The nightmare released Hiro with violence.
His eyes snapped open, body lurching upright as though yanked by invisible chains. The gasp that tore from his throat burned raw and desperate. Sweat plastered his shirt to his chest, cold and clammy against feverish skin. His heart hammered a frantic rhythm that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with need.
The dream hadn't been frightening. That was the problem.
In it, Luna had stood before him bathed in moonlight, her silver hair luminous, her blue eyes soft and trusting. But she hadn't been his classmate. She hadn't been the girl who sat beside him and worried about his grades. She had been *his*—something primal in his chest had known it with absolute certainty. Something that demanded he protect her, hold her, keep her close enough that nothing could ever touch her.
The instinct had felt so natural in the dream. So right.
Now, awake in his darkened room, it terrified him.
Hiro dragged trembling hands down his face, trying to scrub away the lingering sensations. When he lowered them, movement in the window caught his eye—his own reflection staring back with eyes that glowed molten gold. The color pulsed with his heartbeat, bright and hungry and utterly inhuman.
"No. No, no, no."
He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing his breathing to slow. When he opened them again, the gold had retreated to storm grey. But he could still feel it lurking beneath the surface, waiting.
His gaze drifted to the prescription bottle on his desk.
It sat exactly where he'd left it three days ago when he'd returned from the field trip. The white label stark against orange plastic: *SUPPRESSANT – For Predatorial Onset Syndrome – Take one tablet daily or as directed by physician.*
His mother had pressed it into his hands with worry creasing her forehead. "Just in case," she'd said. "The symptoms can start suddenly."
He still hadn't opened it.
"Why do I even need this?" Hiro muttered, even though he knew exactly why.
His phone buzzed, screen lighting up the dim room. Luna's name appeared with a message that made his pulse spike dangerously.
*Good morning! Can't wait to see you at school! *
Simple. Cheerful. Innocent.
His fingers tightened around the phone before he realized what he was doing. The plastic casing creaked ominously. A thin fracture line spider-webbed across the corner with a soft *crack*.
Hiro stared at the damage, horror washing through him.
His hand—his ordinary human hand—had nearly crushed the phone without thinking.
"What's wrong with me?"
School existed in a different dimension that morning.
Everything felt wrong from the moment Hiro stepped through the front gates. Too loud. Too bright. Too *alive* in ways that made his skin crawl and his senses scream.
Footsteps echoed like thunder. Locker doors slammed with explosive force. The fluorescent lights buzzed so loudly he wanted to claw them from the ceiling. Whispered conversations between students crashed over him as though everyone was shouting directly into his ears.
*Too loud. Everything's too loud. How does nobody else hear this?*
He pressed forward through the sensory assault, keeping his head down and his hands jammed in his pockets. Other students gave him odd looks as he passed—probably noticing the tension coiling through his shoulders, the way his jaw clenched tight enough to ache.
The classroom should have offered refuge.
Instead, it only made things worse.
Because Luna walked in, and every heightened sense Hiro possessed locked onto her immediately.
Her scent reached him first, hitting with enough force to steal his breath. It wasn't perfume or soap or anything artificial. It was *her*—warm and soft and impossibly sweet, like spring flowers and clean rain and something uniquely Luna that made his chest tighten painfully. The scent wrapped around him, sank into his lungs, and triggered something deep and instinctive that roared to life.
*Mine.*
The thought blazed through his mind before he could stop it.
His hands dug into the edge of his desk. Wood groaned and splintered beneath his grip as claws threatened to burst from his fingertips.
"Hiro? Good morning!"
Luna's voice slid through his awareness like honey-smooth music, each syllable resonating in places he didn't know existed. She smiled as she approached, completely unaware of the war raging inside him.
Every instinct screamed at him to move closer. To shield her. To mark her as his so that everyone else would know to keep their distance.
Hiro wrenched his gaze to the window instead, staring at nothing.
"Morning," he managed, the single word emerging sharp and strained.
Luna hesitated, her smile faltering slightly. "Are you okay? You seem—"
"I'm fine."
The lie tasted bitter.
She studied him for a long moment, concern evident in those blue eyes, but eventually nodded and took her seat. The relief he felt at the increased distance lasted only seconds before her scent washed over him again.
This was going to be a very long day.
Lunch proved even worse than class.
Hiro sat with his usual group—Takeshi, Yuki, and a few other friends—but barely registered their conversation. His tray held perfectly cooked chicken breast, rice, and vegetables. Normal food. Safe food.
It all tasted like ash.
His mouth watered for something else entirely. Something raw. Still warm. Bleeding.
