All Chapters of Bound by the Cursed Moon: Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

Female Lead POV: Rhen Thornwolf"Something is out there, Kieran, and it is not hunters. I know what hunters feel like against my skin, and this is not that. It is older, colder, and it is watching us like it already knows my name."The fire had burned low by the time the others noticed my stillness. Sable was first, her hand landing on my shoulder before I even realized I had gone rigid, my eyes still fixed on the place at the tree line where the shadow had stood a moment ago and now, infuriatingly, did not."Rhen." Kieran's voice was steady, but his grip on my hand had tightened. "Tell me what you felt, exactly.""Cold," I said. "Not the kind that comes from wind. The kind that comes from something recognizing you." I made myself breathe. "It felt like the locket. Like whatever answers that thing, my blood answered too.""That does not sound like nothing," Sable said, her hand tightening on my shoulder. "That sounds like something that has been waiting for you specifically.""I did n

Female Lead POV: Rhen Thornwolf"Say the name again. I need to hear you say it out loud, Mama, because if I do not hear it from your mouth I am going to spend the rest of my life wondering if I imagined it."We sat together in the small room she still kept at the edge of the Thornwolf quarter, the same room I had grown up in, though it felt like a stranger's house now, every familiar corner suddenly holding secrets I had never once suspected were there. The lamp between us flickered, throwing long shadows across walls I had stared at a thousand times without ever once wondering what they were hiding."Vaelwood," she said again, quieter this time. "That was my name before it was Thornwolf. Rhen, I did not lie to you about who you are. I only ever lied about who I was."I pressed my palms flat against my knees to keep them from shaking. "Why change it at all? Why not just tell people the truth?""Because the truth got people killed," she said. "The Vaelwood line was not Alpha, not Omega

Female Lead POV: Rhen Thornwolf"If something happens to me out there, I need you to promise me you will not let it become the reason you stop trusting the people who love you. I have watched that happen to you once already, and I refuse to watch it happen again."Kieran did not answer right away, his eyes fixed on the narrowing path ahead of us, mist curling low around the pines the further we climbed toward the eastern ridge. Sable walked just behind me, blades secured but hands never far from them, while Dorian led two Enforcers along our flank, scanning the tree line with the focused intensity of a man who had already decided he would not fail us a second time."That is an unfair thing to ask me to promise," Kieran finally said. "Nothing is happening to you out there. I intend to make certain of that personally.""You cannot promise that either," I said, gentler now. "None of us can. That is exactly why I am asking for the other thing instead."He exhaled slowly, and after a momen

Female Lead POV: Rhen Thornwolf "I did not come home. I did not even know this place existed until yesterday, so before you decide I owe you anything, I would like to understand exactly what it is you think I came here to give you." The voice in the basin did not answer immediately, and the pale light around us pulsed slowly, patiently, like something breathing after a very long sleep, testing whether it had truly heard what it thought it heard. "Forgive me," it said finally, softer now, less like stone and more like something that remembered, once, how to be gentle. "I have waited so long for Vaelwood blood that I forgot the years mean nothing to the one returning, even when they mean everything to the one waiting." "What are you," Kieran asked, his hand steady on my shoulder, though I could feel the tension running through him like a live wire, ready to pull me back at the first sign of danger. "I do not have a name your tongues were ever meant to hold," the voice said. "Yo

Female Lead POV: Rhen Thornwolf"Do not you dare die on that stone floor, Dorian Greymane, not after everything it took you to finally trust the people standing around you. You do not get to leave before you see what that trust becomes."The light around me had turned into something I could not fully describe, warm and cold at once, pulling a thread out from somewhere deep inside my chest and stretching it toward the cracked basin beneath my palms. I could hear Sable's voice breaking behind me, could hear Kieran shouting something back at her, but the binding had already caught me in its current, and I could not pull free to help even as every part of me screamed to try."Focus," the voice in the stone urged gently. "The creature weakens the moment the seal closes. Your friend's best chance is you finishing what you started, not you abandoning it half done.""That is easy for you to say," I gritted out, sweat beading at my temple despite the strange chill pouring through my hands. "Yo