.

He was intense even then. He watched rooms when he entered them, noticed strangers who stood too close, and always seemed to know when someone was approaching before she heard the footsteps herself. The first few times he walked her home, he pretended it was coincidence. By the fourth, she stopped outside her door and asked if he intended to keep lying to her.

“About what?”

“You don’t live this way.”

“No.”

“You don’t have anything to do over here.”

“No.”

“So you’re walking me home.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

His answer was simple. “Because it’s dark.”

She should have found it overbearing. Instead, she smiled all the way inside.

That was the man she fell in love with. Strong, confident, loyal and endlessly aware of the world around him. He checked her doors without thinking. If an argument broke out nearby, he positioned himself between her and the trouble before she realized he’d moved. If someone they loved needed help, he was there before they finished asking. Protecting people wasn’t something he talked about. It seemed built into him.

There were strange things too. Scars he never fully explained. Weapons kept meticulously clean. Nights when he disappeared into the forest and returned exhausted, occasionally injured. He knew how to track animals, how to fight, how to move through darkness without making a sound. She knew there were pieces of him he hadn’t shown her, but she never believed those pieces were dangerous.

Not to her.

Eventually, he told her. He showed her the journals first, generations of handwriting documenting attacks, deaths, sightings and hunts. Families torn apart. People who disappeared into forests and never returned. Then came the weapons, some older than either of them and maintained with almost ceremonial care.

Finally, he told her about werewolves.

She laughed.

He didn’t.

It took time before she believed him. Evidence helped. So did the scars. He showed her one across his ribs and told her exactly what had made it. She remembered tracing it with her fingertips and realizing the world was much larger and stranger than she had ever understood.

He expected her to leave.

She stayed.

Because the story he told her wasn’t about hatred. It was about protection. His family had fought creatures capable of killing people who had no way to defend themselves. They had lost relatives doing it. They had saved lives. She saw pride when he spoke about his family, but she also saw the weight of carrying everything they had handed down to him.

He didn’t want glory. He wanted people safe.

So she learned. He taught her enough to defend herself, how to recognize tracks that looked almost normal until they didn’t, how to hold certain weapons and what signs to watch for if something in the forest felt wrong. She was never the hunter he was, nor did she want to be, but learning his world made her feel closer to him.

Some lessons brought them closer than others. One evening he stepped behind her to correct her stance, his chest brushing her back as his hands settled over hers. She accused him of using training as an excuse to touch her. He told her she was distracting him. She turned in his arms and proved him right. The lesson ended there, along with any serious intention either of them had of training for the rest of the night.

As their life together grew, the world around them began changing too. Stories of attacks became less common. Packs organized under Alphas who enforced rules of their own, and wolves who wanted peace began living quietly among humans. Old agreements started forming again in places where generations of violence had destroyed any possibility of trust.

She saw hope in that.

He saw danger becoming better at hiding.

At first, they argued about it gently. She suggested that perhaps not all wolves were what his family believed. He reminded her of names written in the journals. She pointed out that years had passed without an attack near them. He said that didn’t mean another couldn’t happen tomorrow. She understood why he struggled to let go. His family’s dead were real. His scars were real. Asking him to believe humans and wolves could coexist meant asking him to question things his family had died believing.

By the time she discovered she was pregnant, they had built a life together and the world seemed quieter than it had in years. When she told him, the fierce, capable man she knew simply stared at her.

“You’re pregnant?”

“That is generally what I meant, yes.”

He crossed the room, his hands finding her waist before suddenly becoming careful. “We’re having a baby?”

She laughed. “That’s usually how this works.”

His smile broke slowly across his face before his eyes dropped to her stomach. “Are you feeling okay? Should you be standing?”

“I’m pregnant, not dying.”

“Sit down.”

“Oh my God.”

He kissed her before she could argue, one hand settling gently over her stomach. “I’ll keep you both safe.”

At the time, the promise made her heart swell.

