The Choice of BloodAzaria’s POVThe cave walls were cold against my back, but the fire in my chest wouldn't stop burning.I clenched my jaw and focused on my breathing—slow, deliberate, strained. Every inhale scraped like glass, every exhale was laced with the lingering memory of Nicholas’s voice."I don’t care if the stars burn us. I will find you."I held that line in my mind like a lifeline. But the stars were burning. They were burning, and I didn’t know if he was still beneath them or buried in their ashes.The mountain winds howled outside our hideout, scattering snow into the cave’s mouth. Ashley had gone to collect herbs, leaving me alone with my trembling hands and the flickering fire that refused to warm me.That’s when it happened.The air shifted.The flames blinked out.And I was ripped away.---Heat. Smoke. Screams.I stood in the center of a scorched valley, breathless.The sky above was a furious crimson, the ground cracked and weeping light. The trees burned like to
The Alpha’s OathNicholas’s POVThe war drums hadn’t started yet.But I could hear them—faint and distant—pounding in my blood like a warning. The wind carried whispers of change through the mountains. Clouds rolled heavy above, swollen with snow and silence. The world was holding its breath.And so was I.I stood at the edge of the camp, overlooking the valley below. Torches flickered like scattered stars in the dark, trailing up the cliffside and along the jagged perimeter. Tents dotted the ridgeline—ragtag, makeshift, but grounded in unity and grit.Not soldiers. Not council-blessed warriors.Rogues. Outcasts. Survivors.And yet—they followed me.Not because I promised glory or power. But because I vowed something far greater: vengeance, justice… something worth bleeding for.I clenched my fists against the cold. My breath fogged the air, slow and measured.Behind me, footsteps approached.Killian.His boots crunched frost as he stepped beside me, eyes scanning the camp with calm i
Echoes of the Blood MoonAzaria’s POVI woke to the sound of whispers.They rose and fell like waves crashing on a distant shore—softer than breath, colder than wind. The world around me was gray. Not dark. Not light. Muffled as though everything was covered with ash.The floor on which I stood was stone, wet and sticky with dew. Pushing through the cracks in the ceiling, the faint red glow was like bloodlight. And beyond that glow… shadows moved. Dozens of them. Maybe more.Ghosts.They didn’t speak in words, not exactly. Just echoes. Emotions wrapped in fragmented memories. Regret. Longing. Fury. All of them circling, watching, waiting.I pushed myself up slowly, every limb heavy. My head throbbed. My power felt… still. Quiet. Like it was holding its breath.Then I heard her.“You’re awake.”The voice came from across the cavern, clear and resonant—calmer than before. I looked up.She stood apart from the others. No longer a smear of darkness, no longer the shrieking thing from the
Divided TiesNicholas’s POVThe trail ended in ashes.Slow heavy unmelted flakes of snow were driving in our faces as we stood at the threshold of a cabin that had once been. The only thing that was left were black rocks, burned lumber and the aroma of magic that smelt like poison in the air. The frost on the ruins had thawed, and lay as slippery patches of water, and these were steaming, as though the earth would still do something about the fire.“She was here,” Killian said gently, kneeling by a fallen rune stone half buried in the earth. His tones were constricted, his talons close under the skin. “Recently.”Ashley was hovering over the ruins of a doorway, her brows drawn together, the eyes glowing dim violet as she surveyed the space.I stepped into the ruins slowly, heart pounding. The destruction was recent. Violent. The magical residue still sparked against my senses—uncontrolled and desperate.This wasn’t an attack.It was a battle.Moving further into the wreckage I searche
The Name in the DarkAzaria’s POVThe cave beneath the mountain pulsed with cold magic.The deeper I descended, the more ancient it felt—like stepping into the lungs of the earth itself. Every breath was thick with history and forgotten things. The stone walls smoldered with the runes. I could not decipher the sigils written with spirals, claw marks and runes that hissed and whispered out of reach.A drip was going on at the ceiling and it kept the same alerts as my beating heart. The higher we went up steps, the colder the air got until I was breathing out in mist. In the midst of the cavern the circle Vireya had hewn out of the stone floor was waiting, the lines traced in ash and crimson blood, beating faintly as a heart.I hesitated at its edge.I wasn’t afraid of magic. I was afraid of what waited beyond it.Steeling myself, I stepped in.The instant my foot crossed the sigils, the air snapped.The light in the cave turned and disappeared leaving a dim reflection of the stone unde
The Witch of FangsightAzaria’s POVThe borderland of Frostwood was chillier than I thought.The dead trees were covered with the snow, which looked like frostbitten fingers, and the wind whistled around the bone-like branches, singing songs of ghosts and warnings. My every step made a blood-trail in the snow, little scrapes on thorns by which I did not care to go round, bruises that made themselves unnoticeable.Vireya.The Witch of Fangsight.A name spoken in hushed tones even among covens, a figure buried in footnotes and sealed records. She was exiled decades ago—too dangerous, too curious. A witch who believed in blending bloodlines to harness forgotten magic. She had created things—things like me.Finding her had taken everything. Bribes. Secrets. Blood oaths. Even then, the directions I received weren’t directions at all—just riddles etched into tree bark, bones hung like signs, the smell of magic sharp in the air like burnt copper.But I found her.The trees whose upper branch