Page 17 of Moonlit Desires

"Everything here is alive," Thorne replies, taking a single step closer. "And everything hungers, in its way." His gaze drops to the silver light still spilling from beneath her clothing, illuminating the mark on her back. "Your power calls to it. Awakens appetites that are long dormant."

The fog swirls between them, curling around Thorne's legs like affectionate pets returning to their master. He seems both part of the forest and separate from it—a creature that understands its rules but isn't bound by them.

"Why are you here?" Lyra asks, forcing her voice to remain steady despite the fear still coursing through her veins.

Thorne's lips curve into something too feral to be called a smile.

"I felt your panic." He taps his temple with one finger, nails slightly longer and sharper than a human's should be.

"Guardian bond. Your emotions... broadcast when they're strong enough.

" A flicker of something darker crosses his features. "Especially to me."

"Because you're more animal than the others," Lyra says, the realization dawning even as the words leave her mouth.

His golden eyes narrow, a flash of pain quickly suppressed. "Yes." The single syllable carries centuries of struggle. "The beast in me responds to the primal in you. Fear. Anger." His gaze intensifies. "Desire."

Heat rises to Lyra's cheeks, unbidden. Does he know about Kael? About the training session that became something else entirely? The thought of Thorne sensing those emotions makes her simultaneously embarrassed and curious.

"Is it difficult?" she asks, changing the subject. "Balancing the two sides of yourself?"

Thorne's posture shifts subtly, surprise evident in the slight widening of his eyes. Perhaps no one has asked him this directly before. He looks away for the first time, gaze fixing on the distance between silver trunks.

"Every moment," he admits, voice barely above a whisper. "The beast wants freedom. To run, to hunt, to..." He shakes his head. "The man wants control. Dignity. Acceptance." His hands clench at his sides, knuckles whitening. "Neither gets enough to be satisfied."

"Which is the real you?" Lyra asks, taking a tentative step toward him.

Thorne's attention snaps back to her, golden eyes flaring brighter.

"Both. Neither." His shoulders rise and fall with a heavy breath.

"I was born to the Moon Court's elite, but my shapeshifting manifested early—violently.

My parents locked me away until I could control it.

" Bitterness edges his words. "Seven years in isolation, with only the beast for company. "

The raw pain in his voice reaches something in Lyra—a recognition of loneliness she understands too well. "That's why you became a guardian?"

"To prove I could protect rather than destroy." He nods once, sharply. "Kael offered me purpose. Riven taught me shadow-walking to escape when the beast grew too strong. Ashen..." A ghost of a smile touches his lips. "Ashen simply accepted both sides of me as equally valid."

Lyra takes another step forward, but her foot catches on an exposed root. She stumbles, pitching forward with a small cry of surprise. Before she can fall, Thorne is there, moving faster than should be possible, one hand catching her elbow, the other steadying her waist.

His touch is unexpectedly gentle, at odds with the barely contained wildness in his eyes.

His skin burns hot against hers, fever-warm and vibrating with leashed energy.

For a moment, they stand frozen in this almost-embrace, his golden eyes searching her face with an intensity that makes her breath catch.

"Thank you," she murmurs.

Thorne doesn't immediately release her, as if he's forgotten the social cues that govern such interactions. When he does step back, it's with visible reluctance, his fingers trailing along her arm in a touch so light it might be accidental.

"We should return to the Court," he says, voice rougher than before. "The forest grows more dangerous as night approaches."

Around them, the silver trees seem to lean inward, their trunks bending slightly toward Thorne as if drawn by his presence.

The movement is subtle but unmistakable—a forest acknowledging one of its own.

The strangled vines overhead sway in patterns that echo his breathing, and the phosphorescent moss brightens where his shadow falls.

"They know you," Lyra observes, watching the forest's response with wonder replacing fear.

"They fear me," Thorne corrects, a flash of white teeth suggesting something not quite human lurks behind his careful facade. "The beast speaks their language. It understands their hunger."

The mark between Lyra's shoulder blades pulses suddenly, a surge of warmth that spreads outward in concentric waves.

It beats in perfect rhythm with something larger, deeper—the forest's own strange heartbeat, slow and ancient and patient.

