"You're mine," he said, voice low and rough.
Thornak turned her gently, his hands firm but careful, as though she were both flame and offering.
Lara gasped feeling the warmth of his body on her an instant later, pressing close, anchoring her to the present.
His mouth brushed her shoulder, then her neck, and she tilted her head instinctively, granting him access with a trust she didn't know she'd given. "You're mine," he whispered again, voice rough and aching.
Then he entered her from behind, slow and deep, his hands braced on either side of her as if holding back the storm he barely controlled. Lara cried out softly, her palms flattening against the wall, breath catching as her body stretched to take him in.
He paused, forehead resting against the back of her neck.
He began to move, each thrust a claiming and a promise, his body against hers like armor, like fire, like fate.
The water poured over them, but all she felt was him, his strength, his need, the depth of his bond. Her shyness dissolved in the steam, replaced by something primal, something sacred.
She met him stroke for stroke, her moans echoing soft and broken against the stone. And when she came undone again, it was his name on her lips.
Later, in the quiet hush of their chambers, they lay tangled in warm sheets, the moonlight slipping like silk through the tall windows.
Lara rested against Thornak's chest, his arm curled around her as though he were afraid she might vanish. His other hand lazily traced circles along her back, slow and grounding. Every breath they took seemed shared.
Her hair, still damp, spread across his skin like spun gold. He tilted his head to press a kiss to her temple, inhaling the scent of her deeply, possessively.
"I never imagined I will feel like this," she whispered, her fingers gently trailing down the ridges of his torso.
He was about to answer when his eyes flickered, gold darkening with sudden focus.
A voice pressed into his mind, urgent and clipped.
"Thornak. The protective barriers set by Ninzu are flaring. Something just breached the inner keep."
His entire body went still, muscles coiled with tension. The warmth of their shared moment evaporated, replaced by the cold edge of duty.
He sat up, already reaching for his clothes.
"Seal the perimeter," he mind-linked back. "Wake the Seers. No one in or out until I give the order."
Lara sat up too, eyes wide.
"Thornak..."
He turned to her, cupping her cheek briefly, his voice low but firm.
"Stay here my love. Don't open the door unless it's me."
Then he was gone, vanishing into the shadows like a storm answering its call.
A foul stench curled through the halls like rotting meat and burnt herbs, unnatural and wrong. Thornak's nostrils flared as he came to an abrupt stop at the corridor's end, his Beta, Dain, close behind.
"It's coming from your chambers," Dain muttered, eyes sharp. "That's not a smell born of this world."
Thornak didn't answer. He was already moving.
The moment his hand touched the door, he felt it. Cold, seeping dread crawled up his arm. He shoved it open.
Lara was writhing on the bed, eyes wide and glassy, mouth parted in a silent scream. Her hands clawed at her head as though trying to tear something out. The shadows around her pulsed, living, writhing, a darkness not born from lightlessness but summoned from something else.
"Lara!" Thornak shouted, lunging forward.
The shadows snapped toward him like snakes, but he charged through, ignoring the burn along his skin. Dain growled, drawing a silver-forged blade and slashing at the tendrils as they reached for him.
Thornak gripped Lara's shoulders, voice rough. "Look at me. Come back to me."
Her lips moved, but the voice that came out was not her own.
"You are too late," it hissed, ancient and hollow. "She belongs to the dark."
A scream built in Thornak's chest, but he shoved it down. "No. She is mine."
With a guttural roar, his Lycan form surged beneath his skin, power flaring. At the same moment, Lara convulsed and then the runes across her collarbone lit up like firebrands.
The shadow shrieked.
Then it was blasted back.
The darkness shattered like glass, flung to the far wall, where it twisted and hissed, a malformed figure crawling along the stone, a shade, misshapen and hunched, its face a smear of shadow. And in its chest, a blood-red sigil pulsed.
The familiar.
It hissed again, then vanished in a plume of smoke, banished for now but not destroyed.
Lara collapsed against Thornak, limp and trembling.
"She's unconscious," Dain said behind him, voice grim. "Whatever that was, what did it want with her?"
Thornak held her tighter. "I don't know," he said quietly. "But Ninzu will."
He rose with her in his arms, jaw tight. "And we're going to find out."
Before mounting his steed, Thornak turned to Dain, his golden eyes fierce with unspoken weight.
"You're in charge until I return,"
Dain gave a crisp nod, jaw tight. "Aye."
Thornak stepped in closer, voice dropping. "And one more thing what happens to Lara stays between us. No one is to know."
Dain's eyes moved to an unconscious Lara. "Understood."
By the time they reached the Silver Seers' Temple, the night sky had thickened with clouds, veiling the moon in silence.
Ninzu's priestesses met them at the steps, robed in silver and ash.
"This way, my king," one murmured. "We were expecting you."
