Chapter 7: Bound by the Moon
The words hung in the air between them, heavier than the silence that followed.
“You were mine before you even knew my name.”
Isla’s breath caught mid-inhale, her chest tightening as if the air itself had thickened. The audacity of his words should have sparked outrage, laughter even, but all she could feel was the throb of something ancient unfurling inside her. A denial burned hot on her tongue, sharp and ready, but it withered beneath the intensity of his gaze.
The way Damian Wolff was looking at her… it wasn’t just possessive. It was reverent. Like she was something rare and fragile he had found after a lifetime of searching. Like she was gravity, and he was the only one who had ever truly felt her pull.
Her pulse skittered against her throat, uneven and wild, and she took a deliberate step back, needing space, needing breath. “That’s ridiculous,” she whispered, but even to her own ears, the words sounded thin and hollow.
Damian didn’t move a muscle, yet the heat of him still surrounded her, a pressure in the air, heavy and alive. His voice, low and sure, followed her retreat.
“You feel it.”
There was no question in his tone, just certainty. The kind that left no room for argument.
“Deny it all you want, but you know this isn’t normal.”
Of course, he was right. God, he was right.
She swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry. No, it wasn’t normal. Nothing about this, about him, had ever been normal. From the moment she’d met Damian Wolff, the world had tilted on a new axis. The air felt different when he was near, the sky darker and her own skin more aware.
This wasn’t attraction nor lust or curiosity. It was a magnetic and gravitational pull. Like there was some invisible thread strung taut between them, woven by hands far older than fate. A thread that whispered: belonging.
“What are you?” she breathed, unable to stop herself. The question felt as though it had been waiting years to be spoken.
Damian’s lips curved slightly, but the expression was not portraying amusement. It was something else, way darker and older. There was knowledge in the tilt of his mouth, in the shadows beneath his cheekbones.
“I think you already know.”
His words slithered down her spine, not cruelly, but with the kind of truth that resonated too deeply to ignore. Something flickered at the edge of her memory, shadows in the woods, eyes flashing silver, heat radiating off him even in the cool night air.
She hadn’t imagined it. She knew she hadn’t. Everything about Damian screamed other, screamed wild. He didn’t walk like other men, he prowled and when he looked at her, it was like he was seeing through her, past every defense she’d ever learned to hold. Instead of fear, all she felt was a craving fire. A desperate and clawing need to understand what he was, what she was when she was near him.
Before she could speak again, a deep, guttural howl split the night like a blade. The sound reverberated through the trees, thick and feral and full of something that had never belonged in the human world. It rolled across the forest like thunder, echoing into the distance, and then, other howls rose to meet it, answering and calling back.
Her blood turned cold. The primal cry seemed to awaken something instinctual inside her, a warning thrumming in her bones. Her breath hitched as goosebumps chased across her skin. Damian didn’t flinch. He stood as if he had known it was coming. As if he had been waiting.
He exhaled slowly, the movement controlled, as though holding something barely leashed beneath his skin. His shoulders rolled back, a subtle shift that made him look less human, more like a creature adjusting to fit into a form too tight.
Then he turned to her, eyes gleaming not just silver now, but storm-cloud dark. Giving him a sense of urgency.
“I need you to listen to me, Isla.”
His voice was low, but there was a command in it that made her spine straighten.
“No matter what you see tonight… you stay inside this house.”
Her stomach twisted, knotted in dread. “What’s out there?” she asked, even though a part of her was already afraid to know.
Damian’s jaw tightened. Muscles ticked in his cheek, and his eyes held hers for a moment longer than necessary, like he was trying to say something without words.
“Not everything in these woods is mine to control.”
Then he turned, moving toward the door with the grace of a shadow sliding through moonlight, as a whole, too fluid and too fast. He definitely didn’t resemble any human, not anymore.
Isla’s heart pounded as she watched him go, something cold blooming in her chest. The air in the room suddenly felt thinner, the silence pressing in like walls closing around her. As the door shut behind him, she realized, she didn’t know what terrified her more:
That she was about to witness something impossible or that some deep, hidden part of her already knew exactly what Damian Wolff was, and that she had never been more drawn to anything in her life.