Their Forgotten Luna

The Stranger in the Flames

Dominic:

“Shouldn’t you be at the party, Alpha?” My best friend Daniel smirked at me, knowing damn well that no part of me wanted to be at the party being held at the pack house tonight.

I grumbled, “I’ll get there eventually.” I wanted to shrug off his question, pretending that I wasn’t out here because I couldn’t stand to see Cierra’s stormy gray eyes looking at me, wide and appreciative as if I were something to behold knowing she was being sworn away to someone else.

Cierra always looked at me as if I were a magnificent creature, one that couldn’t be compared to others. Yet, she looked at my little brother like he hung the moon, painted the stars, and pulled the sun up every morning to shadow them at dawn, and I couldn’t bear to see her looking at him like that tonight, not when the announcement he would make would change my life and shatter my heart forever.

“You could talk to her, you know? You could stop this. You’re next in line for alpha, not Dane. You have your choice first.” Daniel said softly, speaking words that were meant for only me. He knew I had been obsessed with Cierra since the first moment I was paired to spar with her when we were just small, something I ensured happened every training now.

I shook my head. “It’s too late, D. You and I both know that.” I clenched my fists when he handed me the flask, but I took it and drank greedily all the same.

Daniel and I had joined border patrol tonight, both of us were just trying to escape something. I needed to escape the truth that the girl I was in love with would never be mine. He was just trying to escape the bigger crowd of visiting packs.

We had already spent hours walking the vast expanse of the pack, but both of us intended to spend hours more doing the same thing until our bodies and souls found a contentedness neither of us had found in the flask in my hand nor the walking we had done so far.

“Dom, could she feel the same way about you? I have seen how she flushes when you’re around.” My heart hammered thinking about the way her skin stained when I was around; it had become my favorite shade of red so easily.

“No, now let this go,” I growled, passing him the flask when the smell hit, and the alarms were set off.

Rogues.

By the time I shifted and ran full force toward the estate, with my claws digging into the earth, chaos had already consumed it.

Bodies. Blood. Snarling rogues with eyes like flame and teeth slick with pack blood, and in the center of it all, Cierra fought.

She was fighting like a goddess forged from war itself. Her fingers had shifted into claws, her eyes burned like molten silver, her dress was in shreds, and she wore blood on her face that wasn’t all hers. She moved like fire—furious, and divine.

But even fire dies when it’s smothered, and I watched her flames die out the moment Dane rushed off with Alyssa in his arms. That son of a—

She collapsed just as I reached her, her blood soaking the ground like spilled wine. I shifted mid-leap, fell to my knees, and caught her before her head hit the stone.

“Cierra,” I choked, gathering her broken body into my arms.

She was cold, so cold.

Her eyes fluttered open, hazy and tired.

“Why?” she whispered.

I pressed a trembling hand to her cheek. “Because I saw you, even when he didn’t.”

Then her body went limp, and everything inside me went still.

I gathered her in my arms and ran like hell. I sent Daniel a mind link to be there waiting for me. He was the best healer in the pack, and I wouldn’t have anyone else at her side. Like I demanded, he was waiting for me, whisking her away the moment I entered the infirmary doors with her limp, bleeding body.

“Get a gurney, we’re losing her.” Daniel’s words stopped me mid-run. It felt like someone had dashed me with cold water. I watched in a daze as a group of healers, doctors, and nurses started working on her limp, pale body. Watched as my mind drifted in and out of a place of fear and failure.

“Alpha, what happened? Where is—Oh my god, Cierra!” I grabbed Natalie, Cierra’s best friend, just as she tried to lunge for her.

She fought me, beating and scratching, trying to free herself as we both watched them wheel her away from us.

“She was hurt badly,” I told Natalie, barely able to get the words out for the airlessness in my lungs.

“She can’t die!” She screamed, echoing the words my heart had clung to since I plucked her from the blood-soaked grass.

“She’s not going to, I have the best team on her care, she can’t die!” I growled, making her stiffen in my arms. I didn’t mean to use my alpha command on her, but it was more of a command meant for Cierra. She couldn’t die. I couldn’t handle it, wouldn’t survive it.

Natalie sagged in my arms, her breath hitching in time with the steady beep of the heart monitor echoing from the trauma room beyond the glass.

I should have gone to the party.

I should have stayed by her side.

I should have told her what she meant to me before it was too late.

Now I stood on the other side of a wall that separated life from death, love from loss, and all I could do was watch.

Daniel emerged from the room a few minutes later, blood on his hands and devastation in his eyes.

I stepped forward, but he shook his head. “She’s alive,” he said, voice ragged. “But just barely. We stabilized her… for now.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, my knees nearly giving out from the force of it.

“But,” Daniel added, “she’s not waking up. Whatever happened out there—it was more than just physical. Something’s… wrong inside her. Her wolf—she’s gone quiet. It’s like part of her soul is… missing.”

The words landed like punches, one after another, each one more brutal than the last. My wolf whimpered, clawing at my chest, begging to go to her.

“She’s strong,” I said finally, more to myself than anyone else. “She’ll come back.”

Daniel placed a hand on my shoulder, grounding me. “Then you need to be here when she does.”

I nodded.

And I stayed.

Long after the others were gone, long after the blood was cleaned and the halls fell silent again, I sat beside her bed and held her hand, whispering promises into the void between us.

“I saw you, even when he didn’t,” I repeated, brushing a lock of blood-matted hair from her forehead. “I see you now. And I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Even if she never remembered.

Even if she woke up asking for Dane.

I’d still be here.

Because I loved her.

Even if she never loved me back.