Updated Sep 16, 2025 • ~3 min read
The village was hushed, every hut cloaked in the silence of uneasy sleep. Mira sat outside her door, staring at the sky as if the stars might hold an escape from the bond burning under her skin. Her father’s breathing inside was shallow but steady; for now, he was safe. But she couldn’t shake the memory of what she had seen in the forest—the beast clawing inside Darius, his body breaking under its weight.
The bond tugged at her. She hated it, hated how it made her want to search for him instead of turning away. She hated the way it carried the echo of his pain into her chest as though it were her own.
“You should be resting,” came his voice, deep and quiet.
Her breath stilled. He was there, emerging from the shadows as though the night had shaped itself into him. He looked almost human again, though the exhaustion lingered in the set of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders.
“I couldn’t,” she admitted before she could stop herself.
He lowered himself to the ground beside her, not too close, not touching, but close enough that the bond stirred. For a while, they sat in silence, the night alive with the chirp of crickets and the sigh of wind through the trees.
Finally, she whispered, “What is it? The thing inside you.”
His golden eyes glinted in the moonlight. He didn’t answer at first, and she thought he might refuse. But then his voice came low, each word roughened by old scars. “A curse. One I didn’t choose, one I can’t escape. The moon demands my body, my mind. Some nights I win. Some nights I don’t.”
Mira’s throat tightened. “And when you lose?”
He turned to her, his gaze sharp but vulnerable. “Everyone loses.”
The words settled heavy between them. She should have recoiled, should have reminded herself he had taken her choice, marked her without consent. But instead she felt the strange pull of pity, of understanding she didn’t want to give.
“You saved us,” she said quietly. “Even when it almost broke you.”
His jaw flexed. “Don’t mistake duty for mercy.”
And yet, when their eyes met, something unspoken lingered—something neither of them dared voice.
The night wrapped around them like a secret. Neither reached for the other, but the space between them thrummed as though the bond itself whispered promises in the dark.
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