Chapter 3 WHEN HE FINALLY TOUCHES HER

The first rule Adrian Blackthorne had learned in seven centuries was deceptively simple:

Never touch her first.

It was a rule written in the scars on his soul and the blood on his hands. Every time he found her-every time the universe saw fit to spit her back into existence-Adrian tried to be careful. He tried to be the guardian, the silent observer, the man who waited until she was ready.

But fate was a cruel playwright. Every time he reached for her too soon, the world responded with violence. Sometimes it was an "accident." Sometimes it was a war. Sometimes it was just a sudden, unexplained illness that stole her breath.

Touching her before the bond fully stabilized was like trying to handle raw lightning with bare hands. It accelerated the curse. It pulled the inevitable tragedy forward, like a blade drawn too quickly from its sheath, slicing the hands of those who held it.

And yet-

Rules meant nothing when the soul began to burn.

The hospital corridor smelled of sterile antiseptic, cold metal, and the sharp, sour tang of human fear. It was a place where life and death negotiated on a daily basis, but tonight, the negotiation was over.

Adrian stood at the far end of the hallway, a silhouette of black tailored perfection that felt entirely out of place among the scuffed linoleum and buzzing fluorescent tubes. He was too sharp, too still, too... unmoving. He didn't shift his weight. He didn't blink. He simply existed, a predator in a suit, waiting for the cage to open.

His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his slacks. He kept them there to hide the fine tremor in his fingers-the physical manifestation of a wolf that was currently trying to chew its way out of his ribcage.

The hospital staff felt it. Doctors slowed their pace as they passed him, their conversations dying in their throats. Nurses looked at him once, their eyes widening, before darting away. They didn't know he was a werewolf. They didn't know he was seven hundred years old. But their lizard-brains-the ancient parts of them that still remembered being hunted in the tall grass-told them to run.

Behind the reinforced glass wall of Room 402 lay Lena Ashcroft.

She looked so small. So terribly mortal.

The heart monitor beeped with a rhythmic, mechanical indifference. Beep. Beep. Beep. Every sound was a reminder that her heart was a muscle of flesh and blood, a fragile thing that could stop at any second.

"She's stable, Mr. Blackthorne."

The doctor-a man named Miller who had clearly been woken up at 3:00 AM-stood five feet away, refusing to get closer. He kept looking at the clipboard in his hands as if it were a shield. "But we're seeing things we can't explain. The neurological spikes during her 'collapse'... they shouldn't be possible. It's as if her brain was processing a lifetime of data in three seconds."

Adrian didn't look at him. His eyes were fixed on Lena's pale profile. "And the mark?"

Miller swallowed, the sound audible in the quiet hall. "Yes. The... sigil. It's fascinating, really. It's not a tattoo. It's not a burn. It's as if the pigmentation of her skin has been rearranged from the inside out. It's pulsing, Mr. Blackthorne. It's actually pulsing."

"Leave her," Adrian said. It wasn't a suggestion. It was a command that carried the weight of a king.

"Sir, we need to run more tests-"

Adrian finally turned his head. His eyes weren't gold yet, but they were dark, infinite, and terrifying. "You will leave her room. You will tell your staff that Miss Ashcroft is under my private care. You will take the generous donation I've already wired to this hospital's foundation, and you will forget that anything unusual happened tonight."

Miller opened his mouth to protest, but the words died. He nodded once, jerkily, and turned on his heel, fleeing toward the safety of the nurses' station.

"You're scaring the locals again, Adrian. It's unbecoming."

The voice was cool, weary, and dry as a desert bone.

Morgana Vale stepped out from the shadows of the vending machine alcove. She looked like a woman in her late thirties, dressed in a battered leather jacket and heavy boots, but her eyes held the exhaustion of an era. She was a Truth Keeper-a witch whose line had been tied to Adrian's curse since the very beginning.

"I didn't ask you to be here, Morgana," Adrian said, turning back to the glass.

"No, you just radiated enough psychic distress to wake every sensitive within fifty miles," she replied, leaning against the wall. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, looked at the 'No Smoking' sign, and tucked them away with a sigh. "She's waking up, isn't she?"