Thorne's eyes widen as he notices the synchronicity, his head tilting in that animal gesture of curiosity.

"Your blood is waking to the land," he says softly. "The forest recognizes you now, not just as food, but as kin."

Lyra presses a hand against her back, feeling the heat of the mark through her clothing. "Is that good or bad?"

"Both," Thorne answers, echoing their first conversation in Lythven. "The forest will protect what it considers its own, but it will also expect more from you than from others." He extends a hand, not quite touching her but indicating she should follow. "Stay close. The path back is treacherous."

As they begin to walk, the fog retreats before them, creating a corridor of visibility that wasn't there before.

The silver trees straighten, their trunks shifting to widen the path, branches lifting to allow more light through the canopy.

Thorne moves with predatory grace, each step placed with perfect certainty despite the uneven ground.

"The others worry about you," he says after several minutes of silence. "Kael especially."

Something tightens in Lyra's chest at the mention of the warrior's name. "Kael worries about his duty, not about me."

Thorne glances back, golden eyes knowing. "Is that what you believe?" He doesn't wait for an answer, continuing forward through the slowly separating mist. "We've all waited three centuries for your return, Lyra Ashwind. But none of us have borne the weight of failure as heavily as Kael."

"Failure?"

"He believes he failed your mother," Thorne says simply. "And now he fears he will fail you too."

Before Lyra can question him further, a snarling sound echoes through the trees ahead—wet, guttural, and unmistakably hungry.

____________

The creature bursts from between silver trunks like a nightmare given flesh—all leathery hide and jagged teeth, something caught between wolf and boar yet belonging to neither species.

Its eyes gleam red in the dim light, pupils vertical slits that fix on Lyra with predatory intent.

It launches itself toward her, powerful haunches propelling its massive form through the air, jaws gaping to reveal a double row of serrated teeth designed for tearing flesh from bone.

Lyra has no time to scream, no time to run. Her body freezes in primal terror, muscles locking as death hurtles toward her.

Then Thorne is between them, his body already changing.

The transformation happens too quickly for Lyra's eye to track—one moment he stands as a man, the next his form blurs, flesh and bone rearranging themselves with sickening cracks and fluid motion.

His spine elongates, shoulders broaden, limbs stretch and reshape as golden fur erupts across his skin like fire catching dry tinder.

His face—that briefly handsome, troubled face—elongates into a muzzle filled with teeth as sharp and numerous as the attacking beast's.

The collision is violent and immediate. Thorne meets the creature in midair, his partially transformed body absorbing the impact with a growl that shakes the very ground beneath Lyra's feet.

They tumble together in a tangle of fur, leathery hide, teeth, and claws—a chaos of predatory motion that tears gouges in the forest floor and snaps underbrush like kindling.

Thorne fights with primal grace, his movements neither fully wolf nor fully man but something more terrifying than either.

His jaws snap at the creature's throat while clawed hands—hands still recognizable as once human—rake across its armored hide, seeking vulnerabilities between the plated sections.

His golden eyes burn with ferocious intelligence, tactical awareness guiding the beast's raw power.

The creature is no match for Thorne's fury but compensates with vicious cunning.

It feints, then twists unexpectedly, its razored tusks slashing toward Thorne's exposed flank.

He shifts just enough to avoid disembowelment, but the attack opens him to the creature's claws.

They tear into his side, carving furrows through fur and flesh alike.

Silver-tinged blood spatters the moss, glowing faintly where it lands.

Thorne doesn't cry out. Instead, his lips pull back in a snarl that exposes teeth designed for rendering flesh.

He lunges forward, jaws closing on the junction where the creature's neck meets shoulder.

The crack of breaking bone echoes through the forest, followed by a high, keening wail unlike any sound nature intended.

The creature thrashes, desperate now, its red eyes wide with an emotion Lyra recognizes even in its inhuman face—fear.

Thorne's grip doesn't falter. He shakes his massive head once, violently, then releases the creature with a threatening growl that promises worse should it choose to continue the fight.

It doesn't. The beast scrambles away, leaving a trail of dark ichor as it disappears between the silver trees, its unnatural wail fading into the depths of the forest.