Chapter Fifty:
The atmosphere in the cramped, tile-lined restroom was suffocating, thick with the chemical tang of cheap bleach and the copper sharp scent of rising fear. Luna’s grip on Damien’s throat was absolute; her fingers dug into the soft tissue with a hydraulic strength that defied every mory he held of the girl she used to be. The girl who used to flinch at loud noises was gone, replaced by sothing that looked human but felt like a landslide of cold stone.
"But Stephanie said... she said you died," Damien wheezed, his eyes bulging as he stared into the face of a ghost. His hands clawed uselessly at her wrist, his fingernails scraping against her skin, but it was like trying to move a pillar of solid iron.
Luna tilted her head, a cold, predatory glint dancing in her amber eyes. "I suppose everyone expected to stay in the ground," she replied, her voice a low, lodic vibration that seed to rattle the very tiles behind his head. "But the world isn’t always that kind, Damien. So things don’t stay buried when they have a debt to collect."
She leaned in closer, her breath cold against his cheek. "Quiet," she hissed. "Make another sound, and I’ll rip your throat out before the bell rings for next period. No one is coming to save you."
"You... you wouldn’t dare," Damien gasped, his voice a ragged shadow of its forr bravado. "If you kill here... the school... the police... you’ll never get away with it."
Luna’s lips curled into a smirk that didn’t reach her eyes—it was the expression of soone who had seen the bottom of the abyss and brought a piece of the darkness back with her. "Seems you forget how easily the world can be deceived. You were always so focused on the surface, weren’t you? It wasn’t Luna who followed you into this bathroom. It was Vanessa. Everyone in the courtyard saw her pulling you away. If a body is found, it’s her life they’ll ruin, not mine. I’m already a ghost, Damien. You can’t kill what isn’t there."
Damien’s heart hamred against his ribs like a trapped bird. "But could you really do that? Could you bear the guilt of destroying an innocent person’s life just for a petty grudge?"
Luna’s expression shifted instantly, the smirk vanishing into a void of chilling seriousness. "Innocent?" she repeated, the word sounding like a terminal insult. "If getting what I want ant burning this entire school to the ground with everyone inside..." She paused, her eyes flashing with a sudden, violent gold light that illuminated the dim room. "Let’s just say everyone here would have been dead ten tis over by now. Don’t mistake my patience for morality. I am not the girl who sat in the back of the class and took your insults with a lowered head. I am the thing that hunts the things you fear."
What the hell happened to her? Damien thought, his mind reeling as his oxygen began to thin. This wasn’t a girl; this was sothing ancient. Sothing hungry.
"What do you want with ?" Damien choked out, his vision beginning to blur at the edges. "I wasn’t the one who killed you. I didn’t pull the trigger that night."
"But you almost did," Luna countered, her grip tightening until Damien’s face turned a bruised purple. "You poisoned . Or have you forgotten our little ’date’ in the lab? You watched suffer with a smile on your face."
"That... that wasn’t poison," he struggled to say, his hands beginning to go limp.
"Maybe not," Luna whispered, her voice dropping to a terrifying intimacy, "but it hurt like hell. It felt like my veins were being filled with liquid glass and fire. You enjoyed watching break."
"I was only doing as I was told!" Damien cried out, a crack of pure desperation in his voice.
Luna’s eyes narrowed into slits. "Who sent you? And more importantly, how the hell are you still standing? John killed you. I saw your body fall. I heard the life leave your lungs."
She saw the hesitation in his eyes and realized he couldn’t speak while she was crushing his windpipe. "I’m going to let go," she warned, her claws elongating just enough to graze his skin, drawing a thin line of blood. "But if you try to run, or if you try to scream, I won’t hesitate to sever your head from your shoulders right here on the tiles. I can be out the window before your body hits the floor."
She released him. Damien collapsed to the floor, clutching his throat, gasping for air and coughing violently. The sound echoed painfully in the small space. Luna didn’t give him a second to recover. She bent down, her shadow looming over him like a burial shroud.
"Talk. Who do you work for?"
Damien looked up, the bravado of the star athlete completely shattered. He looked small, pathetic. "The Hunter Association," he whispered.
Luna paused, the na echoing in her mind. It felt heavy, laden with a history she didn’t yet understand. "What is the Hunter Association?"
Damien hesitated, his eyes darting toward the door, calculating the distance. Luna didn’t wait for him to find his courage. In one fluid motion, she drove the five obsidian claws of her right hand deep into his thigh.
Damien let out a strangled groan of agony, his body convulsing as the sharp points pierced muscle and grazed bone. He tried to scream, but the sound died in his constricted throat.
"Talk," Luna commanded, her voice as sharp as the steel in his leg. "I don’t have ti to play gas with you, Damien. My patience died with the girl you knew. Every second you waste is another inch of bone I’ll chip away."
