Chapter Four

The Prey and the Predator

Lunar had never run in her life.

That was the thought that kept circling through her mind, absurd and useless, as she crashed through the forest behind the most dangerous creature in the supernatural world, her bare feet bleeding, her lungs burning, her silver hair whipping around her face like a banner of surrender.

She'd never run. She'd never needed to. She'd been a Lunar Witch—a sacred treasure, a holy sacrifice. She'd been carried places. Escorted places. She'd glided through the temple city on slippered feet, always surrounded, always protected, always being prepared for her glorious, inevitable death.

Nobody had ever told her she might need to know how to run for her life.

"Faster," Kaelen growled, pulling her forward. His hand was wrapped around hers, warm and unyielding, and his stride was impossibly long, eating up the ground like it was nothing.

"I'm—trying—" Lunar gasped. A root caught her foot and she stumbled, almost going down. Kaelen caught her before she hit the ground, one arm around her waist, hauling her upright with an ease that made her want to cry.

"You're going to get us both killed," he said, but there was no anger in his voice. Just a kind of grim, exasperated determination.

"Then leave me!" Lunar snapped, because she was terrified and bleeding and she'd just watched her entire life go up in flames, and if she was going to die in this forest tonight, she was going to at least die with her dignity intact. "I'm the sacrifice! They're not going to—they're not going to hurt me, they need me alive—"

"They don't need you alive," Kaelen said flatly, not slowing down. "They need you on the altar. There's a difference."

Lunar's mouth opened. Closed. She'd never thought about it like that before.

They need you on the altar. Not alive. On the altar.

The thought was so cold, so obvious, so obvious that she felt it settle into her bones like ice. All those years of being treated like something precious. All those years of being fed and clothed and praised.

They'd never needed her alive. They'd needed her on the altar.

"Isolde—" she started, and her voice cracked.

"Isolde will burn the world to get you back," Kaelen said. "Or she'll find a way to kill you first. Either way, we can't let her catch us."

They burst out of the forest and into a clearing, and Kaelen stopped so abruptly that Lunar crashed into his back.

"What—" she started, and then she saw it.

The border.

It was like a wall made of moonlight—a shimmering curtain of silver light that stretched as far as she could see in either direction, cutting through the forest like a seam in reality. She'd heard about it her whole life, of course. The sacred border between the Lunaria Coven's territory and the Moonhowl Territory. The treaty line. The line that no witch and no wolf was allowed to cross.

Kaelen was looking at it with an expression of pure, burning intensity.

"This is the border," Lunar said, stating the obvious because she didn't know what else to do. "We can't cross it. The treaty—"

"The treaty is a piece of paper," Kaelen said. "I've broken bigger things tonight." He turned to look at her, and his golden eyes were blazing. "When we cross, you're going to feel something. It might hurt. It might feel like your chest is being torn open. Don't fight it."

"Don't fight—what are you—"

He picked her up again.

Lunar yelped, her arms going around his neck automatically. "I can walk!"

"You'll slow us down." He was already moving, striding toward the border with that terrifying, implacable purpose. "Hold your breath."

"Why would I—"

They hit the border.

It was like being dipped in liquid silver. Cold, sharp, impossibly bright, and then—pain. Pain like she'd never felt before, exploding through her chest, through her veins, through the part of her that held the moonlight. It felt like the border was trying to tear the magic out of her body, to rip away everything she was and leave only an empty shell.

Lunar screamed.

Kaelen's arms tightened around her. His jaw was clenched, his golden eyes blazing, and she could see silver light crackling along his skin like lightning—the border trying to reject him, trying to burn him alive for the crime of crossing.

But he didn't stop. He kept walking, step after agonizing step, carrying her through the wall of silver light.

"Almost there," he gritted out. "Almost—"

They broke through.

The pain stopped so abruptly that Lunar gasped, her whole body shuddering. She was trembling so hard her teeth were chattering, and her chest felt hollow and wrong, like the border had scooped out part of her and left a space behind.

"I—" she managed. "I feel—"

"Empty?" Kaelen's voice was rough. "The border strips magic. Yours will come back, but it'll take time."

Lunar looked up at him. There was a sheen of sweat on his face, and blood was seeping through the gash on his ribs again, but he was looking at her with that same fierce, hungry intensity.

"You carried me through that," she said stupidly. "It was—you were on fire. I saw you—"

"Silver light," he said dismissively. "It looks worse than it is."

"It was burning you!"

"It was," Kaelen agreed, and his mouth curved into something that was almost a smile. "Doesn't matter. You're worth a little burning."

Lunar stared at him.

You're worth a little burning.

Nineteen years of being told she was precious. Nineteen years of being told she was a gift to the gods. And the first person who'd ever actually, demonstrably, at great personal cost, treated her like she was worth something—

Was a wolf she'd met ten minutes ago.

"Thank you," she said, and her voice came out small and raw. "I don't—I don't know why you did this, but—thank you. For—for saving me. For burning for me. For—"

"Stop thanking me." Kaelen's voice was gruff, almost uncomfortable. "You're my fated mate. I'd burn the whole world for you. A little silver light is nothing."

Fated mate.

The words hit her like a physical blow. She'd heard them before, of course—in the old stories, the ones the elders didn't like to tell. The legend of the Lunar Witch and the Alpha Wolf, the two halves of the moon's power, bound together by a fate that no ritual could sever.

She'd thought it was just a story.

"Fated mates," she repeated slowly. "That's—that's not real. That's a myth. The elders always said—"

"The elders," Kaelen said, "have been lying to you your whole life. Why would they stop now?"

Lunar opened her mouth to argue, and then closed it again, because honestly? He had a point.

The sound of howling split the night behind them. Closer now. Much closer.