MARKED BY MY ENEMY MATE

Lyra was burning.

She didn't know whether she was dreaming or dying, but her body was drenched in sweat, twisted in the sheets, limbs tangled as though fighting some invisible enemy.

The flames licked at her skin—white-hot, ethereal, and familiar.

In the dream, she stood barefoot in a circle of moonlight surrounded by wolves. But these wolves were wrong. Bigger. Wiser. Some had horns like stags, others had wings like shadows, but they all bowed to the woman in the center.

The woman who looked like her.

She wore robes the color of blood and starlight, and her silver hair glowed beneath the moon. Her eyes—Lyra's eyes—held storms inside them. She lifted a hand and spoke in a language Lyra didn't understand, but it echoed in her bones like memory.

A circle of fire formed around them.

The wolves snarled. The woman bled from her palms. Still, she stood tall.

Then the moon turned red.

The wolves lunged.

The woman didn't scream.

She howled.

Lyra woke with a scream trapped in her throat and the taste of blood on her tongue.

She bolted upright in bed, gasping. Her sheets were soaked, her skin fever-hot. Her mark burned like it had been branded again—glowing faintly with golden light that faded as she blinked.

The vision—the woman—it hadn't been just a dream.

Something ancient had called to her.

And it wasn't done yet.

Across the court, Kael stared at the ancient scroll Thorne had just placed on his table.

It was brittle and lined with golden thread, its edges scorched by time, and the ink pulsed faintly under the torchlight. Kael didn't like it.

He liked even less the look on Thorne's face.

"This was taken from the Temple of Ancients," Thorne said, voice low. "Hidden in the ruins beneath the old Alpha tombs."

Kael didn't look up. "You were ordered to stay away from there."

"I disobeyed," Thorne said simply. "Because I had to know. And you need to see this."

Kael unrolled the scroll.

The script was old—too old. Not even High Lupine, but the older tongue, spoken before the packs were formed. Kael could read enough to understand the parts that mattered:

"The Moonblood shall rise in the age of betrayal.

Born of fire and shadow, child of forgotten Lunas.

She will bind Alpha to fury and flame,

and the wolf within her will not bow.

She will shatter the chains that hold the moon."

Kael's throat dried. His gaze fell to a symbol drawn beneath the prophecy.

It matched the mark on Lyra's skin.

"She's one of them," Thorne said softly. "A Moonblood. A bloodline that hasn't walked the realm in over a thousand years. The First Luna's kin. Hunted, hidden, erased."

Kael didn't answer. His jaw clenched. His mind reeled.

He wanted to believe it was a mistake. But it wasn't.

Everything she was… everything she could become… it was more than he could contain.

"She could break everything," he whispered.

Thorne hesitated. "You know what the Council would do if they saw this."

Kael nodded.

Then he took the scroll, stepped to the fireplace, and tossed it into the flames.

The parchment crackled. Glowed.

Burned.

"I won't let them see it," he said. "They'd kill her before she even had a chance to choose who she wants to be."

Thorne didn't argue.

But he also didn't say what they were both thinking:

Kael was no longer protecting Lyra because of duty. He was doing it because he needed her.

Lyra found him later that afternoon in the Hall of Echoes.

She was pale, still trembling from her fever, but she moved with a quiet determination that made Kael's heart pound for all the wrong reasons.

"You knew," she said without greeting.

Kael turned from the stained glass windows and narrowed his gaze. "Knew what?"

"That I'm not… normal. That something is different. That I'm not just a girl with a broken wolf."

She stepped forward. Her voice shook, but her eyes did not.

"I had a dream. Or a vision. A woman with my face. A priestess who bled into the moon. And then I woke up burning. What's happening to me?"

Kael was silent.

The kind of silence that confirmed everything.

Her breath caught.

"You really did know," she said, voice hollow. "You knew something was changing in me and you said nothing."

"I didn't have proof," he muttered. "Only a theory."

"A theory you burned," she snapped. "I saw the ashes in your fireplace."

Kael turned fully now, his own anger rising to meet hers. "Do you have any idea what they would do to you if they found out what you are?"

"I don't even know what I am!"

"Exactly," he growled. "And that's the danger."

Her eyes flashed with tears and fury.

"Admit it," she whispered. "You want me powerless. Easier to control. Easier to abandon."

Kael stepped close—too close. His voice dropped low, rough.

"I want you alive, Lyra."

"And I want the truth," she fired back. "Even if it terrifies you."

He stared at her—really stared.

At the fire in her eyes.

At the strength she was beginning to carry like armor.

At the girl he had marked, who was no longer a girl at all.

And for one reckless second, he wanted to kiss her.

To burn with her.

To forget the war, the prophecy, the rules, the council, the blood and duty and rage—and just want her.

