Bound by Moonfire

CHAPTER3-CLAIMINGMINE

CLAIMING MINE

LUCIEN POV

I felt it before I heard it.

A pull deep in my chest, sharp and sudden, like something had reached inside me and yanked without asking permission first. I was in the middle of reviewing border reports with Riven when it hit, and I actually stopped talking mid sentence.

"Lucien?" Riven was watching me now, forehead creased.

"It's nothing," I said. But I know it wasn't nothing. It never was, not when it came to her.

I hadn't let myself think about Aria Devane in months. Not on purpose anyway. I'd gotten good at shoving her to some far corner of my mind and locking the door, telling myself that was the responsible thing to do, the safe thing. But my wolf never agreed with that decision. My wolf never forgot her for a single day, not since the first time I felt the bond snap into place.

I was fourteen when it happened. Some summer gathering between packs, the kind of neutral ground meeting where Alphas' children got paraded around like future alliances waiting to happen. I remember standing near the edge of the clearing, bored out of my mind, when a girl with dark hair and eyes like moonlight on water walked past me chasing after some ball that had rolled away from a group of younger kids.

She looked at me. Just once. Just for a second.

And something inside me clicked into place so hard I actually stumbled backward, like the ground had shifted under my feet.

I didn't understand it then. I was just a kid, we both were. I didn't have the years or the training yet to know what a mate bond even felt like, only that something in me had just recognized something in her, and it terrified me more than anything ever had.

I never told her my name. Didn't say a single word to her, actually. I just watched her from a distance the rest of that day, and by the time my father dragged me back to Thorne territory that night, I'd already convinced myself I imagined the whole thing.

I didn't imagine it.

Riven found out first, years later, the way Betas always find out everything eventually.

"You're going to have to face it someday," he told me once, arms crossed, that maddening calm voice of his. "The bond doesn't just go away because you ignore it."

"Watch me," I said, getting annoyed at his nosiness.

And for years, that's exactly what I did. I built my life around never being anywhere near Crescent Hollow. Never accepting invitations where I knew she might be. Training harder, fighting harder, burying myself in pack business so deep I didn't have room left to think about a girl I'd met once at fourteen and never spoken to again.

Because I knew what claiming a mate bond meant for someone like me. I knew about the curse tangled into my bloodline, the one my grandfather warned my father about, the one my father warned me about before he died. A Thorne who claims his fated mate doesn't just risk his own life.

He risks hers.

So I stayed away. I told myself it was protection. I told myself distance was the safest gift I could give her, even if she never knew I existed enough to need saving from me in the first place.

That was the plan anyway. Stay away. Keep my distance. Let her live whatever life she was supposed to live, far away from me and whatever ancient mess my bloodline had cursed me with.

Then tonight Riven walked into my study with a look on his face I didn't like one bit.

"What," I said, not looking up from the map spread across my desk.

"Crescent Hollow," he said carefully. "Word just came through. Alaric Devane is holding his daughter's engagement ceremony tonight."

My hand stopped moving.

"So?" I said, though something in my chest had already started twisting, tight and wrong.

"To Kael Veyron." Riven's voice was quiet now, careful in the way he only got when he already knew he was about to say something I wouldn't want to hear. "It's political. Word is she doesn't want it. But she never had a choice in it at all."

I stood up suddenly, my chair scraping back as my hand slammed against the desk, hard enough to c***k the wood.

A sound echoed in my own head, some low furious growl that wasn't fully me anymore, not entirely.

She doesn't want it.

Something in my chest cracked wide open, years of careful distance collapsing in on itself in the space of one sentence.

"Lucien." Riven's voice, sharper now. "Whatever you're thinking, think about the curse first. Think about what happens if…"

"I'm not thinking," I said, and it was the truest thing I'd said in years.

My wolf had already made the decision for me, clawing up under my skin with a need so strong it didn't leave room for logic, or fear, or seven years of careful avoidance. Somewhere across pack lines, she was standing in front of a fire about to be bound to a man she didn't choose, and every single instinct in me refused to let that happen without at least seeing her face one more time.

"Lucien," Riven said again, stepping in front of me like that could stop what was already moving through my veins. "If you go there tonight, there's no taking it back. You know what happens the moment that bond ignites in front of witnesses. You know what it could cost her."

"I know," I said.

And I still walked past him anyway, already shifting halfway to the door, my wolf howling one single command inside my skull the entire way there.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

I didn't care anymore what it cost. Some part of me, the part I'd spent seven years trying to bury, had already decided.

Tonight, I was done staying away.