The Luna He Rejected Is The Millennium Wolf

Chapter 011

Damien's POV

The cold air in the hall was heavy and still, turning the guards' frantic movements into a slow deliberate shuffle. Sienna was leaden in my arms, a physical anchor to a life slipping from my grasp as she stood on the threshold, neither here nor gone.

Six minutes, ten seconds.

"Damien, you are going against the rules. You know the consequences," Morrigan said, her voice surfacing not as a scream but thin, the sound of a predator realizing its prey has finally grown teeth.

The phantom sting of a failure years old settled deep in my marrow. I looked down at Sienna, catching where the sweet wild trail of her soul was gone, replaced by a growing chill. Beneath that, a trace of her lavender soap remained, a small human detail that made the marble floor beneath my boots feel suddenly very cold.

I didn't waste breath on a reply, turning my back on her instead.

Click.

My boot hit the stone.

Click. Click.

The exit was only yards away, but behind me the air shrieked as a jagged force surged toward my spine. Morrigan was striking, forcing me to brace my shoulders with teeth gritted, every muscle coiled for the impact that would shatter my ribs.

The blow never landed.

The room went dead silent, the sudden absence of pressure making my ears pop. I turned to see the noble lady standing in the gap, her hand raised with fingers splayed mid-air, catching Morrigan's magical strike like a stray draft.

Morrigan stumbled, her face turning pale as she clawed at the air in front of her.

"Go," the noble lady said, her voice remaining level and impossibly calm. "The time is ticking before she crosses."

I tried to gauge her strength, but an invisible wall slammed into my mind, a static hum that made my head throb.

"My price is your Alpha title when this ends," she added, her eyes staying locked on Morrigan, never once flickering toward me.

I didn't answer, reaching the doors to glance back at Lucas. He stood trembling, a pale figure draped in expensive silk who looked smaller than I had ever seen him.

Five minutes, three seconds remaining.

"Sienna is the true amendment of soul," I muttered, pushing through the doors into the night.

The outdoor air was a sharp freezing relief, and I moved quickly for the treeline as the pack hall shrank into a shadow behind us.

"Sienna, I'm here. I'm not letting you go." I pressed a brief kiss to her forehead, feeling her skin run cold, tasting faintly of winter iron. A single microscopic tremor shook her lower lip, a final quiet sign that she was still fighting to stay human.

The forest was a blur of dark cedar and crunching needles. I stumbled into a small clearing with my hands unsteady as I gripped the rough bark of a tree, leaving the sticky sap against my fingers to help ground me, pulling me back from the edge of panic.

My energy was flagging because she was drawing from my core just to stay anchored. I laid her down in a hollow of roots where the ground was soft and damp, smelling of rain and decaying leaves in an unnerving quiet.

Three minutes, four seconds.

"She's already crossing," my wolf rumbled, his voice a ragged edge in my mind.

I dropped to my knees as the forest stopped breathing and the wind died, leaving the pulse in my own ears to sound as loud as a drum. I touched my fingers to her forehead to begin the ritual, where the heat of it flared against my skin, sharp and electric. I closed her eyes, trying to ignore how quickly her warmth was being vacuumed out of her eyelids.

The air shocked violently in a dull blow that rattled my skull. Blood began to drip from my eyes, hot and metallic, rolling down my cheeks in warm sticky rivers as I shoved my consciousness straight into the dark.

I stood in a vast grey expanse. Distant hollow cries echoed through the space, but mostly there was only the sound of my own breath in an endless place where light was just a suggestion.

I tried to call on my beast to track her, but a wave of force caught me, knocking me back into the grey dirt.

"Sienna!"

I spotted her a hundred yards away, bound by heavy black chains that fell from a sky that didn't even exist.

I rushed forward, reaching out until the air around her vibrated with a low frequency that made my teeth ache.

"Don't," my wolf warned, sharp and fast.

I yanked my hands back as the air snapped where my fingers had been.

"It's a trap, Damien. That soul is soulless, and if you touch it, you stay here forever."

Two minutes, one second.

"s**t!" I breathed, though the sound vanished as soon as it left my throat.

A surge of energy hit me, and the grey world dissolved completely.

The cold forest air rushed back as I found myself in my body again, my mouth tasting of copper. I grabbed Sienna, my fingers digging into the dirt beside her while her head rolled to the side, her neck too limp and her skin turning the sickly grey of wet ash.

One minute remaining.

"What can we do?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper against the dirt.

"Calm, brother. She's not dead."

The voice sent a shiver down my spine, ancient, familiar, and dead.

I turned my head.

Jennifer.

My sister stood there, showing the clear marks of a long decay in the underworld for years. Her skin was translucent like thin parchment over bone, and her scent was that of old dust. She was wrapped in black chains, but she had slipped them, leaving the iron rings to lay uselessly at her feet like shed skin. The last time I'd seen her, she was sacrificing herself so I could live, and I had left her to rot in this silence for years.

"Jennifer," I breathed.

"I can help you increase the time limit," she said, her smile never reaching her eyes. "But the price is your peace. You will feel my torment, the eternal damp, the hunger of the void, and the fire that took my life. It will be yours every time you close your eyes, forcing you to see what I became."

"I'm ready, sister."

I growled as the ritual flared to life, and the moment she touched my shoulder, a white-hot agony spread through my mind. I felt my skin bubbling and my sanity fraying as her years of decay flooded my veins, but I choked back a scream, forcing that agony into the ritual as I reached into the dark and grabbed the thread.

I pulled with everything I had left.

Zero minutes, forty seconds.

I pulled her soul back and felt the snap of the connection, leaving Sienna's chest to lurch as she sucked in a jagged rattling breath.

Her eyes opened.

They weren't brown, nor were they amber. They were an absolute bottomless black, voids where a soul should be, proving that whatever I had pulled back into her body wasn't the girl I had been trying to save. It was something else entirely that had been waiting in the dark for an open door.