Chapter 27 Luna
Chapter twenty-seven
Luna
The jungle grew darker as twilight settled around us. We’d made good progress since escaping the collapsed crypt, putting several miles between ourselves and Marcel’s team.
We hoped, anyway.
Damien paused at a small clearing nestled between massive tree roots.
“This area should provide adequate shelter for the night,” he said, but his eyes weren’t scanning the terrain anymore.
They were fixed on me.
The intensity in his gaze sent a flush of heat through my body. Neither of us had mentioned what happened after our escape, but the memory hung between us like an electric current.
“Adequate shelter,” I repeated with a smile. “Always the romantic.”
Something sparked in his eyes, a sultry mix of amusement and desire. “Would you prefer I wax poetic about our accommodations? Compare this muddy clearing to the gardens of Versailles post-revolution?”
I grinned. “I sure won’t stop you.”
I tried to imagine Damien in period clothing—powdered wig, brocade coat, and silk stockings—but the image wouldn’t quite form. Out here, with dirt all over him, his clothes torn, and smelling of sex, he seemed too primal for that level of foppery, despite his refined manners.
As we set up camp, I noticed how he maintained physical distance, as if crossing that boundary again would unleash something he couldn’t control, and we’d screw each other into oblivion.
His movements were precise but tense, and when our fingers brushed as he handed me supplies, he withdrew his hand so quickly that the contact might as well have burned him.
“Are we going to talk about what happened earlier?” I finally asked, deciding directness was the only way through this strained awkwardness.
His shoulders stiffened. “If you want.”
“Do you regret it?”
“No,” he said without hesitation, his voice dropping to a register that vibrated through me. “Do you?”
“Not even slightly,” I admitted.
The tension between us only thickened even more until it felt like I could reach out and touch it. A living thing with its own heartbeat.
Damien’s eyes darkened as he looked at me, giving me serious come-hither vibes, but when I lost myself in his stare, I thought he might close the distance between us himself.
Instead, he cleared his throat and said, “We should examine the Shadow Fang piece more thoroughly.”
I bit back my disappointment and retrieved the specialized container from my pack. More sex could wait until we were out of danger.
Down, you pesky hormones.
As I opened the container, feeling the Shadow Fang piece’s subtle warmth and vibration, Damien maintained his distance.
“You can come closer,” I said. “It won’t bite.”
“The Wolf Queen mentioned certain sensitivities vampires have to it,” he admitted. “I’ll likely need special gloves to handle it.”
“Ah. So it will bite.” I removed the Shadow Fang piece from its protective case.
The artifact responded to my touch, its subtle glow intensifying in my palm.
The curved fang was about two and a half inches long, a translucent silvery material that wasn’t quite bone or mineral but something between.
The housing encasing its base was intricate gold filigree inlaid with tiny crystals, each etched with microscopic symbols.
“It’s warm,” I said, turning it.
“It’s always pulsing.” Damien leaned closer, his caution momentarily forgotten. “The frequency synchronizes with your heartbeat.”
As I studied the piece, strange sensations filtered through my consciousness. Not quite visions, but impressions emanating from the fang itself. Feelings of connection, protection, and an overwhelming sense of longing for its missing pieces.
“It’s incomplete,” I murmured. “Like it misses the other parts? That sounds crazy, but if magical fangs have feelings, that’s one of them.”
“Not so crazy,” Damien said. “In my research, I learned that many powerful magical artifacts develop a form of consciousness over time, particularly those created from living tissue. The ancient Egyptians believed parts of a being’s essence remained in anything taken from their body. The Greeks had similar beliefs.”
He spoke with the casual authority of someone who had discussed philosophy with those ancients personally, and it struck me again how little I knew of his long existence.
A sudden, intense wave of emotion surged from the artifact, so powerful it disrupted my thoughts.
Images flashed through my mind—Aria and Jade lying in their Repository beds, their skin marked by the luminescent orange moss of their illness.
But instead of the memory I expected, the vision shifted, showing them in a strange misty realm, suspended in a twilight state neither sleeping nor waking.
And they were…
They were smiling.
Tears sprang to my eyes.
“Luna?” Damien was at my side instantly, cupping my face. “What happened? Did it hurt you?”
