The Vycan's Forbidden Mate

Lyra's pov "Promise you will look after your brother, Lyra?" I could hear the strained warning in Father’s voice over the phone. He was begging us not to fight again. "She's just a minute older than I am, Dad!" Kael screamed from downstairs, his voice sounded muffled as he carried heavy boxes into the castle-like house we had just moved into. "I'm pretty sure I should be the one looking after her." I rolled my eyes, dragging a massive box by its handle up the dimly lit staircase. I kept my shoulder hitched up to pin the phone against my ear. "When will you get here, Dad? It's really creepy. Even the movers wouldn't help us bring anything inside. They just kept glancing around like a monster was going to jump out of the bushes and eat them. Scaredy-cats." Father's laugh was forced, I could tell the difference instantly. Ever since Mother died three months ago, a genuine laugh hadn't crossed his lips. "I just have to finish up the paperwork here, Pumpkin. I'll arrive tomorrow just in time to check you and Kael into school." I pushed open the heavy, silver-colored front door, ignoring the sharp creak of the wooden steps under my weight. The evening had arrived, plunging the entire house into deep shadow. The place had been built in a way that only the brightest midday sunlight could sneak in...definitely not the moonlight. To be fair, the hallways were adorned with more than enough lightbulbs to mimic daylight, but the sun had completely gone down now. The house had to be at least a hundred years old. If not older. "Alright. Take care and call me when you're on the road." I pushed my huge box into the Victorian-style bedroom and prepared to end the call, but Father's panicked voice halted me. "Wait!" he called out hurriedly as his breathing turned shallow and unstable over the line. "Could you check the news reports I asked the cleaner to leave on your nightstand? Is tonight a... what is tonight?" My brows came together in confusion as I walked over to the nightstand and picked up the calendar-looking magazine left on the table. Scanning today's date, I shrugged. "Um... it says it's a full moon. Why?" "Oh s**t! s**t, s**t, s**t!" Dad gasped. The raw terror in his voice made the goosebumps flare across my skin. "I told them to check the moon cycles before the relocation... how the hell could they have missed it?! You were supposed to arrive after the full moon, not before it!" My stomach tensed. "But it's just a full moon, Dad. It's really no big deal, It's not like there are actual monsters lurking in these overgrown woods." I tried to force a joke, but the line remained dead silent. Dad always laughed at my jokes, no matter how stupid they were. Why was he getting so worked up over a random moon in the sky? "Dad, you are being really... I don't know... weird." "I know, I know. I'm sorry, Pumpkin." He let out a heavy sigh, but it did nothing to ease the tension. Whatever was bothering him about tonight was still tightly in place. "Just... could you and Kael make sure to stay indoors? Lock every silver door before the night ends or at least, the exact moment the moon rises." "Why would we lock.." I straightened, my words dying in my throat as my eyes settled on the window. The white, transparent curtain danced in the cool evening air, revealing the dense woods surrounding the estate. There were no other houses in sight, none for miles. I had checked the map reluctantly when the movers drove us here. But the isolation wasn't what caught my attention, it wasn't what brought the hairs on my arms standing straight up. Not too far away, just beneath the thick brambles of the bushes, a pair of eyes watched the house. They were not human. The creature hid in the dense brush, the tall trees and overgrown shadows swallowing its body so entirely that only its eyes were visible. It surveyed the house, and I could feel a heavy, ancient hatred behind every slow sweep of its gaze. "Lyra?" Father called from the other end of the phone. At that exact instant, almost as if it had heard my name, the eyes snapped directly to my window. To where I stood. To me. My heart stopped. The heavy thud of my phone hitting the hardwood floor echoed through the room, but I barely registered it. It felt like time had stopped, like the entire universe had paused its course as an earth-shattering lightning bolt struck through the sky. For a split second, a flash of a completely different scene..a violent war, a woman draped in pure white..flickered violently in my mind, making me dizzy. Fear paralyzed my legs, my eyes, my very soul. The being behind the bushes didn't look away, and I couldn't either. I felt enchanted. Hypnotized. My heart turned into a pounding, chaotic mess. Those gold eyes glistened with absolute malice. It wasn't human. An animal? A deer? A leopard? No. It didn't feel like a beast. Do animals hold complex grudges? Because whatever stood in the trees possessed a terrifying amount of human emotion behind those irises, and every ounce of it was directed entirely at me. The gold eyes flashed, glowing with a predatory intensity that burned through the dark. "Lyra!" I screamed, turning around so fast I almost tumbled out of the massive, floor-to-ceiling window frame. I glared when Kael walked into the room, holding his own phone out to me. "What?!" "Father said you blanked out on him. He wants to speak to you." He tossed the phone toward me in annoyance, and I scrambled to catch it, muttering curses under my breath. "You could have just handed it to me!" "Lyra, are you alright? What happened?" Father asked, his voice laced with deep worry. "Yes, sorry. The connection up here is