Moonbound Secrets

Episode 3

The castle walls jutted out teeth in the sky at night. Lyra hung on to the saddle as the huge horse rode over iron gates that swung creaking open at the command of Darius. Fight, fight, she would go, to chuck herself off and run till she was tired--but she had living experience of what running away meant. He had tracked her once. He would always track her.

The court was busy with life. Wolves came and went, padding into the shadows, their eyes shining, with suspicion and hunger and something primal. Men and women stood on stone steps and looked on with expressions as hard and inscrutable as stone.

And then, silence.

Darius leaped off in one continuous movement, and his hand stretched back to grab her. When her feet hit the floor, the burden of all my gazes struck her. She wished to melt into the rocks of her feet.

“She’s human,” someone muttered.

“Impossible,” another scoffed. “The Alpha wouldn’t—”

“She reeks of fear.”

Lyra’s throat closed. The blade of sound they uttered was harsher than a blade, but Darius had caught her arm, and pulled her along into the ring of gawking faces.

“She is mine,” he said. The words came out deep, thunderous, non-shaky. “My mate.”

The announcement spread to the courtyard. Shock. Out rage. Others stepped their heads immediately, and muttered a word of deference. Others bristled and showed their teeth, and their ill will was in the air.

Him, I shall ruin, a woman, who was spitting in the rear, and whose hair flashed in the light of the torch. “Can you not smell it on her? The curse walks with her.”

Lyra’s stomach dropped. Curse?

"You see a danger," a man snarled with his wolf eyes blazing gold. “To claim her is to doom us all.”

Darius’s hand left her elbow. He came forward, and the power of his body language hushed the courtyard as if it had no words. "Nobody puts questions to me," he grilled. "She is mine". Thou shalt make of her thy Luna.

Nothing in the word, but the weight of the word pushed against her bosom. Luna. She looked at the people--in some reverence, in others hatred. There came a chilled understanding: she had not been dragged into his world. It had put her in its center.

She swallowed hard. "I did not want this," she thought, but the sound of the words was never heard in the dead air.

Darius wheeled, and looked at her. There was no gentleness in his face, no trace of pity. Only steel. “You belong here now.”

Her nails dug into her palms. “No. I don’t.”

Something flashed across his face, an unintelligible shadow, bit it, in the least possible time. He stepped a listener, and reduced his voice to make certain that she alone heard him. Fight or not the bond has been decided. And the bond never lies.

When his words came in contact with her, heat pricked her skin. She disliked that her body responded thus, that her pulse was false and beat in step with him.

A voice rose again in the crowd--this time a guttural growl of one of the larger wolves. “She will destroy us all.”

The growl rang, and she shivered down her backbone. And Lyra breathed, and her eyes darted between their wrathful expressions, and their fear refined to something deeper.

The circle tightened. Every eye turned toward her. And at that instant she became aware--

She was not just unwanted.

She was feared.

It was like a razor cut the truth into her, and she was reeling. The sniffing betrayed Lyra, and her eyes swept over the crowd, a sea of faces merging into one, the werewolves with their gleaming eyes and a savage, feral intensity, the half-breeds with their faces of human and beast, the wanted with their polished surfaces and their secrets and scar, which ran soul-deep and told a story, of which she was never the storyteller. All of them stared at her as an embodiment of a curse.

Darius stood still like a stone with her, and through sheer bulk would not allow them to rush. But she was able to tell that the air was trembling, and that a tension was there so shocking that she could not breathe. His pack of wolves was a pack of creatures which he could have done as he wished. Suppose that leash slipped, or his command had faltered a moment, she did not want to think what would become of herself.

You see? A man sneered, as he moved. His eyes were molten gold, his teeth hard as his anger tore through the quiet. “Even now, she shakes. What force was she to bring to us? She will be our ruin.”

Others snarled in approval, which became like a stormy building. Torches flashed, and the shadows were reaching in banks across the courtyard as though the darkness itself was in the accusations.

Lyra bled through talking, but her voice was no more than a shudder. “I—I never asked for this. I’m not your enemy. I don’t even know what this is.”

Her words fell flat. Anyhow, they only appeared to make the pack disdainful.

A woman with fierce cheek-bones and fiery auburn hair leaned her head back, her wolf licking at the skin only a little under it. The Alpha attached himself to a human girl, she hissed. “A girl who reeks of weakness. Of death.”

A ripple of agreement spread. The very word death appeared to ooze upon the air.

The heart of Lyra thumped in her chest, and the fear tore its way along her throat. She made a step back, but Darius reached round and caught her by the wrist, firm and immovable. His hold was brilliant, scalding, jealous.

“Enough.” A c***k in the night was his voice and he quieted the crowd. His eyes were hot and icy cold. Ask her more, and I am asked. And you are all aware of what defiance costs.

The courtyard stilled. Others cast their heads down at once. Others did not, and their hostility was sizzling under the lowered lashes.

Darius drew Lyra, and bumped her against his side, pushing her into the shadows, and Lyra felt her pulse rocketing speedily. His is a shield, yes, and a cage. She despised the way her body tilted against that strength despite the insanity of her mind protesting.

"You are afraid of her," said Darius. His voice was slow and dangerous. You will find, however, that fear may be converted to power. He looked at the pack like a sword. “She is my mate. My Luna. And next to me, whether you like it or not, is her place.

There was a lengthening, weighty silence. Then an elder clambered to the fringe of the assemblage--the old man bent with age, but with eyes like those of colder doubt. He neither snarled, nor lifted his voice. Instead, he mumbled--low, slow, to be heard by all:

“The curse has begun again.”

The words dropped like a stone in water, and were bottled out. Wolves stiffened. Shivering ran along the courtyard. The mutters started afresh, more wild, more terrified, as though it had been a prophecy and not a warning which the elder had uttered.

Lyra’s stomach dropped. The curse. Again?

She raised her eyes at Darius, scanning his features in vain, and he glared back at the older person, his golden eyes fixed on him.

And though his hold on her hand never slackened, she was now able to experience the weight of it, not, however, possess

ive, but desperate. Already he knew she was the key to something dark and inevitable.