MOONBOUND TO MY ENEMY

Gianna’s POV

I ran as fast as I could, my heart pounding louder than the thud of my feet hitting the ground. The trees blurred past me, dark green and gold in the fading light, but I barely saw them. I wasn’t running from anything.

I was running to something. Or maybe… someone.

“Please let me get there on time,” I begged silently, over and over, like a prayer. My lungs burned, sharp and hot, and I had to fight the urge to double over. But I didn’t slow. I couldn’t.

There wasn’t enough air. Not in the world. Not in my chest. I could barely breathe, but I didn’t stop.

Each breath scraped my throat raw. The damp evening air stung my face as I cut through the woods, leaves tearing at my skin like desperate hands trying to hold me back. But I refused to be held back. Not now. Not when I was this close.

My shoes scraped the worn gravel path as I darted through the cemetery gates, the old iron creaking just slightly in the wind, an eerie sound that might have chilled me on any other day. But right now, I couldn’t afford to feel anything else but desperation.

The scent hit me almost instantly, wet soil and something older, deeper. Decay, still fresh in the ground. It clung to the air like smoke, thick and suffocating. I ignored it. I barely even noticed the stone markers rushing by on either side of me. Numbers. So many numbers. Every time I passed one, I counted, just like he taught me when I was little.

“Counting the markers reminds us how much we’ve lost,” my father used to say when we honoured fallen warriors.

Back then, I thought it was poetic. Now, it just felt cruel.

It felt wrong. Every step I took, every breath I managed, every second I wasted not being there already felt like betrayal. My stomach twisted violently, as though my body knew something I hadn’t yet accepted.

“Not him. Please, not him too.”

The cemetery sloped gently downward toward the older graves, and my legs screamed in protest as I pushed harder, faster, the momentum nearly tripping me with every uneven step. My muscles burned, but I didn’t care. I needed to see it with my own eyes. I needed proof that this wasn’t real. That it wasn’t too late.

The numbers grew more familiar. These weren’t the graves of strangers. This was where my family rested.

We didn’t have the same kind of markings others had. No simple nameplates. No wooden crosses were made hastily after a rogue attack. No haphazard mounds of soil.

We were Pack elites. Beta bloodline. That meant marble. That meant reserved burial plots. That meant—

Legacy.

A legacy now reduced to dirt and stone. No warmth. No honour.

Tears pricked the corners of my eyes before I could stop them. Not because I was weak—but because I could feel it before I even got there.

The absence.

The silence.

The coldness in the air.

I slowed, my body suddenly too heavy, like the weight of the world had latched onto my shoulders. My knees trembled as I took another step.

And then I saw it.

The space was empty. Eerily, heartbreakingly empty.

No chairs were set out in neat lines for mourners. No pack members gathered in ceremonial silence. No warriors standing shoulder to shoulder to salute him one last time. No Alpha to oversee the ritual.

No one.

Except her.

Louisa.

She was curled in front of a gravestone, sobbing so hard her shoulders trembled violently. Her long dark hair hung like a curtain around her face, shielding her from the world that had failed her.

My breath hitched. I couldn’t hold it in. No. No. No.

The scream that built in my chest tore through me, hoarse and broken.

“No… no… NO!” I choked, stumbling forward as my vision blurred with tears.

Louisa’s head jerked up at the sound, her red-rimmed eyes wide and stunned. She blinked at me like she wasn’t sure I was real.

But I was. Too real. Too late.

I collapsed beside her, my knees hitting the damp earth hard, and then I saw it. Carved in clean, cold stone. His name.

My father. Beta of the Black Claw Pack.

Gone.

Gone, and I wasn’t even there.

Pain bloomed sharp and deep in my chest, a grief so thick it felt like drowning. I turned to Louisa, fury crashing through the heartbreak like a violent wave.

“How could you, Lulu?!” I cried, my voice breaking. “Why didn’t you stop them? Why did you let them put him in before I got here?!”

She didn’t say anything at first. She didn’t have to. The devastation on her face was enough—raw, hollow, aching. Her mouth opened, but no words came. Only sobs. Loud, uncontrollable ones that shook her entire frame. She looked so small. So young. So lost.

And just like that, the anger died. It couldn’t survive next to her grief.

I knew the truth before she even said it.

The school board had been so clear. No absences. No skipping. Not even for a funeral.

They said we couldn’t miss class. That we were setting a “bad precedent.” That education came first.

That we were expected to comply.

Even if our father had just been buried.

I had let Louisa take the bus, since only one seat had been available on such short notice. I’d told her to stall the funeral. To beg the Alpha. To make them wait.

I told her not to let them put him in the ground without me there.

She tried.

But they didn’t care.

“I… I didn’t have a choice,” she sobbed, her voice so thin I barely heard it. “When I got here… there was no one. The grave was already shut.”

No.

That couldn’t be real. That couldn’t be true. My mind rejected it, tried to push it away like a lie. But it was real. It was here, right in front of me.

A broken laugh escaped me. Bitter. Hollow. “Those bastards…”

They buried him like he was nothing. Like he was just another name in the dirt. No tribute. No honour. Not even the decency to wait for his daughters.

My fists clenched so tightly I felt my nails pierce my palms. I welcomed the pain. At least it was real.

They’d erased him. Just like that. As if the Beta of this Pack, my father, meant nothing.

I looked back at Louisa. She was crumpled on the grass now, fingers gripping the hem of her shirt like it was the only thing anchoring her to this world.

And that was when it hit me.

She was all I had left.

No mother. No father. No warm home waiting for us with a fire lit and soup on the stove. Just the two of us now, standing in the ruins of everything we once knew.

I could hear Dad’s voice in my head, the last words he said before he left that day.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Liar.

I wanted to scream. To hit something. To dig up the grave just to see him again, to say goodbye. Even for one minute.

But what would that change?

He was gone.

And they didn’t even grant him his final respect.

Not if I had anything to say about it.

I stood slowly and stepped toward Louisa. Reached down. My hand hovered for a moment before I touched her shoulder.

She looked up at me. Her tear-streaked face was pale, hollow-eyed.

“Come on,” I whispered, barely able to speak past the tightness in my throat. “Let’s go.”

She blinked, confused. “Where?”

I didn’t answer right away. I just pulled her up, gently, and wrapped my arms around her small frame. She melted into me, shaking, sobbing softly now into my shoulder.

I didn’t know where we’d go next.

But one thing was certain.

Someone was going to pay for this.