CHAPTER FOUR: Shadows Between Wolves

The forest didn’t sleep.

Even after the last screams faded, after the rogues scattered into the night, the woods felt alive in a way that made the air taste wrong. The moon hung high above like a watchful, unblinking eye, silvering the jagged branches and painting every shadow into something darker, deeper.

Lyra stumbled over a root, breath hitching as Rowan’s hand clamped around her arm to steady her.

“Keep moving,” he murmured, voice low and urgent.

Her lungs burned, her legs screamed, but she let him drag her through the thickets anyway. Every sound behind them—snapping twigs, a distant howl—made her heart jerk.

She glanced over her shoulder.

The distant glow of the clearing was gone now. So were the screams. But the smell of blood clung to her like smoke.

Rowan didn’t slow. His grip on her arm was firm, almost too firm, but there was something protective in the way his body always positioned itself between her and the forest.

“You can’t just drag me away from my pack!” she snapped, twisting in his hold.

His storm-grey eyes met hers, intense even in the moonlight. “Your pack can’t protect you. Not from what’s coming.”

Lyra yanked her arm free, stepping back. Her wolf bristled under her skin, restless, torn between instinct and duty.

“You don’t get to decide that for me,” she shot back.

“I’m not deciding anything,” Rowan said, quieter this time, his voice rough around the edges. “I’m keeping you alive.”

The forest floor turned slick beneath their feet. Roots, rocks, mud all blurred into one. Rowan kept moving like he’d memorized every path. Lyra trailed behind, fighting to keep up, breath puffing out in frantic bursts.

Somewhere far behind them, a long howl split the air a rogue’s howl. But it wasn’t like the ones Lyra had heard before. This one sounded fractured, like glass shattering, a broken voice calling into the dark.

Rowan froze for a heartbeat, head snapping toward the sound. Then his jaw tightened.

“They’re hunting us.”

Lyra’s chest tightened. “They’re hunting me, you mean.”

Rowan turned to her, his expression shadowed. “Yes.”

They stopped by a shallow creek, water whispering over smooth stones. Lyra leaned against a tree, her breath ragged.

“What aren’t you telling me?” she demanded.

Rowan hesitated. The moonlight caught the hard lines of his face, the faint scar running along his jaw. “I’ve been tracking them,” he admitted finally. “For weeks.”

Her eyes widened. “Before the Blood Moon?”

He nodded. “Before you.”

Lyra’s stomach dropped. “You knew this was coming.”

“I knew something was coming,” Rowan corrected. “Not this. Not you.” His gaze softened slightly as his eyes met hers. “But I know they want you. And they won’t stop.”

Her wolf stirred uneasily inside her, an instinctive tremor in her bones.

The howl came again, closer this time. Lyra’s breath caught. She scanned the darkness and saw movement not just one shape, but several. Shadows darting between trees, the faint glint of unnatural eyes.

Rowan shifted slightly, placing himself in front of her. “They’re marked,” he said, voice low.

“Marked?”

He pulled back the sleeve of his torn shirt, revealing a scar on his forearm a strange claw-like symbol seared into his skin. It looked almost identical to the rune Lyra had seen carved into the tree near the clearing.

“I fought them before,” Rowan said. “Barely survived.”

Lyra’s fingers hovered over the scar, not touching, but close enough to feel the heat radiating from his skin. “What are they?”

Rowan’s gaze darkened. “Not just rogues. Something worse.”

Far behind them, in the clearing, Kael stood among the broken bodies and scattered stones.

“Where is she?” His voice was quiet, which was worse than a roar. His claws dripped blood, silver fur streaked with crimson.

A warrior stepped forward, eyes downcast. “The black wolf took her.”

Kael’s pale eyes burned. His wolf pressed against his skin, claws digging into his own palms as if holding back from tearing the messenger apart.

“I’ll find him,” Kael murmured, his voice like ice breaking. “I’ll rip him apart.”

He stared at the shattered binding stones, his breathing steady but heavy.

“And if Lyra lets him live,” he whispered, too softly for anyone to hear, “I’ll tear her heart in two before he claims it.”

Rowan led Lyra deeper into the forest until the trees broke into a clearing. There, half-hidden under ivy and shadow, stood the remnants of an old watchtower stone walls cracked and leaning, stairs broken halfway up.

“This’ll do,” Rowan muttered.

Lyra hesitated at the entrance, peering into the ruin. “This place feels…”

“Abandoned?” Rowan offered.

“Haunted,” she corrected.

He didn’t argue.

Inside, the air was damp and cold. Broken windows let in slivers of moonlight, painting patterns on the dusty floor. Rowan helped her sit on a stone ledge, though she bristled at his touch.

“You don’t have to”

“I’m not leaving you out there,” he said simply.

Lyra wrapped her arms around herself, staring at him. He crouched by the doorway, every muscle taut, listening to the forest like it was breathing secrets.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked quietly. “You don’t even know me.”

Rowan’s jaw tightened. “I know enough.”

“Enough?”

He turned to face her, storm-grey eyes meeting hers, the mate bond sparking between them like static. “I know you’re my mate.”

The words made her chest ache. Her wolf howled inside her, restless, yearning, but her mind screamed caution.

A creak in the shadows.

Rowan’s head snapped up. “Stay here.”

Before Lyra could protest, a shape moved in the doorway a wolf, but wrong. Its body was lean and too long, bones jutting under mangled fur. Its eyes glowed not gold, but white, and its mouth opened and it spoke.

“The moon chose wrong,” it rasped, voice broken but unmistakably human. “The bond must be broken.”

Lyra’s heart stopped.

The creature lunged, but Rowan was faster. He shifted mid-motion, his body cracking, reshaping into the massive black wolf, slamming into the rogue. The tower shook with the force of their fight. Claws raked stone. Teeth snapped bone.

When the rogue collapsed, Rowan shifted back, chest heaving. Blood slicked his hands as he pushed the corpse away.

Lyra stared at the dead wolf, trembling.

Burned into its chest was the same clawed moon rune she’d seen before.

Before either of them could speak, a voice rolled through the forest not coming from the tower, not from the trees, but everywhere at once.

“You can’t hide her, Rowan.”

The words made Lyra’s blood run cold.

Rowan stiffened, scanning the darkness. “Who are you?”

The voice chuckled deep, low, and wrong. “You know who I am.”

The forest outside the tower went silent. No wind. No birds. Just the thud of Lyra’s heartbeat.

And then the shadows moved.

Figures stepped from the treeline, their shapes wrong, too tall, cloaked in darkness. Their eyes glowed white, the clawed moon rune burned into their foreheads like a brand.

One stepped forward, lips peeling back in a smile too wide.

“The moon owes us blood,” it whispered, voice like a blade drawn across stone.

It raised a clawed hand.

“Tonight,” the figure said, “we collect.”

Dozens more shadows moved closer, the tower filling with the sound of claws scraping stone.

Rowan shifted again, his black fur bristling as he bared his teeth.

“Stay behind me,” he growled to Lyra.

Her hands shook. Her wolf pressed against her skin, desperate to break free.

The last thing she saw before the shadows surged forward was Rowan leaping—pure fury and teeth—into the dark.