Updated Sep 16, 2025 • ~2 min read
Night fell heavy, wrapping the village in uneasy quiet. Mira sat by the fire, her hands trembling as she replayed the day’s battle. Every snap of teeth, every flash of claws haunted her—but nothing lingered more than the way Darius had thrown himself between her and death.
The bond pulsed, steady and relentless, like a chain coiled around her heart. She pressed her hand against it, willing it to weaken, but the fire only burned hotter.
When she looked up, he was there. Always there. His presence filled the space like a shadow she couldn’t escape.
“You fought well,” he said, his voice low, threaded with something softer than she expected.
Her laugh was bitter. “I almost died.”
His jaw tightened. “And yet you didn’t. Because I was there.”
Her eyes snapped to his, anger sparking in her chest. “That’s exactly the problem. I don’t want to owe you my life.”
He stepped closer, his gaze unflinching. “This bond doesn’t care what you want. It ties us together, in battle and in blood.”
Her throat constricted. “So I’m just a prisoner then? Chained to you until the moon decides otherwise?”
For the first time, his mask cracked. Pain flickered across his features, raw and unguarded. “You think I wanted this? You think I don’t feel the chain just as you do?”
The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating. Mira’s chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. She wanted to scream, to strike him, to claw the tether out of her skin. Instead, she whispered, “Then break it.”
He looked at her as though she had asked for the impossible. His golden eyes gleamed in the firelight, haunted. “If I could, I would. But every time I’ve tried, the moon only tightens it.”
Mira turned away, her eyes stinging. She hated the helplessness in his voice because it mirrored her own.
The fire crackled between them, the sound sharp as chains clinking in the dark.
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