The thought should have disgusted him. Instead, his stomach growled in painful agreement.
"Hiro? You're not eating," Takeshi observed, frowning at the untouched meal.
"Not hungry," Hiro lied.
"Dude, you've barely eaten all week." Takeshi leaned closer, voice dropping. "And you look terrible. No offense."
"Some taken."
Yuki reached across the table to press the back of her hand against his forehead, her healing abilities making her particularly sensitive to physical ailments. Her frown deepened. "You're running hot. Not quite a fever, but close. And your energy feels... off."
"I'm fine. Just stressed about exams."
Nobody believed him, least of all himself.
When Takeshi launched into a story about their upcoming training session, Hiro took the opportunity to escape. He mumbled something about needing air and fled before anyone could protest.
The school rooftop offered sanctuary.
Hiro leaned against the railing, letting the cool breeze wash over his overheated skin. Up here, away from the crowds and noise and Luna's intoxicating presence, he could almost think clearly.
Almost.
The door clicked open behind him.
Her scent hit first—that maddening sweetness that made his blood sing. Hiro's entire body went rigid, muscles locking down as he fought the urge to turn around. His eyes threatened to glow. His claws ached to emerge.
"There you are."
Luna's voice carried a note of relief mixed with hurt. She crossed the rooftop to stand beside him, close enough that her warmth radiated against his arm.
Too close. Far too close.
Hiro shifted away, putting precious distance between them. "Did you need something?"
"You've been avoiding me."
The accusation hung in the air, gentle but undeniable. When Hiro didn't respond, Luna continued, her voice wavering slightly. "You won't look at me in class. You leave every time I get near. You flinched when I sat down just now."
Guilt twisted through his chest. "I'm not avoiding you."
"You literally just moved away from me."
He squeezed his eyes shut, but that only made her scent stronger. His claws pressed against his palms from inside, desperate to break free.
"I'm just not feeling well."
"Then let me help." Luna touched his arm, the contact sending electricity shooting up to his shoulder. "I'm worried about you, Hiro. Something's wrong, and you won't talk to me about it."
"You can't help with this."
The words came out too fast, too harsh. Luna recoiled slightly, hurt flashing across her features.
"Why not?"
*Because I'm losing control. Because every instinct I have is screaming at me to claim you. Because I don't trust myself not to hurt you.*
"I just... I need space right now. Please."
Luna stared at him for a long moment, blue eyes searching his face. Whatever she saw there made her shoulders sag in defeat.
"Okay," she whispered. "But I'm here when you're ready to talk."
She left without another word, and Hiro sagged against the railing like a puppet with cut strings.
The worst part wasn't the struggle for control. It wasn't the physical changes or the overwhelming instincts.
The worst part was knowing he was hurting her, and being powerless to stop it.
The breaking point came after school.
Hiro was gathering his books, planning his escape route to avoid any more contact, when Luna's laugh drifted across the classroom. The sound made his heart clench and his body go still.
She stood at her locker, smiling at something Yuki had said. Normal. Sweet. Completely unaware of the predator watching her with barely restrained hunger.
Then *he* appeared.
Ryo Matsuda—tall, athletic, popular, and far too confident. He sauntered over to Luna with the easy grace of someone who'd never been rejected in his life. Hiro's enhanced hearing picked up every word despite the distance.
"Luna, got a sec?"
"Um, sure?" She turned, surprised but polite.
"I was thinking... maybe we could get coffee together sometime? Just the two of us?" Ryo leaned against the locker beside hers, casual and smooth. "I've wanted to ask for a while now."
Luna blinked, clearly caught off-guard. A faint blush colored her cheeks. "Oh. Um—"
Something inside Hiro *snapped*.
Not broke—snapped. Like a chain pulled too tight, severing with violent finality.
The hallway blurred. Everything except Luna and the boy standing *too close* to her vanished into red-tinged static. His vision tunneled until they were all he could see.
A growl rumbled low in his chest—feral, warning, utterly inhuman. The sound made nearby students freeze and turn to stare.
Hiro felt his eyes ignite, gold flooding across grey like burning metal. Claws burst from his fingertips with small spurts of blood. Fur rippled across his arms in dark waves. His canines lengthened into fangs sharp enough to tear flesh.
He took a step toward them.
Then another.
*Mine. She's mine. Get away from her.*
Gasps erupted around him.
"Hiro... is he transforming?!"
"His eyes—look at his eyes!"
"Oh my god, is he going to—"
The word *attack* never finished because Hiro regained enough awareness to realize what he was doing. Horror crashed through the rage like ice water.
He spun and ran.
