The Alpha's forgotten Luna

Episode2

Tree limbs keep hitting my arms while I’m sprinting. Silver and black color patches seem to be taking over the woods. Each heartbeat sounds like ribs breaking.

The noise—the howling of the wolves: the wolf who was always different--in the rear goes on. Get her!

I taste the taste of metal. Is that the taste of my blood or my wolf’s? That’s beside the point. The tie remains as a burning bond, a bond that is half-separated, like a hot thread burning through my rib cage.

“Keep going,” I talk to myself in a whisper, but my voice is trembling. “Lyra, don't stop.”

“You can’t run away from anguish,” my wolf speaks softly from inside, her voice almost lost and trembling.

“I can, compared to him.”

The fire in me is ignited by these words. My footsteps ruin on the wet leaves; I hit a tree, wheeze, and do not stop. The dress of the ritual—what’s still hanging there—grabs the thorns on my way. I tear it apart until the shreds of the slip remain only. The forest claims the rest.

Kaelan’s declaring still stings in my head: ‘I, Kaelan Blackthorn, refuse to recognize you as my mate.’

He didn’t even pay attention to me while saying that. Only the council, only the crowds, only the future that would not include me.

Another desperate sound comes from the mountaintops. Closer.

I turn left and rush through the bushes. The water is cold as hell and the only feeling it gives is cuts, but it washes the smell away. I rush in, hold my breath, and leave everything to the river stream.

“Lyra!” the voice comes from behind—female, urgent.

It’s Adira.

I can only lift my head enough to catch a glimpse of her on the bank, eyes full of panic.

“Are you out of your mind?” she growls. “The guard is right behind me. You'll be caught.”

“I'd rather freeze than go back!”

She looks over her shoulder then lobs a little bundle into the water. It floats towards me—food and a cloak.

“Head east,” she whispers. “The Shadowlands are just over the hill. Keep going until the moon sets.”

“Adira—”

“Be quiet and don’t make me second-guess myself,” she snaps but her voice breaks. “I never saw you here, got it?”

I managed one nod, swallowing my pride. “Thank you.”

She vanishes amid the forest's depth.

With all my might i.e. by doing so, I struggle with the current until my arms are all tired out, and finally reach the extremely distant side. My legs are buried in the mud. The position of the world and the stars is now changing. My wolf within is almost crying, keeps on shrinking near my body's core.

Without even a pause, she continues “Is he ever going to love us?”

I touch my chest, feeling a faint, thin candle-like connection. "Maybe, the boring questions must be put aside."

That noise is furious like an approaching storm. It may just be my heartbeat rushing in my ears.

At a certain distance, wolves express their anger—with a bark—but this time louder. I feel my cloak slipping, rush to grab it and basically injure my legs till I reach her.

Each step feels like put in the wrong place. In and out is the only way to survive.

There is no more crying. I cried so much as if I cried like a river but that was miles ago now.

The trees vanish from the ridgeline, and the wind is the one bringing in burnt timber odor—the far border of the rogues. No pack would dare breach the line; even the council is afraid of that forest.

Just right.

A root catches my feet, and it is so hard that I simply fall down again. And I try in vain to breathe, have no air. For a little while I lie still with my face on the wet ground, hoping the world would stop turning.

“Get up,” my wolf says almost without a voice. "If we stand here, they will find us."

I change my position to look toward the moon, complete with its brightness-yet maybe it is laughing at me, I think. "So, you're enjoying yourself?" I whispered so softly. "You followed me to the square when he dumped me and now you're beaming as if there was no problem at all."

The wind is much stronger now. It howls through the trees, and, on the very slight chance, it carries a tiny bit of my scent.

I am in the very active process of trying to get to my feet: my knees give way before me, and I have difficulty penetrating breaths as the ridge looms so blackly against it.

The yells are lost and dwindling behind me. Chaos. I have managed to get on the other side.

Once I am on top of the hill, I collapse, spasmodically in fact this time. Dirt, pain, and relaxation all mixed together in my mouth as I hit the ground.

“We're out, you know,” my wolf speaks very softly.

Out,” I manage to say, with my words breaking.

After that everything is dark.

