Rejected Before The Pack

Chapter 9

Damon’s POV

We rode for most of the day, stopping only twice to water the horses, and Kael's guards seemed always to be watching the tree line rather than each other, a habit I noticed but didn't fully understand until the sun started dropping toward the horizon.

"You keep looking at the trees," I said, riding close enough to Kael that only he could hear me.

"Old habit," he said. "One I'd rather not explain by proving it justified."

I didn't get the chance to ask what he meant. The first arrow came from the left, fast and silent, and buried itself in the shoulder of the guard riding just ahead of me. He went down without a sound, and then the forest around us erupted into chaos.

"Ambush!" someone shouted, and the convoy scattered into formation faster than I could process what was happening, horses wheeling, guards drawing blades, Kael's hand closing hard around my horse's reins to pull me toward the center of the group.

"Stay close," he said, voice flat and controlled in a way that scared me more than panic would have. "Whatever happens, don't leave my side."

Figures dropped from the trees on both sides of the road, wolves in half-shift, faster than anything I'd seen from Shadow Moon's warriors. They moved like they'd trained for exactly this, cutting through Kael's guards with brutal efficiency, and I realized with a cold drop in my stomach that this wasn't a random attack. This was planned. Someone had known exactly which road we'd take.

Ash whimpered against my chest, and I curled my body around him instinctively, useless against blades and claws, nothing but dead weight in the middle of a fight I didn't understand.

"They're after her!" one of the attackers shouted, and I felt my blood go cold at how casually he said it, like my life was simply an item on a list someone had handed him that morning.

Kael's blade was already out, moving between me and the nearest attacker with a speed that didn't match the calm, measured man who'd knelt in front of me that morning. He fought like the fight had already been decided before it started, cutting down two wolves in the time it took me to catch my breath.

"Get behind me," he said, and I did, because there was nothing else useful I could do, and I hated how helpless that felt.

The hum beneath my ribs, the same one that had been quietly present since the night of the ceremony, suddenly surged, sharp and hot, like something inside me had noticed the danger before my mind had fully caught up to it. My vision sharpened at the edges. My hands started to shake, not from fear, but from something trying to get out.

One of the attackers broke through the guards and lunged straight at me, blade raised, and I threw my arm up on pure instinct, bracing for a pain I was certain was coming.

It didn't come.

A pulse of silver light burst from my skin, faster than I could track, and the attacker was thrown backward through the air like he'd hit an invisible wall, landing hard against a tree trunk and not getting up again.

The clearing went quiet except for the sound of my own ragged breathing.

Every remaining attacker froze, staring at me the way you'd stare at something you'd been told was a story and never expected to actually see. One of them said something low and fast in a language I didn't recognize, and then, as quickly as the ambush had started, the surviving attackers melted back into the trees and were gone.

Kael lowered his blade slowly, watching me with an expression I couldn't read. "Are you hurt?"

"I don't think so." My hands were still shaking, though the light beneath my skin had already faded, sunk back under the surface like it had never been there at all. "What was that? What did I just do?"

"You defended yourself," Kael said. "That's the Lunar Queen's power. Instinctual, at first. It protects before it's asked to."

"That man could have died."

"He would have killed you," Kael said, gentler now, crouching to check on one of his fallen guards. "There's no version of that moment where you owed him mercy."

I looked around the clearing at the bodies of Kael's guards who hadn't survived, at the blood soaking into the dirt of a road I'd never traveled before that morning, and felt the full weight of what had just happened settle over me. Someone had sent people to kill me. Not humiliate me. Not reject me. Kill me.

"Who were they?" I asked. "Rogue wolves? Somebody's enemies?"

"I don't know yet," Kael said, though something in the tightness of his jaw told me he suspected more than he was saying. "But they knew our route. That means someone told them."

The words landed heavier than they should have. "Someone from your kingdom?"

"Or someone from the pack you just left," Kael said. "I'd rather not guess before I have proof either way."

I thought of Selena's face as we rode out of Shadow Moon, the fear I hadn't understood at the time, and felt something cold settle in my stomach that had nothing to do with the ambush.

Kael's remaining guards regrouped quickly, tending to the wounded, recovering what they could, and within the hour we were moving again, faster now, no one speaking much as the light started to fade properly into evening.

"You didn't tell me people would try to kill me," I said eventually, when the silence became too heavy to sit in.

"I told you it wasn't safe," Kael said. "I didn't expect them to move this fast. Whoever is behind this knows you've awakened, and they aren't willing to wait and see what you become."

"And if I hadn't done — whatever that was back there. What would have happened?"

Kael didn't answer right away, and the silence told me everything his words wouldn't.

"We're close to the kingdom border," he said instead. "Once we're inside, you'll be safer than you've ever been in your life. I promise you that much."

I wanted to believe him. Some exhausted, frightened part of me wanted very badly to believe that safety was something still available to me, after everything the last two days had taken away.

I held onto Ash a little tighter, watched the trees blur past in the fading light, and said nothing else for the rest of the ride.