Moonbound

Chapter Three

There was still a scrape outside my door. It became more deliberate and softer, as if someone were listening while standing there.

With my bare feet curled against the velvet bedcovering, I sat motionless, listening to the crackle of the fire. There was silence in the hallway beyond.

But there was no sense of emptiness in the silence. It was filled. The handle swung around.

Before I knew I had moved, I was standing up, my heart pounding wildly in my ears. Thorn entered the room as the door swung inward and the lock clicked.

The hard edges of his face, the stubble shadow on his jaw, and the icy calculation in his grey eyes were all illuminated by the fire.

However, there was also something else there, something more focused and sharp, like a predator tracking moment in tall grass.

"You were dreaming," he uttered in a low, nearly growling voice.

I blinked. "Did you hear?"

"You were talking." He looked at me, evaluating, weighing. "I'm not sure in words. Not in a language I understand.”

My neck pricked at the back. "I occasionally talk while I'm asleep."

"Not in that manner." The air between us changed as he moved closer; it became heavier and more charged.

I detested the way his scent sank into me, grounding and unbalancing me at the same time. It was like cedar and rain on stone.

He enquired, "What did you see?"

I saw the cloaked figure calling me Moonborn, the moonlit forest, and the glowing eyes. I gripped the bedpost tighter. "Nothin'. Only a dream.”

Thorn's mouth curled, not in a smile, but rather in that subtle, sly way that people do when they've just exposed your deception.

"A wolf's neck doesn't stand on end from dreams. It wasn't nothing, whatever it was.”

I stepped back. “Thorn, why are you here? To question me in the middle of the night? Or because you believe that merely confining me to a room is insufficient?”

He remained motionless. didn't turn away. "I'm here to find out exactly what's entering my pack and if it will save us. or destroys us.”

Before I could answer, a heavy knock rattled the half-open door. One of Thorn’s lieutenants stood there, pale and tense.

“Alpha. There’s movement at the east border again. You need to see this.”

Thorn’s eyes lingered on me a moment longer, something unspoken flickering in their depths. Then he turned on his heel and left, the door swinging shut behind him.

The lock clicked again.

But for the first time since I’d stepped into the Draven pack’s world, I wasn’t sure if the lock was meant to keep me in… or something else out.

*******

Long after Thorn's footsteps had stopped echoing down the hallway, I remained standing.

The rest of the room felt colder and heavier, as though he had left a weight behind, but the fire's light painted the walls a restless gold.

I went to the window. I leaned forward, my breath fogging the glass, which felt cold under my fingertips.

The grounds of the estate were silent in the moonlight, with the trees outside the wall swaying softly in the nocturnal wind. I didn't see anything at first.

Then the shadows shifted.

Not the wind.

Not the branches' natural movement. Like ink spilling in water, these shadows moved purposefully, moving low along the forest floor and slipping between tree trunks.

My pulse quickened as I squinted. They were shaped like tall wolves, with nearly human-like outlines.

Then I noticed the eyes. dozens of them. Silver-white, with a dim glow against the shadows.

They weren't focussing on the walls or the patrols.

They had their eyes on me.

A chill ran down my back. Unaware that I was whispering the word from my dream, my fingers clenched on the windowsill.

"Moonborn."

Every single pair of eyes disappeared as soon as the sound left my lips, vanishing into the darkness as though they had never existed at all.

The forest was empty again.

But I knew they’d been real.

And somehow, deep in my bones, I knew they hadn’t come for Thorn.

They’d come for me.

*******

With my heart still pounding and the ghost of those silver eyes glaring into my eyes, I took a step back from the window.

In order to feel my fingers again, I had to rub my slick palms against the folds of my nightgown. The lock rotated. I recoiled, my heart thumping, but Thorn entered first, the chilly hallway air embracing him.

His scent now had a new edge, as if he had been running; it was metallic, sharp, and slightly wild. He closed the door behind him, looking around the room before focussing on me. He squinted his eyes. "You're very pale."

The constriction in my chest made it difficult for me to breathe. "Perhaps because I've been confined here after almost being torn apart at my own wedding.”

He failed to rise to the occasion. "Have you noticed anything?"

My pulse faltered. "What do you mean?"

As he approached, he remarked, "The east border was too quiet." "Unless directed to do so, rogues don't simply scatter and disappear. And there's a reason why they're ordered.”

Sharp and evaluating, his eyes darted to the window as if he could sense the truth in the air.

"All right. Did you?

The word Moonborn weighed like stone on my tongue for a moment. I gulped it down. "No. Only shadows and trees.”

The slightest twitch in the muscle there caused his jaw to tighten. "Ravenna, shadows can kill you just as easily as claws."

I hated the way my name sounded on his lips — hated it because part of me didn’t. “Then maybe you should tell me what’s really going on instead of keeping me in the dark.”

For a heartbeat, I thought he might. His gaze held mine, unreadable, as though weighing whether I could bear the truth. Then the wall slammed back into place.

“Get some rest,” he said, turning toward the door. “You’re going to need it.”

The lock clicked behind him.

I stared at the closed door, my pulse still too fast, my mind replaying those silver eyes in the dark. Thorn thought locking me in here would keep me safe.

He didn’t realize that whatever was watching me… wasn’t afraid of walls.

I went back to the window.

Silvered by the moon, the forest lay motionless once more.

Too motionless.

The slightest hint of something wild—wet earth, pine, and a musk that wasn't Thorn's—was carried by a draft that crept through the small opening in the frame and felt cool against my skin.

Then, from somewhere in the room, came a whisper so faint I almost thought I had imagined it. Soon. I went cold. Once, in the quiet, the fire gave a sharp c***k.

However, the room was deserted.