CHAPTER 5: CONTRACTS, COLLARS & CROSSED LINES
1547 Words
“Hands where I can see them. Now.”!
It was deeper, colder, and laced with authority like venom on glass. I didn’t move—didn’t flinch—even as the steel blade hovered inches from my throat, glinting under the moonlight slicing through the cracked ceiling.
I was certain this wasn't Kade, but someone more cold.
Behind me, the hidden archives lay open—scrolls unrolled, secrets bleeding into the midnight air.
“Step away from the seal,” the stranger ordered.
“I’d rather step on your throat,” I replied flatly, eyes locking on his.
He wore the academy crest—but not like a student. His uniform was tailored, darker. A silver insignia on his collar: two wolves eating each other’s tails.
Elite.
He was one of the Moonbound Enforcers.
The Academy's underground police.
Whispers said they answered only to the High Council—and only bled when they wanted to.
“What’s your name?” he demanded.
“Nyra Vale.”
His eyes flickered. Recognition? Or warning?
“You just triggered a restricted sigil seal,” he said, lowering the blade just slightly. “That room you cracked open hasn’t been touched in over two centuries.”
“Maybe it was lonely.”
He stepped closer, and I got a good look at him.
Tall. Raven-black hair. Eyes silver like wolves under lightning. Calm, calculated, and not even slightly amused.
“I’m Lucien Marek. Interim Warden. And unless you want to graduate into a cell beneath the east wing, I’d suggest you explain how you broke into an unbreachable vault without an access rune.”
“I didn’t break in,” I said. “I was invited.”
He stared.
“By who?”
I held up the paper from Chapter 1—the one left on my desk.
No signature. No sender. Just the words: She wasn’t the first. She won’t be the last.
Lucien read it, face blank. Then, slowly, he returned the blade to the sheath at his back.
“That writing,” he said under his breath. “It matches the files of Subject Twelve.”
“What’s Subject Twelve?”
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he grabbed one of the scrolls from the chamber, scanned it quickly, then froze.
My name was on it. Again.
“Who are you really, Vale?” he asked, voice barely a whisper now.
I shrugged. “Still trying to figure that out.”
He shoved the scroll back into its casing and pulled a small silver disk from his coat. It pulsed with lunar energy—pure moonlight distilled into a command seal.
He slapped it onto my wrist.
“What the hell—?”
“It’s a temporary bond tag,” he said, “until we get this figured out.”
A glowing crescent burned into my skin.
I yanked back my arm. “You just marked me like a damn prisoner.”
“I marked you like a damn threat.”
We stared each other down, both daring the other to blink.
Then—
BANG!!
A door down the corridor exploded open. Screams echoed. A student stumbled into view—her neck twisted unnaturally to the side. Blood soaked her gown. She crashed to the ground, unmoving.
Another kill,Lucien drew his blade again. “Stay here.”
I didn’t.
I sprinted past him, following the trail of blood and smoke down the corridor. Another scream. Then silence.
Around the corner, I found the body. Male. Face frozen in horror. Scratched symbols carved into his chest—ancient, guttural. A language even I didn’t recognize.
Above the corpse, etched into the wall, a single phrase burned into stone:
“THE LOST SHALL BE FOUND.”
Lucien caught up, breath sharp. “This wasn’t a rogue attack.”
“No,” I said, staring at the symbol behind the dead student. “This was a message.”
“From who?”
I didn’t answer.
Because I saw it again—the shadow from earlier
It darted across the upper rafters, vanishing through the stone like smoke with eyes.
Lucien didn’t see it. But I did.
And the eyes it wore…
They matched mine.
---
Later that night…
Back in my dorm, the bond tag pulsed with every heartbeat. I couldn’t remove it. Not yet.
I opened the forbidden scroll again—despite Lucien’s warning.
There, beside my name, was another line I hadn’t noticed before.
“Bonded by blood. Marked by moon. The girl who walks with death… isn’t walking alone.”
There was a second name beneath mine.
Smudged.
Unreadable.
But it started with an V.
