Chapter 162

Alaric stood rooted to the spot, his breath hitching in his chest as the silence of the forest rushed back in to fill the space where her voice had been.

The cool night air bit at his bare skin, but he didn’t feel the cold. All he felt was the agonizing thrumming in his soul—a tether that was currently being stretched to the breaking point as she walked further away.

"She’s not... she’s not a wolf?," He wondered to the shadows. His wolf let out a long howl inside his mind, a sound of utter confusion.

The Moon Goddess didn’t make mistakes. The scent was a biological fact. But that woman... she had looked at him like he was a stain on the carpet.

Behind him, across the ravine, the distant sound of howling began to rise. His father’s scouts.

The pack was looking for their runaway Alpha. If they found him like this—naked, bleeding, and standing on the edge of their pack territory—it wouldn’t just be a scandal.

But Alaric couldn’t bring himself to move back toward the Blood-Moon borders. He looked at the trail Clara had left in the pine needles, his blue eyes narrowing with a new resolve.

A few hundred yards away, Clara reached the clearing where Marcus was still standing like a statue, the heavy spellbook cradled in his arms.

He looked up as she emerged from the brush, his eyes immediately going to the soot and dirt on her gown.

"You were gone longer than a rabbit hunt requires," Marcus noted, handing her the book, his gaze flickering to the sentinel hound that was trotting contentedly at her side. "And you smell like... adrenaline."

Clara took the book, her fingers tracing the embossed silver runes on the cover. "A stray," she said simply, her voice tight. "A Blood-Moon pup with a head full of fairy tales and a very bad sense of direction."

Marcus’s posture tensed "Did he cross?"

"He tried," Clara replied, opening the book to a specific page, her white eyes glowing with a faint, restless light.

"I sent him back. But the wards need to be reinforced, Marcus. The border is leaking. If one Alpha followed the residual scent, more will come. We need to move."

Marcus nodded, his expression darkening. He didn’t need to ask for details. Marcus was a creature of silence. He fell into step beside Clara as they began the long trek back toward the North, heading toward the distant, unseen safety of Lucian’s estate.

Marcus moved with the fluid grace of his kind, his footstep not making much sound on the forest floor.

Clara remained quiet, her fingers tightening around the leather binding of her spellbook. Her mind was a chaotic swirl of runes and redirection charms, but beneath the professional layer of the witch, a bubble of genuine, dark amusement was rising.

Mate. The word felt ridiculous in her head. She almost let out a mocking laugh that would have surely startled the birds from the trees. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

A shifter. A boy who smelled of pine needles and desperation, claiming a bond to a woman whose bloodline had been hunted to the brink of extinction by his very kind.

"The imagination on these wolves," she muttered, more to herself than to the copper-haired vampire beside her.

"They spend so much time staring at the moon they forget how to see what’s right in front of them."

Marcus cut a glance toward her, his red eyes glowing a bit brighter in the deepening twilight. He didn’t ask what the "stray" had said to her.

He didn’t need to. He could smell the lingering scent of a young shifter frantic adrenaline on Clara’s gown, a sharp contrast to her own cool, forest-heavy aura.

The silence of the woods was absolute, the kind of quiet that usually meant every living thing was hiding from a predator.

Clara was still mentally scoffing at the "mate" comment, her boots rhythmically hitting the soil, when the atmosphere suddenly curdled.

Barnaby stopped mid-stride, dropping into a lethal, silent crouch, his tail going rigid.

Before Marcus could even turn his head, the brush to their left disintegrated. The chocolate wolf launched himself from a dense bush.

He didn’t attack. He skidded across the path, his claws throwing up clods of earth and dead needles as he scrambled to intercept them, effectively cutting off their path to the North.

Marcus was a blur of copper and shadow. In less than a heartbeat, he was in front of Clara. He didn’t have a weapon, but his posture was terrifying—his fingers curved like talons, his copper-red eyes glowing with a warning that made the air feel freezing.

"Clara," Marcus’s voice was low,"The stray followed us."

Alaric was a sight of pure misery. His chocolate fur was matted with even more forest debris, and the glass cuts on his shoulders were weeping fresh crimson against the dark coat.

He was trembling so hard his legs were nearly buckling, his chest heaving as if he had run the entire distance without a single breath.

Clara stepped out from behind Marcus, her white eyes flashing with a mix of genuine shock and mounting fury.

"Are you suicidal?" she hissed, "I flung you into a tree, boy. I told you to go home. How did you even find us?"

The wolf didn’t growl. He let out a small, broken whine, his wolf’s golden eyes fixed on Clara. He took a tentative, limping step forward, his head low in a submissive gesture that was completely wrong for an Alpha of his stature.

She marched forward, pushing past Marcus’s protective arm. She stopped just feet away from the wolf’s snout.

Barnaby let out a low growl, his coal-red eyes fixed on Alaric’s throat, but the wolf didn’t even flinch. He just looked up at Clara, his molten eyes bleeding with a silent, agonizing plea.

"Listen to me, you flea-bitten hallucination," Clara whispered, leaning down so her face was inches from his furry ears.

"I don’t know who you think I am, but I am not your mate, If I don’t kill you, then he will." she pointed at the stunned Marcus. "And he won’t be as ’polite’ as I was."

The wolf reached out, his wet nose twitching as he dared to nudge the hem of her gown.

Clara recoiled as if she’d been burned.

The audacity of the creature—to touch her, to follow her into Lucian’s heartland—was beyond anything she had dealt with in a century.

"Marcus," Clara said, her voice trembling with rage. "Throw him back. And I don’t mean back to the ravine. Throw him so far into the Blood-Moon territory that he forgets which way is North."

Marcus stepped forward, his red eyes locking onto Alaric. "With pleasure."