Students scattered as he bolted down the hallway, barely in control enough to avoid fully shifting. He burst through the door of an empty classroom and slammed it shut behind him, collapsing against the far wall.
*Stop. Stop. Control it.*
But his body didn't want to stop. It wanted to go back. To make that boy understand Luna was *his*. To mark her where everyone could see so this would never happen again.
Hiro dug his claws into his own arms, using the pain to anchor himself. Blood welled up in thin lines. The transformation slowed, then reversed—fur receding, claws shortening, eyes dimming back to grey.
When it was over, he collapsed to the floor, shaking violently.
"What's wrong with me?" he whispered to the empty room. "What's happening to me?"
"Hiro?"
Luna's voice outside the door made him flinch.
"Go away." His own voice sounded wrecked, barely human.
"No."
The door opened despite his protest. Luna slipped inside and closed it behind her, her expression a mixture of worry and determination. She knelt beside him, ignoring his attempt to scramble away.
"You need to stay away from me," Hiro said desperately.
"Why?"
"Because I'm losing control!"
"Of what?"
"Everything!" He finally met her eyes, and the concern he saw there nearly broke him. "You don't understand, Luna. You can't understand."
"Then explain it to me." She reached for his hand, and he pulled back like she'd burned him. Luna's expression hardened. "Hiro, I'm not leaving. So you can either talk to me, or we'll sit here in silence until you're ready."
He believed her.
Hiro drew a shuddering breath, words spilling out before he could stop them. "I can smell you. From across the school. From down the hallway. Everywhere. And it's not just smell—I hear your heartbeat whenever you're near. I know when you walk into a room before I see you. And today..."
He swallowed hard, shame burning through him.
"When that guy asked you out, I almost transformed. Right there in the hallway, in front of everyone. To make him back off. To show everyone that you're—"
He cut himself off, but Luna heard the unspoken word anyway.
"Mine," she finished quietly. "You were going to say mine."
Hiro turned away, unable to face her. "I'm sorry. I know how insane that sounds. I'm not... I don't think of you like property, I swear. But these instincts, they're so strong, and I can't control them. I don't know what's happening to me."
Silence stretched between them.
Then Luna spoke, her voice soft but steady. "You're not scaring me, Hiro."
He looked at her in disbelief.
"You're scaring yourself," she continued. "And I get it. This is new and overwhelming and probably terrifying. But running away from it—from me—isn't going to help."
"You should be scared," Hiro insisted. "You saw me out there. I was going to—"
"But you didn't." Luna moved closer, close enough that her knee touched his. "You stopped yourself. You ran away rather than risk hurting anyone. That takes incredible strength."
"It doesn't feel strong. It feels like I'm barely hanging on."
"Then let me help you."
"How?"
Luna smiled slightly. "I don't know yet. But we'll figure it out together."
That evening, Hiro sat across from his mother at the kitchen table. The prescription bottle rested between them like a grenade with the pin pulled.
"You're experiencing accelerated maturation," his mother explained, her tone clinical but not unkind. "It happens to male beast folk around your age. The instincts develop rapidly—protective urges, territorial responses, heightened senses."
She paused, seeming to choose her next words carefully.
"And mating instincts," she finished.
"MOM!" Hiro's face burned bright red.
"It's biology, Hiro. Nothing to be embarrassed about." She pushed the bottle toward him. "The suppressants will dampen these instincts. Make them manageable. Without them..."
"Without them what?"
"Without them, the instincts will overwhelm your judgment. You'll make decisions based on primal drives rather than rational thought. It can be dangerous—for you and for those around you."
Hiro stared at the bottle, conflicting emotions warring inside him. Part of him wanted to rip it open and swallow every pill inside. Anything to make this stop.
But another part—a part that was growing stronger every day—rebelled at the idea of suppressing what felt like a fundamental part of himself.
"Not everything I'm feeling is bad," he said quietly. "The protectiveness, the awareness—some of it feels right. Like this is who I'm supposed to be."
His mother's expression softened. "I understand. But you need to be honest with yourself about what you can handle. And you need to talk to Luna."
"What?"
"She deserves to know what's happening. Hiding from her will only make things worse."
Hiro said nothing, but he knew she was right.
Later that night, lying in bed with his phone screen casting pale light across his face, Hiro typed out a message to Luna:
*I'm sorry. I need space to figure this out. Please don't look for me.*
His thumb hovered over the send button for a long moment.
Then he pressed it.
The medicine bottle sat on his nightstand, still sealed. Hiro picked it up, turned it over in his hands, popped the cap open. The pills inside rattled softly.
He stared at them for several minutes.