---
In the shadows outside my dorm, someone watched me.
This one wore a hood.
And in his hand…
He held a second scroll.
--
I moved like instinct, yanking open the window, my claws half-shifted before I even hit the ledge. He didn’t flinch. Just stood there, cloak fluttering in the breeze like a banner for something older than war.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
He didn’t speak. Just tilted his head, then dropped the scroll on the ground.
It landed with a soft thud — sealed with the emblem I’d seen carved behind my neck since birth.
A crescent moon coiled with a dying wolf.
Before I could leap down, the hooded figure turned and disappeared into the mist. Not walked. Vanished. Like smoke into shadow. Not even a scent trail left behind.
My heartbeat wasn’t racing.
It was hunting.
---
Inside, I unrolled the scroll. This one had a name.
Alpha Valen Thorne.
Could this be the same name beneath mine in the bloodhaven archive record starting with "V"? I wondered
A sealed command from the Midnight Circle — an underground werewolf council that, until now, was supposed to be extinct. Like my bloodline. Like me.
The words were scrawled in old Lupine tongue. I translated slowly, every syllable burning hotter than the last:
> “The Lost Luna has awakened. Her mark unlocked. If she reads this, the pact has begun.
Blood will answer blood.
And the Alpha will come for her.
Not to find.
But to bind.”
I dropped the scroll.
What. The. Hell.
---
The next morning, I woke with a headache shaped like secrets and a pulse that wasn’t entirely mine. The bond tag on my wrist? Gone.
Burned off by something stronger.
Lucien didn’t show up for our “routine surveillance.” Kade didn’t knock with annoying remarks or dry stares.
Instead, someone else did.
A girl. Blonde. Wild-eyed. Scarred across the cheek like she’d survived a war… and enjoyed it.
“You’re Nyra,” she said. “Good. You’re late.”
“Late for what?”
“Summoning.”
She tossed a cloak at me. Midnight black. Threaded with ash-grey runes.
“I’m Vanya,” she said. “Gamma-ranked. Bloodborn Division. We were told you’d resist. I’m here to make sure you don’t.”
I blinked. “You’re a student?”
“I’m a wolf,” she growled. “Like you. But I don’t hide it.”
I didn’t reply.
She smirked. “You felt it, didn’t you? The calling. You wouldn’t be able to sleep last night. You’d hear footsteps that never arrive. Smell fur where there’s no wind.”
I said nothing, but my silence was loud.
She nodded. “The Alpha’s marked you.”
---
The forest behind Bloodhaven wasn’t on any map. It moved. Shifted. Responded only to those with moonfire in their veins.
We entered it without words.
The trees closed around us like teeth.
“This way,” Vanya whispered, pulling me through a path that wasn’t really there. “Every Luna chosen by the moon must face the Trial of Bone and Blood. If you pass, you get answers. If you fail, your name vanishes. And no one remembers you ever existed.”
“How comforting.”
She grinned. “You’ll like him.”
“Who?”
“Alpha Valen.”
My chest tightened at the name. The same one on the scroll. The same name linked to mine by something older than laws.
We entered a clearing where moonlight pooled like liquid silver. Five others were waiting — boys and girls my age. All with the same moon-mark.
Rogues. Purebloods. Exiles.
We were all the same now: Moonbound.
Then I saw him.
He stepped from the shadows like he owned them — tall, broad-shouldered, eyes burning ember-gold. His presence didn’t walk into the clearing — it swallowed it.
Alpha Valen.
The real deal.
“Welcome, children of the mark,” he said, voice like gravel and thunder. “One of you will walk out reborn. The others... if the moon wills it.”
His eyes landed on me.
Stopped.
Burned through me.
“You,” he said. “You carry the curse.”
“No,” I replied, stepping forward. “I am the curse.”
The others gasped.
Valen smiled.
Then the ground beneath us split—
and we fell.
---
We landed in a pit of ash and bone.
The Trial had begun.
And over the howling winds, a voice whispered through the cracks of my mind:
“To be Luna is not a gift. It is a sentence.”
---
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