Chapter 4

The forest was restless.

For three nights, Damien did not return. The mansion grew colder, the staff vanished one by one, and the silence that once protected Lena began to suffocate her. Every creak of the floorboards, every sigh of wind felt like the house was whispering secrets she wasn’t meant to hear.

She spent her hours in the library, tracing the faded ink of the red book she had sworn not to open again. But its words burned into her memory—the drawings, the dates, her own portrait labeled The Mute Oracle.

Who had she been a century ago?

And why did Damien look at her as though time had simply looped back on itself?

On the fourth night, the moon rose red.

The pendant around her neck grew warm, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat. Then footsteps.

Slow. Heavy. Familiar.

Damien stood at the doorway, his black coat shredded, mud and blood streaking his hands. His eyes glowed faintly silver in the firelight.

Lena’s breath hitched. She ran to him without thinking, catching his arm before he fell. His skin was burning, his pulse too fast.

He tried to push her away, shaking his head violently.

Don’t, he rasped, voice rough as gravel. It’s dangerous for you here.

The sound of his voice it was human again, broken and raw.

She grabbed a pen from the desk, scrawling quickly:

You’re hurt. Let me help.

He laughed a short, bitter sound that cracked like glass. “Help? You already have. You shouldn’t even be alive.”

Her heart clenched. She pointed at the pendant. This saved me.

Damien’s gaze darkened. “It bound you.”

He sank to the floor beside the hearth, muscles trembling beneath the weight of exhaustion and something darker. “The pendant marks you as part of my line. It protects you from my kind and ties your soul to mine.”

She blinked, stunned.

He went on, voice low and hoarse: “A century ago, there was a woman who could speak to wolves without sound. She was meant to end the blood curse that runs through my family. But she was betrayed… and she died in fire.” His jaw tightened. “You carry her face, her silence. The moon brought you back to me but it demands payment.”

Lena shook her head violently, gripping his sleeve. I don’t believe in fate.

He met her eyes with something between longing and despair. “Fate believes in you.”

Outside, the wind rose to a howl. The forest seemed alive, its shadows gathering at the windows.

Damien flinched, clutching his head as if an invisible chain yanked at him. “It’s beginning. The Blood Moon calls the cursed back to form.”

Before she could react, he convulsed eyes flashing silver, breath ragged. The transformation began again, but this time he didn’t fight it.

Lena stepped back, tears stinging her eyes as bones shifted beneath his skin, his voice breaking into growls. The fire roared higher, reflecting the red moon through the windows.

But this time, she didn’t run.

Her pendant blazed like molten silver, and in her mind faint, impossible she heard him.

Lena… get out.

She froze. It wasn’t sound it was thought, deep and desperate.

You’re in my head, she mouthed.

Bonded, came the answer, the word echoing through her skull. You shouldn’t have signed the contract. It was written in the old tongue it bound our souls under the moon.

Her knees weakened. Then break it.

I can’t.

The wolf inside him roared. His claws scraped the floor, eyes wild and luminous.

Lena pressed her hands to her chest. “Damien,” she mouthed, the word silent but full of fire.

The beast stopped.

His breathing slowed.

Through the silence, she felt their hearts sync—a single rhythm, echoing through the air like a spell renewing itself.

Images flashed in her mind: flames consuming an old chapel, a woman’s scream, a man kneeling before the moon, binding himself to save her. The curse wasn’t punishment. It was a promise.

Tears slipped down her cheeks. You did this for me.

The wolf bowed its head.

The fire dimmed, and in its glow, he changed back—slowly, painfully. When it was over, he was human again, shaking, naked under the weight of his own control.

Lena found a blanket, draped it over him, and knelt beside him. Her hands trembled as she wrote:

We can end it. Together.

Damien’s eyes met hers, raw and shining. “It ends with my death.”

She shook her head violently, grabbing his hand. No.

He smiled faintly a haunted smile. “You still think love can rewrite blood and magic?”

She wrote with fierce strokes:

It already has. You’re not a monster.

The words silenced him. For a long time, he said nothing, staring at her like he was seeing sunlight for the first time.

Finally, he whispered, “If you stay, the moon will take you too. The bond will pull you into the curse. You’ll forget your life your world everything.”

She hesitated. Fear clawed at her throat. Then, slowly, she wrote:

Then teach me how to survive it.

His fingers brushed the edge of the paper. “You’d risk your soul for a beast?”

She looked straight into his eyes, the silver light still flickering there. For the man trapped inside.

Something in him broke.

He cupped her face, trembling. “Lena…”

His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth, lingering like a question neither dared to answer.

“I can’t… control what comes next,” he murmured.

She wrote, tears glinting under the red light of the moon:

Then I’ll hold you until it passes.

And when he kissed her hesitant at first, then fierce it was as if silence itself sighed. The world outside howled, the moon bled red, but inside that moment, time stopped.

Their bond pulsed through the pendant, a silver fire tying heartbeat to heartbeat.

When they finally pulled apart, the air shimmered faintly, as though the curse itself hesitated.

The Blood Moon Pact, he whispered. We share it now.

She smiled through her tears, resting her forehead against his.

In silence, she answered the only way she could: by not leaving.

Outside, the wolves fell quiet, and the forest bowed to the stillness between them.