Chapter 1
The Moonlight Bond
The Night Beings Series
W Więzach Księżyca
Aylin Red
Sometimes revenge isn’t the answer you’re looking for.
She saw only the rose petals.
Red as a freshly split vein, scattered across the wooden floor of her childhood home. The metallic smell bit into her nostrils with every breath — thick, insistent — and tangled with the sickening sweetness of flowers until her stomach climbed her throat even through sleep.
She was barely ten years old. She pressed her small hands against her mouth hard enough to feel her own teeth through the skin — smothering the scream tearing up her throat with nowhere to go. Shadows moved in the moonlight in ways they had no right to, and the silence that followed the sounds from downstairs was heavier than stone.
She was trembling when the man who found her lifted her into his arms. His warmth pushed through the ice-cold nightmare embedded in her bones — through the shivering, through the crying, through that cold that sat deeper than skin.
“Shh,” he whispered, running through the forest.
Her small body jolted with every powerful stride, his shirt smelled of forest and something wild — she fisted both hands in the fabric.
“I know, child. I know.”
Tears soaked into his shirt, her throat burned from sobbing. Behind them, the house shrank with every step until it disappeared between the trees.
But those red petals bloomed in her memory forever.
They would haunt her always.
“Ah!”
Lune tore herself from sleep with a sharp inhale, her heart hammering against her ribs hard enough that she felt her pulse in her throat. Cold sweat had plastered her hair to her temples. Her hands were fisting the sheets — searching for something solid, familiar — the cotton damp, tangled, hot from her body.
She sat still for a moment, her lungs catching air in ragged pulls. Waiting for the room’s darkness to fill with something real. The dresser’s silhouette. The wardrobe against the wall. A silver band of moonlight on the floorboards.
There.
Just there.
She swung her legs off the mattress. The cool floor received her bare feet — the cold entered her soles immediately, pulled itself up her calves, and her muscles protested the sudden contact.
In the mirror across the room she caught her own reflection: white hair plastered to her neck, eyes too wide, skin stretched tight around them like someone who had only just stopped being afraid. An oversized t-shirt hung off one shoulder.
Her stomach growled.
“Time for breakfast,” she muttered, and moved toward the door.
In the hallway, she passed a wall of family photographs. Each sat in a frame Vivika had chosen with meticulous care and hung so that together they told a story. Cushions in earthy tones were piled in the living room, while fresh wildflowers from the garden tilted their white heads toward the kitchen window.
The kitchen met her with a wave of coffee, cinnamon, and vanilla. A warm breakfast still waited beneath a dish towel. Vivika sat at the wooden table, both hands wrapped around a steaming mug. Her blond hair caught the morning sun in golden threads, and her gray eyes crinkled softly when she smiled. The smile lit up her whole face.
“Well, well, look who’s finally up,” she said warmly.
“Hey.” Lune went straight for the fridge. Bare feet slid soundlessly over the tiles. The cool air brushed her still-flushed cheeks as she stared inside without any real intention.
“I warmed up some pancakes.” Vivika nodded toward the counter. Steam still rose from beneath a clean dish towel. “All yours.”
“Say no more.”
A golden-brown stack waited, neatly layered, butter melting between the tiers into yellow, gleaming pools. Lune pulled in a slow breath — vanilla and cinnamon hit immediately, saliva flooding her mouth before she’d even sat down. Her stomach grumbled loudly, completely without shame.
She dragged the whole plate toward herself. The first bite exploded with flavor — perfectly sweet, heavy enough to smother the last trace of metallic taste still clinging to the back of her throat.
“Has Dad already eaten?” Both her parents were up at first light, their wolf instinct demanding early mornings. The kitchen clock barely read nine.
“He has.” Vivika’s smile didn’t dim for a moment. “Should I pour you some coffee?”
“Please, Mom.”
They talked about small things while Lune worked through her breakfast — grocery lists, pack gossip, training schedules. Vivika spoke with the gentle warmth of someone who treats everyone within reach as worth her full attention.
She laughed easily, effortlessly, and that laugh filled the kitchen like music.
When the last bite was gone, Lune stretched — joints cracking quietly, shoulders dropping, the nightmare somewhere further back now, covered over by vanilla and warmth.
“Thanks for breakfast, Mom. You’re the best.”
“Oh, stop it.” Vivika waved a hand in mock disapproval, but her cheeks went pink with pleasure.