They moved swiftly through the torchlit corridors, shadows flickering like watchful spirits along the stone walls. The air grew colder, heavier, pulsing with unseen power.
At the heart of the temple, the great doors to the inner sanctum groaned open. Inside, incense curled in the air like smoke from ancient fires. Runes pulsed along the floor, faint as a heartbeat.
"Lay her on the altar," the priestess instructed gently.
Thornak obeyed, placing Lara's still form on the cold stone. He lingered beside her, his hand at her brow.
At the head of the chamber, Ninzu was already kneeling, her veil shimmering as she chanted in a language lost to time. She hadn't turned, hadn't looked, yet she had known they were coming.
Ninzu's voice did not rise, nor falter. Her chant was like the wind through winter branches, ancient, aching, eternal. As she lifted her hands, the runes beneath the altar flared to life, bathing the chamber in a cold silver glow.
Lara stirred.
Not her body but something within her.
A flicker. A pulse. A thread straining beneath the weight of shadow.
Ninzu's priestesses formed a circle, their voices joining in harmony, weaving threads of light and will. Smoke thickened, rising from braziers at the corners of the room each infused with crushed moonpetal and bloodroot, sacred herbs of revealing.
Then Lara arched, breath caught in her throat, a strangled sound escaping her lips.
"She fights," one priestess whispered.
"No," Ninzu said, still kneeling, her veil lifting in the temple's breath. "Something fights her."
Thornak stepped forward, heart pounding. "Can you stop it?"
Ninzu's eyes opened, ancient and bright. "I can call it forth. But only she can cast it out."
Then, with a final chant sharp as the toll of a bell, Ninzu drove her palms into the stone.
The runes ignited.
Lara cried out eyes wide, but not her own.
Darkness spilled from her mouth like smoke.
A form began to take shape above her wisps of shadow curling, clawing, coalescing into a faceless figure, its body woven of writhing dark.
A shade.
It hissed in a voice that didn't belong in this world. "She is claimed. Her blood belongs to the Forgotten One."
Ninzu stood now, tall as a storm. "Your claim is void. Her line is not broken. You trespass."
The shade recoiled. Thornak shifted to his lycan form.
"You must fight it, Narielle." Ninzu said only to thornak's hearing. "The blood of the Moonguard cannot remain dormant. Not now."
And on the altar, Lara's hands began to tremble.
The light within her stirred.
Inside her mind, the world was a void.
Cold. Endless. And echoing with whispers not her own.
Lara stood barefoot on what felt like water, yet held her weight. The sky above was black, pierced by no stars. Before her loomed the shade, formless, shifting, but watching her with eyes made of nothing and malice.
"You do not belong to yourself," it breathed. "You are marked. Bound. Forgotten by your own blood. You are for him."
She took a step back, not really understanding what was happening.
"Who are you, what do you want." she whispered. Her voice sounded small here.
"They buried your light and named you nothing. Locked your fire away and left you to fade. Why carry the weight of a world that forgot you? Lay down your soul. Let it end."
Then through the veil of shadow, distant but clear a voice called her name.
Not Lara.
Her true name.
"Narielle."
Ninzu's voice. Strong. Sacred. Echoing from the altar across planes of existence.
From beneath her skin, something ancient stirred.
A light. Silver and sharp as a blade. It spread from her chest, veins igniting like stars.
The shade screamed as the sound struck it like lightning.
"Narielle," the priestess intoned again, louder now, divine power woven into each syllable. "Daughter of the Moon, flame of the fallen line, rise."
Her name. Her name.
Lara—Narielle—felt the world tilt. The silver light inside her surged, no longer restrained. It burst forth, radiant and wild, meeting the shade's darkness head-on.
"I am Moonguard." she said as recognition hit her, with voice ringing like a bell in the deep.
She raised her hands and from them surged a torrent of silver flame.
The void shattered.
In the temple, her body convulsed once more and then stilled.
The shadow above her shrieked as Ninzu's chanting reached its peak. It turned to smoke, dissolving into the sacred light of the Silver Seers.
Lara gasped awake, eyes blazing with moonfire.
The light surged outward, casting silver-blue halos across the stone walls, chasing shadows into the corners of the sacred chamber. The altar beneath her pulsed in response, ancient runes flaring to life in threads of light that danced like starlight.
She blinked, trembling, her breath shallow and uneven, yet something deep within her had stirred.
A memory. A name. A truth.
She was Narielle.
And she was awakening.
Her body gave out, the weight of it all pulling her under once more. She collapsed against the altar, slipping back into sleep.
Thornak stood beside her, eyes wide, one trembling hand brushing damp strands of hair from her brow. He'd seen battlefields burn, watched werewolves and lycans fall, but nothing had prepared him for the moment her eyes opened, glowing with white-blue fire.
Pure moonfire.
The implication struck him like a thunderclap.
She was the Moonguard heir.