The Luna's Dark Protector

His Anger

The silence after Cameron’s death was a living thing, fed by the swirling green mist and the settling dust of the destroyed cell. Theron slumped against the wall, clutching his wounded shoulder, his face pale with pain and the dawning comprehension of a betrayal so deep it had rotted their foundations. His gaze, however, was locked on Elara and Kael.

On the space between them, which seemed to crackle with the aftermath of the touch.

Kael had put ten feet of rubble-strewn floor between himself and Elara, moving as if the ground itself burned him. He stood with his back to them, his shoulders heaving, not from exertion, but from some internal cataclysm. He stared at his own torn wrist, the one that had touched her, as if it belonged to a stranger.

“What,” Theron ground out through grasped teeth, “was that?”

Elara pushed herself up, her body aching from the impact, her skin still humming with the ghost of the connection. “He saved my life,” she said, her voice trembling. “The arch fell.”

“I saw what he did!” Theron snapped, wincing. “I’m talking about after. What… what happened?”

Kael turned. The storm in his eyes wasn’t calm or calculating. It was a hurricane of fear and a fury so white-hot it seemed to leach the color from his face. The stoic mask was not just broken; it was incinerated.

“What happened,” Kael said, his voice a low, dangerous rasp that vibrated in the charged air, “is a catastrophe.”

He took a step toward her, then stopped himself, fists clenched at his sides. “Your recklessness. Your defiant, foolish, childish stroll into the dungeon! Did you think you were proving a point? Showing your independence?” He let out a harsh, humorless laugh. “You were signing our death warrants! Cameron was waiting for a spark of willful disobedience to finalize his ritual! You provided it! You walked right into his trap because you were angry at your cage!”

The words were lashings, each one landing with the sting of truth. Elara flinched, but held her ground. “I came because you were here! Because the truth was here!”

“The truth was a noose, and you put your head in it!” he roared, the sound echoing off the broken stones. He raked a bloody hand through his hair. “And now… now this.” He gestured violently between them. “The bond. The fated mate bond. Of all the twisted, cruel jokes the Moon could play…”

“The bond?” Theron interjected, confusion battling pain. “What bond?”

Kael ignored him, his agonized gaze piercing Elara. “Don’t you understand? The corruption in me the Blackwood taint it’s a spiritual sickness. It twists nature. A Stalker is not meant to have a fated mate. We are solitary. Our vows are our partners. But the corruption… it must have latched onto the part of me that… that recognized you. That felt… something.” He spat the word as if it were poison. “It forged a perversion of a bond. A bond that now ties your soul’s light directly to the darkness I carry.”

Elara’s heart, which had been soaring on the wild, terrifying wonder of the connection, plummeted. It wasn't destiny. It was a disease.

“But it felt…” she whispered, “it felt pure.”

“The bait often does!” he shot back, his anger morphing into something desperate, pleading. “Don’t you see? The First Luna down there, she’s a being of corrupted light. She craves purity to fuel her desecration. My taint is the map. You are the destination. Our bond is a shining road straight to you. She will tear through this mountain, through this pack, to get to the other half of the corrupted mate-bond. To consume you and become… complete.”

The core struggle was laid bare, more brutal than any physical fight. Love as a Weapon. The first tender, undeniable spark of a fated connection was not a blessing, but the ultimate strategic defeat. Her feelings, his potential feelings, were the enemy’s masterstroke.

“So we break it,” Theron said, pushing off the wall, his voice grim. “There are ways. Old magic. Painful, but possible.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Kael’s laugh was brittle. “Breaking a fated bond, even a false one, doesn’t erase it. It severs. It leaves a wound in both souls. A screaming, open wound that the corruption would flow into like a river. Breaking it would kill her faster than the tomb-dweller could.”

He finally looked at Theron, the Alpha he’d defied and saved. “Your sister isn’t just in danger. She is the prize. And I…” his voice broke, “…I am the gift-wrapping.”

