Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Astra
I wake up feeling like I’ve been turned inside out and reassembled wrong.
My body aches in places I didn’t know could ache, but there’s something else—an energy thrumming beneath my skin that feels foreign. Electric. Like someone has replaced my blood with lightning.
For a moment, I don’t know where I am. The last thing I remember is pain. Andrew’s face as he watched me being beaten. The sound Luna made when she hit the wall. The taste of blood in my mouth and the growing certainty that I was going to die in that horrible room.
But I’m not in that room anymore. I’m lying on soft grass beneath towering trees, wearing clothes that feel like silk against my skin.
The fabric is expensive—softer than anything I’ve ever owned.
Above me, filtered sunlight dances through green leaves, and somewhere nearby, I can smell meat cooking over a fire.
I stare blankly at the sky, feeling absolutely nothing. Empty. Hollow. Like someone reached inside my chest and scooped out everything that used to be me, leaving behind just this breathing shell.
Where my heart used to be, there’s only a vast, echoing void. I should feel relief at being alive. Gratitude for being rescued. Something. But there’s...nothing.
I hear footsteps approaching through the underbrush, and when I turn my head, Lucian emerges from the trees. For one wild, desperate moment, I wonder if it was all just a nightmare. If Andrew’s betrayal, Luna’s death, the men with their shackles and collars—if all of it was just some fever dream.
But the hollow ache in my chest tells me otherwise.
“How are you feeling?” Lucian asks, sitting down beside me. His voice is careful, gentle in a way I’ve never heard from him before.
The question almost makes me laugh, but the sound that comes out is more like a broken wheeze. “Why did you save me?”
He doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he reaches for a waterskin and offers it to me. “You need to drink.”
I look at the container but don’t take it. I can’t summon the energy to care about being thirsty. I can’t summon the energy to care about anything. “I asked you a question.”
“You need to eat and drink to survive,” he says, still holding out the water.
“I don’t want to survive.” The words slip out before I can stop them, flat and unemotional. I mean them completely. What’s the point? Love is a lie. Kindness is a weapon. I’m better off dead.
Lucian ignores my statement entirely, pressing the waterskin into my hands. “Drink.”
I let it fall to the grass beside me.
He stares at me for a moment, then stands and walks over to the fire. I watch him tend to the meat, turning the pieces and checking them with his knife. The blade catches the firelight as he carves off a small piece to taste it.
We don’t speak. The only sounds are the crackling of flames and the soft sizzle of meat cooking.
I turn my head to look around the camp and notice some things that seem odd.
A neat pile of supplies stacked against a tree.
A carefully arranged circle of stones around the fire.
Multiple sets of cooking implements laid out like someone has been here for more than just a night.
“How long was I out?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Four days.”
Four days. I’ve been unconscious for four days while he...what? Stayed here? Watched over me? The thought makes my chest feel even more hollow, if that’s possible.
Exhaustion weighs down on me suddenly, so heavy I can barely keep my eyes open. Everything feels like too much—the sunlight, the sounds of the forest, even breathing. I want to sink back into unconsciousness where I don’t have to think or feel or remember.
Lucian returns with a piece of cooked meat on a flat stone. He sets it down beside me. The smell should make me hungry, but I feel nothing. No appetite, no interest, no desire for anything.
“Why are you here?” The question comes out level and weary.
“Because you’re hurt.”
“I can move.” I flex my fingers experimentally. Yesterday—or however long it’s been…Last I remember, I could barely breathe without pain shooting through my ribs. Now, my body feels functional, albeit strange. “How is this possible?”
“I forced a healer to fix you.”
The nonchalant way he says it makes me turn my head to look at him. There’s something dark in his expression, something that suggests “forced” might be putting it mildly.
“You shouldn’t have gone that far for me.” My voice sounds foreign to my own ears, dull and lifeless. “You should have left me there to die.”
“No.”
“Just leave me here, then.” I stare back up at the sky. “I don’t want your help anymore. I don’t want anyone’s help.”
“What will you do if I leave?”
I don’t answer because we both know what I’ll do. I’ll lie here until the forest takes me. Until this emptiness in my chest spreads to everywhere else and I finally stop feeling anything at all.
“If you’re planning to die,” he says quietly, “who will take care of Luna?”
