All Chapters of Bound moon: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Serafine’s back scraped against the cold cellar wall as heavy boots thudded above her head. Her heart pounded hard, but she kept her breathing slow and quiet. She had lived down here for years. Darkness was her friend. Silence kept her alive. The trapdoor flew open with a loud creak. Torchlight poured in, bright and painful. “Bring her up!” Darius shouted. “Now!” Rough hands grabbed her arms. Her twin stepbrothers, Darius and Kaelen, hauled her out like a sack of grain. They looked scared. Good. They should be. “Diacina ran off last night,” Kaelen said, shoving a bundle of red fabric at her. “You’re taking her place. Put this on.” Serafine stood there in her thin shift, staring at the expensive silk. “You want me to marry the monster in her name?” Darius grabbed her chin hard. “You do this or the whole family dies. Lucian Draven will kill every last one of us if the treaty falls through. Play the part. Keep your mouth shut. Buy us time to run.” She didn’t fight them. Fighting n

The second wave crashed into the yard like a storm.Serafine gripped the short sword tighter, her knuckles white. Her arms shook. Blood from her split lip dripped onto the snow. All around her, wolves snarled and steel clanged. Lucian stood in front of her like a wall, his bare back streaked with red.“Push them back to the gate!” he roared.He charged forward, swinging his heavy blade in wide, deadly arcs. Two attackers went down screaming. But more kept coming. A half-shifted wolf with massive claws leaped at him from the side. Lucian twisted, but the twitch in his left arm slowed him. The claws raked across his ribs.Serafine didn’t think. She ran straight at the beast.Her sword slashed across its hind leg. The creature howled and spun on her. Its hot breath hit her face. She dodged the first snap of its jaws, but the second caught her shoulder. Pain exploded down her arm. She screamed and drove the blade into its side.Silver light flared from her hands again.The wolf flew off h

The boom of the steel vault door sealing shut vibrated through my teeth. I was locked in the armory with the sound of snapping cables and the wet, guttural snarls of something that had ceased to be a man. The scent of ozone and rotting pine intensified, so thick it coated my tongue with the metallic tang of an approaching storm.I didn't waste time on fear. Fear was a luxury for those with an exit strategy. I scanned the room. The shelves were loaded with crates of silver-tipped munitions, but those were useless against a monster that could rip through rebar. My eyes landed on the workbench where I had been logging the serial numbers. Beside the data pad lay a heavy-duty industrial cutting torch and a rack of long-range flare projectiles.The elevator shaft shrieked one last time. Metal shrapnel exploded across the room as the lift platform was ripped upward by sheer, unnatural force.A massive, distorted shape hauled itself onto the concrete floor. It was Lucian—or the hollow, feral

The air in the Unbound territory was different. It tasted of salt spray, wild heather, and a crushing, heavy magic that pressed against my skin like a physical weight. The High Priestess led me deep into the coastal forest, where the trees grew in twisted, rhythmic spirals, their silver-barked limbs interlacing to block out the harsh light of the morning sun.I walked with a limp. The cut on my thigh from the armory had reopened, and the salt air stung the raw, jagged edges of the wound. Every step was a conscious effort to keep my breathing steady, to hide the fact that I was rapidly reaching the limit of my physical endurance."Rest," the Priestess commanded, stopping before a hollowed-out bluff overlooking the churning grey expanse of the North Sea. "The Unbound will not reveal themselves until they see that you are not one of his trackers."I collapsed onto the mossy floor of the bluff. My vision pulsed with dark spots, and for a moment, the world felt like it was tilting on a jag

The roar that tore through the coastal air was not merely sound; it was a physical force. It shattered the remaining glass in the discarded armor of the fallen retrieval team and sent a flock of gulls screaming into the grey horizon. Lucian was no longer hunting; he was asserting his domain.I stood on the northern lip of the delta, my hands buried deep in the pockets of my cloak. The Unbound had moved with supernatural speed, turning the narrow neck of the river into a defensive fortification. They had rigged the high-pressure gas valves—the same ones Vincent used to power the estate’s furnaces—into a makeshift explosive perimeter."He’s leading the cavalry on the main road," the scout reported, his breathing shallow. "He’s not waiting for his infantry. He’s closing the distance at a sprint.""Good," I muttered. "He's predictable when he's desperate.""Serafine," the High Priestess whispered, appearing at my side. "If you kill him, the Ashmoor Kingdom will collapse into civil war. Vi