“Jade and Aria… They’re…somewhere else,” I managed, struggling to hold on to the fading vision. “Not just unconscious. It’s like they’re trapped in some kind of in-between place.” I looked up at him, my vision blurring. “They’re actually there, Damien. They exist somewhere I can’t reach them.”
The artifact’s glow dimmed as the vision faded, leaving me clutching it with white-knuckled intensity, as if I could physically pull my daughter and best friend back through the connection.
The dam broke. My forced composure, with too many cracks in it to last for a stretch of time, collapsed under the weight of what I’d just experienced. The tears became sobs that racked my entire body.
Damien didn’t hesitate. He drew me against his chest, one arm wrapping securely around my back while his other hand cradled my head. His touch was sure, protective, as if holding me together was the most natural thing in the world.
“They’re not totally gone from me,” I finally managed between sobs. “They’re trapped. This whole time, I’ve been telling myself they were just sleeping, that they couldn’t hear me when I talked to them, but they’re…somewhere. Conscious, in some way. Waiting. And smiling.”
His thumb brushed away a tear from my cheek. “They know,” he said, his voice low and fierce. “They know you’ll move heaven and earth to reach them. And you are.” His gaze dropped to the Shadow Fang piece still clutched in my hand. “We will find the other pieces, Luna. I swear it.”
We. We will find the other pieces. He’d said it not as calculation or obligation but as shared purpose. That helped steady me, and I nodded against his chest.
“Tell me about them,” Damien said, guiding me to sit beside him against an enormous tree root. “Your daughter and Jade.”
Carefully returning the Shadow Fang piece to its container, I took a deep breath and did something I rarely allowed myself—I talked about Aria and Jade without the protective layer of humor or deflection I typically used.
“Aria’s three, but sometimes I swear she has an old soul,” I began, the words coming easier than expected.
“She had these moments of perfect clarity, where she’d look at you, and it felt like she was seeing right through to your core.
Jade called it her ‘wolf wisdom,’ this innate understanding that had nothing to do with being a toddler and everything to do with her heritage. ”
Once I started, the stories flowed freely—Aria’s first word (moon), her favorite stuffed wolf she called Pack because it was her constant companion, her serious little frown when concentrating on building block towers.
I told him about her fascination with stars and how she would point to the night sky with absolute confidence, naming constellations in her toddler babble.
“She was just starting to show signs of shifting,” I continued, the memory simultaneously precious and painful.
“Nothing full, of course. She’s too young, but her eyes would flash gold when she was excited, and sometimes tiny claws would appear when she was frustrated.
Her pediatrician said she was developmentally advanced for her age. ”
Damien listened with complete focus, as if memorizing every detail. There was something almost reverent in his attention, as if he genuinely enjoyed hearing about two of the most important people in my whole world.
“And you fear she’ll lose that connection to her wolf nature the longer she remains in a coma,” he said, not a question but an understanding.
I nodded, unsurprised by his insight. “The longer she’s like this, the more I worry that even when we cure her, she might not retain her abilities. Obviously I don’t know how her wolf is reacting to the coma, but if she’s cut off from it during these formative years…”
I couldn’t bring myself to voice one of my deepest fears—that Aria might suffer the same fate as me, unable to shift, unable to fully embrace her dual nature. It had been torture for me. I’d do anything to spare her from that kind of pain.
“You don’t want her to experience what you did,” Damien said, his voice gentle. “The severance from your wolf.”
I ran a hand through my tangled hair, dislodging bits of crypt debris. “Ironic, right? Me, the outcast who can’t even shift anymore, desperate to preserve my daughter’s wolf heritage.”
“Not ironic,” Damien countered, his hand finding mine in the gathering darkness. “It’s the most natural thing in the world to want your daughter to have the life you were denied.”
The simple observation struck me. He’d cut straight to the heart of my fears for Aria with disconcerting accuracy.
“And Jade?” he asked. “What’s she like?”
“A force,” I said without hesitation. “The strongest person I’ve ever known. Fierce and loyal and stubborn as hell. She knows everything about me, and somehow, she hasn’t run away from me yet.”
Damien smiled. “She chose you and Aria over her pack. That kind of loyalty is rare in any species.”
“She did. And I don’t know what I did to deserve that,” I admitted.
“Maybe you underestimate your own worth,” he said simply.