"She said my name," Adrian whispered. The admission felt like a confession. "In the museum. Before she ever saw my face."

Morgana's expression shifted from bored to grim. "That's not supposed to happen. Not in Arc One. Not before the first full moon of the cycle. If she's remembering now, the bond is moving at five times its usual speed."

"I know."

"Which means the Order of the Eclipse is already on their way," Morgana continued, her voice dropping an octave. "Lucien won't wait for her to understand who she is. He'll strike while she's still fragile. You know his philosophy: Better to kill the flower than let the forest burn."

Adrian's jaw tightened. The thought of the Hunter, Lucien Hale, near Lena made the air in the hallway turn cold. Small frost patterns began to bloom on the glass partition.

"I will kill him," Adrian said simply.

"You've tried," Morgana reminded him. "In 1612. In 1890. He's as immortal as you are, Adrian, just for different reasons. You can't protect her by playing bodyguard. You have to tell her the truth."

"The truth is what kills her! Every time!" Adrian finally snapped, his voice a low roar that made the lights overhead flicker. "The truth is a weight she can't carry until her power stabilizes. If I tell her she's the Lunar Sovereign, her own mind will tear itself apart trying to house that much divinity."

Morgana looked at Lena, then back at Adrian. Her eyes softened with a pity that Adrian hated. "Maybe. But look at her. She's not the girl from the 1500s anymore. She's not the scholar from the 20s. This world is different. Maybe she's stronger than you think."

Suddenly, the heart monitor inside the room changed.

Beep-beep-beep-beep.

The rhythm accelerated into a frantic staccato.

Adrian moved. He didn't use the door; he moved through the space with a blur of speed that left a vacuum of air in his wake.

Inside the room, the temperature had plummeted. Lena was thrashing against the thin hospital sheets, her dark hair a tangled mess against the white pillow. Her skin was no longer just pale; it was translucent, the silver veins beneath her surface glowing with an ethereal, terrifying light.

"Lena!" Adrian's voice was a plea.

She woke with a scream that tore the air. It wasn't just a sound; it was a release of pressure.

Lena bolted upright, her eyes wide and unfocused. She was gasping for air, her hands clutching at her throat, right where the mark was glowing a fierce, angry silver.

"Fire..." she choked out. "The smell of... the smoke... Adrian!"

She turned her head, her gaze clashing with his.

The world stopped.

The beeping of the monitor, the hum of the city outside, the rustle of the wind-all of it faded into a dull, distant roar. There was only him.

Lena's breath hitched. She didn't look like a woman who had just seen a stranger. She looked like a woman who had finally found the missing piece of a puzzle she'd been working on for a thousand years.

"It's you," she whispered. Her voice was hoarse, raw from screaming. "The man from the snow. The man from the fire."

Adrian stayed at the edge of the bed, his hands clenched at his sides. He was fighting every instinct he possessed to reach out and pull her into his arms. "Lena. You're safe. You're in London. It's 2026."

"No," she said, her eyes filling with tears that shone like mercury. "I'm nowhere. I'm everywhere. Why do I remember your hands? Why do I know the way you smell before you even walk into the room?"

She reached out a trembling hand toward him. "I keep dying, Adrian. Over and over. I see myself falling. I see you catching me. And every time, you're crying. Why are you always crying?"

Adrian felt his heart shatter. It was a familiar sensation, but it never got easier. "Because I am a man who has lived too long, and you are the only thing that makes the years worth counting."

"Who are you?" she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper. "What are you?"

Adrian looked at Morgana, who stood in the doorway, her face unreadable. He looked back at Lena-the girl who didn't believe in monsters, now staring at one.

"I am a werewolf, Lena," he said, the truth finally falling between them like a heavy stone. "I am the Alpha of a pack that died out before your great-grandparents were born. I am an immortal who has loved you for seven centuries."

He expected her to scream. He expected her to call for the nurses.

Instead, Lena let out a short, hysterical laugh. "A werewolf? Really? Not a vampire? Not a ghost?"

"Does it matter?" Adrian asked, stepping closer.

Lena looked down at her hands. They were shaking. "No. Because the weirdest part isn't what you are. It's what I am."

