Chapter 4: Scars Beneath Moonlight
The dark felt different the second time she woke screaming. Still suffocating, still laced with the metallic taste of panic, but this time she registered the arms around her before the dream’s final image—her father’s silver claws—could fully dissolve. Kieran was already awake, his body tense against hers, one hand stroking her hair, the other a firm pressure against her racing heart.
“Shhh,” he murmured into the crown of her head. “Just a dream. I’ve got you.”
She choked on a sob, nodding into his chest as she tried to steady her breathing. His scent, the simple solidity of him, pulled her back into the room, into their bed. She drifted off again, only to jerk awake an hour later, a gasp catching in her throat at the memory of Lia’s mocking laughter echoing down an endless hallway.
Each time, Kieran was there. A steady presence in the chaos. A touch, a word, the quiet rumble of his voice pulling her from the precipice.
By the tenth time, dawn was a thin, grey suggestion at the window. Thalia came awake not with a jolt, but with a slow, weary surfacing, her body heavy with an exhaustion that went beyond the physical. She was trembling, a fine, constant shiver that seemed to come from her very bones.
Kieran shifted beside her. He didn’t ask if she was okay. He simply pulled her closer, tucking her head under his chin, his lips pressing to her forehead. “Talk to me,” he said, his voice gravelly with sleeplessness. “Tell me what to do.”
The question was so achingly sincere it undid her last thread of composure. A tear tracked hot and fast from the corner of her eye into her hairline. “You can’t,” she whispered, the words scraped raw. “It’s just… it’s always been like this.”
He went very still. “The nightmares?”
“Sleep,” she corrected, her voice small in the quiet room. “I’ve never… I don’t think I’ve ever had a full night of good sleep. Not that I remember.” She swallowed, the admission feeling dangerous. “It’s always been waiting. In the dark. The quiet just lets it all in.”
“What ‘all’?” His question was soft, but she felt the intensity coiled beneath it.
She closed her eyes, speaking to the hollow of his throat. “Feeling like a mistake. Like I took up space someone else deserved. Listening to my parents wish for a son in the next room. Hearing Lia practice her Luna voice in the mirror, talking about how she’d redecorate this very house.” A hollow laugh escaped her. “What was I supposed to dream about? Happy things? I didn’t know any.”
The silence that followed was thick. She felt the shock move through him, a stiffening of his muscles followed by a deep, vibrating anger that he immediately tried to stifle through their bond, not wanting it to spook her. His hand came up to cradle the back of her head. “Thalia,” he said, her name a broken thing.
“And now,” she continued, the fear finally finding its voice, spilling out in a rushed, trembling whisper, “it’s so much worse. Because now I have something. I have this.” She clutched at his t-shirt. “I have you. This room. A future. And my brain… it doesn’t know how to hold onto good things. It only knows how to expect them to be taken away. So it… it rehearses. In the nightmares. It shows me losing it. Losing you. Going back to being nothing.”
She finally looked up at him. In the faint pre-dawn light, his face was all stark angles and shadow, but his eyes gleamed with a ferocious, pained understanding. “That’s not going to happen,” he said, the words absolute.
“I know that here,” she said, tapping her temple. “But in here?” She placed a hand over her own heart. “It’s a scared animal waiting for the trap to spring.”
He was quiet for a long moment, his thumb stroking along her jawline. Then he let out a slow breath. “Okay,” he said, as if solving a complex problem. “New rule. No more sleeping in the dark.”
Before she could question it, he moved. He slid out of bed, walked to the wall, and flipped a switch. A soft, warm glow emanated from a series of sconces she hadn’t noticed before, casting the room in a gentle, amber light. It wasn’t bright enough to be intrusive, but it chased the deepest shadows into the corners.
He came back to bed, but he didn’t lie down. He sat facing her, cross-legged on the mattress, and took both of her hands in his. “You think your mind only knows how to rehearse disaster?” he asked. “Then we’ll teach it something else. Every night. We’ll give it new material.”
“How?”
A small, determined smile touched his lips. “First, we start with what’s real. Right now.” He squeezed her hands. “Tell me five things you can see that are yours.”
She blinked, confused. “What?”
“Humor me. Five things in this room that belong to you now.”
She looked around, the exercise feeling silly but his gaze was serious. “The… the dress Elara gave me. On the chair. My brush on the dresser. The… my towel from last night, hanging on the rack. The space on this side of the bed. And…” She looked down at their joined hands. “You.”
He brought her knuckles to his lips. “Good. Four things you can feel.”
“The sheets. Your hands. The pillow behind my back. The… the mark on my neck. It tingles a little.”
“Three things you can hear.”
She listened. “Your breathing. The old pipes in the walls… a kind of hum. A bird outside, just starting.”
“Two things you can smell.”
