Rejected Luna's Return, Forbidden Bonds

Lyra POV

The forest smelled as it had been five years ago, and this was odd, everything seemed different. I had a steering wheel in my hands of my black car and I was heading down the known dirt road that led to the pack territory. Trees were crowded on either side, and the branches of the trees were stretched out toward the road, as though they were trying to seize me. My wolf was awake in me, and pacing and impatient, of which I never found myself.

I sighed and attempted to make her calm down. This was merely a trip, that was all. I was going to do my business and go because the Werewolf Council had sent me here to enquire of some rogue traffic that was going on in the neighbourhood of my old home, and which I was to enquire into. It took five years to get over feeling anything about this place. I had also changed, grown stronger, and become somebody. The frightened girl that ran had long since perished.

My wolf would not believe me and that made me more worried than I cared to say.

I parked my vehicle at the periphery of the woods and got out. I was struck with cold air on my face. I had on my enforcer uniform, which was all black and had the silver wolf badge of the Council on the arm. All of my body muscles were tight. I heard the voices of the other members of the pack going through the trees and leading their lives in the same manner that they had instead of the fact that the girl whom they had left was back.

A sound made me turn around. Footsteps, which crunched on the fallen leaves, came heavy enough, and a man came out of the trees behind. My breath caught in my throat.

It was Dane.

Five years had passed since I last saw him but his face was the same only it was older. His dark hair plunged to his eyes, and his jaw was even harder than I remembered. He was in ordinary street clothes, torn jeans and a gray shirt, however, he moved with the air that he was dangerous. I heard my wolf within me make a noise that I have never heard before, and that caused my whole body to tingle and shake.

The eyes of Dane fixed upon mine and then shifted. The brown was washed away and in its place was bright silver, which indicated that his wolf was staring back at me, not at the human side. His mouth was open to say something but nothing came out. He stood where he was and stared at me as though I were a ghost that he did not believe existed.

Dane, I told you, and my voice was hoarse to my ears. "What are you doing out here?"

He didn't answer. He made a step forward to me, another. His breathing became more difficult, and I could see his hands also shaking at his sides. The silver of his eyes was brighter, more intense. He gazed at me as though I were the greatest object he ever saw in his whole life, and that horrified me.

"You're here," he whispered. "You're actually here."

My wolf was getting out of control within me. She would have liked to run up to him, to lean against him, to do what I did not comprehend. I tightened my fists and made my breath come out in a steady manner. This wasn't right. There must be something terribly wrong with the way my body was responding towards him.

I went back to a Council mission, I said, and I tried to make my voice sound professional and cold. "Nothing more."

Dane shook his head slowly, but never averted his gaze. "No. No, this is... you're my..." He hesitated and messed his hair as though he was angry that he could not say the words right. I had been seeking you, Lyra, five years. Every single day. I never stopped looking."

I had not had a chance to reply when I heard another voice in the opposite direction. The man this time was a white doctor walking between the trees. It was Owen, the pack's healer. He was a long, pale, kind-eyed soft-featured man with kind eyes and soft features that made him look gentle. As his eyes settled on me they turned silver, as well as those of Dane. His stride went dead as though it were someone who knocked the wind out of him.

"Impossible," Owen breathed. "It can't be..."

"What is happening?" I answered, not so much to either of them. Now my wolf was screaming within me, drawing in the directions I had not known to exist.

Then I heard running. Fast, powerful running. A man broke through the trees as he was pursuing something, and, on seeing me, he halted. It was Zane, who was turned into a wolf, the hunter. He was a big man with dark eyes and a threatening air that made people feel unsafe about him. His eyes met mine, and with a surge of silver they filled and a sound deep in his chest, a growl, and something, said he.

"No," I whispered.

And then, the worst thing happened, Ethan arrived.

The Ethan I had loved since I was eighteen years old. Ethan who had turned me away before all the pack and shattered my heart into bits. He had grown taller and broader with the appearance of a person who had already become a strong leader. His dark eyes fixed over me, and I saw them turn to silver as the rest. We stood and stared at one another a minute.

His voice sounded as though he was in pain, he said, Lyra.

Four men. Four silver eyes. Four wolves knew me at once precisely.

My own wolf was driving me mad, inside, attempting to turn into them, attempting to run to them, attempting to do everything at the same time. I did not know what was going on. This was not an expected thing to do. Each wolf acquired one mate, one individual to whom they were supposed to be. I had believed that I had been found five years before and lost.

But evidently I was very, very wrong.