The green mist coiling from the floor began to change. It wasn't just swirling randomly. It was drawing together, coalescing into vague, humanoid shapes echoes of the vacant guards, but made of mist and malice. They let out silent screams, their forms shuddering as they pulled themselves from the stone. The violent energy Cameron had dumped into the tomb was regurgitating, creating guardians.

“She’s stirring,” Kael said, all anger draining into cold dread. “She knows the bond is active. She’s sending up scouts.”

The mist-shapes solidified, their empty eye sockets turning toward Elara with singular hunger.

Theron tried to shift again, but his body shuddered, the green poison in his wound flaring. He collapsed back against the wall with a groan.

Kael moved. Not toward the shapes, but to a pile of rubble. He grabbed a long, jagged shard of broken stone and a crude spear. “We have to get out. Now. To the oubliette passage.”

“We can’t leave the mist here, it’ll spread through the keep!” Elara argued, even as the shapes began to glide toward them.

“The mist is the least of our problems!” Kael snapped, his anger flaring again, this time at the situation. “The structural integrity above us is gone! This whole wing is coming down! Your heroic defiance is about to bury us all!”

As if on cue, another deep groan echoed through the mountain, and a shower of stones fell from the shattered ceiling. The mist-shapes shrieked silently, surging forward.

Kael met the first one, his stone spear moving with blurring speed. He didn't try to destroy the mist; he disrupted the core of gathered energy with precise, jarring strikes. Each shape dissipated with a sickly pop, but two more formed for every one he felled.

“ELARA! THE PASSAGE!” he bellowed, parrying a mist-claw aimed for his throat.

She stumbled toward the dark hole of the oubliette, then turned back for Theron. He was trying to stand, his face grey with pain. She slung his good arm over her shoulders, hauling him toward the door.

Kael fought a rearguard action, a whirlwind of desperate violence, herding the shapes back, buying them seconds. As Elara half-dragged Theron into the pitch-black oubliette, Kael made a final, sweeping strike with his makeshift weapon and dove in after them.

He didn't pause. He shoved past them in the tight, suffocating darkness, feeling his way. “This way! It climbs! It has to come out near the old grain stores!”

They stumbled through absolute blackness, the sounds of crumbling stone and ethereal shrieks fading behind them. After an eternity of groping and climbing, a sliver of grey light appeared ahead a c***k in a wooden hatch.

Kael burst through it, emerging into a dusty, low-ceilinged storeroom. He turned and hauled Theron out, then Elara. He immediately slammed the hatch shut and dragged a heavy, empty grain barrel onto it.

For a moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing in the dusty silence.

Then, Kael turned on her.

“Never,” he said, his voice quiet now, but trembling with a fury so intense it was colder than ice. “Never again. You will not act without thinking. You will not defy orders on a whim. You will not put your feelings above the survival of everyone in this territory.”

He took a step closer, and she saw it wasn't just anger in his eyes. It was terrifying. For her. “What bond do you feel? That is not a gift. It is a countdown. Every moment you are near me, it grows stronger. Every reckless act you commit, shines brighter for her to see.” He leaned in, his breath ghosting over her face. “So you will do exactly as I say. You will become the most obedient, predictable, boring Luna who has ever lived. You will be a statue. Because the moment you step out of line again, the moment you let that… that spark between us cloud your judgment, you won’t just be killing yourself.”

His gaze flicked to the wounded, despairing Theron, then back to her, his final words a vow and a curse.

“You’ll be killing the man whose soul is now chained to yours. And I will have to watch you do it.”

He didn't wait for a response. He turned and walked to the storeroom’s only door, putting his back to them, a guardian once more. But the message was clear.

The first touch hadn't brought them together. It had forged a chain of terrible responsibility. And Kael’s anger was the first, furious rattle of that chain.

He was no longer just her protector.

He was her prisoner, and she was his.