just... shitty," I lied, forcing my voice into a calm tone to hide the panic searing through my chest. I turned back toward the window slowly, my gaze sliding down to the edge of the woods but the brush was empty. My brows furrowed as I frantically searched the treeline. Something had been there. How could it have vanished so quickly? Had I imagined the whole thing? I took a shaky step closer to the glass, holding my breath and fisting my trembling fingers as I stared into the dark forest. But the intoxicating, heavy feeling from a moment ago had evaporated, and whatever had been hiding was gone. Unlike an hour ago when we first arrived, the sky outside had darkened significantly, turning the environment into a deep, bruised blue. It was strange, considering my watch still read five in the evening. Even the trees swayed in an unnatural rhythm, as if they were following a hidden pattern, or as if the forest itself possessed a mind of its own. Everything in this town felt different. Wrong. Terribly wrong. "That's the last of them," Kael said with a heavy sigh, crashing onto the velvet couch in the hallway. "I will forever curse those movers for leaving us to do the heavy lifting." I walked down the staircase, each step creaking beneath my sneakers. "There's something about this place, Kael. This town. I just... I can't put my finger on it." I shook my head, trying to discard the thought. Whatever was in the brush had to be a stray animal. The early darkness was probably just a weird humidity shift. I was letting my paranoia get the best of me. "I don't know about you, but I'm glad that we don't have neighbors," Kael said, crossing his arms behind his head happily. "We have the entire wilderness to ourselves." "And you don't find it the least bit suspicious that this house...a place Mom and Dad never mentioned to us..was suddenly passed down to Father out of nowhere?" "Surprising, yes, but not suspicious. Dad never really spoke about his hometown." "And for a reason!" I shot back. I felt like I was losing my mind, even though I was trying to convince myself that what I saw meant nothing, something kept twisting violently inside my gut..like a second skin fighting to tear its way out. "They hated it here, Kael. Remember? Dad once mentioned that Mom almost lost her life in this town. That's why we never asked questions." "Yeah, well, maybe he missed Mom and wanted to feel connected to her. Maybe when the lawyers offered him the house, he took it to be closer to her memory." I inhaled deeply, wanting to believe my twin. Heaven knew I wanted to. But the unsettling weight in my chest wouldn't shift. "I'm going for a quick run," I said, sliding a water bottle into the pocket of my athletic gear. "I'll be back before the full moon peaks. Dad said to stay indoors and lock up." "Indoors? Why?" "No idea!" I called out, already jogging toward the front door. I pulled my hair back into a high ponytail and adjusted my headphones over my ears. Checking my watch, I saw I had about ten minutes before the moon fully took over the sky. I didn't know why Dad was going completely ballistic over a lunar cycle, or why he wanted the silver doors locked, but I figured it was better to be safe than sorry. I just needed to clear my head, and I could only do that if I ran. "If he told us to stay inside, why the hell are you going out?" Kael yelled after me. I ignored him, pushing through the front doors. A small voice in the back of my mind screamed that this was a terrible idea, especially after what I had witnessed at the window. No matter how much I tried to rationalize it, I knew I hadn't imagined those eyes. But I couldn't stay cooped up in the stifling silence of that ancient house. I turned up the volume on my headphones, letting a melancholy violin track flood my ears as I sprinted down the dirt pathway cutting into the woods. Then, the rain started. One cold drop after another. My heart began to race as the memories I had spent months trying to suppress came crashing back into my mind. Tears burned the back of my eyelids. I didn't stop running, I knew if I slowed down, if I let those dark emotions catch up to me, they would consume me entirely. Just like they always did. The downpour intensified, the icy drops stinging against my skin. Finally, my pace slowed to a harsh stop. The tears I had been fighting won, racing down my cheeks to mix with the rain. I missed her. I missed my mother so much it felt like a physical ache in my ribs. But I had to be strong for Dad. I had to be strong for Kael, just like Mom used to be. "Howwwwllll!" A deep, reverberating sound echoed through the dense trees, and my breath caught instantly. I snapped my head up, my blurry eyes stretching wide as I stared ahead. The darkness had completely overtaken the forest. How long had I been standing here? Lifting my chin, I stared up at the sky. Oh, f**k. The full moon sat directly above my head, its powerful, luminescent glow illuminating the entire forest. The woods practically glowed in an unnerving way. Every nerve in my body locked up as Dad's panicked warning echoed in my ears. I took a sharp breath, turning around to sprint back toward the mansion. But my body went entirely rigid as a sharp snap of a twig echoed directly behind me. Someone was here. I turned around instantly, gripping my plastic water bottle tightly like a weapon. But the second my eyes locked onto what was standing in the shadows, every muscle in my body turned to stone. And I knew, for the first time in my life, I had made a fatal mistake. Meeting my terrified gaze with its own glowing, predatory gold ones, the monster from my window let out a low, guttural growl.