Forsaken Luna

Chapter 4 - The night of chains.

Nyx

The world had narrowed to the cold bite of steel and the ache in my wrists. Chains dragged between my arms, heavy enough to make my shoulders throb with every step. The Stormfang guards had tethered me like an animal.

The night smelled of damp earth. The moonlight glinted off the links that bound me, painting silver stripes across my skin. Somewhere in the trees, owls called to each other, indifferent to the way my life had been shattered.

One of the guards shoved me hard as soon as we got out of the car and I stumbled. I hit the ground on my knees, grit biting into my skin.

“Stay down, omega,” he barked, his voice thick with disdain. My jaw ached from where they had struck me earlier, but I spat blood into the dirt, forcing myself to look up. My emerald eyes burned as I whispered back.

“Break me again, and I’ll rise sharper.” My eyes dared him to strike me again. The back of his hand cracked across my face before the words had finished leaving my mouth. My head snapped sideways, stars exploding behind my eyes.

The pain pulsed hot and immediately, but I didn’t cry out. I wouldn’t give them that satisfaction. Another guard snickered. “She’s got a mouth on her. You should gag her.” They grabbed my arm, hauling me upright again, the links of my chains rattling like cruel music.

I swayed, blood dripping from my lip, but I forced my legs to hold me. My body trembled, every nerve screaming, but inside, something hotter burned. Rage. From the edge of the clearing, a low voice stirred the air.

“This one won’t break,” Kaelen. I hadn’t seen him approach. Hadn’t heard his steps over the murmur of guards and the hiss of shifting torches. He stood beside his father, the old Alpha looming like a dark pillar, but Kaelen’s gray eyes were on me.

Not with pity, not even with cruelty. With something stranger. Assessment. The guards fell silent, shuffling back slightly. I licked the blood from my lip and glared at him. If he thought my spirit was unbreakable, he was right. Even if I died chained in their hands, they would never own me.

The camp settled into grim preparation. I was secured tighter than any pack’s prisoner of war. I lay on the cold ground that night, chains biting deep into my flesh, listening to the Stormfang warriors breathe around me.

I shut my eyes, but the words repeated in my head, Kaelen’s voice a brand I could not scrape away. “This one won’t break.” We left before dawn, the convoy moving like a shadow across the land as we drove further away from my pack territory.

Kaelen beside me and his father in the car in front of us. The forest stretched endless, a cathedral of shadow and silver. The air smelled of damp moss and wolves. Hours passed. Pain blurred into numbness. And yet … beneath it all, something stirred.

It was faint at first, a flicker at the edge of my mind. A whisper in the marrow of my bones. Not words. No, never words. But presence. A pulse, an echo. My wolf. I stirred in my seat, nearly touching Kaelen’s hand, and the sensation rippled through me.

Heat bloomed low in my chest, wild and sharp, like the taste of lightning. For a heartbeat, I thought I heard her growl.

“If I ever see my wolf,” I whispered, the words cracking in the dry air, “I’ll burn them all.” Kaelen turned his head. His gaze brushed over me like a shadow. He didn’t speak. He didn’t mock. He just watched. And it terrified me more than the chains.

The day stretched long. Dusk painted the trees in gold and crimson. My wrists were raw. My throat parched. But the flicker inside me had grown, subtle but steady, like an ember refusing to die.

That night, campfires burned low. I sat chained to a stake hammered into the ground, my back aching, my eyes heavy. Kaelen stood across the camp, speaking with his father in low tones. I strained to catch their words, but all I heard was the rhythm of my own heart, and the faint rumble of my wolf pacing in the dark of my soul.

The attack came with no warning. A shriek split the night, inhuman, feral. Shadows lunged from the tree line, eyes glowing red, teeth snapping. Rogues. The camp erupted into chaos. Warriors shouted. The scent of blood filled the air.

One rogue broke through the ring of Stormfang fighters, hurtling toward me. I twisted, chains clanking, nowhere to run. His jaws opened, gleaming white, aimed straight for my throat. Time slowed. The ember in my chest flared white-hot, fire surging through my veins.

