Bound by the Moon

Chapter 50

The night clung to them, a heavy, oppressive weight that suffocated the air. The silence was unnerving, a vast emptiness that filled the space where the violence had been. The world around them was still, but beneath that stillness was an ominous current, as if the forest itself held its breath in anticipation of something far worse. The pale crescent of the moon cast an eerie glow over the scarred earth, the fissures still raw and jagged, a testament to the power that had surged from Astrid.

Lucien stood a few feet away from her, his posture rigid, his muscles tight as if he were preparing for another attack. His eyes, once filled with the steady resolve of an alpha, now brimmed with something else—fear. A fear he tried desperately to conceal behind the cold mask of authority, but Astrid could sense it. It rolled off him in waves, a quiet terror that gripped him tighter than any enemy ever had.

She couldn't blame him. She felt it too. That moment when everything had broken free, when her power had exploded out of her like a wildfire—there was no controlling it, no stopping it. And now, in the aftermath, she felt hollow. Drained. As if something essential had been torn from her, leaving only an empty shell.

Lucien's gaze swept over her, assessing her as if she were something unknown, something dangerous. And maybe she was. She had no idea what had just happened. She didn't understand it any more than he did, but there was no denying the truth of it: something inside her had awakened, and it wasn't just her wolf.

"This isn't just about the mate bond anymore, is it?" Lucien's voice cut through the silence, rough and edged with a tension she had never heard before. He took a step closer, but the space between them felt vast, like a chasm neither of them could cross. "What happened back there—what you did—Astrid, that was something else entirely. That wasn't just a shift, or your wolf coming through. I've never seen anything like that."

Astrid swallowed hard, her throat dry, her chest tight. She didn't want to admit it, didn't want to voice the fear that gnawed at her insides, but Lucien was right. What had happened wasn't natural. It wasn't normal. And it wasn't something that could be easily explained away.

"I don't know what it was," she whispered, her voice barely audible in the thick air. "I didn't mean for it to happen. It just—" She broke off, unsure of how to explain the feeling of losing herself, of being overtaken by something ancient and dark, something she hadn't even known was there.

Lucien's jaw tightened, his eyes darkening with a mixture of frustration and concern. He looked down at the ground, where the earth still bore the scars of her outburst, the cracks weaving through the dirt like veins, raw and bleeding.

"That kind of power..." he muttered, more to himself than to her, his voice low and dangerous. "It's not something that should exist. Not in a wolf. Not in anyone." He lifted his gaze to hers, and the intensity in his eyes sent a shiver down her spine. "Astrid, this—this is something bigger than us. People are going to feel that. They're going to know."

A cold wave of dread washed over her. She hadn't thought about that. She hadn't thought about what it meant for others to sense the power that had erupted from her. Her mind raced with the implications. If Lucien had felt it, then others would too. It would ripple out, reaching those who had the ability to sense such things, those who were always searching for signs of power, of weakness.

"They'll come for me, won't they?" Astrid's voice trembled, the weight of the realization hitting her full force. "Whoever felt it—they'll want to know what I am. They'll want to control it. Or... stop it."

Lucien didn't answer immediately, but the way his expression hardened told her everything she needed to know. His silence spoke volumes, and it was more terrifying than anything he could have said.