Nameless Luna

Chapter 3. Reborn

A few days passed.

James was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t look for me. With every sunrise that came and went, the fragile hope I had guarded for years began to rot inside my chest.

Perhaps he had forgotten. Perhaps the promise made seven years ago had meant nothing after all—just the careless words of a privileged boy who had never truly understood what survival here cost. In Anderstone Pack, hope was a luxury no woman could afford. Yet I had dared, and now I paid for it.

The women taken to the pack house after the full moon run eventually returned. They always did, but never the same. Some staggered back with purple bruises blooming across their skin. Some trembled uncontrollably, their eyes hollow, distant, broken. Two were carried in, unconscious, their bodies limp like discarded dolls.

Curly… Curly could not even walk. Bonny and I supported her weight as best we could, but every small movement drew sharp, strangled gasps from her throat. Her leg bent at an unnatural angle, swollen and darkening by the minute. Broken, almost certainly. With proper care, she might have healed. But proper care did not exist here. With poisoned food and starvation, she had no chance.

If I ever escaped this place, I would be among the luckiest creatures alive. And if fate allowed… If strength ever became mine… I wanted to save them all.

The thought was reckless. Dangerous. Almost laughable. But every time I saw them like this—shattered, discarded, barely breathing—something twisted violently inside me. Anger. Rage. Helpless, suffocating rage.

Usually, I buried it. Anger without power was pointless, a fire that only burned its bearer. I poured my energy into tending wounds, cleaning blood, offering silent comfort. But this time… this time was different. The fury did not fade. It grew. Even as night swallowed the forest. Even as the others drifted into uneasy sleep, curled together for warmth behind the stables.

My heart was not the only thing burning. My body was on fire. Heat crawled beneath my skin, unnatural, suffocating, unbearable. My breaths came shallow and uneven as cold sweat dampened my back and forehead. It was autumn. The air was freezing. Yet I was burning alive.

Every inch of my skin felt hypersensitive, as though the world itself had become abrasive. Fabric scraped like sandpaper. My own movements felt wrong, intolerable, maddening.

A scream clawed at my throat. I bit it back. Desperate, disoriented, I stumbled toward the narrow path behind the stables.

The forest swallowed me instantly. Branches loomed like skeletal fingers. The ground was uneven, scattered with roots and fallen needles. Moonlight filtered weakly through towering pines, thin and silver, offering little comfort.

The river. I needed the river. Cold water was the only relief I could imagine.

Halfway there, a scent struck me so suddenly that I froze. Cinnamon. Apple. Warm, rich, intoxicating.

My pulse stuttered. I lifted my head, senses snapping to attention, every instinct sharpening with startling clarity. Someone was close—they had to be. No natural forest carried such a vivid, impossible fragrance.

Panic surged. Had I been followed? Had someone discovered me?

Slowly, I scanned the darkness. Nothing. No footsteps. No breathing. No presence. Only a lone owl perched above, its unblinking eyes fixed upon me, and a family of squirrels sleeping soundlessly within a hollow tree. I was alone. Completely alone.

Confusion rippled through me. The scent lingered. Wrapped around me. Clung to me. Then the realization hit with staggering force. It was mine. My scent. Stronger than ever before. Thicker. Deeper. Alive. It enveloped me like a second skin.

Unease slithered down my spine as I continued along the shadowed trail. The night felt sharper now, every sound and movement piercingly clear. I could hear distant leaves shifting. The minute scrape of insects. The soft rush of wind weaving through pine needles. Everything was amplified. Everything was wrong.

Then came the discomfort. Low. Between my legs. A strange, throbbing pressure that made my steps falter. My head began to pound, each heartbeat slamming against my skull. My chest tightened painfully, as though invisible hands were constricting my lungs.

Something was terribly wrong with my body.

I finally reached the river.

Moonlight shimmered faintly across the flowing water, casting fractured reflections over slick stones. My trembling fingers fumbled with the ragged rug—the only fabric shielding my skinny body from the cold. I folded it carefully atop a large rock.

The river should have brought relief. It had always been there, cutting through the forest like a silver scar, indifferent to the cruelty of the pack and the suffering hidden beneath the trees. In summer, its scent was soft—moss, damp stone, sunlight. In colder seasons, it carried the sharp, biting chill of mountain runoff.

Tonight, it was ice. Yet when my trembling feet first touched the water, I barely felt the cold. Because I was already burning alive. Heat had been crawling beneath my skin for hours, relentless and unnatural. It coiled inside my chest, slithered through my veins, wrapped around my bones like something sentient and merciless. Every breath felt wrong, my lungs too tight, my heart racing as though I had been running instead of stumbling blindly through the night.

It was the end of autumn. The air was freezing. And still, sweat soaked my back.

Desperation drove me forward. Pebbles shifted beneath my unsteady steps as the current climbed my legs, my waist, my chest. The cold should have shocked me violently, should have made my muscles seize and my teeth chatter. Instead—Relief.

For one fragile, fleeting second, the fire dimmed. A trembling breath escaped my lips. The icy water wrapped around me, numbing, silencing the unbearable heat. My racing thoughts slowed. The pressure inside my skull eased.

I almost sobbed. Almost. Then everything changed. The burning did not return as warmth. It returned as agony. It erupted beneath my skin with such violence that my body arched uncontrollably. A broken sound tore from my throat, half gasp, half scream, ripped free by pain too immense to contain. It felt as though I had been submerged in molten metal.

Every nerve ignited. Every inch of flesh turned to fire.

“No—” The word collapsed into a strangled whimper.

Panic detonated inside me. Instinct—raw, desperate, animal—seized control. I thrashed against the water, stumbling blindly toward the shore. Stones slipped beneath my feet. The current clawed at my legs.

I barely made it. My body slammed onto the riverbank, soaked, shaking, lungs convulsing as the cold night air bit into my skin.

Then I heard it. A crack. Sharp. Sickening. Wrong.

For one disoriented heartbeat, I thought the sound had come from the forest. Until my arm twisted. Pain exploded. Not pain—annihilation.

A scream ripped from my throat, wild and uncontrollable, swallowed instantly by the vast emptiness of the night. My bones felt as though they were being torn apart by invisible hands, ripped free from their sockets and forced into new shapes.

Another crack. Then another. My spine convulsed violently. My ribs compressed, then expanded with nauseating force. The sounds—those horrific, wet snapping sounds—echoed inside my skull, impossibly loud, impossibly intimate. I was breaking, dying. I was… changing.