Chapter 5 Luna
1255 Words
The mark burned all night.
Eira lay in Kael's furs, curled on her side, his massive black shirt tangled around her legs, while Kael sat as far away from her as the small cabin would allow — back against the far wall, knees pulled up, head in his hands like a man being punished.
He had not touched her again since his thumb brushed the crescent bite on the back of her neck. He had thrown a fur over his naked body, shifted back into his torn pants somehow without looking at her, and retreated.
But his eyes never left her. Every few minutes, they flashed gold in the firelight, checking.
The mark itself was small, no bigger than her thumb, a perfect crescent moon with two tiny puncture dots on either side where his canines had broken skin. It should have been bleeding. It wasn't. It was hot, pink, and pulsed in time with her heartbeat — and, impossibly, with his.
Every time Kael's heart beat hard, the mark beat harder. Every time she shivered from cold, even under three furs, Kael shivered too, his jaw clenching.
"What did you do to me?" Eira whispered finally, her voice hoarse from crying and from the strange heat still flooding her veins. She touched the mark again and hissed. It sent a jolt straight down her spine, to her stomach.
Kael's head snapped up. "Don't touch it," he said sharply, then softer, guilty. "Please. Don't."
"Why? What is a Luna mark? My mother never told me about marks!"
"Because Keepers were never supposed to be marked!" He stood abruptly, pacing, his bare feet silent on the wood, his back muscles flexing under his scars. He looked like a caged animal. "A Luna mark is... it's a claim. A vow. It's what an Alpha does when his wolf decides a female is his mate. His to protect, his to provide for, his to..."
He stopped, his golden eyes darkening as he looked at her neck again.
"His to breed," he finished quietly.
Eira's face went scarlet. "B-breed?!"
"Not like that! Not —" Kael dragged a hand through his black hair, frustrated, his ears turning red. For a terrifying Alpha, he looked completely out of his depth. "It means you are pack now. My pack. My only pack. The Moonstone amplified it. My wolf has been alone for fifty years, Eira. Fifty years without a pack, without a touch. And you came in smelling like moonlight and bleeding and brave, and you touched his fur and called him beautiful. No one has called him beautiful. Ever."
He knelt again, but this time kept a full arm's length away.
"The mark means two things," he said, forcing his voice to be calm, like he was explaining a wound. "One, every supernatural creature in a hundred miles will now smell me on you. The warlocks will know you are no longer just a Keeper. You are an Alpha's Luna. They will hunt you ten times harder. Not just for the stone, but to break me."
Eira swallowed hard. "And the second thing?"
Kael's golden eyes locked on hers, and the pained guilt in them made her breath stop.
"The second thing is, you can't leave."
"What?"
"The Luna bond... it's not just symbolic. For the first three days after a marking, if the Luna goes more than a mile from her Alpha, her heart starts to fail. The bond thinks she is being taken. It will try to pull you back. It will hurt." He looked at her bandaged feet. "Your feet will never heal if you keep running. The mark needs my presence to settle. I need... I need to stay close. To guard the bond."
Eira stared at him. "So I'm trapped? Here? With you?"
"You're safe. Here. With me," he corrected, his voice low. "There is a difference."
"Safe is not the same as free!"
"No," he agreed softly. "It isn't. I know."
Silence fell, thick and heavy, broken only by the fire.
Eira looked down at her hands. The Moonstone on her chest, which had been white, was now faintly silver, matching the faint glow coming from her mark. When she focused, she could feel him. Not just see him — feel him. His guilt, like a stone in his gut. His exhaustion. And underneath, a fierce, possessive warmth that was entirely focused on her.
Is that what a Luna feels?
"Does it... does it hurt you too?" she whispered, looking at him.
Kael blinked, surprised she asked.
"Yes," he admitted. He pulled up his own shirt, just enough to show his chest. Over his heart, where the faded crescent moon scar had been, there was now a fresh, matching mark, glowing faintly silver. Her mark. "If you are scared, my chest burns. If you are cold, I can't get warm. If you... if you hate me, it feels like a knife."
Eira's anger, which had been a shield since her mother died, cracked.
She scooted forward, just an inch, in the furs. Kael tensed but didn't move away.
"I don't hate you," she whispered. It was the truth. She was confused, and marked, and hunted, but when she looked at this broken man who had buried his whole family and still carried her bleeding body through the snow, she couldn't hate him.
"I hate that you were alone for fifty years."
Something in Kael's face shattered. The Alpha mask fell completely.
In two strides he was in front of her, his large hands cupping her face, careful not to touch the mark, his forehead pressed to hers. His skin was hot, his breath shaky.
"Eira," he breathed her name like it hurt. "Don't say things like that. Don't be kind to me. I don't know what to do when you are kind to me."
His thumb brushed her cheekbone, wiping away a tear she didn't know had fallen. The touch was so gentle from hands that had just ripped warlocks apart.
Outside, the bleeding moon pulsed again. And this time, Eira felt it pulse inside her own chest, answering the mark on her neck and the man holding her face.
The Moonstone flared between them.
And from the edge of the forest, too far for a human to hear but loud enough for an Alpha, came a new sound. Not a hound. Not a warlock.
A howl. A wolf's howl. Low and mournful.
Kael's head snapped up, his golden eyes going wide with disbelief, then pure, raw shock.
"Impossible," he whispered, his hands tightening on Eira's face. "That howl... that is my brother's howl. But I buried my brother fifty years ago."
Eira grabbed his wrists, scared by the look on his face. "Kael? What does that mean?"
"It means," he said, looking down at her, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper as he pulled her protectively against his chest, his mark on her neck glowing brighter, "we are not alone in this forest anymore. And whoever is out there... they know I have a Luna now."
He scooped her up, furs and all, and carried her to the far corner of the cabin, away from the door, away from the window, shielding her body with his.
"Hold on to me, Luna," he growled as another howl answered the first, closer this time, from the other side of the river.
And deep in the woods, the black smoke of the warlocks began to gather again, thicker this time, forming a shape almost human.
- Writer