The name hits me like a punch to the gut. Luna. My brave, loyal Luna, who died trying to protect me. Who died because I was too stupid to see Andrew for what he really was.
“Luna is dead.” The words taste like ash in my mouth. “They killed her.”
“Is that so?”
There’s an amused tone in his voice, which makes no sense. How can he joke about this? How can he find anything funny about my cat being murdered?
Before I can ask what he means, his hand cups my jaw, gently but firmly, and tilts my face to the right. “Does that look dead to you?”
I glance at the tree he’s pointing to, and my world stops.
Luna is sprawled across a low branch like she owns it, black fur gleaming in the dappled sunlight. Her eyes are closed, and her chest rises and falls with the deep rhythm of sleep. One paw dangles over the edge of the branch, twitching slightly as she dreams.
She’s alive.
“Luna!” The cry tears from my throat, raw and desperate.
Her amber eyes snap open at the sound of my voice. She stretches luxuriously, like she has just woken from the world’s most comfortable nap, then focuses on me with that intelligent gaze I know so well.
“Luna, come here!” I’m sitting up now, my arms reaching for her.
She gives me one of her most imperious looks—the one that clearly says she’ll come when she’s good and ready—then gracefully leaps down from the branch, straight into my arms.
The moment her warm, solid weight hits my chest, the dam breaks.
Everything I’ve been holding back crashes over me at once. The betrayal, the terror, the bone-deep certainty that I’d lost the one creature who truly loved me. It all comes pouring out in great, shuddering sobs that shake my entire body.
“I thought you were dead,” I gasp against her fur, my voice barely recognizable. “I thought they’d killed you. I thought I’d lost you forever.”
Luna purrs and nuzzles against my neck, her usual comfort technique when I’m upset. But this time, it only makes me cry harder. She’s real. She’s alive and warm and purring in my arms, and I can’t believe it.
“How?” I look up at Lucian through my tears. “How is she alive? I saw them hurt her. I heard—”
“She was unconscious, not dead,” he says quietly. “I had the healers treat her before me. I know how important she is to you.”
The tears keep coming, harder now. Relief and grief and a thousand other emotions I can’t name, all tangled together.
Luna’s alive, but everything else remains shattered.
I still don’t understand why Lucian came for me or how he found us.
I still don’t know why he’s being kind when he made it perfectly clear how annoying he thinks I am.
“I don’t understand,” I sob, clutching Luna tighter. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“You don’t have to understand right now,” Lucian says. “You just have to stay alive.”
“Why?” The question comes out broken. “What’s the point? Pretty much everyone I’ve ever trusted has either abandoned me or betrayed me. Everyone except Luna, and she almost died, too.” Images of Daciana and Selene flash through my mind, but I can’t speak of them. It’s too dangerous.
“Not everyone.”
I look at Lucian through my tears, but I can’t read his expression. It’s intense and complicated and makes my chest feel tight.
“You called me annoying,” I whisper. “You said I was pathetic and desperate.”
Something flickers across his face—pain, maybe, or regret. “I lied.”
“Why?”
“Because I was angry.” His voice is rough, and he looks away from me. “I said things I shouldn’t have.”
I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what any of this means. All I know is that Luna is alive and warm in my arms, and for the first time since waking up, I feel something other than emptiness.
It’s not happiness; I don’t think I’ll ever feel that again. But it’s better than nothing. A tiny crack in the void that has been consuming me.
There’s a long silence. I focus on Luna’s warmth, her steady purr against my chest. Finally, I find the courage to ask what I’ve been dreading.
“What happened to Andrew and the others?”
“They’re all dead.” His voice is flat, impassive. “Except Andrew.”
This answer only raises more questions. “Maybe it would have been better if I had just gone to the other pack. Let them mate me, like Alpha Gareth wanted.”
Lucian’s expression turns absolutely glacial. The temperature around us seems to drop several degrees as a dangerous look flickers in his eyes.
“They would have killed you,” he says, his voice sharp with anger.
I’m quiet, continuing to pet Luna’s soft fur. The repetitive motion is the only thing keeping me grounded.
Suddenly, Lucian’s hand wraps around my wrist, urging me to look at him. His blue eyes are blazing with a fervor that takes my breath away.
“You should stay with me,” he says, and it’s not a suggestion or a plea. It’s a vow, spoken with the weight of absolute certainty. “I won’t betray you. Ever.”