Luna's:
His words were gasoline.
My breath was the spark.
I shoved him not to push him away, but to make him stumble into me. My palms hit his chest, solid as the wall I'd been pressed against, and instead of stepping back, he let the momentum close the gap entirely.
The air between us vanished. Heat replaced it.
"You think you can keep me?" I challenged, my voice shaking not with fear, but with something far more reckless.
Aezrel's lips curved into that lethal, half-mad smile that made my stomach knot. "No," he said, almost gently. "I know I can."
And then his mouth crashed against mine.
It wasn't a kiss it was a collision. A war. My fingers curled into his coat, pulling him closer when I should have pushed him away. He tasted like iron and smoke, like every rule I'd ever wanted to break.
The Codex pulsed behind us, its energy skittering through my veins, mixing with the fire his hands were feeding into my skin. One of them slid up to the back of my neck, holding me there like he could anchor me against my own storm.
"You...." I tried to speak, but his mouth swallowed the word, turning it into a gasp.
"I should hate you," I breathed when I found air again.
"Then hate me harder," he said, and his voice was low, rough, the kind that wrapped chains around your ribs.
I didn't realize until much later that this was the moment the second everything between us stopped being about protection or control, and became something neither of us could name without losing ourselves.
Something that would burn us both alive.
...
Aezrel's POV:
The moment I tore my mouth from hers, I felt the loss like a blade slipping from my hand mid-fight. Dangerous. Unforgivable.
Her lips were swollen, her breath ragged, her pupils so wide they swallowed the stormy color of her eyes. She didn't look like the careful, guarded girl who'd stumbled into my world days ago she looked like something I'd just woken, and couldn't put back to sleep.
And I'd done it knowing damn well what it meant.
The Codex behind her pulsed again, a deep, humming throb that climbed into the air like heat from stone. I could feel it pressing at me, begging to be claimed, its voice sliding into the cracks of my restraint.
But I couldn't take my eyes off Luna.
"You feel it, don't you?" I said.
She stiffened. "Feel what?"
I stepped closer. She didn't move away, she never did when she should. "That burning in your blood," I murmured. "That ache that doesn't stop when you step back." My gaze dipped to her mouth, then rose again, holding hers. "That's not just me, Luna. That's the Codex choosing you."
She swallowed, but I saw her pulse hammer at her throat. "You're lying."
"I don't lie." My voice dropped to the quiet that makes people lean in, even when they shouldn't. "But I do take what I want."
Before she could answer, a deep crack split the air wood splintering, stone grinding. The chamber door shuddered.
I grabbed her wrist, yanking her to me so fast she stumbled against my chest. "They've found us."
Her eyes flew to mine, the shock and heat still tangled there. "Who"
"Not friends." My grip tightened, and I pulled her toward the shadowed archway at the far end of the room.
And even as the roar of pursuit closed in, I realized my hand hadn't let go. Not because she needed saving
but because I did.
...
Luna's POV:
Aezrel's grip was iron on my wrist, dragging me through the dark passage. My pulse battered against my ribs, but it wasn't fear of the footsteps pounding after us
it was him.
It was the heat he'd left burning in my veins, the one that felt nothing like panic and everything like hunger.
But under it… there was something else.
A sound.
Low, guttural, and impossibly close.
At first, I thought it was the echo of our breath in the narrow corridor. Then it curled into words. not words you hear, but words you feel crawling under your skin.
"Run, little thing. Run until your heart cracks."
I jerked my head around, half expecting to see something snarling at our backs. The hall behind us was empty just stone, shadows, and the ragged flicker of torches.
The voice came again, from inside.
"Or stop. Let him catch you."
It wasn't mine.
It wasn't even human.
The Codex. I knew it without knowing how. It wasn't just a book it was alive in ways that made my blood thrum. And it didn't just want Aezrel.
It wanted us.
"Luna...." His voice snapped my head forward again. He'd slowed, his body dropping low, the muscles in his back tensing under his jacket. He was listening.
The footsteps had multiplied. Five, maybe six pursuers, closing fast. I could hear their weapons dragging against the walls, a deliberate scrape meant to shake us.
Aezrel's gaze cut to mine quick, sharp, and in that single glance I could see it: the same wild thing that was inside me was inside him too. The wolves weren't just speaking to me. They were speaking to him.
"They're close," he said, voice low. "You keep moving when I tell you. No matter what happens."
I almost laughed, breathless and raw. "You think I'm leaving you?"
