Mate Me in Moonlight

Chapter 73

POV: Adeline

The screaming woke me.

Not battle horns—something worse. The high, terrified screaming of children.

I was on my feet and running before my eyes fully opened, the exhaustion of the past days burning away in a surge of pure adrenaline. The sound was coming from the pup dens—the reinforced underground chambers where the pack's youngest sheltered during attacks.

No. Not the children. Anything but the children.

The night air hit my face like a slap as I burst from my cabin. Other wolves were converging on the same location, their expressions matching the horror clawing at my chest.

The pup dens had been breached.

Three Ironclaw wolves—smaller, faster scouts who must have slipped past our perimeter during the chaos of the second wave—had found the hidden entrance. They had killed the guard and descended into the chambers where fourteen pups huddled with their minders.

I arrived to find the aftermath.

Elara stood at the bottom of the stone stairs, her back to the children, her body a barrier between them and the three Ironclaw wolves she had somehow held off. Her silver hair was matted with blood. Her left arm hung at an angle that made my stomach lurch. Wounds covered her—deep, deliberate wounds, the kind meant to cripple rather than kill.

But she was still standing.

Still standing between the monsters and the children.

One of the Ironclaw wolves lunged. Elara threw herself into its path, taking the blow on her already-shattered arm. Her scream echoed off the stone walls.

I didn't remember shifting. Didn't remember crossing the distance. One moment I was at the top of the stairs, and the next my claws were buried in the lunging wolf's throat.

The other Willow Ridge wolves poured in behind me. The remaining two Ironclaw scouts died quickly, overwhelmed by numbers and fury.

But Elara—

She collapsed the moment the last threat was eliminated, crumpling against the stone wall like a puppet with cut strings. The children were sobbing, clinging to each other, but alive. All alive.

Because she had shielded them with her body.

"Elara." I shifted back and dropped to my knees beside her. "Elara, can you hear me?"

Her eyes fluttered open. Glazed with pain, but still present. Still her.

"The pups," she whispered. "Are they—"

"Safe. All safe. Because of you."

A ghost of a smile crossed her bloodied lips. "Good. That's... good."

I catalogued her injuries with growing horror. The shattered arm. A deep puncture wound in her side that was bleeding far too heavily. Claw marks across her back and shoulders. A gash on her scalp that had turned her silver hair crimson.

She was the pack's healer. The only wolf with true healing gifts. And she couldn't heal herself—wolf healers never could, some cruel quirk of the magic that demanded they could only give, never receive.

"We need to stop the bleeding," I said, pressing my hands against the wound in her side. "Someone get me bandages, pressure wraps, anything—"

"Adeline." Elara's uninjured hand caught my wrist with surprising strength. "Listen to me."

"You need to save your energy—"

"Listen." Her eyes locked onto mine, fierce despite the pain. "You learned from me. These past weeks. I taught you the basics."

Cold understanding washed through me. "No. No, I can't—I barely know how to wrap a wound, I'm not a healer—"

"You don't need to be." Her grip tightened. "You have something better. The bond."

The mate bond. The connection to Aiden that hummed constantly beneath my skin, that let me feel his presence across any distance.

"The bond gives you access to his strength," Elara continued, her voice weakening with each word. "His Alpha power. Use it. Draw on it. Channel it through what I taught you."

"I don't know how—"

"Yes, you do. You've been doing it for weeks without realizing. Every time you felt him steady you. Every time his presence calmed your wolf. That's the bond sharing energy." She coughed, and blood flecked her lips. "Do it now. Deliberately. Focus on the wounds and let his strength flow through your hands."

Other wolves had gathered around us. Someone pressed cloth into my hands. Someone else was praying quietly.

The wound in Elara's side was still bleeding.

She was dying.

"You can do this," she whispered. "I believe in you."

I closed my eyes.

Aiden. I reached through the bond with everything I had, searching for that burning star in my chest, that constant presence I had learned to lean on. I need you. Not here—just you. Your strength.

The response was immediate. A surge of warmth, of power, of steadfast certainty that had nothing to do with my own trembling hands. Aiden's essence, flowing through the bond like a river breaking through a dam.

What do you need? I felt more than heard.

Everything. Give me everything.

And he did.

The power poured into me—raw Alpha energy, the kind that healed packmates and commanded wolves and anchored an entire territory. I felt Aiden on the other side of it, felt him deliberately opening the bond wider than it had ever been, holding nothing back.

I pressed my hands against Elara's wound and let the power flow through me.

I didn't know what I was doing, not really. But I remembered what Elara had taught me—the way healing energy needed to be directed, the visualization of tissue knitting together, the intention that mattered more than technique. I focused on the torn flesh beneath my palms and willed it to mend.

The bleeding slowed.

Then stopped.

I moved to the next wound, then the next, guided by instinct and desperation and Aiden's strength steadying every trembling attempt. I couldn't do much—I wasn't a true healer, couldn't regrow bone or repair organs—but I could close surface wounds. Stabilize the worst of the damage. Buy time for her body's natural healing to take over.

By the time I finished, I was shaking violently, drained in a way I had never experienced. The bond had gone quiet—not severed, but resting, both of us depleted by what had just passed through it.

But Elara was breathing. Steadily. Evenly.

"She'll live," someone said, wonder in their voice. "She'll actually live."

I sat back on my heels, my hands covered in blood that was no longer flowing, and felt something crack open inside me.

Not break. Unlock.

Something I hadn't known I was capable of. Something that had been waiting for exactly this moment to reveal itself.

Elara's hand found mine again. Her grip was weak, but when she looked at me, her eyes were clear.

"There," she whispered. "Now you know what you can do."

I didn't have words. I just held her hand and let the tears fall and tried to comprehend the new landscape of who I was becoming.