Bound By Moonlight to My Mates (by Sofange Daye) novel Chapter 91

Aelara

The wind tastes different tonight. For centuries it carried nothing but dust and rot, a smell that only a few of us can detect. It carried the slow decay of forgotten prayers. But now… now it hums with life. I can feel it in the stones beneath my bare feet, in the pulse of the earth as if something long dead has taken a breath.

The world is moving again.

I step beyond the threshold of my ruined temple, the air sharp and cold. The moon hangs low, spilling her light over the skeletal remains of a civilization that no longer remembers her name. My name.

The marble steps groan beneath my weight. Moss covers the carvings that once sang my story. “Aelara,” they had called me, the Daughter of Death, the Keeper of the Final Door. Now I am nothing but shadow and echo.

And yet, the moment the Silver Wolf’s howl shattered the night weeks ago, I felt her.

A thread of power tugged at me, thin as spider silk but strong enough to make the world tilt.

She lives.

The thought still burns through me like a fever. Tala’s legacy. The one who can end all this.

I walk until the forest swallows the last glimpse of the temple. The trees are tall here, ancient. They bow toward me as if remembering what I am, but I don’t return their reverence. I am not the Goddess’s hand anymore. I am her mistake.

A flicker of sound catches my attention, something breaking the rhythm of night. Footsteps. Rapid. Mortal.

I freeze.

Through the mist, I glimpse movement: a man running, his shirt torn, and his breath ragged. He’s bleeding, bright red against the snow. He stumbles once, twice, and then collapses at the base of an oak.

I should keep walking. The last time I saved a mortal, he died in my arms before sunrise. The curse doesn’t let me love; it only lets me mourn.

But the sound of his heartbeat is a fragile drum against the silence, and it calls to something inside me I can’t quite silence.

I step closer.

“Stay away,” he gasps without looking up, dragging a blade from his belt. His hand trembles. The weapon’s silvered edge glints under the moon.

“You bleed too much to fight,” I say softly. My voice feels strange after so long, like using a muscle that’s forgotten how to move.

He looks up then, eyes wild and too bright. Hazel with flecks of gold, like sunlight trapped in amber. “Who…

what are you?”

I laugh and stand over him. It is a fair question, my black irises let the world know I am not one of them. Still, I kneel, ignoring the blade he still clutches. “Someone who’s seen too much dying.”

He flinches as I touch him. My magic hums under his skin, drawn to the wound like it remembers what to do. Power pools in my palms, dark and silver, and I press it against the gash on his ribs.

He jerks, gasping, as light seeps into him. The blood slows. The torn flesh knits together. When it’s done, I pull away.

He stares at me as if I’ve just rewritten the laws of nature. “You shouldn’t be able to do that,” he says.

“I shouldn’t be able to do many things.”

He pushes himself up on one elbow, grimacing. “What are you doing out here alone?”

I almost laugh. “I’ve been alone for longer than your world’s been breathing.”

He studies me, the faintest crease forming between his brows. There’s something familiar about his face, something that doesn’t belong to this age. “You talk like you’ve seen a lot of centuries.”

“More than I care to count.”

The air shifts again, and I feel them before I see them, the men chasing him. Their hatred is tangible, a sickness that tastes like iron and smoke. They move through the trees in a half circle, weapons drawn, and flashlights cutting through the dark.

“Hunters?” I ask.

He nods, clearly too afraid to speak.

I rise. “How many?”

He glances toward the treeline. “Five. Maybe six. They’ve been after me since the bridge.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not supposed to exist.”

That makes two of us.

The first of the hunters steps into the clearing, his eyes catching mine. He hesitates, whispering something to the others. The name they use for me hasn’t been spoken aloud in centuries, yet I hear it on his lips.

“Daughter of Death.”

I tilt my head, amused. “So you do remember.”

They raise their weapons. The night crackles with tension.

I raise a hand and the shadows answer.

They slither across the ground like smoke, wrapping around the hunters‘ feet, dragging them backward. They scream, striking at nothing as the darkness devours them one by one. When silence returns, the snow is red and the air smells of copper.

The man stares, chest rising and falling too fast. “You didn’t have to….”

“They would have killed you,” I interrupt.

“You didn’t even flinch.”

“I haven’t flinched in a long time.”

He watches me with something I haven’t seen in centuries, pity. It’s almost unbearable.

“I should go,” I say, turning back toward the path.

“Wait.” He pushes himself to his feet, still unsteady. “Where are you going?”

“To find someone.”

“Who?”

“Someone who can end this.”

“Who can end what?” He questions.

“Me.”

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