When Luna was born, something in him cracked open. The same man who had faced creatures stronger than himself without flinching looked terrified of holding a baby incorrectly. He barely slept during those first nights, checking Luna constantly just to make sure she was breathing. As she grew, he carried her when she fell asleep, let her climb over him while he tried to read, and taught her to balance on fallen logs while she insisted she didn’t need his hand.

He still intended to teach her the skills his family had passed down, but he promised it would be different. Luna would never be raised the way he had been.

For years, it seemed like he might keep that promise.

Then came the camping trip.

They had gone deeper into the forest than most people did, beyond the safe zone where camping was encouraged. He knew the woods. If anyone could keep them safe out there, she believed it was him. That evening the three of them sat together around the fire, Luna tucked between them in a sweater far too large for her, warming her hands around a cup of chocolate while sparks disappeared toward the moon.

When Luna heard something in the trees, her father dismissed it as a squirrel. Her mother told her to stay close.

Luna did, mostly.

She wandered only to the edge of the forest, still close enough that they could see the little shape of her between the trees. Her parents continued talking until a cry shattered the quiet.

They moved at once.

Her mother reached Luna first. Their daughter was crying, clutching one hand against herself as a small dark animal disappeared into the forest. Blood welled from a bite beneath her wrist.

Her father saw the wolf.

More importantly, he knew what it was.

Everything about him changed.

He moved toward the trees, but Luna’s crying stopped him. For one suspended moment, he looked between the darkness where the little wolf had vanished and his daughter bleeding in her mother’s arms.

He chose Luna.

Her mother watched him drop beside them and take Luna’s wrist. His hands were steady at first, practiced as he inspected the wound, but she knew him well enough to see what was happening beneath the surface.

Fear.

Not because the wound was severe.

Because of what had made it.

He had spent his life protecting people from wolves, and he had taken his daughter beyond the safe zone. Now one had gotten close enough to put its teeth into her while he sat only yards away.

He never forgave himself for that.

They watched Luna obsessively afterward, waiting for fever, sickness, transformation—anything his family’s journals had taught him might follow a bite.

Nothing happened.

The wound healed into a pale crescent beneath Luna’s wrist.

He searched every journal his family possessed and found nothing that explained it. Eventually, his desperation took them to someone even he didn’t fully understand.

The shaman examined Luna’s wrist for a long time. “Do not fear what has begun.”

Her husband’s jaw tightened. “What has begun?”

“Not yet.”

“What does that mean?”

“When the time comes, she will understand.”

Her mother reached for his hand.

He didn’t take it.

He was already somewhere else, trapped inside every terrible possibility those words had given him.

After that, protecting Luna became something different. It began innocently enough. Balance exercises became games. Games became lessons. He taught her how to fall without hurting herself, how to watch her surroundings, how to run if someone stronger came after her. Her mother agreed with most of it. Their daughter had been bitten by something neither of them understood. Preparing her seemed responsible.

Then the lessons became training.

As Luna grew older, he pushed harder. He told himself strength would keep her alive. He watched the forest more closely, checked Luna’s scar, revisited the journals. Every year that passed without an answer seemed to frighten him more instead of less.

Her mother noticed the change. She also noticed everything that hadn’t changed.

He still checked the doors at night. Still reached for her hand when they walked together. Still carried Luna to bed when she fell asleep somewhere she shouldn’t, even when she became almost too big for him to do it. He still loved them with a ferocity that could take her breath away.

That was what made it so difficult.

Every individual choice had an explanation. Luna needed to know how to defend herself. Luna needed to be stronger. Luna wasn’t ready for the truth yet. One more lesson. One more secret. One more year.

For the first time, she didn’t see the young man who had walked her home because it was dark.

She saw the man his parents had raised.

The thought came with another feeling she wasn’t prepared for. Small enough that she could almost pretend it wasn’t there, but unfamiliar enough that she recognized it immediately.

Fear.

She had spent most of her life believing there was nowhere safer than beside him. She had believed that eventually he would see the world was changing, that the old war was ending, and that he could finally let go of the fear his family had passed down to him.

Now, she wasn’t so sure.