Luna Lost

Damien’s Path

Damien still had Luna’s hand in his.

He could feel the tremor running through her fingers. She was staring at the wound that no longer existed.

His skin was whole.

Not healed enough to be explained away. Not healing slowly enough for her to pretend she hadn’t seen it.

Whole.

Damien’s wolf stirred beneath his skin.

She knows.

He kept his expression carefully neutral “Look…”

She looked at him. There was fear in her eyes. Not of him..not yet. Of everything she had just witnessed.

“I saw that,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“How?”

Damien’s jaw tightened. There were a thousand answers he couldn’t give her.

Not yet.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came.

And then Luna’s breathing changed.

Shorter, Faster, Her eyes began to lose focus.

“No.”

Damien immediately moved closer.

“Stay with me..”

She shook her head.

“No, no, no…”

Something was happening inside her.

He could see it. Memories. Pieces of childhood lessons, stories told in lowered voices. Warnings disguised as bedtime tales. Things she’d been told not to believe in and simultaneously taught to fear.

Monsters.

Wolves.

Things that weren’t human.

Her knees buckled, and Damien moved with lightning speed he would later question, catching her before she hit the floor.

She gasped and grabbed his shirtless chest with both hands, and for one stunned second, he simply held her, her flushed face pressed against him, her heartbeat hammering beneath her skin.

And his wolf went completely still.

Mine.

Damien closed his eyes.

“Breathe,” he murmured.

She clung tighter. He could feel the panic slowly giving way to confusion.

Then—

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Luna jerked upright.

“Oh God.”

Another knock.

“Luna? It’s Mom!”

Her eyes went enormous. “My mother.”

Damien blinked. “I gathered that.”

“She can’t see you.”

“I assumed that too.”

“Hide.”

He almost laughed. There were very few people in the world who could order Damien anywhere. Apparently Luna was one of them.

“Where?”

“My bedroom. Closet. Go!”

He disappeared before she finished the sentence.

The closet was dark and cramped.

And smelled overwhelmingly like her. Damien closed his eyes. Her perfume, her shampoo, the faint scent of her skin lingering on sweaters and shirts.

He exhaled slowly, his wolf already restless. Then he smelled something else. Something beneath the layers of newer scents.

Faint, Familiar, Impossible.

His hand reached toward a tiny jacket hanging near the back. He didn’t know why, He simply knew. His fingers brushed the fabric, and then he smelled it. Damien went completely still.

It wasn’t the jacket itself.

It was what clung to the fabric beneath years of other scents.

Rain.

Smoke.

Pine.

And something else.

Something his wolf recognized before his mind did. His fingers closed around the tiny jacket and the world around him disappeared.

He was there again.

Years ago.

A campsite tucked deep among the trees, laughter drifting through the evening air, and a little girl wandering farther from the fire than she should have. Damien remembered watching from the shadows. He had been young too, not yet fully aware of what his instincts meant.

She’d been fearless.

She’d pushed through the bushes and found him. For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then she’d smiled.

A tiny, bright thing that had somehow made the entire forest feel warmer. She’d talked to him as though he were the most ordinary creature in the world.

No fear.

No hesitation.

Just curiosity.

Damien remembered the sound of her laugh, the way she’d reached toward him, the way his wolf had responded to something it couldn’t possibly have understood yet.

And then—

The sudden flash of instinct.

His teeth.

A tiny nip.

Her startled little gasp.

The sharp burst of something ancient and permanent passing between them.

Then footsteps.

Voices.

Her parents calling her name.

The memory fractured and Damien was pulled what felt like violently backward.

The separation, the chaos that ensued, and his blood moon; the woman in the pool.

The years afterward.

And then the tiny jacket again.

Damien opened his eyes, they were black pools again.

His breathing was ragged.

Luna.

It had always been Luna.

The little girl from the forest. The one his wolf had remembered even when he couldn’t, the one he’d searched for without knowing exactly what he was searching for. His fingers tightened around the fabric.

“Holy hell,” he whispered.

His wolf didn’t answer, It didn’t need to. The certainty was already there.

Mate.

Damien stared toward the bedroom door.

Luna was only a few feet away.

The little girl from his memory had grown into the woman he’d just been holding.

And somehow, impossibly, he’d found her again.

Luna.

The little girl, The scent he’d spent years trying to remember. It was her. His wolf surged forward with such force that his fingers curled into fists.

Mate.

Damien stared at the jacket.

“No…”

But he knew, he knew with the absolute certainty of instinct.

He had found her.

⸻

“Mom, I’m fine.”

“You’re pale.”

“I’m tired.”

“And you’re soaking wet.”

“It was raining.”

“I brought soup.”

“Thank you.”

Damien stood motionless in the darkness, his fingers still curled around the tiny jacket. Luna. The little girl from the forest, the woman he’d just held. His wolf demanded he stay, but reason won. Her mother was still in the apartment, and Luna had already seen too much. She needed time to understand what he’d shown her—and, more importantly, the freedom to choose what came next. He wouldn’t take that from her, not even for his wolf.

Then his thoughts turned to his brothers. They would feel it too if they ever found her.

Damien knew them well enough to know they would want her, and while he could accept sharing her if that was what Luna ultimately wanted, he wouldn’t let them near her before she had a choice, and before he possessed her first. The last thought came from somewhere dark and heated. A primal hunger down deep in the core of his being.

First, He needed to return to the pack, make them believe everything was normal, and keep Luna’s existence secret. He heard her footsteps approaching and made his decision. He would leave now, before she opened that door.

He glanced once toward the bedroom, then slipped silently through the window and vanished into the rain.

————

Luna waited until she heard the front door click shut.

She stood there for a moment, listening to her mother’s footsteps fade down the hallway.

Finally, she exhaled.

“Okay…”

Her gaze drifted toward the bedroom.

Damien. She had left him in there.

Her stomach twisted. She crossed the room and reached for the closet door. “I’m sorry about this,” she whispered, already feeling ridiculous for talking to an empty—

Her fingers closed around the handle, pulling it open.

Nothing.

Luna blinked.

The closet was empty.

She stared for several seconds, as if the strange, ridiculously good-looking man might simply reappear if she looked hard enough.

His scent still lingered in the small space, warm and unmistakable, but he was gone.. completely gone. Her heart began to pound.

“How did you—?”

She stopped, something catching her eye. A single sheet of paper rested on her bed. Luna walked toward it slowly and picked it up.

Three lines were written across the page:

I’ll find you again soon.

There’s something I have to take care of first.

—Damien

She read it twice.

Then a third time.

A cold draft brushed her cheek, making Luna turn. Her bedroom window was wide open, rain tapped against the glass, a few drops already scattered across the floor.

She stared at the empty window.

Then back at the note.

Somehow, she knew the stranger she’d brought home wasn’t anything close to ordinary.

And somehow, she knew this wasn’t goodbye.