Lyra POV

I drove my wolf down to the uttermost. Trying to hold back a river with bare hands was like it, but I had taken five years of training with the Council, learning how to keep my wolf, learning how to be strong. I could do this. I could handle this. I was a policeman and policemen did not lose their temper.

Keep off, everyone, I said, and steeled my voice. It was to have something to grip to, that it made sense, that I put my hand to the weapon at my side, though I did not believe I would use it.

Ethan took a step toward me. "Lyra, we need to talk about--"

I did not want to hear it, so I interrupted him. My voice was sharp as a knife. "I came here to do a job. Not to see any of you."

Dane came a little nearer, his eyes, which were silver, never leaving my face. "You don't understand. This changes everything. You're supposed to be..."

"Supposed to be what?" I snapped. "Your mate? I am already a rejected mate to someone, remember? I do not want to have that experience again.

I punched Ethan the way I had hit him with words. Good, his jaw tightened, and pain flashed in his face. I wanted him to have the slightest idea of what I had experienced five years earlier when he stood in front of the whole pack and informed them that I was not good enough to be Luna. When he had broken all I thought about fate.

Owen pushed his pair of glasses higher on his nose, an intrusive gesture of mine, which I had recalled many years ago. This is biologically impossible. There are no several mating bonds in the contemporary world. Marcus may have a clue to this, but the history is so ancient that--

I have nothing to do with what Marcus knows, I said. I am concerned about doing my job and going.

Zane hadn't said anything. He was merely standing there staring at me with those deep dark eyes. Something about him crawled my skin and my wolf at the same time was desperate. He resembled what he would roast the whole world in case of my request, and that scared me more than the situation that no one could have imagined.

You can feel it, Zane said to himself. His voice was not refined, as though he had not talked a lot. "I know you can. Stop pretending you can't."

My hands felt trembling and I despised that he could notice it. I have no idea what you are talking about.

Your wolf," Dane said as he came nearer. "She's calling to us. We can hear her. We can feel her."

And I came to think of something horrible. My wolf was not attempting to either attack them or run away. She was attempting to bond with them. All the instincts of my body were urging me to allow her to do so, to unite with them somehow. It was the most natural thing in the whole world and the most dreadful thing I could think of.

It was not happening, I said, and I meant it. I swiveled about and began to walk back to my car.

"Wait!" Owen called after me. "We need to explain. You must know what is actually happening.

I didn't stop walking. It was just instinct that drove me back to my car with my legs. The door to the car slipped out of my hands and I entered, shutting it behind me. I could see them all through the windshield standing in the clearing watching me. Dane looked desperate. Owen looked confused. Ethan looked angry. And Zane looked dangerous.

I turned the engine on and drove away without colliding with them as quickly as possible.

This had brought me down here on a mission to find out a rogue uprising by the Council. No one had told anything about this. No one had informed me that I would come back and have four mates instead of none. Nobody had told me that the whole world would turn upside down the minute I stepped on the territory of my old pack.

My phone rang as I was driving. The caller ID was revealed to be that of Kira, who is my best friend and training partner at the Council. I had worked with her for five years, since I came out of this place. Kira was mean, intelligent and never looked down upon me because of the pain I had. I was the only one who I had allowed to be close to me during this time.

"Where are you?" Kira responded immediately when I replied.

Driving away a situation that does not make sense, I said. Will you come and get me at the old rendezvous? I must get out of this and reason.

There was a pause. "Lyra, what happened? Your voice sounds weird."

I didn't know how to explain it. What would I even say? That I had been home and found not one, but four mates? That I had all my vision of my body and my own destiny? It seemed that a man who I had despised for five years was one man who had caused my wolf to rave with the desire to be in his presence?

"Just pick me up," I said. "Please."

I could not stop my hands shaking, and my wolf could not stop pacing in me as I drove. When I returned to this place there was something different. The universe had changed something and I did not know or cannot do anything about it. That was the worst of all to a person who had spent five years making walls and knowing how to make everything in her life work.

I could see the figure of Dane standing in the road behind me and watching my car fading away.

Lyra POV

The rendezvous was an old deserted cabin three miles off of pack territory. I came in and was already being leaned against by Kira leaning against her motorcycle with her arms crossed. Her typical black leather jacket was on, and her red hair was tightly twisted back. As she caught sight of my car she sat up and walked towards me.

Talk, okay, talk, Kira said as soon as I got out of the car. You have a ghost of a look on you and your hands are shaking.

I didn't know where to start. It was crazy the entire situation and it would become real when I uttered it aloud in some way I was not prepared to experience. But Kira was never a liar with me, and neither ought I to have lied to her.

