Cast Out by My Mate, Crowned by the Moon

Chapter 4 – Wolves in the Dark

By the time the sun slid behind the trees, my leg had gone from burning to throbbing to a deep, pulsing ache that made my vision gray out whenever I put too much weight on it.

I’d done what I could.

I’d torn my pants to wrap the gash, rinsed it in the creek until the water ran pink instead of red, and smeared crushed yarrow leaves from a patch I’d recognized along the bank. It wasn’t much, but I wasn’t a healer. I was an ex-Luna with a knife and a limp.

The boar lay where it had fallen, eyes glassy, flies already finding the corners of its mouth. Its stink clung to me. My own blood was a sharper, saltier thread under it, a beacon for anything with teeth and a nose.

Staying here was suicide.

So I walked.

One slow, dragging step at a time, following the creek because it gave me direction and because the noise helped chase back the silence in my head. Every time I stumbled and gasped, I listened for the old, automatic echo of pack through my mind.

Nothing. Just my own ragged breathing and the rustle of leaves.

When the light finally thinned to blue and grey, I was done.

I found a small rise above the water, half-sheltered by a leaning oak and a tangled fall of dead branches. It wasn’t a den, but it could be a nest if I squinted.

Good enough.

I lowered myself with the care of an old woman, biting back a groan as my leg flared. The makeshift bandage was already damp again. I’d have to change it in the morning, if there was a morning.

“If you get infected and die,” I told my useless, silent wolf, “I’m haunting you.”

No answer.

I laughed once, a broken sound that didn’t even make it past my teeth.

The night came in properly then. The air cooled; the trees turned to black silhouettes. Crickets started up, then fell abruptly silent as something bigger moved through the undergrowth, far to my left.

I froze, fingers tightening on the knife.

Leaves whispered. A weight shifted. Then nothing.

“Probably just a deer,” I whispered.

Deer didn’t move like that.

I forced myself to breathe. Shallow didn’t help; it just made my head light. In through the nose, out through the mouth. My ribs ached like I’d been running for hours.

Snap.

This time, the sound was closer. A twig, cleanly broken, not under my feet.

My heart kicked.

“Who’s there?” I called, which was a stupid thing to say in any forest, let alone one where I had no pack and a bleeding leg. But silence was worse.

For a heartbeat, there was only the distant trickle of the creek.

Then a voice, low and edged, from the dark ahead. “Put the blade down, lone wolf.”

The words were strange—accented, rough—but the authority in them was unmistakable. Not a human. Not quite like any Alpha I’d heard, either.

My fingers tightened. “You first.”

A short huff of what might almost have been amusement. “You’re bleeding so hard I can smell it over the wind. If I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t have heard me.”

A shape detached itself from the shadows beneath the trees. Tall. Broad-shouldered. A man, bare-armed, dark hair tied back at his neck. Behind him, more movement—two, three, maybe four others, half-hidden, flanking.

Wolves. Not Blackclaw. The scent was wrong—wilder, threaded with smoke and mountain stone.

My pulse spiked.

“I’m not a threat,” I said, keeping the knife low but not dropping it. “Just passing through.”

“No,” the man said. Moonlight caught his eyes—pale, sharp, like chips of frost. “You’re not. Passing through wolves’ land without permission would be stupid, and you don’t smell that stupid.”

My wounded leg chose that moment to throb hard enough to make me sway. I gritted my teeth.

“If you’re going to kill me,” I said, “do it fast. I’ve had a long couple of days.”

The man stepped closer, slow enough not to spook prey. His nose wrinkled, catching the scents: boar blood, my blood, crushed herbs, faint ghosts of Blackclaw pack still clinging to my skin.

His gaze sharpened.

“Exiled,” he said, like it was a diagnosis. “Fresh. You still stink of their bond.”

Something inside me lurched. “I don’t belong to them anymore.”

He studied me for a moment longer, then nodded once, almost to himself. “Name.”

My throat went tight. A stupid, instinctive flash of thought: if I told him, it would make it real. Liora Fenriss, traitor’s daughter, ex-Luna, nothing.

“Liora,” I managed. “Just Liora.”

He arched a brow, clearly catching the missing piece. “Every wolf belongs to someone. Or did.” His mouth twisted, barely. “I am Sorren Wildcrest. This is my territory. You’re bleeding all over it.”

I stared at him. “You want me to… apologize?”

The corner of his mouth actually ticked up. “I want you not to die on my doorstep and draw every scavenger in ten miles.”

One of the shadows behind him shifted—a young female voice, impatient. “We don’t have to drag her anywhere, Sorren. She’s not our problem.”

“Nyssa,” he said without looking back, “she’s a bleeding wolf at our creek. That makes her our problem until she’s off it. Or on her feet.”

My fingers went slack around the knife. Instantly, pain rushed up my leg, hot and dizzying. The world blurred.

“On my feet,” I said stubbornly, even as my vision tunneled. “I can—”

My knee buckled.

Sorren moved faster than my useless eyes could track. One moment he was a few strides away; the next, his arm was under mine, solid, holding me upright exactly long enough for pride to be satisfied.

Then everything went dark around the edges.

As I sank against him, my last clear thought was a bitter, disbelieving thing:

Cast out by my mate. Caught by a stranger.

The forest really did have a sense of humor.