That was easiest. “You. The pine from outside, maybe.”
“And one thing you know,” he finished, his voice dropping. “One true thing.”
She looked into his eyes, the green almost black in the low light, and saw only unwavering certainty. The bond hummed between them, a live wire of connection. She took a shaky breath. “I know you’re here.”
“I am,” he said, the words a vow. “And I’m not going anywhere. Not in your dreams, and sure as hell not in your life.” He pulled her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her. “So when that scared animal in your heart starts to panic, you talk to it. You tell it: Look. See? My dress. My brush. My mate. He’s right here. He’s real.”
She nestled against him, the trembling in her limbs slowly subsiding. The light in the room made the space feel smaller, safer. “It sounds so simple.”
“It’s not,” he admitted, his chin resting on her head. “It’s work. And we’ll do it every night if we have to. Until your mind gets so bored of the old nightmares it starts making up new ones.”
“New ones?”
“Sure. You know, the terrible, awful kind.” His voice took on a mock-serious tone. “The horror of realizing you ate the last slice of pie. The terror of me picking the wrong movie. The unspeakable dread of… perfect, uninterrupted sleep.”
A real smile, fragile but genuine, touched her lips for the first time that night. She pinched his side lightly. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m pragmatic,” he corrected, his own smile audible in his voice. “And I’m yours. Which means your insomnia is now my problem. And I’m a very solutions-oriented guy.”
The grey light at the window was steadily warming into gold. Morning was coming, undeniable and bright.
“Kieran?” she asked, her voice quiet again.
“Hmm?”
“What if… what if I’m not good at being Luna? What if I don’t know how?”
He shifted, lying back down and pulling her with him so they were facing each other on the pillows, bathed in the mix of artificial and dawn light. He traced the line of her eyebrow with his fingertip. “You know what my first act as your mate is going to be today?”
“What?”
“Teaching you how to make truly terrible coffee. It’s a family recipe. Burnt and bitter, but it’ll wake the dead.” He grinned at her scandalized look. “Being Luna isn’t about knowing how. It’s about learning. With me. We’ll figure out the formal stuff later. Today, we start with coffee. And maybe not jumping at shadows.”
The simplicity of it, the mundane normalcy he offered, was a balm. The monumental fear of her new role shrank just a little, replaced by the immediate, manageable prospect of a bad cup of coffee made together.
Outside, the bird’s tentative song was joined by another, then another. The world was waking up. For the first time in as long as she could remember, Thalia wasn’t greeting the dawn frayed and hollowed out by the night. She was weary, yes. But she was held. She was seen.
And she was, against all the old, rehearsed odds, still here.
Kieran watched her eyes finally drift closed, her breathing evening out into something resembling true rest. He stayed awake, watching the dawn paint her face in pale gold, etching this new, quiet truth into his soul: her peace was his purpose. And he would spend every day of his life making sure she never had reason to doubt it again.
And he would spend every day of his life making sure she never had reason to doubt it again. The morning arrived softly, diluted through the gauze of her exhaustion. She awoke to the smell of scorched coffee beans and the low murmur of Kieran’s voice just outside the bedroom door, giving quiet orders. The amber lights were still on, defeating the shadows in the corners.
He returned with two steaming mugs, placed one on her nightstand, and clinked his against it with a wry smile. “As promised. Truly terrible coffee.” She took a cautious sip. It was acidic and strong enough to make her eyes water. “See? Authentic.” he said, watching her.
After breakfast, he led her outside. “The mind needs new material,” he said, his hand warm around hers. “So we’re going to give yours some. Something solid to hold onto.” They walked towards the training grounds, a wide, hard-packed earth circle edged with wooden weapon racks. The scent of pine resin and fresh sweat hung in the cool air.
Elias was already there, lazily spinning a practice knife. “Alright, little Luna. Time to learn which end of a stick to hold.” His grin was easy, teasing. Thalia felt a flutter of anxiety, but Kieran’s steady presence at her back was a wall. “We start with defense,” Kieran said, his voice dropping into a teacher’s calm. “How to stand. How to move. How to not be where a strike lands.”
He guided her into a basic stance, his hands firm on her shoulders and hips, aligning her posture. Her body felt clumsy, all wrong angles and nervous tension. “Relax into it,” he murmured near her ear. “It’s about balance, not force.” For an hour, they worked on footwork—simple shifts of weight, pivots, backward steps. The repetitive motion began to quiet her buzzing thoughts.
The physical focus was a strange kind of meditation. Her muscles protested, but the sharp clarity of the effort left no room for ghosts. She was here, in the sun, her mate’s patient instructions washing over her. Elias demonstrated a disarm technique, his movements fluid. “See? You just redirect the energy. Use their own momentum against them.”