Lyra felt it too.

Her breath caught. Her lips parted.

But the kiss didn't come.

Kael's hands curled into fists.

He stepped back.

"You want me to be weak so I won't scare you," she whispered. "But I was never made to kneel."

And with that, she walked away—head high, back straight, even as her heart pounded like a war drum.

Kael stood alone in the Hall of Echoes, surrounded by glass and silence.

And for the first time in years…

He was afraid.

Not of her power.

But of what it meant to love her.

The great bells of the court tolled in the distance—deep and slow, like the heartbeat of something ancient waking in the bones of the earth.

Lyra didn't return to her room.

She couldn't.

Instead, she wandered through the moonlit halls, half-dazed, half-burning, her thoughts tangled like threads knotted too tight to pull apart.

What am I?

Who am I?

And more haunting than anything—What will I become?

Her fingers traced the wall as she walked, the cold stone grounding her, even as her veins buzzed with energy she couldn't name. Her mark, though dimmer now, still pulsed under her skin like an ember refusing to die.

She wasn't the same girl who had entered the Academy weeks ago.

She could feel her bones shifting under her skin, her soul sharpening like a blade. Every time someone looked at her now, they paused. They felt it. The wrongness. The power.

The reckoning.

Her footsteps took her, unknowingly, to the Temple Garden the quiet sanctuary where Lunas were once honored, before the Alphas silenced their voices in history.

No one came here anymore.

Which made it the perfect place to fall apart.

Lyra sank to her knees beneath the statue of the First Luna—half-forgotten, weathered by time but still fierce, still upright, still watching. Silver moss clung to her stone cloak. Vines curled around her feet like wolves at rest.

Lyra stared up into the chiseled face.

"I don't want to be this," she whispered into the silence. "I just wanted to find my wolf. To belong."

A gust of wind stirred the leaves. The statue said nothing.

"But I don't belong to them. To him. And maybe I never will."

Her hands curled into fists.

And then—something moved inside her.

Not physically. Not like a shift. But like a whisper in her blood.

She gasped.

A flicker of violet flame pulsed beneath her skin. Brief. Gentle. Gone before she could understand it.

A promise.

Or a warning.

Meanwhile, Kael stood alone in his chambers, staring into the fire that had devoured the prophecy.

He didn't know what he feared more—the girl he couldn't control or the man he was becoming because of her.

She wasn't supposed to matter.

He'd bonded her to protect the court. To control the chaos. To use her if needed, and cast her aside when it was done.

But every time she defied him, every time she stared him down like he was just another wolf trying to chain her—he unraveled a little more.

Kael had ruled with fire and ice for years.

But Lyra…

She was something else entirely.

Something born from both—and from something older than either.

Moonblood.

He whispered the word like a curse.

Like a prayer.

He turned toward the window, staring out at the dark woods beyond the walls.

Trouble was coming. He could feel it.

The kind of trouble that didn't come with war horns or battle cries.

The kind that slipped in through dreams and bloodlines. The kind that couldn't be killed with teeth or steel.

And she was at the center of it.

When Lyra finally returned to her room, dawn was beginning to stain the horizon gold.

She didn't undress.

Didn't sleep.

She simply sat at the edge of the bed, the same words echoing again and again in her skull.

> "She will bind Alpha to fury and flame…"

She touched the mark on her shoulder, feeling its warmth seep into her skin.

> "And the wolf within her will not bow…"

A quiet knock came at the door.

She didn't answer.

But it opened anyway.

Kael.

He didn't speak. Just stood in the doorway, eyes shadowed, hair tousled like he hadn't slept either.

Lyra didn't rise.

"I won't apologize," she said.

"I'm not asking you to."

Silence stretched between them.

Finally, Kael stepped inside, closed the door behind him.

"I burned the scroll to protect you," he said quietly. "But I won't lie to you again."

Lyra blinked.

A breath hitched in her throat—but she kept her voice steady. "Why does it scare you?"

Kael leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "Because power like yours always comes with a cost. And I don't know who will pay it yet."

She nodded slowly.

They stared at each other, the weight of their unspoken truths thick in the air.

Then Kael said something she didn't expect.

Something raw. Honest.

"I don't know how to be near you without wanting everything."

Lyra's heart stuttered.

And yet, all she said was: "Then maybe you shouldn't come near me."

Kael didn't move.

Didn't speak.

He just looked at her.

Like he was memorizing her. Mourning her. Wanting her.

And then, without a word, he turned and walked out.

The door closed.

And Lyra exhaled.

A quiet, shattered sound.

The flame in her mark pulsed once.

Twice.

And then it settled.

But Lyra knew…

This was only the beginning.

The secrets were rising.

And the fire in her blood would not stay quiet for long.