It is the cold that stirs me to awaken and halt me from sleep.

Hard are my hands; filth clings to my nails. From the very moment I lay eyes on the world, gloom and wetness is all about. There is mist in the air that looks like smoke coming through the trees.

Each inhale is painful. There is a feeling that my chest has been cut open where the bond was.

“Still here,” my wolf says to me. This time, her voice is barely perceptible but real.

“Hardly.” I sit up. My hands leave bloody marks on the rocks. “How long were we passed out?”

“A couple of hours. The moon is gone. They will not look for us anymore.”

I look up to where the ridge is. No lights, no howls—only quietness. The type that comes after an accident.

I get a stomachache. It is hunger, sorrow, or both. I undo the cloth bundle Adira had given me—half-wet bread, a strip of dried meat, a light of a cloak. I eat while standing and looking around the woods.

Then the wind changes direction, bringing a smell that makes me sick: smoke and roses. It is Kaelan's fragrance. It's getting weaker, but it’s still cruel and sweet in my mind.

“Don’t,” my wolf alerts me. “Don’t think of him.”

It's too late. I remember everything— the moment the council’s crest appeared and the cold words, and the breaths of the crowd. The rejection. The way he was not able to look into my eyes. My guts are burning. "Why did he do it? He was—"

Talking in the past tense started to choke me.

The forest starts to rain in reply. At first a few thin drops, and then heavier and heavier until it is pounding through the leaves. I tighten the cloak and continue to walk east.

I should get further away from him with each step, yet I feel him even more somehow—like the bond is still trying to catch its breath through the ashes. My wolf whimpers every time I trip.

“Something's wrong.”

“Everything’s wrong.”

“No,” she insists, voice sharpening up. “Inside. You feel it too.”

I pause. The rain uploads the world noise. My heart beats and pounds faster; my body is hotter, though it is likely a cold day. It is not just fatigue.

Weeks start to mix in my head— the continuous pressure, the sleepless nights before the ceremony, the way my cycles became irregular. A single thought pierces through the fog.

“No." I put both hands on myself. “It can't be."

"It is."

I breathe out hard. I fall on a tree. “No, no, no—”

I am flooded with pictures: Kaelan’s hands on my skin, the squeezing night before everything got destroyed, the way he breathed his mine against my throat. And now… this

"I can't," I say quietly. "Not his. Not after—"

"They are innocent," my wolf flutters. "They are ours."

Tears run with the rain. "How can I even defend them? He is the Alpha. He'll claim them—"

"Then he'll first have to locate us."

I chuckle, a choppy sound. "Locate us? I am hardly able to stand."

Yet the truth ends up being the very one thing that settles into the soul with an undisputed and absolute opinion. Two heartbeats. Still, fluttering, disconnected from mine. The last of life where nothing prospered.

I slid to the ground using the tree as a support, my arms hugging me. The forest spins and balances.

"You won't be going back," my wolf mentions slowly.

"No." My voice quivers, but the word is a block of a fortress. "Never."

"Then we have to be alive."

"I don’t have a clue."

"You will."

I have no other way to be. I am numb for what seems an endless time, though I can still hear the sound of rain. The mate bond is broken, but perhaps another one has been forged: this one weak and fragile, barely brushing the tips of my fingertips.

I recall the pack that scorned me, the council that hushed, Kaelan’s enigmatic eyes. If they ever uncover the truth, they will tear me apart once again.

“I will be your shelter,” I say to the life force within me. “You will not be discovered.”

Thunder crashes and lightning cuts through the trails of clouds. Intense streaks of light glow over the forest for a split second. I walk into this gloom.

East. Always east.

The woods begin to disappear with a dirt track showing instead. Much farther away, I recognize some lights - human lights, not the pack’s territory anymore.

My heart is beating forcefully, partly terrified, and partly relieved. In this place, the air smells like oil and rain, without any whiff of magic.

With one foot on that boundary, I am a nobody. No Alpha’s mate, no wolf’s daughter. Just a woman with a secret.

I put the hood of the cloak on my head, let one last touch of my han

d to my stomach, and breathe out the very last promise that I have.

"You will be born free."

After that, I head in the direction of the lights, without turning around.