ShadowBound :The Panthers Bride

Cinder POV

The morning mist clung to the hills like a memory, silver and soft. Dew wet the grass beneath Cinder’s bare feet as she crossed the orchard, her heart thudding louder than the cicadas in the trees.

She wore her grandfather’s jacket—faded olive green, patched at the elbows, and still smelling faintly of campfire and river wind. Slung over her shoulder was a worn canvas bag, filled with only the essentials: notebooks, maps, a knife, spare batteries, and her mother’s old camera. The weight of it all made her stand straighter.

Penny had watched her from the porch of the new pack house, arms crossed over her belly. She was pregnant again. Cinder’s youngest sibling wouldn’t remember this goodbye.

“Africa’s a long way, baby,” Penny had said, eyes misty but proud.

“So was the truth,” Cinder had replied, slipping the camera strap around her neck. “You said I’d know when it was time.”

And she did.

She was seventeen, sharp-tongued and long-limbed, with dark curls that couldn’t be tamed and eyes the color of old flames—somewhere between molten amber and wildfire. Her skin glowed with sun and strength, and the air around her always felt charged, like something waited just beyond the edge of sight.

They said she was born under a rare moon, that the stars pulsed when she cried.

But Cinder didn’t care about destiny.Not really.

What she cared about now was finding Amara.

She’d read the journals—her grandfather’s, her mother’s—and pieced together the stories between the inked lines: the jungle, the cats that weren’t cats, the women who dreamed in firelight and fought like spirits. The Panthers. The Shamans. The ones who whispered to trees and danced in warpaint under eclipses.

And Amara, who had saved them all.

“She’ll teach me,” Cinder whispered to herself, boarding the bush plane from Nairobi. “She has to.”

She needed to know what it meant to be herself—not just the daughter of legends or the name spoken in hushed tones by elders.

The camera clicked softly as she took a picture out the window—clouds, the jungle below, the red curve of earth. A page in the next story.

Her story.

The night before she left, Cinder packed alone.

The attic room above the old stone wing of the Pack House had become hers long ago—converted from a storage space into a chaos of maps, strings of Polaroids, and books stacked in teetering piles. Moonlight filtered in through the round window, casting silver on the wooden floor as she laid out her things.

Notebook.Batteries.First aid kit.Flint.Bootlace spool.Sketch of a ruined temple, copied from her grandfather’s journal.Her knife.

She picked up the blade, worn smooth from years of practice. Solaris had given it to her the year she turned thirteen—etched with a sun symbol and sharpened by hand. Her thumb brushed the hilt, and she slipped it into her boot sheath.

Then came the camera.Old. Heavy. Her mother’s.

She cradled it like a living thing.Then snapped a photo of the room—just in case she never saw it again.

A knock echoed against her door. “Let me in, sis.”

Smoke.

He entered in his usual swirl of woodsmoke and mischief, Ash hot on his heels. Ash had grown into a solid wall of muscle in the past year, but Cinder still called him “Twig” just to get under his skin.

“Got something for you,” Ash said, grinning and tossing her a small box.

She caught it one-handed. Inside was a miniature compass carved from bone and obsidian.

“I enchanted it,” Smoke said, flopping onto her bed. “Sort of. It points toward family. You know, in case you lose your way.”

“I never lose my way,” she said, slipping it into her jacket pocket.

“You do when it comes to people,” Ash muttered, but he was smiling too.

Later, as the moon hung low over the orchard, they gathered at the edge of the trees. Just her family. Just them.

Nyra stood with her arms crossed, her warrior braid tight and shadowed by the hood of her patchwork jacket.

“I should be going,” Nyra said. “Not you. You’re just a kid.”

“I’m three years younger than you,” Cinder shot back. “Not a decade.”

“That’s practically an infant in wolf years,” Nyra said, but her voice cracked near the end. She reached beneath her coat and pulled out a necklace—a simple string of beads made from carved stone, moonbone, and riverglass.

“Our mother wore this when she went into battle,” Nyra said, placing it around Cinder’s neck. “Now you wear it when you go into the unknown.”

“Thanks,” Cinder said, swallowing hard. “For the guilt trip and the power charm.”

“You’re welcome,” Nyra said, pulling her into a hug so tight it made Cinder gasp.

Then came Solaris. He said nothing—just pressed a folded note into her hand and kissed her forehead. She knew better than to read it in front of everyone. His goodbye would be written in stars and secrets.

Drummer stepped forward last, barefoot and solemn. He looked up at her with those enormous eyes that always saw more than they should.

“I painted you something,” he said, holding out a smooth stone. On it was a fiery spiral—red, gold, and black—surrounded by tiny glowing dots like a galaxy.

“What’s it mean?” she whispered.

He shrugged. “I think it’s you.”

She tucked it in her bag, next to the compass.

Penny was the last to step forward.

“Are you sure?” she asked, one hand over her belly, the other brushing Cinder’s cheek.

“I’ve never been more sure,” Cinder said.

“You’ll find her,” Penny whispered. “But you’ll find yourself too. Don’t forget that’s part of it.”

“I won’t.”

And then, just like that, the girl born under firelight and moonrise stepped into the dark, into the wild, into the story waiting just ahead.

The jungle hit like breath held too long—wet, hot, alive.

Cinder POV

Cinder stepped off the final motorbike ride at the edge of the trail and adjusted the straps of her bag. The driver, a wiry man with skin like oiled bark and eyes sharp as a hawk’s, nodded once and turned his bike around without a word.

She was alone now.And that was the point.

The trees rose in endless spirals of green, vines thick as ropes twisting through the canopy. The path narrowed into damp stone carved centuries ago, slick with moss and pitted with roots. She walked slowly, machete in hand, cutting through the curtain of leaves like a whisper—respectful, not aggressive.

The air was heavy with secrets.The kind that sank into your bones before your mind even noticed.

Every sound echoed louder here: the snap of a twig, the rustle of unseen wings, the shrill call of a toucan somewhere to her left. Sweat clung to her collarbone, soaking into the fabric of her grandfathe