I Never Meant to Be His Luna

Chapter 8

The rain had washed Hollow Ridge clean. It hadn’t touched the inside of Lyra’s chest.

She stayed in the garage long after the others drifted out, the big doors cracked to let in the late light. Monitors hummed softly, lines of code crawling across one screen while the north ridge feed played on another.

Theo had finally gone to crash. Sienna was on patrol. Cassian had been called up to the house for a strategy talk with Atlas.

Lyra had the place to herself.

Good. She needed space to breathe.

That coastal scent hadn’t left her nose: old pack training grounds, sea on stone, commands barked over the crash of waves. The claw mark in Hollow Ridge rock that felt like a fingerprint from a life she’d sworn never to see again.

“Coincidence,” she muttered, zooming in on a static image. “World’s big. Cliffs are cliffs.”

Her wolf didn’t buy it. Neither did the numbers. The pattern of glitches, the angles of the blind spots—they looked a lot like drills she’d run as a teenager, learning how to slip past rival territories without tripping sensors.

Someone out there had been taught the same way.

The hairs on her arms prickled.

She killed the camera feed and pushed back from the desk. “Walk,” she told herself. “Five minutes. Get out of your own head.”

Outside, the air was cool and sharp, the sky streaked pink and gold. Pups shrieked in the distance; someone laughed near the training field. It almost felt normal.

Lyra didn’t head toward the noise. She followed the gravel path past the guest cabin and out toward the treeline, skirting the edge of the wards until their shimmer tickled her skin.

Her wolf paced just inside them, tail low, ears high.

“Easy,” Lyra said under her breath. “We’re just looking.”

The border here dipped through a shallow ravine, a natural choke point. Cameras covered most of it now, thanks to their work—but there were always seams, edges where magic and tech met and left hairline cracks.

She crouched near a mossy rock, breathing slow, letting scents sort themselves.

Pine. Damp earth.

Hollow Ridge. Warm, familiar, already too easy.

And under it, faint but sharp as glass—

No.

Her heart stuttered. Lyra leaned in, fingers digging into the moss.

Not possible.

The scent was older than it should’ve been, thinned by wind and time, but she’d know it anywhere. A particular mix of cedar, iron, bitter herbs and something she’d once associated with home.

Her first Alpha. Her first mate’s pack.

Her old life, ghosting along Hollow Ridge’s border like it had every right to be there.

Her wolf froze, then lunged, a silent snarl ripping through her chest.

Lyra stood too fast, vision blurring at the edges. For a second the trees doubled, past and present overlaying—this ravine and another one, years ago, where she’d walked away under stares and whispered words.

A twig snapped behind her.

She spun, hand already halfway to the knife at her belt, wolf slamming forward.

Cassian stood a few yards up the path, hands empty, jacket open, eyes narrowed on her face.

“You okay?” he asked.

“No,” she said. The word came out raw. “They were here.”

He went still. “Who?”

She swallowed, throat dry. “My old pack. Someone from them. Their scent’s on your line.”

Cassian’s gaze flicked past her to the rock, then back. His aura tightened, wolf pushing up hard enough she could feel it in the air.

“How long?” he asked.

“Hour. Two, maybe.” She dragged in a breath. “They know exactly where your seams are. They’re testing you the way we… the way we were taught to test others.”

“Silas?” Cassian’s voice had gone flat. “Jonah?”

“Could be either,” she said. “Could be both.”

Wind shifted, gusting up the ravine. For a heartbeat the scent flared strong again, wrapping around her like a memory: a crowded hall, an Alpha’s command, a boy’s hand slipping from hers under pressure not his own.

Lyra’s knees almost buckled.

Cassian was there in two steps, not touching, just close enough she could feel his heat.

“Lyra.” His voice cut through the roar in her ears. “Look at me.”

She did. His eyes were all Alpha now, no softness.

“If they’re here,” he said, “they’re not getting you back. Or through you.”

“That’s not what scares me,” she forced out. “They’ll use me as an excuse to hit your pack. They always did like collateral.”

He opened his mouth to answer.

A howl split the air, sharp and wrong, riding the wind up from the ravine.

Not Hollow Ridge. Not friendly.

Lyra’s wolf snapped its head toward the sound.

The border wards flared, a bright, brief shimmer—then, on her skin, something tugged, like invisible fingers catching her by the chest and yanking hard toward the line.

Recognition. Claim.

A voice she hadn’t heard in twelve years slid along her nerves, low and commanding, wrapped in old magic.

Lyra. Come home.

Her breath locked.

The wards flickered again.

And this time, something on the other side started to push through.