My body convulsed, bones twitching, skin burning as though something inside me tried to claw free. My wolf! She was there. I felt her. But she didn’t break through. The rogue slammed into me, the ground knocking the air from my lungs. His weight crushed me, his teeth grazing my neck.

And then he was gone. Ripped backward, snarling, blood spraying across my face. Kaelen stood above me, his expression unreadable. His eyes, gray as a storm’s heart, locked onto mine as if searching for something only I could give.

I gasped, shaking, chains rattling against the earth. He pulled the rogue aside, letting the rogue collapse. For a moment, the world was only the two of us. Me broken, bound, breathless … and him, predator and savior both.

Around us, the Stormfang pack clashed with the remaining rogues, snarls and screams tearing the night apart. But Kaelen didn’t move. He just stared at me, as though he had felt it too. The flicker in my chest, the fire straining to rise.

My wolf. And for the first time, I wondered if he was waiting for her. The metal cuffs chafed worse than the rope that my pack used ever had. They’d fitted me with heavy restraints that dug into the bone of my wrists, a chain running between them, clicking against itself with every reluctant step.

The world suddenly roared around me. Gunfire, screams, metal groaning as flames climbed into the night sky. But all I could hear was the rattle of my own chains, the way they anchored me to the dirt while chaos devoured the convoy. Without a word, Kaelen knelt and grabbed the chain between my wrists.

“W—what are you doing?” I rasped, stumbling backward. He didn’t answer. The steel links screamed as he pulled them taut, then brought his blade down in a sharp strike. Sparks burst where metal met metal. Again. And again. Until the last hit snapped the chain, the broken links falling heavily to the ground.

I stared at the shattered pieces. Why didn’t he just use a key? Or perhaps he didn’t have a key? My breath caught in my throat. My wrists were still cuffed, but for the first time in what felt like forever, I wasn’t tethered like livestock.

Kaelen’s hand closed around my arm, hauling me to my feet. His voice was low, harsh, but there was something fierce beneath it. Something protective.

“You’ll die if you stay here. Come with me.” His voice was calm, but urgent. I blinked up at him, half-drugged on shock, on blood loss, at the impossible reality that he was helping me.

“Why should I trust another Alpha?” My voice cracked when I spat back.

“Because I’m the only one not selling you.” His gaze hardened. The words hit harder than any blow I’d taken. For a moment, the noise of the battle faded, replaced by the rush of blood in my ears. No one had ever spoken to me like that.

Not as property, not as a burden, but as if I was worth choosing. Worth saving. Wariness tangled with something sharper in my chest … hope. Fragile, trembling, terrifying hope. Another rogue lunged from the smoke, snarling.

Kaelen shoved me behind him and cut the wolf down with practiced ease. His movements were precise, merciless. He didn’t falter, didn’t hesitate. And then his hand was on mine again, pulling me into the trees beyond the burning convoy.

We ran. Branches whipped my face, the ground uneven beneath my shackled ankles, but I kept moving, lungs searing as the forest swallowed us whole. Behind us, the sounds of battle grew dimmer. My pulse thundered louder.

When we finally stopped, breathless in the shadows of the pines, I tore my hand from his grip, pressing my back to a tree. My chest heaved, the broken cuffs clinking softly as I clutched my arms to myself. Kaelen stood a few paces away. His eyes unreadable in the dark.

I wanted to scream at him. To demand what he wanted from me. To remind him, he was still an Alpha, still born into the same world that had chewed me up and sold me off.

“Why?” Was all I could whisper instead. He didn’t answer right away. He just watched me, as though weighing whether I was worth the truth.

“Because you’re not theirs. Not anymore,” he said softly. The ember in my chest pulsed, stronger than ever. The faint stirrings of something that was mine. Hope. I swallowed hard, blinking away the tears burning my eyes. The convoy, Orion’s pack, my chains. All of it was behind me now.

And ahead? The unknown. But as Kaelen motioned deeper into the forest, his voice steady and commanding, I stepped forward. Because whatever waited in the shadows couldn’t be worse than the world I was leaving behind.