Chapter 2: Secrets Beneath the Skin
391 Words
Lyra woke in a room that smelled like pinewood and leather. Velvet curtains shut out the moonlight, but she felt it anyway buzzing inside her like static electricity.
Her body ached. Her mark pulsed.
She sat up slowly, her hand instinctively covering the silver crescent still glowing faintly on her collarbone.
“Good. You’re awake.”
Kade stood near the window, arms crossed, jaw tight. Power clung to him like fog—unspoken but unmistakable.
Lyra’s voice cracked. “Where am I?”
“My territory.” He turned to face her fully. “Shadowfang lands.”
The words meant nothing. Yet something inside her twisted at the sound, like her bones remembered what her mind could not.
“I was attacked. Wolves.” She gripped the quilt around her. “Why did they stop when you came? What—what are you?”
He moved closer, slow and deliberate. “Alpha. Protector. Enemy, depending on the hour.”
She swallowed. “And me?”
“You’re the moon’s chosen.” His gaze dropped to her mark. “A dormant hybrid. Human... but not only.”
Lyra’s breath caught. A memory flashed her mother, crying over an old diary, tearing out pages with symbols she didn’t understand.
“They told me I was normal,” she whispered.
“No one with that mark is normal.”
Her mind swirled with questions, but one rose above the noise. “What do you mean... hybrid?”
“Your blood carries two legacies. Human and wolf. And something else—older. It’s waking.”
“I don’t want it to wake,” she snapped.
Kade’s expression darkened, but something vulnerable flickered in his eyes.
“Neither did I,” he said softly.
Silence stretched between them, thick as fog. Lyra looked away, heart racing.
Suddenly the door burst open. A younger man strode in lean, cocky, eyes like black fire. He looked her over and smirked.
“So this is the girl causing all the chaos.”
Kade stepped between them instantly. “Out, Jaren.”
But Jaren grinned. “Rival packs are demanding a claim trial. She’s not marked yet. They're coming for her.”
Lyra felt like she’d been plunged underwater.
“Marked?” she echoed.
Kade didn’t answer just stared at her with the intensity of a storm waiting to break.
- Writer
