Lunar Reckoning

“Don’t move, Raine. He’s watching you.”

Mara’s whisper shot like ice down my spine. Her grip tightened on my wrist, nails digging into my skin.

I swallowed hard, trying to slow my pulse, but it was useless. The growl that had been following us since the ridge rattled the night air again low, primal, a sound no human throat could ever make.

“Mara,” I whispered back, “tell me you didn’t drag me into their territory.”

“It wasn’t their territory last week.” Her breath came in sharp, panicked bursts. “Something’s changed.”

The underbrush cracked behind us. Not clumsy like a deer or a bear. Controlled. Deliberate.

Every nerve in my body screamed.

Mara yanked me forward, but then

A voice.

“Too late.”

It wasn’t hers. It was smooth, masculine, but threaded with something feral.

We both froze.

A man stepped from the shadows. No, not a man. His eyes caught the moonlight and burned molten gold. His smile was sharp, wrong. His presence coiled around us like smoke.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, though his gaze locked on me and only me. “This forest belongs to the Bloodfang Pack.”

Mara’s hand trembled against mine. “Bloodfang’s extinct. Everyone knows that.”

The man chuckled, low and cold. “Do I look extinct?”

His stare was unbearable, like he could peel my skin away and read what pulsed underneath. Something in my chest reacted to the heat blooming where there should have been only terror.

“Run,” he told Mara.

“No way ”

The growl that left his throat wasn’t a sound. It was a force. Mara staggered back, face white as ash, then bolted into the trees.

I should’ve run with her. My legs wouldn’t move.

The stranger stepped closer. He didn’t walk like a predator. He glided, smooth, sure. His voice dropped to a murmur.

“You smell wrong.”

“Excuse me?” My voice cracked.

“Not fully human. Not fully wolf. Something in between.” His nostrils flared as he breathed me in. “Your blood sings too loud.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stammered, but my body betrayed me. My pulse pounded against my throat.

“Yes, you do,” he whispered, so close his breath brushed my cheek. “And I want it.”

Then he moved lightning fast. His hand caught my jaw, pressing me against the rough bark of a pine. The world spun with his strength, the heat of him overwhelming.

I opened my mouth to scream.

He didn’t give me the chance.

“You’ll belong to me.”

His teeth sank into my neck.

Pain exploded. White-hot, searing, ripping through every nerve in my body. I gasped, the sound strangled, the forest whirling into a blur. My knees buckled.

And then

Darkness.

When I opened my eyes, the world was different.

Every sound screamed louder. The rustle of a mouse under the leaves. The whisper of Mara’s distant sobbing. The hammering of my own heart.

But he, the golden-eyed stranger, was gone.

Someone else crouched before me.

This one