Mate Me in Moonlight

Chapter 8

POV: Adeline

I woke with my heart racing and the echo of flames still clinging to my skin.

For a few disoriented seconds I lay there, trying to separate the dream from the room around me. Fire had risen in a perfect ring, and Aiden had stood at its center untouched, his hand extended as if stepping through flames were simple.

Now there was only moonlight across the floorboards and the quiet creak of the packhouse settling. No flames. No smoke. Just a chill in the air and a heaviness in my chest.

Still, the feeling didn't leave.

A thin thread of unease tugged beneath my ribs, tightening like a warning I couldn't yet name. My wolf lifted her head, fur bristling.

Something is wrong. Get up.

I pulled on my boots with clumsy fingers. Nothing seemed disturbed—no shouts, no slammed doors. Yet the silence was too complete, too breathless.

Then the night split open.

A howl cut through the forest—short, sharp, unmistakably Marcus. A warning, not a casual patrol call.

By the time the last note faded, I was already moving.

I bolted into the hallway and took the stairs two at a time. The cold hit me full in the face when I pushed outside, night air knifing down my throat as I sprinted into the trees.

By the time I reached the northern border, my lungs burned. But I wasn't the first to arrive.

Aiden stood near the ridge, flanked by Marcus and Luca, patrol wolves forming a semicircle around them. He looked like the forest itself had grown a spine—straight, unyielding, attuned to every shift in the dark.

His head turned the moment I stepped into the clearing.

"You're here," he said quietly. "You felt it too."

"I woke wrong. Like something was pulling at me."

He held my gaze a moment longer than necessary, then shifted to make room beside him.

"Marcus found something. We want your read on it."

Marcus motioned toward the ground. "Tracks."

I knelt in the pale light, brushing leaves aside. The impressions were clear—large paws, deep weight, orderly spacing. Disciplined movement, each step landing in pace with the next.

Then the wind turned.

The scent wrapped around my senses like a cold hand. Smoke, iron, burned pine, and something darker beneath.

Ironclaw.

"It's them," I said, forcing my voice level. "The tracks are fresh. Hours at most."

Luca swore. Marcus's jaw tightened.

"They weren't wandering," I added. "The spacing is consistent. Formation, not loose patrol."

Aiden crouched beside me. "How many?"

"At least fifteen. Probably more. They're overlapping to mask numbers."

He rose. "We tighten the outer patrol ring, reinforce the ridge—"

He broke off as the wind shifted again.

Another hint of that scent brushed over us—from the left. Then the right. Then behind. Then ahead again.

The Ironclaw scent was no longer lingering on old tracks. It was moving in the air around us.

Luca's eyes flicked across the clearing. "That's too many directions."

My wolf went rigid.

Circle. They are closing a circle.

I knew that pattern. The memory hit so hard my stomach flipped: Ash Hollow surrounded on all sides, no clear path of escape, the sky itself feeling like a lid closing over us.

My breath shortened.

Aiden's attention snapped to me. "Adeline?"

"They've done this before." My voice came out thin. "They test how it feels to be surrounded. They listen to how wolves panic."

Moonlight cut silver lines across his face; the scar along his cheek looked almost white.

"You're not surrounded," he said quietly. "You're with us. With me."

For a few heartbeats, everything held still. Then the scents around us settled. Not dispersing—arranging. As if invisible wolves had chosen positions and gone perfectly, terrifyingly still.

He is here. Be ready.

"Good evening, Adeline," he said. "It's been a while. We have unfinished business."

The words scraped along old wounds. For a moment the clearing doubled—one laid over memory, fire just out of sight, smoke in my throat, Caleb screaming—

From between two pines on the far edge of the ridge, a figure stepped out.

He moved with unhurried ease that spoke of certainty. His coat was long and dark, hanging open despite the cold. His scalp gleamed under the moon—completely bald, no hair to soften the hard lines of his head. And his eyes—

Yellow. Not bright gold, but a flat, predatory yellow that made my skin crawl. Wrong in a way the forest itself seemed to recoil from.

The Alpha of Ironclaw.

Ronan.

Every instinct screamed at me to run, to bare my teeth, to drop to my knees. My body couldn't decide. My wolf pressed so hard against my skin it hurt, caught between the urge to flee and the older, deeper need to protect the wolves standing beside me.

Aiden didn't give me time to choose.

In one smooth step he moved fully in front of me—so quickly I found myself staring at the broad line of his back rather than the enemy's face. His presence blocked the scent, the line of sight, everything except the low growl building in his chest. The sound vibrated through the bond between us, and for one breathless moment I felt what he felt: not fear, but fury held on a tight leash.

Ronan let his gaze slide over Marcus, over Luca, over the patrol—then tipped his head to see past Aiden's shoulder.

When his yellow eyes found me, his mouth curved.

My knees threatened to buckle.

Aiden's voice held steel I had never heard before.

"You are not welcome here. You have no right to stand on Willow Ridge soil. You will withdraw beyond our borders."

Ronan laughed. The sound moved through the trees like smoke.

"Boundaries," he mused. "Such a charming thing for frightened packs to cling to. Lines on the ground, as if the soil cares which wolves bleed on it."

Aiden didn't move. "You heard me."

"I did. So I'll be gracious and give you more time."

"Time for what?" Luca asked harshly.

Ronan's gaze lingered on me. "Time to play at safety. To pretend this place can keep her."

He paused, his yellow eyes gleaming with something that looked almost like amusement.

"I could take her now," he said, almost to himself—as if Aiden and the patrol wolves were furniture, beneath his notice. "But that's not how this works. She has to choose to come back."

His smile widened, slow and certain.

"And she will. They always do."

The words landed like ice in my veins. My wolf snarled inside me, furious and terrified in equal measure.

Then he stepped backward into the shadows. One more pace, and the dark swallowed him whole—not like a man retreating, but like the night itself had opened a door and welcomed him home.

The pressure in the air thinned. The scents faded, withdrawing as if unseen wolves were peeling away one by one.

No one spoke for several long breaths.

Only when the last thread of Ironclaw scent grew faint did Aiden exhale. He turned halfway, enough to see my face.

"Are you all right?"

I opened my mouth to lie.

Then I saw it.

Not far from where Ronan had stepped out, the ground held a darker patch—soil scorched and blackened. I moved toward it without realizing I'd left my place behind Aiden.

There, burned into the earth, was a sigil. A rough circle with a jagged line clawing through the middle.

The Ironclaw mark.

The same one they carved along Ash Hollow's border before the first flames took hold. The same one that marked the places wolves fell and never rose again. I had watched it burn into the earth the night my world ended. I had smelled this same char while my pack screamed around me.

My body remembered faster than my mind.

My vision narrowed. The air felt too thin, like I couldn't pull enough into my lungs no matter how hard I tried.

Behind me, someone said my name—but it was Aiden's voice that cut through, closer, urgent.

"Adeline."

The bond surged like a struck chord. I felt his fear and his anger and the wild instinct to gather me up and drag me away from that mark.

For a heartbeat, I swayed toward that pull. Toward him.

The world tilted and then it broke.

Blackness rushed in from the edges of my vision. My legs gave out. The last thing I registered was strong arms catching me before the ground could, the smell of cedar and night air and Aiden's skin filling my senses.

Somewhere far away, someone shouted my name.

Somewhere even farther, I thought I heard a low, lingering laugh fade into the trees.

Then there was nothing at all.