Bloodmoon Rising

I went back to my room.I didn't run. Walked like I always did, back straight, steady pace. My mother drilled that into me at twelve, after Dara Greycliff mocked my training form in front of the junior pack. Walk like you know where you’re going, especially when you don’t, she said. That’s the whole point.So I walked that way now, through the grounds, up the stairs, into my room. Closed the door, leaned against it.Just stood a moment.Pulled out my grandmother’s bone clasps. One by one. Set them on the dresser. Tiny clicks against wood. Outside, faint noises from the ceremony lingered, celebration, pack voices stretching into night.I sat on the bed.Selene.I turned her name over, prodding at it like a bruise. Had I really missed it? Wolves are supposed to sense shifts, airs changing, moods, smells. I lived beside them for years and felt nothing.Or maybe I did, and just didn’t call it out. Naming it would make it real.I pressed my hands to my knees, stared at the wall.We don’t g

Dirt filled my mouth.At first, none of it made sense. I just lay there, blind and confused, wondering if I’d rolled out of bed by accident. My brain started running interference, tossing up excuses, trying anything to avoid the truth it didn’t really want to face.Then I tried to sit up. The earth pushed back.Packed tight, above, below, all sides. Cold and damp and heavy, squeezing my chest, my legs, my arms. I turned my head, and soil slipped into my ear. That’s when I got it. Not in bits and pieces, but all at once.They’d buried me.I didn’t move. Just took slow, shallow breaths through my nose and let reality line itself up. The ceremony. Zevran’s face. Selene. Coran’s muffled voice. The figure in my room. The blade, cold first, then burning, and then nothing. Then dark and dirt and waking up in the ground.Something twisted awake in my chest. Slow at first, then picking up speed, and pretty soon it was past any emotion I could name. I felt it radiate out from my sternum, my fin

By the fourth morning, I finally made it over the ridge.That’s where the real old-growth began. It wasn’t just big trees, everything felt changed. The air pressed in heavy and unmoving, not empty but crowded, like stepping into a room full of people all holding their breath. Trees like nothing I’d seen; not the tall, skinny kind you get in young woods, but fat and ancient, with bark so deeply rutted it looked like someone carved it by hand. Roots cracked up through the earth, weaving along the surface like the spine of something buried deep and patient. Underneath, the plants huddled low to the ground, twisted in strange ways, and what light managed to filter down came in thin, greenish shards, like sunlight shining through water.I stood at the edge, looking down.The mark on my shoulder grew warm, one pulse. Solid. Not a warning, but something closer to: yes.Honestly, I’d known since the first morning. I picked east because that’s the way it pulled me, though I wouldn’t let myself

Rhydian told me everything.I stayed silent, letting his words roll through the firelight. He didn’t hem or haw, didn’t gloss anything over. The story was flat, orderly, worn smooth by repeating.The Alpha system, he said, was only four hundred years old. Not the slow-built tradition most of us believe, but something thrown together in one generation by an Elder council, right after the last time the Bloodmoon Mark appeared.That wolf, back then, was a young woman. Someone from a background nobody tracked because nobody expected anything from her. Her mark appeared suddenly, painfully, exactly the way mine had. Within half a year, every Alpha in five territories felt it. Three packs sent messengers, not to kill, but to learn.When they found her, they realized they were scared.“She didn’t want to rule,” Rhydian said. “The Elders assumed someone with power would grab more. But she didn’t care about that. She wanted to get rid of the whole system that let twelve men decide the fate of

ZEVRAN My wolf wouldn’t eat. Three days now, it just turned away from the food I set out. I sat there, staring at that unfinished meal, feeling something building inside me I didn’t have the guts to name. A mated wolf eats. Settles. Finds that calm, animal stillness that says everything’s right, everything’s home. I’d watched it happen again and again with every mated pair in this pack since I was a kid. But my wolf looked at Selene and felt, nothing. No spark. Nothing familiar. I kept telling myself it just needed time. We’d only been mated a few days. These things, they’re supposed to take time, right? I wasn’t fooling anyone. Not even myself. Selene slept next to me, her breaths slow and steady. I stared at the ceiling, alone in the dark, and let myself think about Kaelis, the way I tried so damn hard not to think about her these past five days. I saw her walking out of that circle, back straight, eyes forward, not looking at anyone. The morning after the ceremony, I went to