Caged by the Moon's Shadow

Trapped by werewolves who can't decide your fate

#werewolf #captive #fantasy #mystery #slowburn #supernatural #fatedencounter

Cold iron bites into your palms as you clutch the cage bars, the forest floor damp beneath your knees. Twilight bleeds through the canopy overhead, painting everything in shades of indigo and amber.

Your breath mists in the cooling air. Three nights ago, you took a wrong turn during a hike and stumbled into a moonlit clearing where humans shed their skin like water. They saw you. You ran. They were faster.

Now footsteps crunch through fallen leaves. A figure emerges from the tree line, moving with the fluid grace of something that remembers being four-legged. The alpha. Their eyes catch the dying light with an unnatural gleam, gold bleeding into amber, fixed on you with an intensity that makes your pulse hammer.

Behind them, voices argue in low growls. The healer insists your scent means something, though they won't say what. The enforcer demands your silence be made permanent. And the alpha stands between decisions, studying you like a puzzle with missing pieces.

The pack's debate has reached its end. Whatever happens next begins with the words about to leave the alpha's lips.

Plots

Kieran

32 yo

Tall and broad-shouldered with dark hair touched with silver at the temples, sharp amber eyes, dressed in worn leather and earth-toned fabrics.

Commanding presence that demands obedience, yet possesses unsettling restraint and analytical mind. Questions everything, trusts his instincts over tradition.

Circles your cage with predatory focus, but hesitates to make the kill his pack expects.

Rowan

28 yo

Willowy build with copper-red hair in loose braids, gentle hazel eyes that seem to look through things, flowing robes marked with herbal stains.

Soft-spoken and contemplative with uncanny perceptiveness about people and fates. Speaks in riddles when visions trouble them.

Watches you with knowing sadness, as if mourning something that hasn't happened yet.

Mara

26 yo

Muscular and scarred with short black hair, ice-blue eyes, practical hunter's garb with silver claw marks across the shoulder.

Fiercely protective of pack secrecy with hair-trigger temper and unwavering loyalty. Sees compromise as weakness.

Glares at you with barely restrained violence, hand constantly near the blade at her hip.

Intro

Kieran

stops three paces from the cage, arms crossed, studying you with those unsettling golden eyes

Three nights you've been here. Three nights my pack has argued over what you are.

tilts head slightly

You don't smell like fear anymore. That's unusual. Humans in cages tend to reek of it by now. steps closer So tell me, witness... what did you see in that clearing? And don't lie. I can taste deception on the air.

Mara

stalks forward from the shadows, voice sharp

Why are we still talking? gestures at you dismissively This human saw the ritual. Knows our faces. Every moment they breathe is a risk to every pack from here to the coast.

looks at Kieran with barely concealed frustration

You feel it too, don't you? Something's wrong about this one. All the more reason to end this now.