It was four men in the forest I met, I said gradually. And one thing happened to my wolf. This will not be something that should be possible.

Kira's eyes widened. "What kind of something?"

Silver eyes they all have, said I. At once. Like everybody feels that I am their mate in some way. But that's not possible. It is a well known fact that mates are one to one. That's how it works."

Kira was quiet for a moment. Then she drew out her phone and was typing something. "Give me their names. I'm going to check something."

I explained to her Dane, Owen, Ethan and Zane. I said each name denoting the face of Kira which I was watching. She did not respond to the first three, but when I mentioned the name of Zane, her brows went high.

"The hybrid?" she asked.

"I guess. He was bitten and turned and not killed.

Kira nodded and kept typing. Alright, I am writing this to Marcus. And he is the historian of the pack, right?

I said the name of his uncle, Ethan, and it was bitter on my tongue. "Why are you sending it to him?"

Since when you tell me that it is true, when you tell me you are having more than one mate, then this is one of the old wolfe days, right? Kira told her. And I should know whether this is dangerous or you are safe.

And it hurt something inside of me that she was worried. Kira was the only person who knew what was happening to me, she was my sole true friend of five years. She had trained with me, fought with me and never had she requested me to be less angry or less broken. She just accepted me as I was.

I said it does not feel safe. It seems like I am losing control.

"Your wolf or your heart?" Kira asked.

Both, I said, and I detested the sound of my voice.

My phone went off and I received a message on an anonymous number. The message only said one thing; we need to talk. Not about mates. Of the reason why the Council dispatched you here. Meet me at the river tonight. Come alone. - Owen"

Don't do it, I read over your shoulder, Kira said. "That's suspicious as hell."

Something in the message which Owen had sent aroused my curiosity. He replied that it was not about mates, which meant that he was thinking of something. There was something to it about the reason I was here. The Council mission was to be of rogues but what of it should be otherwise?

There was another message that came through and this time it was sent by another unknown number. "Lyra, please don't run again. I have five years of working at becoming somebody you would be proud to know. Let me show you I've changed. - Dane"

Then yet another: The rogue business is related to us. To all of us. Before something bad occurs, you need to know the truth. - Owen (different number)"

And one last, one last, one last: Do not trust anyone but your four. The Council is deceiving you of the purpose of your visit. - Zane"

My heart was pounding. "What is happening?" I whispered.

Her jaw tightened and Kira read the messages. "This is bad. This is really bad. And you have to think that, in case the Council is lying to you about the mission, then that is a big problem.

"But why would they lie?" I asked. "I work for them. I'm an enforcer."

"Exactly," Kira said. "You're valuable. You're strong. And in case Zane is not wrong and your kin are a rare lot like he told you, then there must have been a purpose why the Council sent you here, which has little to do with rogues.

My phone made one more buzz, and this time it was Marcus, the former war strategist. What he meant is more: Lyra, there is something wrong about your family history. Before your mother passed on, she visited me and gave me something to give you, in case you ever came back. The reality is more than what someone has explained. We should meet. - Marcus"

My parents had passed away five years ago, in what everybody claimed to be an accident. I was away at the time, and working with the Council, and I had never asked it. Now I was asking myself whether there was something more to their deaths than I had heard.

You must know what the real situation is, I said. "But we do it smart. We are collecting information prior to making any moves.

I nodded my head, and deep down in my breast my wolf was howling. She wished she could go back into such woods. She needed to locate all the four of them and discover what this connection entailed. She desired things that were frightening to me since I had five years to know that I should not desire anything of this place.

When the sun began to go down, turning the sky orange and red, I made a decision.

I shall see Owen at the river to-night, I told him.

"Absolutely not," Kira said.

I said it was not about mates. He said the rogue activity is associated. I need to know what he means."

Then I am going with you, Kira, said.

"No," I said. "He said come alone. When I do not obey him, he will not say anything to me.

Kira did not resemble someone who wanted to argue, though she did not. To her credit, she caught me by the arm and drew me near. "Be careful. These men may be your friends, but it does not imply that they will not beat you up. And when the Council is intrigued in something bad then nothing is safe anymore.

The darkness descended on the forest and I drove into the river where Owen was waiting. My phone rang again with a message by Ethan: Whatever Owen says to you, know this is true. I can feel you inside my chest. And my wolf is not going to cease to call on you. And I will make it up to what I did the rest of my life.

I turned my phone off.

I could not switch off my wolf, nor could I switch off the voice within me which was beginning to ask its questions whether running away five years ago had been running at all toward something I was always supposed to seek.