Between Two Worlds
Luna's POV
The human girl's body crumpled to the floor before either of us could catch her.
"Is she dead?" I whispered, my voice shaking. "Did we kill her?"
Alpha Kieran knelt beside the girl, pressing two fingers to her neck. "She's breathing. Just fainted." He looked up at me, his eyes blazing with barely controlled fury. "We're in the human world, Luna. Do you understand what that means?"
I didn't get to answer because the girl's eyes suddenly snapped open. She screamed.
"Please don't scream!" I begged, dropping to my knees beside her. "We won't hurt you, I promise!"
The girl's scream cut off mid-breath. She stared at me, her mouth hanging open. "You... you're speaking English."
I blinked. "What's English?"
"What you're speaking right now!" The girl scrambled backward until her back hit her bed. "You're a wolf. I saw you transform through the mirror. Wolves can't talk!"
"Of course we can talk," I said, confused. "How else would we communicate?"
Alpha Kieran grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise. "Luna. We need to leave. Now."
But something felt wrong. I looked down at my hands, then at the girl, then back at Alpha Kieran. "Wait. How are we understanding her? We've never learned human language. The elders always said human speech sounds like nonsense to wolf ears."
The girl sat up straighter, her fear mixing with curiosity. "You really didn't know you were speaking English?"
That's when it hit me. The crystal. When it had pulsed with that warm light, when those symbols had burned into my mind—it had done something to me. Changed something.
"The Moon Mirror gave me a gift," I breathed. "It let me understand humans."
"The what mirror?" The girl's voice rose with excitement. She pointed at the silver mirror leaning against her wall—the same one I'd seen in the forest. "That thing? I found it at an antique shop last week. The owner practically gave it to me for free. Said it was cursed or something, but I thought it was beautiful."
Alpha Kieran's grip on my arm tightened. "We're leaving. Right now."
"No, wait!" The girl jumped to her feet. "I'm Olivia. Olivia Chen. And I've been seeing you through that mirror for days. I thought I was going crazy, but you're real. This is real!" She laughed, a slightly hysterical sound. "There are werewolves. Actual werewolves."
"We prefer to be called wolves," I said automatically. "Werewolf sounds like we're monsters."
"Luna!" Alpha Kieran yanked me toward the mirror. "We don't have time for this. The longer we stay here, the more the barrier destabilizes. We could get trapped in the human world forever."
Terror shot through me. Trapped here? Away from my pack, my family, my home?
But Olivia stepped between us and the mirror. "Please, just one minute. I need to know—why did the mirror connect us? Out of billions of people and wolves in the world, why me and you?"
I looked at Alpha Kieran helplessly. His jaw was clenched so tight I thought his teeth might crack, but after a long moment, he nodded once.
"I don't know," I admitted to Olivia. "I was just curious about humans. I kept sneaking to the forest edge to watch your village. Then tonight I found this crystal disk in our Sacred Grove, and everything went crazy."
"A crystal disk?" Olivia's eyes widened. "With glowing symbols?"
My heart stopped. "How did you know that?"
She rushed to her desk and pulled out a book—old, leather-bound, with a cracked spine. She flipped through pages until she found what she was looking for. "Because I have one too."
She held up a photograph. In it, a crystal disk identical to mine sat on someone's palm. The symbols were the exact same.
"My grandmother gave me this book before she died," Olivia explained quickly. "She was obsessed with myths about a Moon Mirror that could bridge worlds. I thought she was just telling stories, but then I found that mirror, and I started seeing you, and—" She thrust the book at me. "Look at this passage. She marked it."
I read the words written in neat handwriting: "When two souls, one human and one wolf, each find a Moon Crystal on the same full moon, the ancient barrier weakens. These two become Bridges—able to cross between worlds. But beware: with this gift comes great danger. Forces from both sides will seek to control the Bridges, or destroy them."
The book slipped from my numb fingers.
"We're Bridges," I whispered. "That's why we can understand each other. That's why the mirror connected us."
Alpha Kieran snatched the book from the floor, his eyes scanning the page rapidly. His face went from angry to terrified in seconds. "Luna, we need to get you back home right now. If what this says is true—"
A crash came from downstairs. Olivia's eyes went huge. "My parents. They're home early."
"Mom?" a woman's voice called. "Olivia? Why is there a weird light coming from your room?"
We all looked at the mirror. It was glowing brighter than ever, pulsing like a heartbeat.
"Hide!" Olivia hissed, shoving us toward her closet.
But before we could move, her bedroom door swung open.
Olivia's mother stood in the doorway, grocery bags in her arms. Her eyes went from her daughter, to me, to Alpha Kieran, to the glowing mirror.
The grocery bags hit the floor.
"Olivia," her mother said in a voice that was way too calm. "Step away from them. Right now."
"Mom, I can explain—"
"Those are wolves." Her mother's hand moved to her pocket, pulling out something small and silver. A whistle. "I said step away from them NOW."
She blew the whistle hard.
The sound was so high-pitched I couldn't hear it, but I felt it—a piercing pain that drove through my skull like a knife. I fell to my knees, clutching my head. Beside me, Alpha Kieran collapsed too, his face twisted in agony.
"Mom, stop! You're hurting them!"
Through my blurred vision, I saw Olivia's mother pull out her phone.
"This is Sarah Chen," she said into it, her voice cold and professional. "Code Silver. Two wolves manifested in my daughter's bedroom. Send the Hunters."
The Hunters?
Alpha Kieran grabbed my hand, his grip weak but desperate. "The mirror," he gasped. "Luna... jump... through..."
But I couldn't move. The whistle's pain paralyzed every muscle in my body.
Olivia looked at her mother with betrayal written across her face. "You're one of them. You're a Hunter."
Her mother's expression didn't change. "I'm protecting you. This is what Hunters do."
Heavy footsteps thundered up the stairs.
We were trapped.