Lune took the stairs two at a time. In her room, she pulled open drawers and changed into a dark blue training outfit. She put on sturdy shoes, their soles marked by earlier sessions. As she tied a lace, she enjoyed the quiet morning for a moment, free of unanswered questions and the metallic smell.
The morning air hit her face at the door — crisp, pine needles and resin pulling deep into her lungs. Sunlight filtered through the crown of the pines, throwing long, dancing shadows across the packed dirt path.
“Hey, sleepyhead!”
The shout came from the clearing. Raven waved from the tree line, shifting from foot to foot in worn sneakers and mismatched socks.
Sunlight flashed copper through her red curls, and a smile showing slightly crooked teeth brightened her freckled face. She trembled with excitement, like someone with too much energy for her own body.
Beside Raven stood a familiar, broad silhouette.
Her stomach dropped and bounced back up — one motion, before she could do anything with her face.
Nathaniel leaned against an oak trunk, arms crossed — and before she’d properly looked at him, she felt that weight he always carried. A few strands of dark hair had fallen across his forehead, catching the filtered light. His gaze found her too quickly, with that amusement sitting in it ahead of everything else.
That infuriating half-smile pulled at his mouth.
“Took you a while.” His voice carried across the morning quiet.
Lune broke into a jog toward them, boots crunching on pine needles. The closer she got, the more detail filled in: Raven’s fingers paint-stained from another late-night streak, Nate’s loose strand of hair falling back across his forehead with every breath.
“Sorry, sorry!” Her cheeks had started warming before she even reached them. “I got caught up talking to my mom.”
Nate pushed off from the tree in one easy motion — shoulders rolling loose — and reached out. A broad, warm hand landed on top of her head. The warmth moved from her temple downward, through her neck, to her collarbone, before she could brace for it. He ruffled her white hair with that completely unthinking affection, like something entirely obvious.
“Our little water nymph.”
He always did that — treated her like a younger sister rather than a woman of flesh and blood. The warmth slid from her temple through her neck to her collarbone and stayed there. Her gaze snagged on the line of his jaw — a fraction of a second, one too many — before she forced it away.
Raven bounced on her heels, clapping.
“Ooh, are we doing morning runs? Say we’re doing morning runs. I’ve been working on my technique and I think I finally figured out how to get around that pathetic wipeout from last week when I tried to jump that fallen trunk and—”
“We’re running.” Nate cut off the stream with one word, tolerant amusement in his voice.
Both of them stepped back a few paces. The air around them shivered with that unnamed energy Lune had known since childhood — the moment just before a shift, when the human world dropped away and something wilder and truer stepped into its place.
Raven went first. Her slight frame lengthened with a quiet crack of bones finding new positions — until a russet-brown wolf stood where the girl had been. Her coat shimmered with copper undertones, tail wagging with the same unchecked energy her whole body had held moments before.
Nate’s shift was different.
Slower.
Muscles tensed and spread beneath his skin like water seeking its shape — certain, effortless, as though the human form was something he wore for others rather than for himself. A massive, dark wolf appeared where Nathaniel had stood. His coat was near-black, threaded with silver that caught the light with each breath. Even in this form, he radiated that quiet authority that made the rest of the pack instinctively step back without quite knowing why.
They launched forward without warning. Powerful paws kicked up dust and the forest swallowed them whole.
“Let’s go!”
Lune reached for her magic — that constant, low hum in her veins. The water answered immediately: it gathered from the morning dew and the nearby stream, cool and obedient, formed something solid and carrying beneath her feet. The current pushed her forward and a laugh tore free, carrying between the trees alongside her.
She caught up and jumped. She landed on Nate’s broad back, fingers sinking into dense, warm fur — the heat burning through her palms, steady and certain like everything in him.
He only shifted his center of gravity, shoulders adjusting beneath her weight, and kept running with the same unconscious routine as every week.
Their ritual. Lune, a water mage raised by wolves, keeping pace with magic instead of a shift.
She belonged here.
Here, with Raven’s playful yelps echoing between the trees and Nate’s constant strength beneath her — everything was natural.
They ran deeper into the forest along paths worn smooth by countless wolf paws. The canopy filtered the light into a greenish half-dark that whispered of old secrets.
Soon, through the dense trees, the familiar outline of the hideout emerged — the Voss pack’s home, and everything that mattered most to Lune.
