Moonbound Vows

The silver around my wrists burned deeper every time I moved, but staying still was no longer an option. Boots struck concrete somewhere beyond the warehouse doors— more than one man, their heavy, controlled steps announcing they were neither police nor Silverfang. Beside me, the man knelt and started praying. He had been doing that for five minutes, whispering the same few words through split lips, begging God, the saints, and anyone else who might have been listening. None of them answered. Neither did I.

I pulled against the chain bolted into the floor, pain tearing through my arms, but the metal held. The silver weakened my wolf and kept my body trapped between forms— my fingernails had sharpened into claws, my teeth had lengthened, and every breath came out sounding more animal than human. The traitor glanced at me. “You said they wouldn’t find us.”

I stared at him through the strands of hair stuck to my face. “I said we needed to leave.”

“You were supposed to protect the shipment.”

“I was supposed to learn who bought it.”

He looked toward the warehouse entrance as the footsteps drew closer. “They’re going to kill us.”

“They’re going to kill you.”

His face drained of what little color remained.

The doors opened, and cold air swept through the building, carrying rain and the scent of gun oil. Four men entered first, each armed and dressed in black, spreading through the warehouse without speaking as they checked the aisles between the stacks of crates. A fifth man followed. He did not hurry. He did not need to. Lorenzo Valenti moved through the warehouse as if he already owned every shadow inside it. His dark suit was clean despite the rain, and his expression carried no anger, only certainty. That made him more dangerous.

The traitor rose onto his knees. “Enzo, listen to me.” Valenti stopped several feet away, his gaze moving over the blood on the floor, the open weapons crates, and the silver cuffs around my wrists. When his eyes reached mine, they narrowed. Whatever he had expected to find in the warehouse, it had not been a chained wolf.

“Who is she?” he asked.

The traitor swallowed. “No one.”

I almost laughed.

Valenti looked at him. “You stole from my family, sold our routes, and brought enough silver into my city to start a private war. Now you want me to believe the chained woman with claws is no one?”

One of his men stepped closer to me, raising his gun. My wolf surged against the silver, and a growl ripped from my throat before I could stop it. The gunman froze, but Valenti did not. He watched me, still as a predator recognizing another predator. By the look on his face, he didn’t understand what I was, but he wasn’t afraid enough to look away. That was his first mistake.

The traitor lunged. His movement was fast for a human, but Valenti had expected it. He caught the man by the throat and drove him backward onto the concrete as the traitor clawed at his wrist, choking. “Please,” he gasped. Valenti drew a gun from beneath his jacket. “Who supplied the silver?” he asked.

The traitor’s eyes darted toward me. I stopped breathing. Valenti noticed. “The woman?” he asked. “No.” The traitor shook his head too quickly. “She was only the contact.”

I leaned forward, ignoring the silver cutting into my skin. “Do not.” He looked at me with pure panic. I knew what he was about to do. Men like him always traded the most dangerous secret first and hoped it would buy them another minute. Valenti pressed the barrel beneath his chin. “What contact?”

“She came from the wolves.” Silence settled over the warehouse. One of Valenti’s men gave a short, nervous laugh. “The wolves?” The traitor nodded so hard his teeth clicked. “Silverfang. They control the ports. They control the unions. They control half the city. You think the Valentis own Chicago, but you don’t know what lives beneath it.”

Valenti’s expression barely changed, weighing whether the traitor was lying or insane.

I flexed my fingers. My claws scraped the floor. Every gun turned toward me. Valenti looked at my hands and then at my eyes. I knew they were glowing. I could feel the heat building behind them as my wolf fought to surface.

The traitor saw his chance. “She was sent to kill you,” he said. I slammed my shoulder into him before he could say anything else. The chain snapped tight and tore skin from my wrists, but I knocked him off balance.

Valenti fired. The shot cracked through the warehouse. The traitor fell beside me. Blood spread across the floor. My ears rang, but I did not look away from Valenti.

He lowered the gun. “You should have let him finish,” he said.

I looked at the dead man. “He was going to tell you the truth in the wrong order.”

Valenti’s men shifted around us. One moved behind me, and I heard the safety on his weapon click off. My body reacted before thought caught up: I twisted, caught the chain between both hands, and swung it across his knees. He went down hard. I lunged for his throat, but the silver dragged me back before my claws reached him. Another man kicked me in the ribs—pain exploded through my side. I grabbed his ankle and pulled. He crashed onto his back, and I drove my heel into his face.

Gunfire erupted; concrete shattered beside my head. I rolled behind the dead traitor’s body as bullets struck the floor. My wolf forced itself higher, pushing through the silver long enough for fur to spread across my arms.

“Stop shooting,” Valenti ordered. The gunfire ended immediately. I looked up. Valenti stood exactly where he had been, his gun pointed at my forehead. His men were breathing hard. He was not.

“You killed my only useful witness,” he said. I didn’t answer. Valenti stepped closer. “Then you can tell me the rest.”

I smiled through the pain. “I would rather die.”

“That can be arranged,” he said as he crouched in front of me. Up close, he smelled like rain, smoke, and blood. There was no fear in him, but there was something else beneath the surface. Something buried. Something his own body had not yet recognized. I stared at the pulse in his throat. My wolf went still—not calm, but the kind of stillness that came before violence.

Valenti noticed the change in my face. “What?” I forced myself to look away from him. Nothing. It was nothing. Humans did not carry that scent. Humans did not make my wolf press against my bones like she wanted to tear me apart from the inside.

Valenti reached for my chin. I snapped my teeth at his hand. He caught my throat instead and drove me against the floor. His grip was firm enough to hold me without crushing my windpipe. He was strong, but not strong enough to be what my wolf suddenly believed he was.

“You will answer me,” he said. I grabbed his wrist. The movement opened one of the cuts beneath my cuff. Blood ran over my palm and onto his skin. The world stopped.

Pain hit me first. It tore through my chest and slammed into every nerve in my body. I arched against the floor as heat rushed through my veins. Valenti’s hand tightened around my throat, but his expression broke for the first time. He felt it too.

The warehouse disappeared beneath a flood of emotion that did not belong to me: rage, control, loneliness so deep it had hardened into something cruel. Then his emotions vanished beneath the roar of my wolf. Mine. The word tore through my mind.

Valenti stumbled away from me, staring at the blood on his hand. “What did you do?” he demanded. I could not answer. A black mark spread beneath his skin where my blood had touched him. Thin lines twisted over his wrist like ink-filled veins. One of his men moved toward him. Valenti turned so fast that no human should have been able to follow the motion. He struck the man in the chest and sent him crashing into a stack of crates. Everyone froze.

Valenti looked at his own hands. His breathing changed—too deep, too rough. His eyes lifted to mine. Gold flashed through the brown. My wolf slammed against my ribs. I had been trained to identify every kind of supernatural threat. I knew the signs of a forced shift, a blood curse, and a broken mating bond. This was none of those things. This was older. Worse. Impossible.

Valenti stepped toward me, and every instinct in my body screamed to run. The chains held me in place. His men raised their weapons again, but Valenti ignored them. He came closer until the black mark on his wrist began pulsing in time with my heartbeat. Then something inside his chest growled— not metaphorically, not quietly. An animal answered mine.

Valenti stopped directly in front of me. His voice came out lower than before. “What are you?” I stared into his changing eyes and felt the bond lock around us. My father had warned me that failure would mean death. He had never warned me that the enemy might be my mate.

Then Enzo Valenti’s bones began to break.