A Luna for the beast

*Isabella*

My name is Isabella, and I am going to die tonight in a red dress that is not mine.

The dress was too beautiful to die in. Red silk, off-shoulder, the kind Luna's from the city wear. The elders bought it with the village money. They said the Beast likes red. He likes to see blood on red.

"Walk," my father hissed, pushing me into the Black Forest. His hand shook on my back. Not from sadness. From fear.

I was twenty-one and I had never shifted. In a world where every girl gets her wolf at eighteen, I was wolfless. Cursed. That was why they chose me. The cursed girl for the cursed Alpha.

The forest was silent. The full moon above was huge and red, the blood moon from legends. The same moon from your cover photo.

"He will kill you fast," my little sister Luna had whispered while tying my red dress. "The Beast does not torture. He breaks necks."

I heard him before I saw him. A growl that shook the trees.

Then he stepped out.

He was exactly like the photo. Tall, over six-four, black wavy hair, white shirt open at the chest despite snow, scars on his chest. And over his shoulders, a massive gray wolf fur cloak that moved like it was alive. Behind him, a real gray wolf, huge, gold eyes burning.

Kael. The Beast Alpha of Shadowfang Pack. The Alpha who killed his own Luna five years ago on their mating night. Since then he wore his wolf's skin as punishment and never became fully human.

His gold eyes found me in red. He sniffed the air.

"Another one?" His voice was rough, gravel and growl. "You humans never learn. You send me a virgin in red every year?"

I could not speak. My bare feet were freezing in snow.

He walked to me. Slow. Predatory. He grabbed my chin hard. "Look at me, little red sacrifice."

I looked. His eyes were not fully human. A beast pushed behind the gold.

"Please," I whispered. "I don't want to die."

"Everyone says that." He inhaled my neck. My whole body shook, but not just from cold. Something pulled in my belly, hot and strange. "You smell wrong. Like silver. Humans don't smell like that."

The wolf behind him growled at Kael. It pushed between us, sniffing my dress, my hands, my cut. I had cut my finger on a thorn.

A drop of my blood fell on his fur cloak.

Everyone said the cloak burned any woman who touched it. Any woman who tried to be his Luna died screaming.

My blood touched it.

It did not burn. The fur glowed silver. Veins of moonlight ran through gray fur.

The huge gray wolf froze, then threw its head back and howled. A mate howl. Long, desperate, echoing through the forest.

Kael's eyes went black.

"MINE," his beast said, two voices at once.

"What did you do?" He grabbed my wrist, staring at glowing fur. "What are you?"

"I am wolfless! I am nothing!"

"You lie." He ripped his fur cloak off his shoulders, the cloak he had not removed in five years, and threw it over me. The heavy, cursed fur that killed his last Luna wrapped around my red dress.

I should have burned. I should have screamed.

Instead, I felt warm. Safe. It smelled like forest and rain and him.

The wolf circled me, nuzzling my red dress, whining, warming my bare feet.

Kael stared at me wrapped in his beast skin, breathing hard. "You can wear my beast. No one has worn my beast for five years. My last Luna died wearing it."

He picked me up like a bride, one arm under knees in red dress. "Put me down! I am not your Luna!"

"You wore red into my forest. You bled on my beast. You made my wolf howl mate," he growled against my ear, carrying me to his gothic mansion with lights on, covered in snow like a beast's castle. "You are already mine, little red sacrifice."

He kicked open the mansion doors. Warmth poured out. Inside was dusty, abandoned, except one room upstairs where a single throne of roses sat.

He carried me to his bedroom and locked the door.

"From tonight, you sleep in my fur," he said, laying me on his huge bed, pulling fur tighter over red dress. "And if anyone looks at you in that red dress, I will rip their throat. Only I get to see you in red."

Outside, his wolf howled again. And somewhere in my chest, where I had always been empty and wolfless, something answered with a tiny, silver whine for the first time in twenty-one years.