The hideout grew from the forest as though it had simply been born from the earth. Massive timber structures blended with the pines, the log walls weathered to a warm honey tone. Solar panels gleamed between the branches, cleverly tucked away. At the perimeter, the shimmer of a ward rippled — invisible to human eyes, crystal-clear to everyone else.
Lune slid from Nate’s back at the gate, boots landing softly on packed earth. The wolves shifted back — magic moved through their bodies like a wave of hot air, skin pulling close around human shapes, and then Nathaniel was standing in front of her as he always was: dark hair disheveled from the shift, one strand already back on his forehead.
He dragged a hand through it.
The strand fell right back.
“Morning patrol in fifteen.” He held his gaze on her a fraction of a second too long — something flickered in his brown eyes and was gone before she could catch it. Then he turned toward the wardens’ office. “Just don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone.”
“Do I ever get into trouble?” she called after him.
A quiet snort carried across the courtyard — the best possible answer.
The communal house stood at the heart of the settlement — three stories tall, smoke curling from the chimney, golden light spilling from every window. Raven ran up the front steps, curls still wild from the shift.
“Mrs. Henley said she was making blueberry muffins today. Please tell me we’re not too late!”
The heavy oak door swung open into a wave: coffee, fresh baking, and beneath it that deeper, animal scent of wolf and earth — warm, unrepeatable.
Margaret Henley emerged from the kitchen with flour on her apron, sixty-five years old, crow’s feet around her eyes that spoke of decades of laughter.
“Morning, girls!”
In the main room Connor was stretched out on the sofa with a book, the Murphy twins had claimed the table along with a plate of muffins that had apparently found their own way there. Waves, casual greetings — they settled around Lune like a blanket.
“Lune, sweetheart.” Destiny glanced up, a gossipy gleam dancing in her hazel eyes. “Your dad’s been in his office since sunrise. He looked buried in Alpha business.”
The words landed exactly where they always did. Something tightened beneath her ribs — brief, familiar, without warning. Adam wasn’t her biological father. For ten years she’d never felt the difference. But the pack had laws of inheritance that love couldn’t rewrite — and that wasn’t something she could unknow.
“Thanks, Destiny.” She poured as much lightness into her voice as she could manage. “I’ll go say good morning.”
Adam’s office occupied a corner room on the second floor, windows overlooking both the training yard and the main entrance — the position of someone who always wants to know what’s happening on his territory.
The stairs creaked softly beneath her weight. Two knocks on the familiar door.
“Come in.”
She stepped inside.
Adam sat behind the heavy desk, his salt-and-pepper hair catching the morning window light. Papers spread across the surface — territorial agreements, correspondence with other Alphas, a supply list.
When he saw her, his brown eyes softened immediately — that warm expression that for ten years had soothed her nightmares and celebrated her wins. He leaned back in his chair, giving her his full attention.
“Good morning, sweetheart.”
Lune shifted her weight. Suddenly she was ten years old again — that uncertain child he’d found that night.
“I was thinking — maybe I could help with something. Like the patrol? Or anything, really.”
The words came out too fast, tangled with hope and a desperation that squeezed her chest from the inside. Adam’s face softened — but she caught that flicker a beat too fast before it was covered with love. Something like regret, maybe.
Frustration. Maybe both.
“Lune… you know you can’t. Patrol duty is a very serious responsibility.”
“That’s exactly why I wanted to help.”
“You’re training with Nina.” He smiled with a pride that held something inside it that made her chest feel small. “You’re going to do incredible things. Water magic is a remarkable gift.”
Nina.
A water mage Adam had found through contacts with other mages. Twice a week, on schedule. Lune always thanked her and held the smile long enough after she left.
“Yeah.”
She retreated from the office and stepped out onto the wide porch. The boards were solid beneath her feet — solid and familiar and somehow suffocating right now. She dropped into the rocking chair and pulled out her phone with the automatic motion this had become over the past months.
Tonight, these two worlds were going to collide.
The Cave’s interface loaded instantly. Her rank — five stars, the absolute bottom of the hierarchy — restricted her to the simplest jobs. Mostly deliveries, discretion over skill.
She scrolled through the list with her thumb, searching for anything that would give her the feeling she was contributing to something larger.
Most of the pack had no idea.
Only Raven knew. They’d probably worry — or worse, try to stop her even for something this small.
Dad especially.
But when she sat here, surrounded by people she loved and to whom she never fully belonged — this secret was the one thing that was one hundred percent hers.
Lune stared at the job details.
Her thumb hovered over the button.
