《Bound by the Moon》全部章節：第 11 章 - 第 20 章

A scream woke me.At first, I thought my nightmare hadn’t ended, then a rat raced past my ear and the smell of rot welcomed me back to consciousness like an old friend that had been waiting patiently by the door. The scream came again from different angles, louder this time, sending a quaking uproar through the cells, which bounced off stone walls and doubled back.“Shut the hell up!”“Some of us are trying to sleep!”“What is wrong with you?!”The screaming came again. This time from beside me. From the man the enforcers had carried in days ago, the one with the familiar scent I still hadn’t been able to place no matter how many times I turned it over in my mind.My palms flew to my ears. Even the rats had stopped scavenging, their frantic squeaking filling the gaps between screams as though they too could feel whatever pain was bleeding through the walls. Animals always knew before people did. I had learned that much.I couldn’t take it anymore.I dragged myself upright, every joi

At every single moment, the same thought crossed my mind despite the panic eating away at my chest. I chanted to myself. This is it.The day I leave.The day I don’t come back.It didn’t come with hope. Hope was too soft for the disappointment I faced in my life. It came sharper than that, like instinct. Like something that had been waiting for the right crack in the world and I had finally found it.The dungeon had been chaotic for hours.The screaming hadn’t stopped. It had only changed shape. Some had gone hoarse. Some had gone quiet. Some had turned into the kind of sound that didn’t feel human anymore.No one came.No enforcers. No footsteps. No keys.I could feel it in the way the walls trembled, in the way the air tasted sour and heavy, like something buried had decided it was done staying buried.At first, I stayed where I always stayed.Low. Still. Small. Old habits sat in my bones.But something else sat there too now.Something that had been growing in the forest. Since th

The battle room looked the same.Same oval table scarred with blade marks. Same maps bleeding ink across every wall. Same weapons rack along the far side, each one cleaned and waiting for the next reason to be used. Same cold stone smell underneath everything, the kind that didn’t change regardless of what happened in the room or who stood in it.I had stood here once before, chained, bleeding from Damon’s claws, certain I was about to die.I stood here now, unchained, clean, wearing borrowed clothes that actually fit, and felt somehow more undone than I had that first time.At least then I knew what was coming.They had positioned me in the centre of the room the way you position something you’re examining. Rosalind, the pack’s healer, was to the left, her hands folded in front of her like she was at a formal proceeding. The elders, Eli and Edgar, clustered near the far wall. The beta, Ralph, standing slightly apart from the others, his voice warm and attentive.Skylar stood near the

Eris.My foster mother stood in the doorway of my room and looked at me the way she had always looked at me. Like I was something stuck to the underside of her life that she couldn’t scrape off.The room shrank.I shrank.I am twenty-two now.Yet, fifteen years of careful fear and survival lived in my body and it responded to her before I could stop it. The urge to make myself smaller, to drop my eyes, to find the corner of the room and press against it. I felt it move through me like muscle memory and I hated it and it happened anyway.She looked around my room. At the window. At the bed. At the lamp and the empty bowl and the clothes Skylar had brought.“You really think,” her voice carried the pleasure of someone delivering news they have been saving, “that the alpha will give you a spot beside his throne.” Her laugh was short and without warmth. “The mad alpha. Damon Bane.” She said his name like a punchline. “He enjoys a spectacle. He likes to be entertained. Why else would he p

He is not who you think. The note sat on the table beside my bed all night. I had picked it up more times than I wanted to admit and read it more times than that. By the time dawn came, I had arrived at no conclusions. My head throbbed as my eyes felt the lack of sleep. The timing of this was funny. Right on the night before my first test. When my mind was already loud enough without the addition of anonymous warnings slipped under my door in the dark. I folded and tucked it under my pillow. The pack had gathered in the main courtyard by the time Skylar came for me. I heard them before I saw them. The low murmur of a crowd that had already decided the outcome and was here for the confirmation of it. I had stood in enough rooms like this – full of people who had already made up their minds about me. I knew the specific quality of that sound. It had a texture to it. A particular density. I kept my chin up and walked into it anyway. The test parameters were simple. A targ