"They... they are a group!" Damien gasped, tears of pain pricking his eyes. "Elite personnel. They’re responsible for general human safety... protecting the world from creatures like you. From the monsters that hide in the dark."
Luna twisted her claws, earning another muffled scream that ended in a whimper. "You think I’m stupid? You’re eighteen. You’re a high school kid who spends more ti at parties and chasing girls than in training. Why would a ’global elite’ organization hire a boy like you? You’re a decorative piece at best."
"Yes! It’s true!" Damien yelled, his hands hovering over his bleeding leg but not daring to touch her. "It’s because I awakened! I’m a Ki user! I have the potential!"
So the people who invaded our territory... the ones who hurt the clan... they belonged to this Association, Luna thought. The puzzle pieces were finally clicking into place, revealing a much larger, much deadlier picture than she had imagined. The world wasn’t just werewolves and humans; it was an organized war.
"So you humans have your own Awakening Ceremony?" she asked, her voice cold.
"What ceremony?" Damien asked, his voice shaking with tremors of shock.
"If you don’t have a ritual, then how do you awaken your Ki? How do you steal power from the world?"
"I don’t know! It just... happens," Damien said, his breathing shallow and rapid. "So people awaken when they’re kids. So awaken late. It’s different for everyone, but it’s always hereditary. My father was a Hunter. His father was a Hunter. It’s in the blood, Luna. You can’t train for it; you’re either born with the spark or you aren’t."
Luna looked him over with a look of pure disdain. "If you’re a Ki user, why are you so pathetic? I’ve t a Ki user recently, and trust , he was anything but weak. He was a storm of blades and intent. You’re just a puddle."
Damien laughed weakly, a bitter, self-deprecating sound that turned into a cough. "I’m just a Level One. A ’Seed.’ I’m barely stronger than an average human. I was just a scout. They don’t send the big guns for a routine check."
"So the Association sent a scout to kill a ’nobody’ like ? Why would they care about a girl living in the suburbs? Why waste the resources?"
"Actually," Damien said, his voice dropping as he looked at the blood pooling on the floor, "the first ti I tried to kill you, I wasn’t even on a mission. The Association didn’t even know you existed. I was just trying to make a quick buck. I wanted to sell your parts on the black market. Turns out werewolves are rare in this sector. Certain collectors... they’re willing to pay a fortune for a hide or a heart. I thought you were an easy paycheck."
Luna felt a surge of cold, white-hot fury. The idea that her life had been reduced to a bounty, a commodity to be traded by a boy who wanted a faster car or a better watch, made her Silver Will thrash beneath her skin. "So to you, I was nothing more than a pig waiting for slaughter? A trophy to be carved up?"
Damien let out a sarcastic, wheezing laugh, his desperation turning into a weird sort of honesty. "Yeah. You were. You were just a lucky bitch who got away because of that freak you were with. You were so easy to track, Luna. So easy to fool. You walked right into every trap I set."
The insult snapped the last thread of Luna’s restraint. She drove her claws deeper, twisting them with a slow, agonizing deliberation until Damien let out a sound that was more animal than human.
"How did you know I was a werewolf?" she hissed, her face inches from his. "I was careful. I suppressed my scent."
"Rember chemistry lab?" Damien gasped, his face slick with sweat. "A month before you disappeared? We sat together during that long experint. You started coughing uncontrollably. You thought it was the fus from the beakers, didn’t you? You thought the ventilation was just bad."
Luna rembered. The burning in her lungs, the sudden dizziness that had made her world tilt. She had blad it on the sulfuric acid they were using. "Yeah."
"It wasn’t the chemicals," Damien said, a twisted pride flickering in his eyes even through the pain. "It was a specialized spray. Wolfsbane concentrate. Every Hunter in the Association carries it as a perfu or a lingering mist. we spray it on our clothes, our lockers, the hallways. If soone reacts to it—if they choke or their eyes water—we know exactly what they are. You reacted like a dying dog in a gas chamber. You were so stupid back then, so oblivious. What the hell happened to you in that forest?"
Luna leaned in, her breath cold against his ear, her voice a promise of nightmares. "I was hunted until there was nothing left of the girl you knew. Then I was sent to hell, and I crawled back up through the dirt. And I didn’t co back alone, Damien. I brought the forest with ."
Damien’s eyes went wide, his pupils pinpricks of terror. "Wait... what?"
"Now it’s your turn," Luna said, her voice dropping to a terrifying whisper that seed to swallow the light in the room. "Tell how a dead boy is sitting in a bathroom talking to . How did you escape the grave, Damien? Because I know for a fact your heart stopped beating. Tell the truth, or I’ll make sure the next ti you die, there isn’t enough of you left to put in a coffin."
Damien stared at her, his mouth agape. He realized then that he wasn’t talking to a classmate. He was talking to a force of nature that had finally found its teeth
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