MoonBound Hearts

Chapter Four

The first thing I smelled was smoke.

Not from fire, but from myself—burnt fur and singed skin lingering like a curse. My lungs refused to fill all the way, every breath scratching like I’d swallowed glass. When I tried to move, pain lanced through my ribs, reminding me that shifting halfway into a monster had torn me apart from the inside.

White walls surrounded me, the sharp sting of antiseptic cutting through the musk of wolf and blood. The infirmary. My pack’s place of healing.

But when I shifted my head, I found not comfort but suspicion.

Three pack wolves stood near the doorway, whispering, their eyes refusing to meet mine. I heard their words anyway, low but clear as knives:

“She lit up like the moon itself.”

“She almost killed the Alpha.”

“She’s dangerous.”

Their gazes cut into me, sharp and fearful. Wolves I’d grown up with. Wolves who’d once smiled when I walked past. Now, I was a creature to be feared.

The word they didn’t say out loud rang in my skull: Moonborn.

The door opened, and silence fell like a guillotine. Kael filled the space with sheer presence, his broad shoulders shadowing the room. His shirt clung to his chest, stained with his own dried blood from last night’s fight. His jaw was cut, his forearm bandaged, but his eyes—those golden eyes—were alive with something that made my heart misstep.

Not hatred. Not exactly. Something hotter, sharper. Something that made my wolf stir, restless.

“You’re awake,” he said, voice low, edged with command.

“Unfortunately,” I rasped, shoving myself upright against the headboard. The thin blanket tangled around me, doing little to hide the tremor in my hands.

The guards shifted uneasily. Kael’s gaze snapped toward them, and without a word, they lowered their heads and slipped out, leaving us alone.

Silence swallowed us whole.

“You should have told me,” he said finally.

“Told you what?” I shot back, my voice raw. “That I’m broken? That my wolf doesn’t shift right? That there’s something inside me I can’t control? I didn’t exactly have a handbook for this.”

His jaw ticked. He stepped closer, the air tightening between us. “You’re not broken, Lyra. You’re dangerous. You unleashed something last night—something that nearly killed me.”

The words slammed into me harder than the memory of light bursting from my chest. My throat closed. “I didn’t mean to,” I whispered.

“I know,” he said, and that was somehow worse.

He sat on the edge of the bed, too close, his heat bleeding into me. For a heartbeat, we just breathed the same air, the same tension stretching between us until I thought I’d choke on it. His eyes softened, just for a moment, the Alpha mask slipping.

“Moonborn,” he murmured, like the word itself was sacred and damned at once. “Do you have any idea what that means?”

“No,” I snapped. “And I don’t care. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for you to reject me, or for them to hunt me, or for this power to turn me into something I can’t control.” My voice cracked. “I just wanted to belong.”

The truth of it hung heavy, unmovable. For a second, Kael looked like I’d struck him. His hand twitched, like he wanted to touch me, pull me in, erase every ugly thing he’d ever said. But then his Alpha mask slammed back into place.

“You can’t run from what you are,” he said, voice low, dangerous. “And I can’t protect you if you keep pretending otherwise.”

The words lit fire in my chest, not of longing but of fury. “Protect me? You rejected me. You made sure every wolf here knows I don’t belong. You can’t claim to protect what you refuse to keep.”

His eyes darkened, the gold burning hotter, fiercer. “You think I don’t feel this bond, Lyra? You think it doesn’t tear me apart every time I breathe near you? I reject you because I have to. But that doesn’t mean I don’t—”

He cut himself off, teeth gritting, muscles straining as though caging words he couldn’t let free.

I stared at him, my pulse a war drum in my throat. My wolf leaned forward, desperate, aching to hear the words. My heart wanted them too. But my mind… my mind remembered the whispers. The fear in my pack’s eyes. The way my power had nearly burned Kael alive.

I couldn’t stay here.

Not when every breath felt like chains tightening around me.

When Kael finally left the room, orders spilling from his mouth to the guards, I waited until his voice faded down the corridor. Then I swung my legs from the bed, ignoring the way they trembled, ignoring the pain that flared like fire in my veins.

I found clothes in a cabinet—loose, ill-fitting, but enough to cover me. My bare feet made no sound as I slipped through the infirmary’s back door, into the night.

The forest called to me, dark and endless. My wolf pushed at my skin, urging me forward.

Run.

And so I did.

Branches clawed at me, roots caught at my ankles, but I didn’t stop. Every breath was a ragged gasp of freedom, every step a defiance of the fate they tried to write for me. For the first time since Kael had said I reject you, I felt like I was choosing something for myself.

But freedom lasted only as long as it took for the air to shift.

The scent hit me first—iron, smoke, and something sharp, metallic, wrong. My wolf snarled, fur bristling along the edges of my skin.

And then they stepped from the shadows.

Cloaks black as night, eyes glowing red like fresh wounds. The same hunters who had whispered “Moonborn” with hunger.

“Running away from home already?” the leader said, lips curving in a smile that made my stomach turn. His gaze swept over me, slow and certain, like a predator savoring prey that couldn’t escape.

“You saved us the trouble of coming to fetch you.”

The forest closed in, the world shrinking until there was nothing but their eyes on me. My wolf growled, but my body was trembling, my strength frayed from running and shifting and bleeding.

I was alone.

And this time, I didn’t know if Kael would come.