He moved to stand beside Kieran, both of them observing her next attempt. Thalia practiced the pivot-step, over and over, trying to make it automatic. She was facing away from them, focusing on the feel of the earth under her boots. Elias, wanting to give a tip on her foot placement, walked up behind her. He wasn’t stealthy; his steps were normal on the hard ground.
He reached out to tap her shoulder.
His fingers hadn’t even brushed the fabric of her shirt.
Thalia exploded. A violent, full-body flinch wrenched her sideways. She stumbled, her arms flying up to protect her head and neck, a choked gasp tearing from her throat. Her eyes were wide, unseeing, blind with a panic that had nothing to do with the present moment. She cringed, expecting impact.
The world froze. Elias snatched his hand back as if burned, his face etched with shock and immediate guilt. “Thalia, I’m—“
Kieran saw it. He saw the truth in that recoil, in the way her body folded in on itself before a thought could form. It wasn’t just a startle. It was a conditioned response, carved into her nerves by repeated trauma. He saw the phantom strikes land on her back, her ribs. He saw the ‘discipline’ her father had snarled about at the gathering. He saw every hidden mark on her skin, every unspoken memory in her flinch.
A low sound built in his chest, a vibration that stirred the leaves on the trees at the clearing’s edge. It wasn’t just anger. It was a tectonic shift, a fury so profound it reordered the air. His gaze snapped to Elias, but the command was for the forest, the territory, the very past itself.
“Elias.” Kieran’s voice was a roar that shook the branches. “Go to their house. The one they were ejected from. Find the punishment logs.”
Elias stared, his own blood running cold at the look on his Alpha’s heir’s face. “The… what?”
“The logs!” Kieran’s snarl was primal. “The ones they used to beat her. The ones they kept. Bring them to me. Now.” He turned his head, his eyes burning with a green fire as they found Thalia, who was now trembling, her arms slowly lowering as the real world seeped back in. His next words were a vow, spoken into the sudden, ringing silence. “They will account for every single mark they left on my mate’s skin.”
The echo of Kieran’s command hung in the clearing, a sharp, angry thing that seemed to silence even the birds. Thalia stood frozen, her breath coming in shallow hitches, the ghost of her father’s hand still stinging her shoulder. She watched Elias give a single, curt nod before turning and vanishing into the treeline at a dead run.
Kieran crossed the space between them slowly, deliberately, as if approaching a spooked animal. He didn’t touch her right away. His hands flexed at his sides, the knuckles white.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice barely there. The apology was automatic, a relic.
“Don’t.” The word was ground out between his teeth. He finally reached for her, but his touch was utterly different now. His fingers, calloused and warm, traced the line of her arm from her elbow to her wrist, a slow, deliberate mapping. “How many?” he asked, his voice low and terrible.
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I don’t… I never counted.”
“Did he use his hand?” Kieran’s thumb brushed over a faint, silvery line on her forearm, a forgotten scar from a shattered plate.
She shook her head. “Not… not usually.”
He went very still. The air around him thickened, growing heavy with a pressure that made her ears pop. His eyes had gone wolfen, a ring of gold flaring around the green. “Tell me what he used.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she breathed, dropping her gaze to the dirt.
“It matters to me.” His voice was a soft rumble that vibrated through the ground. “Names, Thalia. I want the names of the objects they turned against you.”
She flinched at the phrasing. A hot, shameful tear escaped, tracking through the dust on her cheek. “A belt. A… a switch, sometimes. His favorite was a ledger. The leather one from his desk.” She spoke to the ground, the words ash in her mouth. “It had metal corners.”
Kieran made a sound then, a strangled, inhuman snarl that was choked back almost instantly. His hand trembled against her skin. “A ledger.” He repeated the word as if tasting its poison. “And your mother? Lia?”
“They watched.” It was all she could manage. The memory of their passive, approving faces was somehow worse than the strikes.
He pulled her to him then, wrapping his arms around her so tightly she felt her ribs creak. It wasn’t a gentle embrace; it was a claiming, a sheltering, a promise of retribution written in the force of his grip. She buried her face in his chest, the world narrowing to the beat of his heart and the storm she could feel building inside him through the bond.
They stayed like that, statue-still in the center of the training ground, until the sound of pounding footsteps announced Elias’s return. He burst back into the clearing, his chest heaving. Clutched against his side was a familiar, worn leather-bound book. The sight of it sent a jolt of pure, primal fear through Thalia’s system. She shrank back into Kieran.
Elias’s face was the color of slate. He wasn’t just winded; he looked sick. His eyes, usually so bright and cynical, were wide with a hollow, stunned horror. He stopped a few feet from them, his gaze locked on Kieran’s, and held out the ledger. He tried to speak, but his mouth opened and closed without sound. His hand was shaking.
