Page 88 of Rising Luna
She had let me go, knowing exactly where I would end up, drawn to my powerful mates. An alpha and two betas, each formidable enough to command their own packs. Their strength bled into me, amplifying my own power until I became something greater, something unstoppable. But it wasn’t fate. It was a carefully laid trap, and I had walked straight into it. Therealization curdled in my gut, thick with regret. Someone played me, and worse, I let it happen.
Especially now, as I could feel the fire of the serum burning through my veins and pushing to bring that wall down.
There was no stopping it. It was already in my blood, surging through my veins with ruthless intent. In mere minutes, it would tear down the wall between me and my wolf, swallowing me whole. My existence would fade, consumed by the shift. The thought sent tears streaming down my face. I was about to lose everything—myself, my mates, our bond. The boys would have no choice but to reject me, severing our connection just to keep from being ensnared by this damn thing. I didn’t even know for sure if that’s how it worked, but if it did, Lupe would have won more than just a battle. She’d have secured her greatest victory yet.
Fight this, Dylan! Push to keep the control!My wolf screamed in my head.
What? Before, the bond felt distant, muffled, as if she were just out of reach. But now it was wide open, her voice cutting through with clarity. That had to be a good thing, right? If she was talking to me, it meant she wasn’t trying to seize control. She was still here, still listening.
I don’t want this, Dylan! Fight! Keep the control level where it is!
Holding on felt impossible. Every inch of me was aflame, wracked with relentless agony. Even the effort of speaking through the bond sent shockwaves of torment through my body, black creeping into the edges of my vision like a slow eclipse. There was no middle ground. I either fought through it or let it take me.
And I had no plans to die today.
Mentally, I pushed for control over my wolf, visualizing me wrapping my arms around her and holding her to the ground.It was the same method I did when she first came to me, and it worked then. She respected me with my approach and she worked with me to bring us to a balance.
Sure, there were moments where she liked to have fun. My astral form was something I learned how to control while I was here. But it was my mates who showed me how balanced I could be. They gave me the strength I didn’t know I needed to get me to where I was now.
My wolf shoved against the barrier, and the moment she did, something fractured inside me. Power ripped through my body, violent and unrelenting, forcing a scream from my throat as searing pain split my mind in two. Voices erupted around me, shouting and snarling, but their sources blurred into nothingness. Darkness bled into my vision, swallowing everything as I tumbled into the void, weightless, untethered. The bond stretched, pulled in jagged directions, twisting me apart. And yet, my wolf’s presence wasn’t sharpening my senses as it should; it was dragging me deeper, drowning me in the chaos.
GONE.
This wasn’t working. If I was going to fight this, I had to stop resisting on this plane.
I needed my wolf.
She was my best chance. I hadn’t done this often, but there was no other choice. I focused, pulling myself toward the space where I could truly see her, where I could speak to her without the noise tearing me apart. It took longer than usual, the pain and chaos dragging at me, but I pushed through. And then, finally, her presence surged around me, her energy cocooning me, wrapping me in its warmth like a shield against the storm.
Then turned into being tightened with a rope.
I dropped to my knees, my vision snapping into focus as my wolf’s howl ripped through the air. Blinking away the black hazeclinging to my eyelids, I sucked in a sharp breath at the sight before me. It was like I stepped into an alternate reality. Instead of the usual plane where it felt like a void of nothing outside of my wolf, I saw my house and the open yard before the trees of the surrounding woods. There wasn’t a battle between two sides any longer, but just one wolf with foes surrounding her.
My wolf.
She stood, her coat darker than the depths of the night, surrounded by shifting shadows that crashed into her from all sides. Snarling, she snapped her jaws, lunging at anything that dared come close. But for every strike she landed, more pressed in, an endless tide. Her yelps echoed through me, tearing from my throat as if they were my own.
Desperate, I ran to her, swiping at the figures, but my hands passed through nothing; just wisps of smoke, untouchable, relentless.
What the fuck? What are these things?
It’s the power of the serum trying to take me over!
Oh hell no!
It didn’t look like there was much I could do to help my wolf, but it didn’t stop me from trying. Using my hands and legs, I punched and kicked as they came near her. My body went through them, but it at least kept them from touching her. I took on two from one side just to give her a breather, but when I looked back at her, she looked exhausted. She panted and her movements were slower. The way she attacked made it clear she had reached a level of fatigue that would cause her to lose if I didn’t do something.
But what the hell could I do?
This plane was nothing like our world. Here, I was a foreign presence—powerless, untethered. My magic, my strength, all of it came from my wolf, and without her, I was just a human. And in a place like this, being human was a liability. A deathsentence if I wasn’t careful. I had no weapon, no shield, and no way to help my trapped, fighting wolf.
There had to be a way—there had to be. This wasn’t how the serum worked for others. It wasn’t supposed to do this. But if it was tearing into my wolf like this, if she was on the brink of collapse, then this wasn’t me losing myself to her. No—this was something else entirely. And if I didn’t figure out what that meant, I might lose her for good.
I would lose her entirely.
Maybe this was Lupe’s plan all along. Had I become too much of a threat—too unpredictable, too powerful? Was this her way of eliminating me? As I kept battling the spirits, the realization struck like a dagger: they weren’t just attacking my wolf. They were wearing me down, draining me in ways she couldn’t. My wolf was tiring, struggling to hold them at bay—but maybe that was the point. Fending them off prevented her from helping me.
This time when they attacked, I felt their claws through my skin, blood dripping down to the ground. These spirits could do whatever they wanted to me in here, and it looked to me they were choosing to kill me.
