The Luna of Four: Marked by Four

Lyra’s POV The forest runs with me. The branches whip my arms and tear at my skin. Somewhere behind, I hear them yelling. There are too many of them, too many feet hitting the earth. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be anywhere. “Left!” I hear one scream behind me. “She went left!” My lungs burn as I push even faster. My breath rages around me. The moon hangs bright above the skies, but there is something wrong about it. It is torn at the edges, jagged lines on display for everyone to see. And then, a bright blue light dancing around it, as if coming alive. I have never seen it like that before. It stares down into the earth and I can swear that I feel it in my bones, searching. Licking. “Not now,” I whisper to myself as I hear the first sharp c***k. “Please, not now.” My wolf has been called a lot of names. Dead. Non-existent. Ruined. Crippled. And all because for the whole twenty-one years of my life, she has refused to come out. I feel her sometimes in me, breathing, surviving. But now, she is more alive in my bones, but not when I need her to be. A fallen trunk comes into my line of vision and I jump across it. I land badly, and a sharp pain pierces through my ankle. I resist the urge to scream, but I clamp my teeth together, the pain racking through me. This s when the scent hits. Cedar, iron and something else. Something old. I don’t need anyone to tell me that I am at the boundary of a pack. I should stop. I should turn around. It is an offence as a rogue to go into a pack, because there is a high chance that I will be slaughtered. It doesn’t help that I don’t know their laws. But I can’t go back. Not when their footsteps are heavy, getting closer every second. I hear a shot in the air and it barely misses me. It must have grazed my shoulders because the pain intensifies. Bloody wolfsbane. “Stop!” One of them yells, but this time, there isn’t eagerness or that dark need in his tone. It is one of fear. “You are over the ridge line…” “Take her out!” Another one yells. “The court wants the girl. They don’t bloody care about the boundary.” I don’t wait to hear more as I push myself downhill, despite the pain that almost brings me to my knees. The heat begins to lick up my skin and everything else happens so fast. One minute, I am rolling into another territory, my hands not feeling like mine. And the next, a loud scream pierces the night, straight from my chest. The scream changes suddenly. It doesn’t sound like me. It doesn’t sound human. When the heat subsides, with only the pain from the wolfsbanestill pulsing from my shoulders, I am on four feet, standing in the middle of a clearing I cannot recognize. And then, I see him, right in front of me. A massive wolf steps out of the woods and just like that, the sounds of the gun dissipate into oblivion. His dark eyes doesn’t look at me. Instead, they are fixed on the spot past me, at the men still on the ridge, their weapons aimed. I still don’t understand why they desperately want me dead. Or who the court is. Something in the air changes suddenly. It has nothing to do with the fact that he is three times my size. Instead, it is his command. The way it bounces off him in waves. He growls once. Just once. And the hunters above me freeze. One of them actually takes a step back, before the rest follow, the panic in their eyes evident. “No,” one of them whispers when a younger one tries to aim the rifle at me. “It’s not worth your life. You see the Alpha down there, he will devour you raw.” That does the trick as the lot of them disappear into the trees, leaving me with the big black wolf. My wolf trembles, now out in the open. I am not used to her taking control yet and I feel every bit of it. The big wolf turns. His eyes are not dark. They are iron-gray. Not a color I have seen in a face before. They land on me and something answers to him, like the chord of a violin. It rings through me, through the space we both stand. “Mine,” I hear in my head. “You are mine, mate.” It feels like a compulsory gravity, and it forces me forward. The wolf slips into the shadow and in a few seconds, he walks out in his human form. “Easy,” he murmurs, his black damp hair sticking to his forehead. “You crossed our boundary under a torn moon.” So it has a name. “I am not going to hurt you,” he continues, an intriguing authority easily identifiable. “Name.” I try to talk, but it comes out as a growl. He looks towards the trees. “Dorian?” Another man walks out, leaner than the first one. “Alpha,” he says first, then gears his head in my direction. Something teases his senses because he looks up at me sharply, his eyes wide open. “She’s bleeding,” he whispers. “Her shoulders. Smells like… silver...” I don’t like the way the word falls off his lips, like a problem but at the same time, a prayer. Something desperately wanted. “And wolfsbane,” the Alpha completes. “Fuckers. She shifted on the edge. Firs time, by the look of it.” Dorian sighs softly. “Under a torn moon? I don’t know if this means luck or is the symbol of a curse.” “I’m not some superstition,” I try to say, but I fail again. I cannot even find my own voice. Frustration washes through me but I don’t even have the time to focus on that as I feel something else. It is hot in my right hip. I remember the tiny mark there. The one I have always thought was just a birthmark. It sends fire through me. And in that instant, the Alpha’s head snaps like he feels it too.