His Rejected Luna: The Bond That Wouldn’t Die

Chapter 11 – Into the Fire

The heat hits like a solid wall the second we cross the threshold.

Smoke claws at my throat, tearing coughs out of me before I can stop them. The lobby is a half‑remembered nightmare: the cheerful mural of painted hands on the far wall is already blistering, colors running like they’re trying to escape.

“Down,” Corin orders.

He yanks me with him, both of us dropping into a crouch. The air is a fraction clearer closer to the floor, a murky gray instead of choking black. My eyes burn. Tears stream hot over my cheeks.

“Stairwell!” I shout, voice shredding. “Left, past the office—”

Something crashes overhead with a teeth‑rattling boom. Bits of plaster rain down, stinging exposed skin.

Corin’s hand tightens around mine. “Stay with me.”

We move in short bursts: crawl, pause, check for falling debris. The sound of the fire is a constant roar, like an angry ocean trapped inside four walls. Somewhere above, metal groans.

“Theo said they were evacuating,” I cough. “Most of the kids are out. Staff were sweeping for stragglers.”

“Which means anyone left is stubborn, terrified, or unconscious,” Corin says grimly. “We’ll take the first two. Firefighters can carry the third.”

We reach the hallway that leads to the stairs. One of the fluorescents overhead dangles by its wires, flickering feebly. Heat radiates from the wall on our right—the side facing the alley, where someone must have started this.

The smell is wrong here. Not just burning wood and plastic. Accelerant.

Rage punches up through the fear, hot and clean.

“They did this on purpose,” I rasp.

“I know.” His jaw flexes. “Smell it too.”

Part of me files that away for later; the rest is already at the bottom of the stairs, heart in my mouth.

The stairwell door hangs half‑open. Behind it, smoke churns like a living thing. The metal handle is hot under my hand, but not enough to sear. Not yet.

“Second floor,” I say. “Mara’s office, nap rooms, the storage closet where Lucas always hides when he’s scared.”

“Call out,” Corin says. “If anyone’s conscious, your voice will cut through better than mine.”

I swallow, tasting ash. “Kids! It’s Miss Sylvi! If you can hear me, shout!”

My voice ricochets up the stairwell, swallowed quickly by the crackle and roar. For a second, there’s nothing.

Then—faint, from above us—a thin, high cough. Followed by another. And a hoarse, adult voice I know better than my own.

“Sylvi?”

Mara.

My knees almost buckle in relief and terror. “Second‑floor landing,” I gasp. “She’s—”

“I’ve got it.” Corin shifts in front of me, taking the lead on the stairs. “Stay on my shoulder. If I tell you down, you go down.”

Smoke thickens as we climb. Heat presses from all sides, sweat slicking my back under my shirt. The world narrows to Corin’s broad shoulders, the pounding of my heart, Mara’s ragged coughs getting louder.

We hit the second‑floor landing. The corridor beyond is a nightmare of shadows and flicker. Flames lick along the ceiling tiles at the far end, hungrily gnawing their way toward us. The nap room door on the right stands open, beds already gutted, mattresses blackened husks.

“Mara!” I yell. “Where are you?”

“Storage closet—” Her voice comes from the left, rough and thin. “We—we couldn’t get the door open—”

Corin doesn’t wait. He charges down the hall, low and fast, dragging me with him. The bond hums between us, tight and focused. I can feel his wolf at the surface, straining to break skin.

The storage closet door is warped, frame blackening from heat. Someone’s already tried to kick it in; there’s a dent where a boot caught, then slid.

From inside, a child sobs.

Corin drops my hand and slams his shoulder into the wood. It shudders in the frame, but holds.

“Again,” I choke.

He hits it a second time. The jamb splinters, but still doesn’t give.

Behind us, a fresh crack runs along the ceiling, white plaster crazing like a pane of glass. A section sags ominously, glowing orange above.

“We are out of time,” Corin grits. “Move back.”

I stumble away from the door, pressing myself against the opposite wall. He steps back once, twice, eyes gone full silver now, veins standing out in his neck.

“Corin—”

He roars and slams into the door with everything he has.

The wood explodes inward. Heat and smoke billow out, knocking me sideways. I cough, eyes streaming, blinking through the haze.

Shapes coalesce: Mara, hunched over two small bodies, one under each arm. A third kid clings to her back, fingers locked in her shirt. All of them are covered in soot, eyes wide and wild.

“Sylvi,” Mara gasps, as if she can’t believe I’m real. “The corridor— we tried, but—”

“I’ve got them,” Corin says, already moving. He scoops one child into his arms, his other hand closing around Mara’s elbow.

The ceiling groans again. A chunk of flaming tile crashes down where he stood a heartbeat ago, sparks blooming across the floor.

“That’s it,” he says. “We’re done here. Out.”

We half‑run, half‑stumble back toward the stairs, him with a kid and Mara, me with the smallest boy clinging koala‑tight to my neck, his hot tears cutting tracks through the soot on my skin.

Halfway down the hall, the world changes sound.

The roar of the fire shifts, a deeper, hungrier note sneaking in. Heat spikes against my left side.

I glance back.

Flames have found the old shelving along the wall. The cheap pine goes up like paper, a curtain of fire racing along the corridor, leaping from one stack to the next.

It’s coming for the stairs.

“Faster,” I wheeze.

We’re three steps from the landing when the first beam gives way overhead with a sickening crack.

“Down!” Corin shouts.

We dive as the ceiling collapses behind us in a blizzard of flaming debris. The impact slams into my back, driving the air from my lungs. For a heartbeat, all I know is weight and fire and the terrified wail of the child in my arms.

Then something massive slams into us from the side—warm, solid, braced.

Corin.

He takes the brunt of the falling beam across his shoulders, muscles bunching as the wood pins him against the stair rail. The child in his arms screams. Mara cries out.

The smoke roars in, greedy.

“Go,” he grinds out, voice muffled, every line of his body straining. “Get them— down—”

The beam shifts another inch, biting into his back. The smell of scorched fabric and skin hits my nose.

My bond flares bright, answering his pain like it’s my own.

Leaving him is not an option.

“Rian,” I rasp to the boy on my hip. “Arms tighter. Don’t let go.”

Then I plant my feet on the burning stairs, wrap both hands around the beam pinning my alpha, and pull.