She looked up at him, and for the first time, the fear in her eyes was replaced by something much more dangerous: Awareness.

"I'm not just a security guard, am I?" she asked. "When that pendant broke... I felt something click. Like a lock being turned. I feel... powerful, Adrian. And I feel so, so angry."

"The Sovereign," Morgana whispered from the door. "She's waking up."

Adrian's eyes flashed a brilliant, lethal gold. "Lena, listen to me. You have to stay calm. Your power-it's tied to your emotions. If you let it out now, before you're ready, the Order will find us."

"Let them find us!" Lena cried, her voice echoing with a strange, metallic resonance. The glass of the water pitcher on her bedside table began to spiderweb with cracks. "I'm tired of running! I'm tired of dying! I want to know why this is happening!"

She lunged forward, reaching for his hand.

"Lena, don't!" Adrian warned, but he was too slow-or perhaps, deep down, he didn't want to be fast enough.

Their fingers met.

The contact was a detonation.

It wasn't a touch; it was a collision of two celestial bodies. A shockwave of silver and gold light exploded from the point of contact, ripping outward with enough force to shatter the lightbulbs in the ceiling. The glass rained down like glowing snow.

Lena's head snapped back, her body arching as the bond finally, violently, slammed into place.

THE MEMORY STORM

It wasn't a vision this time. It was a deluge.

She saw them in a garden in 14th-century Italy, sharing a peach beneath a canopy of vines. She felt the sweetness of the fruit on her tongue. She saw them on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic, huddling together against the spray of salt water as they fled a plague. She saw them in a small cottage in the English countryside, Adrian reading to her by candlelight while she knitted a blanket for a baby that would never be born.

Every kiss. Every argument. Every moment of mundane, beautiful life they had managed to steal between the tragedies.

It all hit her in a single, crushing second.

She felt Adrian's grief-seven hundred years of it. She felt the weight of every grave he had stood over. She felt the sheer, agonizing depth of his devotion.

And then, she felt the Sovereign.

Deep inside her, something massive and celestial uncurled its wings. It was a cold, lunar power that didn't care about "Lena." It cared about the stars. It cared about balance. It cared about the fact that it had been imprisoned in mortal flesh for far too long.

Adrian let out an inhuman roar as the power surged through him as well. He wasn't just an Alpha anymore; he was the anchor for a goddess. He gripped her hands, his claws extending, his face shifting into something more lupine, more ancient.

The room was a vortex of wind and light.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, it stopped.

The silence that followed was deafening. The hospital room was a wreck-glass everywhere, the monitors fried, the walls scorched by the sheer intensity of the energy release.

Lena sat there, her hands still locked in Adrian's. She wasn't shaking anymore.

She looked at him, and her eyes were no longer brown. They were the color of the moon during an eclipse-a shimmering, liquid silver.

"I remember," she said. Her voice was different. It carried the weight of centuries.

She looked at the mark on her chest, which was now glowing with a steady, permanent light.

"I remember why I chose this," she whispered, looking back at Adrian. "I chose to be human so I could love you. But the universe... the universe wouldn't let me."

She squeezed his hands, her grip surprisingly strong. "They're coming, Adrian. I can feel them. Lucien and the others. They're in the parking lot."

Adrian stood up, pulling her with him. He didn't care about the doctors or the nurses or the mess. He only cared about the woman who was finally, truly back in his arms.

"Let them come," Adrian growled, his golden eyes glowing in the wreckage of the room. "I've spent seven hundred years learning how to kill them. This time, we aren't the prey."

Morgana stepped into the room, her hand hovering over a dagger hidden in her jacket. "We need to move. Now. The hospital isn't a fortress."

Lena looked at the window. The moon was still red, but as she watched, a ripple of silver passed over its surface.

"No," Lena said, a small, dark smile touching her lips. "I'm done being protected. Adrian, give me your coat."

"What?"

"We're walking out the front door," Lena said, her voice filled with a new, terrifying authority. "And if they want the Sovereign, they're going to have to go through the Moon first."

Adrian stared at her, a mixture of awe and absolute terror filling his chest.

She wasn't the girl who didn't believe in monsters anymore.

She was the monster's queen.