Ronan came for her at sunrise.
No guards. No formal request. No warning.
Just a heavy fist pounding on her door, the kind of knock that didn't ask—it demanded. The sound rattled through the small space like thunder wrapped in bone.
Lyra jolted upright, Lucien's dagger still clenched in her hand beneath the pillow.
Another knock.
Harder.
"I said open the door," Ronan growled from the other side, voice ragged with something that wasn't just anger.
She didn't move at first. Her blood was already pounding. Her ribs still ached from yesterday's clash with Silas and Dorian. And now, the warhound had come knocking.
She slid the blade beneath her pillow and rose, brushing tangled hair out of her face with one hand. She padded to the door, unhurried.
And opened it.
Ronan stood there like a storm still caught in its cage.
His shirt was unbuttoned halfway, exposing the hard, scarred lines of his chest. His boots were caked in mud. A fresh scratch ran down the side of his jaw, half-healed, like he'd fought something with teeth and barely cared.
"Hope you slept well," she said dryly.
"Move," he snapped.
"You're not exactly a morning person, are you?"
He grabbed her arm—not enough to bruise, but enough to make a point—and yanked her into the hall.
She didn't resist.
She let him.
Because that was always how you made the wolf lose control.
Make him think he's in charge.
Then take everything away.
He dragged her toward the lower courtyard—past the atrium, the northern halls, down into the stone-ringed pit where the Pack trained their soldiers.
The training circle was empty at this hour. The air was cool, thick with mist. Moss slicked the cracks in the stone underfoot. The sky above hung gray and heavy, as if holding its breath.
Ronan shoved her into the ring.
She stumbled forward, but stayed upright, spine straightening like a blade drawn free.
She turned.
He was already pacing like a beast caged too long.
"Fight me," he said.
Lyra raised an eyebrow. "What, no breakfast first?"
"You think this is a game."
"No," she said calmly. "I think you don't like the fact that someone else touched what you think belongs to you."
His eyes darkened.
"You belong to the Pack."
"I belong to no one." Her voice cut through the air like flint on steel.
That was the moment the crack formed.
Not in her.
In him.
His body went still. A quiet, awful stillness. And then—
He lunged.
She dodged. Barely.
His fist swept past her face like a cannonball. She ducked, turned, caught his next movement in her peripheral vision—then dropped to the ground and rolled away.
Ronan was fast.
Too fast.
But brute force didn't scare her.
She met it with movement. Precision. Rage honed into something colder.
He tried to catch her again—this time she spun behind him and slammed her elbow into his side.
He grunted, not from pain but from surprise.
"You're getting slow," she taunted.
He growled—a low, brutal sound—and charged again.
This time, he caught her.
She hit the wall of the ring with a thud, his arm pressing across her chest, pinning her like a warning.
His breath was hot against her face.
"You don't get to turn us into your game pieces," he hissed.
"And yet," she said through her teeth, "you keep playing."
She didn't struggle.
She studied.
Where he was standing. Where his weight shifted. Where his knees bent.
And then she moved.
Fast.
She dropped down, twisted her body, and slammed her foot into his leg hard enough to throw off his stance. As he staggered, she elbowed his side again and drove her knee up—
Right between his legs.
Ronan dropped to one knee with a pained grunt.
She didn't wait.
She grabbed his arm, used his weight to flip him over, and slammed him flat on his back with a crash that echoed off the courtyard walls.
She straddled him, knees pinning his ribs, one hand planted against his throat—not squeezing. Not quite.
Just enough to remind him she could.
His chest rose and fell beneath her.
And for the first time, Ronan looked up at her with something that wasn't fury.
It was recognition.
"You can't win like this," he rasped.
"I already did."
He growled low in his throat.
"You keep pushing us," he said. "One day, you'll push too far."
She leaned in closer, lips at his ear.
"Maybe I want to."
She shoved off him and stood.
Her hands were shaking.
Not from fear.
From the rush.
From the heat of knowing—he hadn't broken her.
And he never would.
Ronan lay there for a breath longer before sitting up. He wiped blood from his lip, his expression unreadable.
Then he laughed once—low and bitter—and said, "You're going to ruin all of us."
She didn't respond.
She turned and walked away.
Back in her room, Lyra stood by the mirror, her pulse still wild.
There were bruises blooming already on her arms. Her hair was a mess. Her palms were scraped raw.
But she felt whole.
Sharp.
Dangerous.
And very, very awake.
The kind of awake that came after choosing violence and not regretting it.
She opened the drawer beside her bed and retrieved the dagger Lucien had given her.
Then she stared at herself in the mirror.
"You want a monster," she whispered. "I'll give you one."
🖤 Mini-Scene: What Bleeds, Binds
Night fell slowly, as if the sky itself hesitated to sleep.
Lyra sat alone at her desk, the room lit only by the low flicker of a single candle and the cold moonlight seeping through the window. Her knuckles were scraped. A bruise was beginning to darken her thigh where Ronan had clipped her mid-swing.
And on the edge of the table lay a scrap of cloth.
Blood-stained.
His blood.
She hadn't meant to keep it.
It had been caught in her fist, part of his shirt torn during the fight—forgotten in the rush, in the haze of motion and fury. But now, it sat like a question she hadn't asked herself yet.
Lyra reached for it slowly, fingers tracing the stiff, dried edge of the torn fabric. The scent of iron clung to it still, raw and bitter.
She could burn it.
She should.
Instead, she pressed it flat between the pages of her journal. Not as a keepsake.
As a warning.
A reminder that monsters bled.
And if she could make one bleed, she could make them all kneel.