Then he closed the bottle and set it back down, untouched.
"I won't hide from this," he whispered to the darkness. "And I won't hide from her."
Even if he didn't know what that meant yet.
The abandoned warehouse district sat on the edge of town, forgotten by everyone except teenagers looking for a place to skip class or beast folk needing somewhere to practice shifting in private.
Hiro had chosen a building near the center—four walls, a partially collapsed roof, and blessed solitude. He'd been coming here after school for the past two days, trying to meditate his way through the instinctive storm raging inside him.
It wasn't working.
Every time he closed his eyes, Luna appeared. Her scent. Her voice. Her warmth. The memory of her concern and the way she'd refused to leave him alone in that classroom.
*You're not scaring me. You're scaring yourself.*
Hiro opened his eyes, staring at his reflection in a broken mirror propped against the far wall. Grey eyes stared back—no gold, no evidence of the beast lurking beneath. But he could feel it pacing inside him like a caged animal, testing the bars.
"Control," he muttered. "Just... control."
Footsteps echoed from the warehouse entrance.
Hiro's head snapped up, every sense suddenly on high alert. He knew who it was before she even spoke. Her scent arrived first—that maddening sweetness that made his blood sing and his control fracture.
Luna stepped through the doorway, backlit by the late afternoon sun. Her blue eyes found his immediately, determined and unwavering.
"You shouldn't be here," Hiro said, his voice rough.
"And you shouldn't try to deal with this alone."
"Luna—"
"You asked for space. I gave you two days." She took a step forward, and he took a step back. "That's enough."
"It's not safe." His hands clenched at his sides, claws threatening to emerge. "I could hurt you."
"You won't."
"You don't know that!"
"Yes, I do." Another step forward. "Because you've had a dozen chances to hurt me, and you haven't. You run away instead. You hide. You push me away." Her voice cracked slightly. "But you don't hurt me."
Hiro backed against the wall, trapped. Luna stopped a few feet away, giving him space but refusing to leave.
"You don't know what I feel," he said desperately. "What I want to do when you're near me."
"Then tell me!" Luna's composure finally shattered, tears welling in her eyes. "Tell me what you're feeling right now! Stop running and just be honest with me!"
The words burst out of him like a dam breaking. "I want to be near you!"
Silence crashed through the warehouse.
Hiro's eyes blazed gold, illuminating the dim space. His breathing came harsh and uneven. "I want to be near you," he repeated, softer this time. "All the time. Every second. I want to know where you are, who you're talking to, whether you're safe. I want to keep you close enough that nothing can touch you."
Luna stared at him, lips parted in surprise.
"When that guy asked you out, I wanted to tear him apart," Hiro continued, the confession pouring out now that he'd started. "Not because he did anything wrong, but because he was looking at you. Talking to you. Standing too close. And every instinct I have was screaming that you're mine."
He finally met her eyes, gold meeting blue.
"That's what I'm feeling, Luna. Possessive. Territorial. Primal. And I don't know how to control it, because it feels like trying to control my heartbeat or my breathing. It's just *there*, all the time, getting stronger every day."
Luna took a step forward.
Then another.
Hiro pressed harder against the wall, even though there was nowhere left to go. "What are you doing?"
"You're treating these feelings like they're a disease," Luna said softly. "Something wrong that needs to be fixed or hidden away."
"They are wrong—"
"No." She stopped directly in front of him, close enough that her warmth soaked into his skin. "They're intense. They're overwhelming. They're scary because they're new. But they're not wrong."
She reached up slowly, giving him every chance to pull away, and placed her palm against his chest. Right over his racing heart.
"I see you, Hiro. Not the beast. Not the instincts. You." Her blue eyes held his gold ones without fear. "And I'm choosing to stay."
Something inside Hiro cracked. Not broke—transformed. The wild desperation that had been clawing at him for days suddenly stilled, settling into something deeper and warmer.
His hand came up to cover hers, keeping it pressed against his heart. The gold in his eyes softened but didn't fade.
"I don't want to hurt you," he whispered.
"You won't," Luna promised. "Because we're going to figure this out together. You don't have to do this alone."
Hiro finally let himself believe her.
He pulled Luna into his arms, tucking her against his chest where she fit perfectly. She wrapped her arms around his waist and held on tight. They stood there in the abandoned warehouse as sunlight slanted through broken windows, two teenagers navigating something far bigger than either of them.
But at least they were navigating it together.
"Thank you," Hiro murmured into her hair. "For not giving up on me."
"Never," Luna said simply.
And for the first time in days, Hiro felt like maybe—just maybe—everything would be okay.