Chapter 6. Fight or Flight

Luna's heart beat feverishly, pulse roiling in her ears as the hulking wolf charged, human hands tucked close to enormous jaws. She stood rooted, mind screaming at body, but body did not answer against the looming harbinger, paralyzed by degree of fear.  

"Luna, run!" Alec's voice was harsh with urgency but barely started to sink in.

In an instant, Alec’s body changed. Painfully, his bones popped and reforms as his clothes tore, his form expanding into the buff form of a midnight-black wolf. He lunged with a snarl that sighed through the clearing, right in Ronan's face.

A collision as unimaginable as it was brutal: two bears of violence smashing together with incredible weight and strength and energy. Ronan withdrew his teeth, slashing into Alec's side and twisting, swinging a massive foreleg and slamming Alec down to the ground.

Kade and Jax were in motion too. Kade shifted in a flash to his rippling gray wolf before charging in, while Jax stayed human, circling, alert, eyes fixed with intent and waiting his chance.

But Luna...still no movement.

And every shred of fear from earlier training came back tenfold. With each action, her hands trembled as she observed the fight in front of her. She could see Alec and Kade were strong, very strong. Ronan was unrelenting. Any attack was met with savage brutality, and she could see in their eyes each second they had the wolf restrained.

Jax suddenly turned to her, barking at her "Luna move, you have to move! Get to safety!"

"I- I can't ..." Her whisper barely reached beyond the attacks of jaws, growls, and flight at the two men in the fight.

Ronan briefly shifted his eyes to her, yet kept Alec and Kade at bay, with the same predatory glimmers and darkness in his eyes: your mine he seemed to say.

At that moment, the fear turned to urgency: unless she moved, she was good as dead.

At last, Luna felt her instinct to survive kick in. She whirled and fled, her breaths ragged as she ran for the trees lining the clearing. The forest would afford her safety, and once she was among the trees, she— But even as she dashed through the trampled grass, she could hear the sounds of the fighting continuing back in the center of the clearing. Growls, the snap of bones breaking, the thud of bodies crashing to the earth. Her lungs burned as she went, the energy required to escape them that much more than was humanly possible. Then, no matter how swiftly she moved, the sense of him coming after her remained, and she knew Ronan would never stop until she was caught. He was drawing closer to her. She knew it with every part of her being, the sensation of him getting near enough to trigger a feeling like a breaking point in the air among the trees. She let out a yelp and stumbled, breaths scattering in the clearing air like ashes tossed off into the wind. Another anguished growl came from behind her, the sound of something large crashing through the foliage, and her heart seemed to drop into her stomach. Ronan had broken free from the fight that was still going on between Alec and Kade. He was coming for her. Her legs almost failed her as she glimpsed the sight. Running through the woods, under the light of the nearly full moon, he looked like a wild beast. Monstrous in size, his black fur splattered with patches of crimson, his eyes radiating that awful malice; Ronan surely outpaced her so much so that there was no possible hope of outrunning him. Panic shattered through her, and she stumbled so violently where she stood that for a split second she thought she might fall over completely. She half-tripped on a root and stumbled onto her hands and knees, a sharpness flaring up her ankle and her wrist at the impact. The silver dust in her veins turned sharp and painful, and she struggled to push herself back to her feet. You can't get away from him. The thought that entered her head was cold and it rung with finality as much as a gunshot fired in the middle of the night. It blasted through her conscious thought like a wave of water taking down her defenses. He was too strong, too fast for her, and she was nothing to compare— Room temperature warmth gushed into her from some indistinct source. Than ever before, It was drawn to something in her, something she'd never felt before, something dangerous. And it was not fear that she found growing beneath her skin. Not anymore. It was something else. Something ancient. Something of the moon.

Luna's breath quickened even further as something in her vision seemed to sharpen, as the sounds of the forest dully echoed without. She could feel it - her power. Whatever it was that she was learning to control... it was with her now. It was not behind the fear she found herself lost in lately. It was right there, ready to rise forth.

Closing her lids, she found the same calm Alec had guided her to all those years ago. She reached for it, let it consume her, let it rise. When her eyes opened, her world had changed once again. Everything appeared so slow, the colors of this forest... How she could see it all now. How she could hear so closely. Even the grass beneath her.

When her gaze found the beast again, Ronan was staring right back at her, his pace stilled as he gazed back at her. This time she did not feel that sense of dread. She felt emboldened.

Already, Ronan had sensed a change.... and his eyes narrowed as a low hum echoed in his depth, a warning growl on the very edges of his maw. Yet he too hesitated, he hesitated. He did not approach her. He did not ready to charge her as he'd been more than ready to do just moments ago.

She took two steps before her very body hummed with vibrant energy. Her hand came up without her even detecting it. Something inside her switched however and she could feel the ground shake. 

“Stop,” she commanded, her voice stronger than she had ever heard it.

Ronan snarled, flashing his teeth at her but not moving.

Alec, Kade, and Jax had been closing in on Ronan, Ian, and Nick's sides. They paused when they felt the shift in the air. They stared at Luna with shock and something like awe.

“You think you can give me commands?” Ronan growled, his voice deep and guttural as he shifted back into his human form. Without clothes, he stood before her with blood on his chest. “You are just a frightened girl playing with powers that you do not understand.”

Luna did not flinch. Whatever fear had been controlling her was gone, as were the thoughts of everything she was scared of. She didn’t know how she was doing it. But the power was there as she willed it. And for the first time, she was not scared.

“Get out,” she said, calm, but a command. “Leave before I make you.”

A flicker of something dangerous raced through Ronan’s eyes, and his lips curled into a snarl of a smile. “You have no idea what you are dealing with, moon-bearer... I am not the only one looking for you.”

Luna’s heart dropped. “What?”

Ronan walked toward her as he spoke. His eyes glistened with cruel glee. “There are others, ones who are far older and far more powerful than I am, and you think you have barely touched your power? They will simply rip it from you.”

Luna’s stomach turned at the words, and before she could think of a plan, Ronan’s body glimmered, and he dissolved in swirls of shadow and then smoke. He disappeared into the dark of the forest and his voice rushed with the wind.

“We will meet again, moon-bearer."  

Frozen in place, Luna's mind was racing with his final words. Others? More powerful than him?

Alec, still in wolf form, padded on all fours next to her and nudged at her hand with his snout, trying to comfort her. She looked down at the enormous wolf trying to express support, her heart pounding furiously in her chest. Kade and Jax joined their pack, and both transitioned back to their human form.

"What do you think he meant?" Luna said, her words barely above a whisper, shaking with emotion as reality slipped back into focus and what was happening started to become real. "There are others?"

Kade clenched his jaw tight, concern written in his blue eyes. "He wasn't lying."

Jax combed a hand through his hair, his expression slightly grim. "If he is telling the truth… we are going to be in more trouble than we could have ever anticipated."

Luna felt the suffocating heaviness of their words settle in over them, heavy in a way that almost felt greater than anything she had known before. There are more like Ronan. And they are coming for her.