Kieran took the book. It felt obscenely ordinary in his hands. He looked at Elias, a silent question in his rage-darkened eyes. Elias finally found his voice, but it was thin, stripped of all its usual confidence. “Kieran… you need to see this.” He swallowed hard, his throat working. “It’s not just… it’s not just tallies.”
Thalia’s breath caught. Kieran’s jaw tightened. He didn’t open it there. Instead, he turned, tucking her firmly under his arm, and began walking back toward the Pack House. His stride was purposeful, lethal. Elias fell in step behind them, his earlier shock settling into a grim, silent fury.
They didn’t go to their bedroom. Kieran led them to his father’s study, pushing the heavy oak door open. Ronan looked up from his desk, his eyes immediately tracking from Kieran’s face to the ledger in his hand to Thalia’s pale, drawn expression. He stood up slowly.
“What has happened?”
Kieran didn’t answer. He placed the ledger on the large, polished desk with a soft, definitive thud. He finally opened the cover. The pages were not filled with columns of numbers or harvest reports. They were dense with handwritten lines, dates stretching back years.
The first entry he saw was from a date over a decade prior.
Thalia, age 8. Spilled milk at the supper table. Shows a clumsy, wasteful nature. Correction: five strikes with the hand. Lia wept at the mess. Comforted her after.
Kieran’s finger trailed down the page. The entries were methodical, cold.
Age 9. Questioned why she could not join the harvest run. Insolent, argumentative. Correction: three with the belt. Needs to learn her submissive role.
Age 11. Found reading a text above her station. Ambition is unseemly in an omega. Correction: four with the switch. Library privileges revoked.
Age 14. Was seen looking at the Alpha heir during the solstice gathering. Brazen, shameful behavior. Correction: six with the ledger. Must learn to lower her eyes.
Each entry was a clinical dissection of her spirit, each ‘correction’ a methodical breaking. But it was the later entries that made the air in the study turn to ice.
Age 17. Heat symptoms observed. Scent is distractingly strong. Lia reports Kieran noticed. Unacceptable. Correction: confined to cellar for duration. Scent diminished satisfactorily.
Kieran’s vision tunneled. He remembered that summer. He’d caught a faint, dizzying trace of wildflowers and sunshine for two days, then it had vanished. He’d thought nothing of it.
Elias, reading over his shoulder, made a gagging sound. “They locked her in the damn cellar for her heat?”
But Kieran kept reading, his heart a cold, hard stone in his chest. The final entries, from the months just past, made the earlier ones look benign.
Subject continues to exhibit stubbornness. Repeated corrections have not instilled proper deference. Lia advises stronger measures are needed to secure her position. Have obtained silver-dusted implements. Pain is a more effective teacher.
The page ended there. The next page was a detailed, annotated diagram. It was a sketch of a female form, front and back. Dozens of small, precise ‘x’ marks were dotted across the limbs, the back, the shoulders. Each was labeled with a date and a code: ‘B’ for belt, ‘S’ for switch, ‘L’ for ledger. A new symbol, a circled ‘X’, appeared on several marks on the back of the thighs and shoulders. A note in the margin, in a different, neater hand—Lia’s hand—read: Silver application shows promise. Marks linger, reinforce lesson. K’s attention must be redirected.
Ronan had come around the desk. He looked at the diagram, at the meticulously recorded cruelty, and his face aged a decade in a second. “By the moon,” he breathed, a prayer and a curse.
Kieran lifted his eyes from the page. The rage was gone, burned away, leaving something infinitely colder and more dangerous in its wake. He looked at Thalia, who was staring at the far wall, her face a mask of sheer, unadulterated terror. She was seeing it all again, every strike, every cold decision.
He closed the ledger. The soft sound was final.
His voice, when he spoke, was calm. Deadly calm. “They logged it.” He looked from his father to Elias, his gaze devoid of all warmth. “They kept a record. For future reference.”
Elias just shook his head, still speechless, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles were bloodless.
Kieran turned to Thalia. He cupped her face, forcing her to look at him, away from the ghosts. Her skin was icy. “You see?” he said, his thumb stroking her cheek. “This was never about you. This was a blueprint. A manual for breaking.” He gestured to the book as if it were a venomous thing. “Their cruelty had a purpose. To shape you into nothing, so she could be everything.”
He released her and picked up the ledger again, holding it with a kind of reverence reserved for sacred, terrible things. He looked at Ronan. “They passed judgment on my mate. They passed sentence.” His eyes were like chips of arctic glass. “Now I will pass mine.”
He walked out of the study, the ledger in his hand. He didn’t say where he was going. He didn’t need to. The law was clear. The evidence was in his hand. And the fury of an Alpha heir, once cooled from a blaze to a glacial certainty, was the most terrifying thing of all.