Luna in Chains

09.

The training yard echoed with the sharp crack of wood against wood.

Kade’s breath came in ragged white clouds, billowing in the icy air. The first rays of dawn illuminated the training grounds as the boy swung his wooden sword in a brutal, relentless rhythm. His body ached in places he didn’t even realize he had muscles. His shoulder burned. His palms blistered. Still, he didn’t slow.

How could he?

Each strike promised to make him stronger. Every jarring impact brought him closer to Lyra. He’d stopped praying when the Moon Goddess stayed silent the night that Lyra was taken away from him. He could only rely on himself.

The memory of her screams echoed in his mind, threaded with her last words as she sobbed and begged. He remembered the sound of the promise he made coming from her lips, tattooing them into his mind in rapid staccato. A relentless rhythm that had beat for days.

The boy struck harder. The training post shuddered beneath the blow, a piece breaking free and spinning off to disappear in the snow.

“Again. Faster. Stronger. You were too weak to stop them. You cannot be weak again!”

He repeated it over and over in his mind. Driving himself to improve. Demanding more.

Kade’s teeth ground together. He saw the scene every time he closed his eyes. Lyra’s tear-streaked face, the sound of her screaming as that Beta dragged her away while his father held him back, and then the total darkness of being knocked unconscious.

When he woke the next day, unceremoniously dumped on his bedroom floor, a sense of loss threatened to consume him before the rage took hold. He hated the swirling storm of feelings inside him and had to do anything to fix it. When his gaze landed upon his training sword, set against the door frame of his bedroom, he knew what he needed to do. He wasn’t strong enough to get Lyra out, but he could get stronger. And he would at any cost.

His focus became singular. Swing his sword. Work his muscles. Strengthen his reflexes. Anything he could do a hundred times over in a day to make himself into the wolf Lyra needed to be.

“Train harder, boy!”

His father’s voice barked the order, cutting through the fog of Kade’s rage. The Beta stood near the edge of the yard, his arms folded and expression carved from disdain. A pair of young warriors flanked Garrett, watching Kade with a mix of admiration and something closer to fear.

“You think other warriors will fall at your feet because you swing a stick?” Kade’s father sneered. “Iron Claw would gut you before you took your next breath. Again!”

Kade refocused, gripping his sword tighter as he poured his rage into each strike. His muscles screamed, but he didn’t stop until the post finally split in two, collapsing in the snow with a final dull thud.

He looked down in surprise, not believing he’d just broken one of the training posts. He’d never done more than damage one before. It wasn’t common to break them until a warrior’s wolf emerged. He still had several years to go. Even Kade knew a few days of exhaustive round-the-clock training weren’t enough.

He dropped to one knee, chest heaving and sweat freezing to his skin. For a brief moment, he looked toward the trees on the outskirts of the training grounds. It’s where Lyra would sit while he trained, and her boisterous excitement when he accomplished a new milestone in training was deafeningly absent.

Garrett’s voice shattered the memory further, “Pathetic.”

Kade’s head snapped up, anger threatening to burst free, “I broke it!”

“You broke a post. You didn’t kill a wolf. A real opponent would have flayed you halfway through the sloppy technique you just displayed.” The Beta strode closer, his shadow falling over Kade. “Strength without discipline is nothing. You fight like a feral pup.”

“Then teach me! Make me strong enough to go get her back,” Kade demanded, surging to his feet with his fists clenched.

A flicker of something, mostly disdain, crossed Garrett’s face before vanishing beneath cold calculation. “She’s gone, Kade. She belongs to another Alpha, and she’s no longer a member of our pack. Rowan felt it. Her tie has been severed. Forget her.”

The realization that Lyra was no longer a member of their pack hit him like a hammer to the chest. “I won’t forget. Never.”

“You will,” Garrett said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “You have no choice. Your loyalty must be to this pack and its people. To me. To your Alpha. You cannot focus on a girl who will never be anything to you but the Luna of Iron Claw.”

“Alpha Rowan just stood there as his daughter was taken. Cowards. They let her be stolen!” Kade’s inner voice was loud in his mind as he screamed within it. His voice dropped to a low, dangerous tone. “My loyalty is and always will be to her.”

