CAUGHT BY MY FATHER’S GUARDS

LYDIA POV

I ran until my legs threatened to give out completely.

Every step sent a sharp, sickening pain up my twisted ankle. The cuts on my palms burned. My scalp still throbbed where the shears had torn through my hair. Branches slapped my face and arms as I forced my way deeper into the forest, but I didn’t stop. Behind me, the first angry voices of my father’s guards were already entering the trees.

“Spread out! She can’t have gone far!”

“Check the eastern ravine — the minister is expecting her at dawn!”

“If she’s damaged, your heads will roll with hers!”

Their words cut through the night louder than any howl. They weren’t searching for a missing daughter. They were hunting property that had escaped.

I bit down on a sob and pushed harder. Tears mixed with sweat on my face. The black dress I had worn to the celebration was torn and filthy, hanging off me in ruined pieces. The uneven ends of my hair brushed against my neck with every movement, a constant, humiliating reminder of what Seraphina and my parents had done. My body screamed for rest. My lungs burned. Still I kept moving, because stopping meant being dragged back to that basement and handed over to an old man at first light.

I stumbled over a root and fell hard. Pain exploded through my ankle. For a moment I stayed on my hands and knees, forehead pressed to the damp earth, gasping. The broken mate bond in my chest throbbed in time with my heartbeat, a cruel reminder that even the Moon Goddess had given me something only to watch it be ripped away.

Get up.

I forced myself to my feet and limped onward.

The guards were getting closer. I could hear them crashing through the undergrowth, calling to one another, cursing my name. One of them passed so near that I had to drop flat behind a fallen log and hold my breath. His boots stopped less than ten feet away. I could smell the leather of his armor and the faint metallic scent of the weapons he carried. My heart slammed so hard I was terrified he would hear it.

“Nothing here,” he muttered after a long moment. “Keep moving. She can’t run forever on that ankle.”

He moved on. I stayed frozen until the sound of his footsteps faded, then dragged myself up again and continued in the opposite direction. Every step was pure agony now. My vision blurred at the edges. I had lost track of how long I had been running. The night felt endless.

And then a little injury boy caught my attention.

He was lying half-hidden beneath a cluster of ferns, small and still. Blood soaked the side of his shirt. His breathing was shallow and too fast. An omega pup, no older than seven or eight. Probably caught in a trap or attacked during the chaos of the celebration while no one was watching the lower grounds.

I should have kept running.

The guards were close enough that I could still hear them. Every second I stayed increased the chance of capture. The minister’s name flashed through my mind again, and with it the memory of my father’s voice: *He’ll take you off our hands at dawn.*

I dropped to my knees beside the boy anyway.

“Hey,” I whispered, voice wrecked from crying and exhaustion. “Can you hear me?”

His eyelids fluttered but didn’t open. More blood welled under my fingers when I pressed against the wound. He was dying.

I didn’t think. I just pressed both hands to the injury the way I had done with small wounds in secret for years. The familiar warmth stirred under my skin — only this time it came faster, hotter, almost desperate. Soft white light spilled from my palms before I could stop it. The glow lit up the ferns and the boy’s pale face, bright enough to push back the darkness.

I watched, stunned, as the bleeding slowed. The torn flesh began to knit together under the light. His breathing eased. Color slowly returned to his cheeks.

The light faded as suddenly as it had come, leaving my hands trembling and my entire body even weaker than before. The healing had cost me. I felt hollowed out, dizzy, on the edge of collapse.

The boy’s eyes opened. He stared up at me with quiet, dazed wonder.

I had no time to feel relief.

A shout rose nearby — sharp and triumphant.

“Light! I saw light over there!”

Boots crashed toward us through the trees. Multiple sets. They had seen the white glow.

Panic gave me a final burst of strength. I hooked my hands under the boy’s arms and tried to drag him with me into thicker cover. My ankle screamed. My vision swam. I made it only a few steps before my leg buckled completely and we both went down.

The first guard burst into the small clearing, followed by two more. Their faces lit with ugly satisfaction when they saw me on the ground.

“Got her!” one of them barked. “Send the signal — tell the Beta we’ve recovered his property!”

I shoved the boy behind me and tried to crawl backward, but there was nowhere left to go. My arms shook too hard to hold me up. The broken bond in my chest pulsed weakly, as if even that ruined connection knew I was finished.

One of the guards stepped forward, reaching for me.

I never saw the archer.

I only heard the sharp, vicious whistle of something cutting through the air.

Pain exploded in my left side — hot, deep, and wrong. I looked down in shock. The dark shaft of an arrow was buried in the flesh just below my ribs. Black liquid already seeped from the wound around the wood, spreading under my skin in thin, burning lines.

Poison.

The guard’s triumphant expression faltered for a second in surprise, then twisted into something colder.

“That’ll keep her from running again,” someone called from the trees. “The minister won’t mind a little damage as long as she’s still breathing.”

I tried to speak, to scream, to do anything, but the poison was already moving. Fire raced through my veins. My limbs grew heavy. The faces of the guards blurred and doubled. The little boy’s frightened voice sounded far away.

My fingers scrabbled weakly at the dirt.

The last thing I felt before the darkness rushed up to claim me was the poison spreading deeper, and the distant, useless throb of the broken mate bond in my chest — as if even in this moment, some part of me was still waiting for someone who had already rejected me to care.