CHAPTER 5
1119 Words
Omniscient
He dropped her back in the cell without a word.
No warning.
No punishment.
No explanation.
One moment, the forest still rang in her ears—the rough bark against her skin, the heat of him behind her, the release of feelings inside her she didn’t think she had—and the next, the iron door had shut with a dull finality.
Ariana had stood there for a long moment, waiting.
Waiting for the door to open again.
Waiting for anger.
Waiting for mockery.
Waiting for something. Anything.
Nothing came.
The silence stretched, thick and heavy, pressing against her chest until it hurt more than the shackles ever had. The cell was the same as before. Damp stone. Torchlight that never fully chased away the shadows. A thin blanket folded neatly on the narrow bed, as if someone had thought about her comfort and decided it was just enough.
She hated that.
She sat on the edge of the bed, hands clenched in her lap, replaying the memory against her will. Not the fear. Not the chase.
The pause.
The moment he’d stopped.
The way his control had snapped back into place like a door slamming shut.
It made no sense.
Men like him did not stop. They took. They destroyed. They indulged. That was what she had prepared herself for. What she had braced her spine against. That was–even though she didn’t want to admit it–what she wanted.
Instead of finishing what he started, he had carried her back like a burden he refused to acknowledge. Like a chore he had to complete. Had the tension she felt between them at that time just a fluke, just a mistake? She didn’t know what to think anymore.
She hated him even more.
Hours passed.
No footsteps came.
No guards entered.
No taunts slid through the door.
By the time food appeared—left just inside the threshold without a word—her anger had dulled into something quieter. Something more dangerous.
Acceptance.
If this was how it was going to be, she would survive it. Alone, if she had to. She lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the drip of water echo through the stone.
He didn’t come that night.
Or the next.
And slowly, against her will, she got used to the quiet.
---
Far above the dungeons, in a chamber carved from black stone and lit by fire rather than torchlight, Claud stood with his men.
The table before them was scarred with old knife marks and burned edges, a map spread across its surface. Mooncrest lay at its centre, marked in silver ink. Around it, smaller territories branched out like fractures.
“They’re bleeding,” one of the men said, tapping the map with two fingers. “No Luna. No ceremony. Their Alpha is unravelled.”
Another leaned back against the wall, arms crossed. “The timing couldn’t have been better. You are really an expert at planning, Alpha Claud.”
Claud did not smile.
He rested his palms on the table, shoulders squared, eyes fixed on the markings as though he could will them to shift. His men watched him closely. They always did.
Mooncrest’s collapse was not news. It was the plan.
“Lucian is losing control,” Claud said at last. His voice was even. Measured. “The council is divided. The people are frightened. Packs like his don’t survive uncertainty.”
One of the men—tall, sharp-eyed, always too curious for his own good—tilted his head. “And the Luna?”
Claud’s jaw tightened, just slightly.
“She’s alive,” he said.
A few exchanged looks. One chuckled under his breath.
“More than alive, from the sound of it,” the man said lightly. “Word is she nearly slipped through our fingers.”
The room stilled.
Claud lifted his gaze.
The man cleared his throat. “I mean—no disrespect, Alpha Claud. I was only asking.”
That name carried weight. Alpha was not a title given to just anyone. It had to be earned.
Claud straightened.
“She ran,” he said. “I retrieved her.”
“And?” another pressed. “Did she fight?”
A pause.
Just long enough to be noticed.
“I handled it,” Claud replied.
Simple. Final.
It should have ended there.
But curiosity had teeth, and his men had never been good at leaving things alone.
“She doesn’t strike me as fragile,” the sharp-eyed man said. “Mooncrest wouldn’t have chosen a weak Luna.”
“She isn’t weak,” Claud said.
The words came too quickly.
Silence followed.
Claud became aware of it a second too late. Of the way their attention sharpened. Of the faint shift in posture as they leaned in, interested now.
He turned away from the table, moving towards the fire. The flames caught the edges of his armour, casting sharp shadows across the scars on his face.
“She’s irrelevant,” he continued. “Mooncrest and their Alpha are the targets. She is a tool. Nothing more.”
One of the men snorted softly. “So what’s the way forward? Do we wait for them to make a move or do we strike now that the iron is hot?”
Claud’s hand tightened around the goblet he’d picked up. The metal creaked faintly under the pressure.
“You’re mistaking restraint for weakness,” he said coolly. “We will strike but at the right time. If we rush into this. We’d lose and my father would be disappointed.”
No one argued further.
Still, the sharp-eyed man wasn’t done. “What if Lucian comes for her?”
“He will,” Claud said. “And when he does, he’ll make mistakes.”
Mistakes Claud had waited years for. Mistakes that he had anticipated.
All this while, as he was dishing out instructions to his men, an image surfaced into his memory, unannounced.
A flash of auburn hair against dark bark.
Defiance burning behind blue eyes.
He pushed it down.
Hard.
When the meeting finally ended, his men filed out one by one, boots echoing against stone. Claud remained by the fire, staring into the flames as they devoured the logs.
Revenge required focus.
Precision.
Detachment.
He knew that. If he wanted to make Mooncrest pay for what they did to his pack, he’d have to remove any form of distraction. Something that this captive Luna was trying to
be.
As the room emptied and silence settled in once more, he took a sip out his goblet and sighed. "I’ll not let anything stop me from avenging you, father.”
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