Father and son stared at each other, the air thick with an unspoken challenge. Then, the Beta turned sharply and dismissed his son with a wave, “Enough of this. Train until you collapse. Maybe then you’ll stop thinking with your heart and use the brain our Goddess gave you.”

By midday, the yard was a ghost town. The other young warriors retreated from the cold and the snow into the dining hall for warmth and a hot meal. Kade stayed behind, training until his hands bled. He decided to go for a run once his hands began to tremble from exhaustion.

His feet pounded the path, sinking into the snow as he ran, but he didn’t care. He didn’t even know where he was going, but he also didn’t care much. To no surprise, he found himself at Silver Lake. It was the place where Kade spent the most time with Lyra, providing them with a haven beyond the ever-watchful eye of their fathers.

The frozen surface gleamed beneath a pale winter sky. Kade fell to his knees on the shore, his breathing reduced to ragged gasps. The ache in his muscles was nothing compared to the hollow, gnawing ache in his chest.

“I failed her,” he whispered to himself. He knew the odds had been against them, but he’d let himself dare to dream about a future where they escaped together.

When he returned to the packhouse, the sun had dipped below the horizon. Kade was almost pulled toward the scent of roasted meats and warmed cider coming from the dining hall within the packhouse. Instead, he forced himself to return to his family’s quarters where no such warmth remained.

There, Kade found Garrett seated at their table with maps spread in all directions, taking up every available surface as he poured over the paper with a cup of spiced wine in his hand. His father’s rank was evident in every detail. The fine leather of his tunic, the silver clasp of his cloak, and the subtle arrogance of this posture belied a wolf who set himself apart from the others.

Garrett’s gaze turned to his son, “You reek of sweat and failure.”

“I was training,” Kade spat, his jaw clenching in anger.

“You’re obsessing,” Garrett corrected. “There is a difference between the two. You think your feelings for that girl will make you strong, but it is only weakening you, distracting you.”

“She’s not just a girl,” Kade snapped. “She’s…” He trailed off because he wasn’t yet old enough to know how to finish the sentence. Lyra was more, and he knew it.

Garrett’s eyebrow raised, “She is the daughter of an Alpha. A bargaining chip. You truly expected her to be here forever? She’s gone, Kade. Accept it, or it will destroy you.”

Kade’s hands shook with the effort it took to restrain himself. He wanted to shout. He wanted to grab his wooden sword and see what it would do to his arrogant father, but he knew better. His father was the Beta for a reason, and even in anger, Kade knew it would be years before surpassing Garrett was even a possibility.

“Alpha just gave her away,” Kade said, his voice raw. “His only daughter. He bargained her away.”

Garrett nodded, “It is as I’ve said repeatedly. This was her duty, and she has fulfilled it.”

He stared at his father. This deal didn’t just take away the person he cared for most in the world, it made him see everything differently. The man sitting at the table wasn’t the father who tucked him in when he was younger. He wasn’t the same wolf who taught him the pride of being a warrior, a defender of Midnight Crest. He was a stranger compared to the man who had taken him to the forest to forage the perfect branch to carve his training sword from, patiently stomping through brush for hours until the exact right piece was found.

Kade hoped that somewhere deep inside, that man still lived. It seemed unbelievable that a wolf who cared so deeply for his people wouldn’t fight for the smallest among them. He realized with sick clarity that Garrett hadn’t fought at all, not because he couldn’t. It was because he wouldn’t.

“You could have stopped it,” Kade breathed. “You didn’t even try. You know what she means to me.”

Garrett’s expression hardened, “It was Alpha Rowan’s decision. It was a decision that preserved the pack’s future, and you will respect it.”

“No.” The word left Kade’s lips like a blade drawn from its sheath. “I will never respect it. And I can’t respect you.”

His father’s face rapidly reddened as he looked ready to strike Kade, but he exhaled sharply, forcing himself to calm down, “Go to your room. Cool your head before you say or do something you cannot take back.”

Kade turned on his heel and stormed down the hallway of their quarters to his room, his pulse thundering in his ears.

Sleep didn’t come that night. Instead, Kade sat at his window, staring at the stars. Somewhere, under the same stars beneath the same sky, Lyra was a prisoner. He wondered if she was looking up at the stars along with him.

When dawn came, he was already in the training yard again.