Their Forgotten Luna

Haunted Dreams

Cierra:

When the crowd thinned and the wolves dragged Dominic and Dane in opposite directions, I couldn’t stand anymore. My legs felt carved from wax, trembling and soft. Every inhale was a blade against my ribs. Sweat clung to me in cold patches, drying sticky on my skin, but worse than the ache in my body was the pain in my chest—the two gazes still burning into me, searing me from inside out.

Dane’s eyes, raw with need. Dominic’s eyes were steady with promise.

I turned away before I shattered. The murmurs of the pack followed me as I left the training ground, voices like the hiss of water on stone. My abandoned staff still lay in the dirt, splintered from my last strike, but I didn’t pick it up. I couldn’t.

The path back to my room blurred. My body carried me, though I wasn’t sure how. Every muscle twitched with overuse, and my heartbeat refused to slow. I collapsed onto my mattress, sweat dampening the sheets. I had no strength left to strip off my sports bra or peel the dirt from my skin.

The weight of the spar. The weight of their words. The weight of memories I couldn’t grasp. It all pressed me flat until the only thing left to do was surrender.

Sleep dragged me down hard.

The darkness wasn’t empty.

It bloomed with smoke and fire. A chaos too jagged to be dreamed alone.

Wolves screamed, shadows lunged, the copper tang of blood thickened the air until I gagged on it. My feet pounded across dirt, too fast, too unsteady. I wasn’t in control, not entirely—I saw through blurred eyes, moved with instincts I couldn’t direct.

I stumbled. My palms skidded over stone, skin tearing. Teeth snapped at my throat. Heat flared along my side as claws raked across skin. Pain was a white flash, then gone, drowned beneath the frenzy.

Fear wasn’t just around me—it was alive inside me. It breathed with me. It howled with me.

And then—beneath the chaos—her voice.

Not human. Not separate either.

You are not prey.

The words thrummed low, ancient, rattling through my bones.

I froze. Breath caught in my throat.

You are not prey, she repeated, her voice threading through the fire, through the violence, through me. Run. Fight. Live.

My wolf.

Not instinct this time. Not a whisper. Not a flicker.

Her.

I reached for her, desperate, but the dream twisted away like smoke through fingers. The fire surged higher, the shadows bled closer, and I was swallowed again—wolves tearing, voices screaming, a hand catching mine in the dark, a laugh breaking through blood, a promise whispered against my ear—

Forever.

My own scream split me apart.

I woke choking on it.

Sheets tangled around my legs, sticky with sweat. My chest heaved, air clawing into my lungs too sharp, too shallow. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. The fire still clung to me, the rogue attack etched fresh in my veins, as if it hadn’t happened years ago but minutes.

The walls tilted. The floor tilted. My heart tilted.

And then—

“Cierra.”

His voice anchored me.

Dominic leaned against the doorway, his golden eyes soft but shadowed with worry. His presence steadied me before he even crossed the room. When he did, his movements were slow and careful, like approaching a wounded animal.

I wanted to tell him I was fine. To roll over and pretend I could breathe on my own. But the truth was, I couldn’t.

I reached for him before I could think better of it.

He sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping with his weight. His hand slid instinctively along my back, firm and grounding. His touch was heat—not burning or consuming, but steady like the hearth fire that warms without destruction.

“It was just a dream,” he murmured, though his voice carried more than reassurance—a vow, quiet and deliberate. “You’re safe. With me, you’re safe.”

I pressed my forehead against his shoulder, inhaling the scent of him—pine, steel, and something I couldn’t name but always knew. My fingers curled in his shirt, clinging tighter than I meant to.

“It didn’t feel like a dream,” I whispered. My throat scraped raw, words barely audible. “It felt like… like I was back there. The rogues, the blood, everything.”

His arms tightened around me. “Because you were. Dreams like that—they’re memories, Cierra. Pieces trying to find their way back to you.”

The thought chilled me. Because if that was true, then my nightmares weren’t just fear—they were real. And buried inside them was something I couldn’t yet face.

“I heard her,” I whispered, so quiet it could have been the wind.

He leaned back just enough to meet my eyes. “Who?”

“My wolf.” My lips trembled as I spoke the words. “Not just instinct. Not just a pull. Her. She spoke to me.”

Dominic’s golden eyes softened, reverence flickering through them. “That’s good,” he said quietly. “It means she’s still with you. Still fighting to reach you.”

I swallowed hard. “She said I wasn’t prey. That I had to run, fight. Live.”

“You’re not prey,” Dominic echoed, his thumb brushing over the back of my hand. “And you don’t have to fight alone.”

His devotion was steady and unshakable. It wrapped around me and pulled me back from the edges. But even as his words anchored me, another voice echoed in the hollow of my chest.

She remembers me—I know she does.

Dane’s words.

The nightmare had felt too vivid, too much like a memory bleeding through. And tangled in it had been fragments of warmth, laughter, a hand catching mine in the dark. Not Dominic’s hand.

My body remembered things my mind couldn’t.

I tightened my grip on Dominic anyway, because he was here. Solid. Steady. Devoted in a way Dane had never been. Or maybe he had. I didn’t know anymore.

“I don’t want to sleep again,” I admitted, voice breaking.

“Then don’t,” Dominic said. He shifted, pulling me gently into his lap, holding me as if I weighed nothing, as if he could shield me from even the ghosts in my own head. “Stay awake. Breathe. I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere.”

I buried my face against his chest, listening to the rhythm of his heart. Each beat steadied mine until the tremors in my body eased.

But even as I clung to him, as his warmth seeped into me, I couldn’t silence the truth that gnawed at me.

My wolf had spoken. My memories were clawing back. And they didn’t belong to just Dominic.

They belonged to Dane, too.