His Rejected Luna: The Bond That Wouldn’t Die

Chapter 10 – Through the Smoke

By the time we turn onto Keane’s street, the night is orange.

Flames lick up the side of the old brick building, painting the sky in violent color. Smoke boils out of broken windows, thick and black. The wail of sirens ricochets off the row houses, punctuated by the stutter of radios and shouted orders.

It looks like a war zone. It smells like my worst nightmare.

Varro jerks the SUV to a stop half a block away, just short of the barricade the first patrol car has thrown across the street. Fire engines crowd the curb. Hoses snake over asphalt, spraying shining arcs of water against the inferno.

“Out,” Corin says.

He doesn’t wait for a reply. The door’s open and he’s moving, a tall dark shape cutting through chaos like a blade. I scramble after him, air punching out of my lungs as the heat hits.

Even out here, the smoke tastes like burned paper and plastic and something else—cheap fabric, crayon wax, the sour edge of panic-sweat. My life, on fire.

“Ma’am, you can’t be here!” a firefighter yells, trying to wave me back.

“I work here—” My voice scrapes, useless.

Corin steps between us without breaking stride. “She’s with me,” he says, flashing some kind of ID that makes the man hesitate. Pack liaison badge, probably. “Where are they staging evacuees?”

“Across the street, school gym.” The firefighter jerks his chin toward the dark shape of the elementary school. “We’ve got most of the kids out, but we’re still sweeping the second floor. Gas line’s a concern, so—”

“Most?” The word lodges like glass.

“How many unaccounted?” Corin asks, calm as if he’s asking about a guest list.

The man glances at his clipboard. “Two staff, three kids, unless they’re already over at the gym and not marked yet. We’re still—hey, you can’t go over there, that’s a hot zone—”

But I’m already moving.

“Sylvi!” Corin’s hand closes around my wrist, iron warm on my skin. “You’re not going in there.”

“Like hell I’m not,” I snap, twisting. “You heard him. Two staff, three kids. That’s Mara’s floor.”

“The firefighters are sweeping,” he says. “They’re trained—”

“For what?” My laugh breaks on smoke. “For kids who hide under beds? In closets? Behind the old soda machine because that’s what they did last time someone yelled? They don’t know these hallways. I do.”

The bond flares between us, hot and panicked, mirroring my terror back at me doubled. For a second I see me the way he must: wild-eyed, soot already streaking my clothes, scar stark white against my throat.

If you go in there and the ceiling comes down, he doesn’t say.

If I don’t and they die, I don’t say back.

Varro appears at his other shoulder, jaw set. “Alpha. We need you on the outside. Command. If something shifts with the police or the Department—”

“I’m not asking him to come with me,” I cut in. “I’m telling you I’m going.”

A cluster of kids and staff huddled on the far sidewalk catches my eye. Theo’s there, coughing into his sleeve, phone in his hand. His gaze locks on me. Relief flashes across his face, followed fast by new panic.

He mouths something I can’t hear over the roar.

Behind him, above the lobby doors, a second-story window explodes outward in a shower of glass as flames punch through, hungrily seeking air.

A collective cry goes up.

Corin swears under his breath. The decision hits him like a physical impact—I feel it through the bond: fear, calculation, something that tastes like surrender.

He turns to Varro. “You coordinate with fire command. Keep our people out of the cameras’ center frame as much as possible.”

“Understood,” Varro says grimly.

“Elian?” Corin’s already reaching for his comm. “I want every street cam and bystander video of this pulled the minute it hits the grid. If anyone sees wolves where they shouldn’t, I want to know before Severin does.”

Then he looks at me.

“I can’t let you go alone,” he says, voice low. “Not in there. Not again.”

“Then don’t,” I whisper. “Come with me.”

For a heartbeat, we’re sixteen and seventeen again, standing at the edge of our fathers’ world, about to jump off a cliff we didn’t build.

This time, we’re the ones stepping.

He releases my wrist only to slide his hand down, lacing our fingers together. The contact sends a jolt through the bond, sharp enough to steal my breath—but it steadies, not shatters.

“Stay low, follow my lead,” he says. “If I say out, you don’t argue.”

“If you try to carry me,” I shoot back, “I bite.”

Despite everything, the corner of his mouth lifts. “Noted.”

We duck under the tape before anyone can stop us, smoke closing in like a living thing. Heat slams into us as we cross the threshold, the air a choking wall of ash and memory.

Behind us, someone shouts for us to come back.

Ahead, down a hallway I’ve walked a thousand times with crayon-smudged fingers wrapped in mine, fire eats the world I built out of nothing.

My wolf lifts her head.

Ours, she says.

Then we run into the burning shelter to take it back.