Eighth-Born Luna (Emily and Nathan) novel Chapter 80

Nathan didn’t look for the car keys.

The moment we cleared the cabin door, he shifted. The sound was brutal—bones snapping and muscles tearing, rebuilding into something much bigger.

Asher stood before me, a massive black wolf. He was pure black, with steam rolling off his fur into the cold air. His eyes were wide, burning with a frantic kind of urgency.

He dropped his chest to the dirt, waiting. I buried my fingers deep into his thick ruff and pulled myself onto his back.

“Go,” I whispered.

He ran.

The forest became a blur of dark green and grey. Branches slapped at my face as he tore through the woods at a terrifying speed.

Dirt kicked up behind his paws. The guards shifted and tried to follow, but none of them could match his speed.

He didn’t care about roads. He didn’t slow down for the rivers or the rocky hills. His body felt like a powerful engine beneath me, unstoppable and ancient.

I felt his mind through our bond. It was a mess of jagged emotions—the image of his father, the fear for his mother. But underneath the grief, there was a tiny, desperate spark of hope.

The hospital lights cut through the trees. Asher cleared the last hill in one massive leap and slammed onto the pavement near the entrance. People scrambled out of the way, shouting in alarm.

He lowered his shoulder, letting me slide off his back just as his body began to shift.

One second he was a wolf, the next he was standing there—bare skin, tattoos, chest heaving. He grabbed my hand, his grip like iron.

“Move.”

The smell hit me the second we hit the doors. Antiseptic and blood. It made my stomach roll. Hospitals felt like cages to me—full of memories of cold beds and feeling helpless.

We burst through the operating room doors, the hinges slamming against the wall.

“Alpha, you can’t be in here!” Doctor Reed shouted, spinning around.

The words died in the air as we saw her. My stomach dropped.

Blood was everywhere on the floor, the trays, the sheets. Meredyth lay on the table, her skin the color of ash. Deep, jagged claw marks ripped across her chest and stomach.

“She’s lost too much,” Reed snapped, his hands shaking. “We can’t stop the bleeding.”

I stepped toward the table. The rune on my arm started to itch.

“Let me try.”

Reed looked at me like I was out of my mind. “What? Your hands aren’t even clean. If you touch those open wounds, you’ll kill her faster.”

Nathan moved faster than the eye could follow. He pinned the doctor against the wall, the metal instruments rattling on the trays.

“Enough.”

Nathan’s eyes were glowing. “Emily,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “Do it.”

My hands were trembling as I reached for her. Meredyth looked like a ghost. I could feel the bond between her and Nathan—it was a thin, flickering thread, ready to snap at any second.

What if I wasn’t enough?

The rune pulsed, sending a jolt of white-hot energy up my shoulder. It was answering me.

I pressed my palms directly over the deepest wound. The moment my skin touched her blood, agony ripped through my body.

I screamed.

The pain wasn’t a sting; it was a physical assault. It felt like invisible claws were reaching inside me and shredding my stomach from the back to the front. My knees hit the floor with a heavy thud.

Meredyth’s wounds began to knit together. It was a slow, agonizing crawl of skin over muscle. But as her body healed, mine began to break.

Blood bloomed across my own shirt.

Doctor Reed stumbled back, hitting a tray of instruments. The metal clattered loudly in the room. “Oh my goodness…”

The cuts were opening on my skin, mirrored perfectly. The same jagged lines that had been on her chest were now tearing through mine. I gasped, the air catching in a throat that felt like it was full of glass.

Nathan was there in a heartbeat, his large hands catching me before I could faceplant into the blood-slicked floor. “Emily!”

I shook with the force of it. Nathan’s face was inches from mine, his eyes wide with horror. “Stop,” he growled, his voice thick with a raw, panicked edge. “Emily, stop!”

“If I stop—” I forced the words out through gritted teeth. “She dies.”

Suddenly, the steady, rhythmic beep of the heart monitor shifted. It grew stronger. Faster.

The doctors stood like statues, watching the impossible happen. The rune on my arm wasn’t just glowing now—it was a lighthouse. White light raced through my veins like liquid moonlight, visible through my skin.

I pressed my palms harder against Meredyth’s chest, ignoring the way my own body felt like it was being pulled through a meat grinder. Pain swallowed everything. My vision turned into a mess of grey and white.

And then—

Meredyth’s chest arched. She took a sharp, violent breath.

The machines around the bed went wild with loud, frantic beeping. Her eyes flew open.

Nathan went rigid. “Mother?”

Her gaze was hazy, but it found him. She was breathing. Actually breathing. The heavy weight of death that had been sitting in the room just vanished.

But the price was due.

The wounds on my own chest burned like they were filled with acid. Blood dripped steadily from my hem, pooling on the floor.

Nathan’s grip tightened, his arms a cage around me. “Emily.”

His voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well. I looked down at Meredyth. Her skin was smooth. The blood on her was old, the wounds gone.

Now they were all mine.

Doctor Reed was shaking his head, his face white. “That’s impossible… she shouldn’t be able to…”

I tried to tell him that it hurt. I tried to tell Nathan to hold on.

But the darkness hit me too fast. It was heavy and cold, pulling me down. The last thing I heard was Nathan’s roar, my name echoing off the sterile walls before the lights went out for good.