His jaw clenched, but his eyes didn't leave mine. "If you stay, you'll watch me tear them apart. And you won't like the way it makes you feel."
"He's lying," the Codex whispered in my skull, a dark chuckle curling around the words. "You'll like it too much."
And maybe that's why I didn't argue when we reached the first bend and he shoved me ahead. Because part of me wanted to see.
The first man came out of the dark like a shadow detaching from the wall. Aezrel didn't hesitate he drove his shoulder into the man's chest, slamming him back into the stone so hard the air burst from him.
Then I saw it
his eyes.
Not the deep, molten gold I'd seen before, but something brighter, feral, and wrong. Light fractured in them, the way light fractures in a predator's gaze at the moment before it strikes.
It's wolf.
The fight wasn't clean. It wasn't meant to be. Aezrel fought like something that had been caged too long teeth bared, fists cracking bone, movements too quick and brutal to be human.
I should've been horrified. Instead, I could feel my own lips curling back, my own breath quickening, as though the same hunger in him was bleeding into me through the air.
The second man came for me, blade raised. My body moved before my mind did ducking low, sweeping his legs out. I didn't even feel the pain when his knife grazed my arm; all I felt was the rush when he hit the ground.
"Good," the voice in me purred. "Now don't stop."
And I didn't. I brought my knee down into his jaw, heard the crack, felt the shudder through me.
Aezrel's hand closed around the back of my neck, yanking me upright, his breath hot against my ear. "You feel it too."
It wasn't a question.
We didn't run after that. We hunted two wolves in the dark, pushing forward, the corridor becoming a tunnel of sound and scent and blood until the last of them hit the ground.
Only then did the danger at our heels fade into silence.
But the heat between us didn't.
And somewhere in the quiet, the Codex laughed.
...
The taste of blood was still in my mouth. Not my own. His.
Aezrel's grip was bruising my arm, dragging me away from the clearing where the echoes of our clash still hung thick in the air. My wolf thrashed in my mind, teeth bared, snarling at him. He thinks he can pull us like a pup? she seethed.
I yanked against him, though my body was still trembling from the fight. "Let me go," I hissed, my voice rough, carrying that animal rasp that came when the wolf inside bled too close to the surface.
His golden eyes cut into me, sharp enough to strip flesh. You're bleeding in front of them, his wolf's voice growled through the bond, invasive and unyielding. Do you want them to smell weakness?
"I'm bleeding because of you," I spat, twisting my wrist against his hold. My words were hot enough to burn through the cold night air.
The forest seemed too still. Even the wind had stopped to listen.
And then… a low chuckle rippled through the trees. Not his.
My head snapped toward the sound, my wolf already pacing. From the shadowed treeline, a figure stepped into view, tall, broad, with black hair that caught the moonlight like a blade. His gaze wasn't hungry it was cruel.
"Still parading her around, Aezrel?" Kaelen's voice carried that perfect mix of mockery and malice. "I thought you'd learned after the last time."
My gut tightened. I'd seen him before once, from a distance, when he'd looked at me like I was nothing but a cracked bone underfoot.
Aezrel didn't release me, but his stance shifted shoulders squared, jaw set. "Careful where you step, Kaelen."
Kaelen's gaze slid over me slowly, dissecting me. "The disgrace of your bloodline in the flesh. Tell me, Luna.. does it hurt, carrying a name you can't live up to?"
I wanted to rip the smirk off his face, but Aezrel's grip tightened, almost as if he knew my wolf was seconds from lunging.
Let me tear him, she whispered in my mind, her claws already sinking into the soil of my thoughts. He's prey that deserves it.
Not now. Not yet.
Kaelen's voice was silk over steel. "I heard the Alphas will gather soon. Dangerous thing, bringing… her into the council's sight."
Aezrel stepped forward, placing himself between us, his shadow swallowing mine. "Say another word, and you'll wish you hadn't."
Kaelen only smiled wider, the kind of smile that promised more blood down the road. He turned, melting back into the darkness as if he'd never been there at all. But the echo of his words stayed like the scent of a predator that never truly leaves.
Aezrel finally let go of me, and the air between us was still charged, every breath a threat. "You keep drawing them," he muttered.
"Or maybe," I said, stepping closer until my chest brushed his, "they're coming for you and I'm just the excuse."
His eyes flared not just the man, but the wolf beneath, answering mine with a silent challenge neither of us dared voice.
The danger wasn't gone. It had multiplied. And I could feel the next shadow waiting in the wings.