Rejected Luna's Return, Forbidden Bonds

Dane POV

I had ears full of blood with the scream of the creature. Not in any tangible sense, but that is how it seemed to me. My whole body would like to move and run, to have a safe place and hide there until this nightmare is complete. However, I could not move, as Lyra stood there, frozen, and staring at it as though it had stolen all the air out of her lungs.

I grabbed her hand. Something happened the moment we were in contact. The hysteria in my heart was reduced. The fear became manageable. Her presence was almost as though I were anchored to reality like some sort of anchor that made me not lose comprehension of my own self.

Then we should go, I said, dragging her to the door. "Now."

But Lyra didn't move. She was gazing at the animal with a face I had never seen before. It wasn't fear. It was recognition. Or like she knew what this thing was, or worse still, like it knew what she was.

The eyes of the creature fixed on her own. All of them. There were dozens of eyes staring at Lyra simultaneously. And then it did what almost frightens me more than anything.

It bowed.

"What does it want?" Father, asked Ethan tremulously. He stood near Lyra as well, and his wolf was in a frenzy to safeguard her.

"I don't know," Lyra whispered. Something new I have never felt like this.

At last the spell was broken and the creature began to move toward us. Zane and Owen took arms as I dragged Lyra in the stairways. The liberated werewolves who should have been under her began running in varied directions with panic taking hold. The troops that Thorne had trained confronted him, with armed shoulders up, but they looked frightened, as well.

The soldier who was nearest to the creature was one of them. She defended herself gallantly, her gun on the object. However, once the monster touched her, she simply changed. Her form had transformed herself into something that was neither human, nor worse still, wolf. She screamed, but the scream became a howl which was not herself.

"Don't let it touch you!" Owen shouted. "It's corrupting them! It is making them out of what they are not!

We gained access to the stairs and began to climb them. I could hear the sound of chaos and death at the back of them. The beast was making its way through the men, as they were nothing beside it, colliding with them, transforming them into what they were not supposed to be. The freed werewolves were attempting to fight it, however they were in the dark on how to employ the rules of normal combat to battle anything that would not go by them.

Lyra was crying. I would even touch her tears on my hand since I was still holding her as she was running. She was gazing over her shoulder with the carnage, at the troops changing, at the nightmare that was the disease.

"I have to stop it," she said.

"No," I said firmly. "We have to survive first. Before we wage war on it we must know what we are dealing with.

Dying, dying, people, dying, said Lyra, and the sound of it hurt her voice, and broke something inside my chest.

"I know," I said. "And we'll save them. But not like this. Not by the sacrifice of your life.

We made it out of the building. As cold and real and living as the night air that struck us. In the background, the Council headquarters was already crumbling as the monster kept on destroying the lower floors. Alarms were still blaring. Rescue vehicles were beginning to come into the scene without knowing what they were driving towards.

In the shadows was waiting Kira, with a car. She didn't ask questions. She merely opened the door and drove away. Ethan, Owen, and Zane were already inside.

Lyra sat back in the seat shaking her body. The friendship between us was like the open wound vibrating. I even felt the pain and the guilt and the sense of utter failure in her. She was accusing herself of each and every human being who had died down there.

I went nearer to her and embraced her in my breast. I had not yet stopped approaching her because my heart was racing as a result of the chase, but I was in her vicinity, and it decreased. My wolf was anxious to reassure her, to make her see that I was there and I was not leaving.

It is not your fault, I told her into her hair.

"Isn't it?" Lyra asked. Thorne answered that he was training an army. He told the creatures that they were waking up because of me, because of my bloodline.

Because they are getting up, he said because the barriers are failing, Owen said, in the front seat. And that is not anything to do with you.

But Lyra wasn't listening. She was lost in her guilt and pain, and I was not sure how to take her back. I had been a five-year-old searcher, half five years convinced that all would be well as long as I could discover her, and make her aware that I had repented my sins. But I hadn't imagined this. I had never even thought that I would grow up in the world where I simply had her in my life and I would be hunted down by the things which should not be.

Pull over, down with you, Ethan said abruptly. His voice was harsh as though he had decided about something significant.

Kira drew the automobile into a shady road. All around us trees enclosed us. There was not a single person in sight.

Ethan turned to look at Lyra. I gave you a failing five years back, he said. I have allowed politics and power to stand above the relationship between us. I have been regretting it on a daily basis after that. But I am telling you now, till you will excuse me, as you will believe me, that I will never fail you again.

Lyra had wept, and had the eyes of the crying. How do you make such an offer when we do not know what we are up against?

It does not matter what we are confronting, Ethan said. He touched and clasped her face in his hands. "It could be anything. It could be everything. And I would still choose you. We all would."

He kissed her then. It wasn't a passionate kiss. It was a promise. It was him he finished putting all that he had to the relationship between them. And, communing with the mate bond, I would experience the reaction of Lyra. She was still too frightened, still guilty, but now there was no longer any one alone.

Ethan drew away and Lyra gazed towards Zane. The fanatic hunter sat in the blackness of the car with his face, which was scarred, not to be read. but when his eyes looked at her I saw it. I watched all the savage guardianship that he had been barring, all the loyalty and those devotions.

I would burn down the world to you, Zane said in no more than a second. I would be the monster you would remain safe.

Then Owen moved forward. The deem good doctor who was brought up to be prudent and polite took the hand of Lyra. I have always been told to do it somewhere by rules and follow orders, he said. However, when we met you helped me realize that there are other things in life, which are more important than rules. You matter more."

And finally, Lyra looked at me. I did not utter anything beautiful or poetical. I simply took her hand and allowed her to experience what I was experiencing with the connection. Five years of searching. Five years of never giving up. Five years of thinking that at some place in the world, she lived and one day I would see her. And now that I had, nothing in the universe could take her away out of my hands.

You see, I am afraid, I told her; and she had so little bit of a voice that I would have shielded her against the whole world.

"We all are," I said. "But we're scared together."

The car started moving again. We had to seek shelter, a place where we should work something out to do with the monster and Thorne and the whole impossible mess that we were in.

But as we rode our creaking way in the darkness my wolf was making himself felt within me. As I was able to sense something on the part of Lyra of which she was not audible. She was aware of the presence of the creature even this far. And it wasn't going away.

It was getting closer.