THE BOND

The wind howled like a wounded beast over the scorched tree trunks of Hollowmere. Blackened timbers jutted from the earth like broken teeth, ash curled in the air, and blood stained the dirt where a little human village had once stood.

Seraphine Duskbane crouched over a half-burnt human skull, the bone still warm. She dipped two fingers into the blood pooled beside it and smeared a crude symbol across her jaw, three vertical slashes down the cheek, a hunter’s mark. Her fingers were steady. Her heartbeat wasn’t.

A full blood Moon glared overhead, painting the ruins crimson.

“Tracks end here,” said Dorian Vale, her second-in-command, stepping over the bloody pool with a crossbow slung across his back. “But the scent’s strong as hell. Must’ve shifted mid-fight. It’s fast, but it’s wounded.”

Seraphine stood. “It’s a Pureblood.”

Dorian nodded grimly. “High-ranking. No feral stink. We caught something big tonight, Commander.”

Commander.

It still felt foreign in her ears.

Less than a week ago, Seraphine had been a mere field enforcer, a ghost in the dark, a blade in the shadows. Now she was leading the Guild's most elite hunters through cursed woodlands on a sanctioned Blood Moon strike. She hadn’t asked for the promotion. She hadn’t cared for it. But when High Commander Luka was found torn to pieces inside his locked chamber, the Guild needed a fast replacement.

And she’d be summoned.

She wiped the blood off on her sleeve. “ Too soon, Vale.” Turning to her team, she ordered, “Form a crescent. Push forward. It’s heading east, toward the river to mask the stink.”

“It’s hunting alone…” Dorian frowned. “Seems off. A Pureblood wouldn’t stray this deep into Guild territory without company.”

“It made a mistake,” Seraphine said coldly, already moving through the ruins. “Now we make it fatal.”

The moonlight spilled silver through the trees as the hunting party fanned out, ten enforcers in black armor stitched with silver thread, eyes glowing faintly blue from the elixirs they’d drunk before the hunt. All except Seraphine. She never drank the odd potion.

She didn’t need to. Her senses and reflexes were sharp enough on their own.

The trail was bloody and messy. Broken branches, a streak of blood on a moss-covered boulder. The Pureblood was bleeding out. A clean cut, which was likely from Seraphine’s silver dagger earlier in the ruins. A silver blade had caught the wolf between the ribs before it vanished into the forest.

Seraphine could smell it now, clover and blood, and something else.

Something eerily familiar.

She stopped suddenly, heard a rustle in the trees to her right.

“Circle up,” she snapped. Her team froze in motion. “The beast is close.”

A low snarl split the silence.

Then the woods exploded.

The werewolf came out of the trees like a meteor, fur rippling black-blue under the moonlight, eyes glowing gold. The strike was near fatal as Dorian barely dodged a claw that would have shredded his torso. Another enforcer went down screaming, his throat torn out in a single swipe.

“Hold the line!” Seraphine shouted, already launching forward, twin silver daggers in each hand.

The Pureblood was tall, lean, fast. The beast was obviously mortally injured with the blood coating its side, but its movements were surgical. It was buying time, distracting them from something.

Seraphine danced around the wolf, slashing low, drawing a line of burning silver across the beast’s thigh. The creature howled, staggering.

Then its golden eyes locked on Seraphine’s.

The wolf hesitated for a breath too long.

And that’s when Seraphine struck.

She drove a dagger up under the ribcage, twisting until the blade lodged between bone. The werewolf shrieked, clawing at her face, but Seraphine ducked away and rammed her second blade into the creature’s neck.

A spray of hot blood hit her.

The wolf collapsed, shifting mid-fall. Human skin peeled through fur, bones cracked. And there, in a crumpled heap of blood and silver, lay an eerily beautiful young woman. She looked barely twenty.

Raven-haired. Regal features. Eyes wide with pain.

Seraphine stood over her, panting. Her guard was up in case the beast reared up again.

The girl gasped. “You... don’t know… what you’ve done.”

Seraphine’s grip tightened on her blade. “I know exactly what I’ve done.”

The girl coughed out blood. “Now, he’ll come for… you.”

Then her body went still, and an eerie silence fell over the woods.

Seraphine wiped her blade clean and stood.

“She was guarding something,” she murmured, shaking off a strange feeling, “Search the area.”

They found it minutes later, a message satchel, sealed in bone and buried beneath loose stones, marked with runes only old blood would recognize.

Seraphine opened the satchel to reveal a small scroll with a royal seal pressed into red wax.

“That’s the Vaelthorn crest.” Someone whispered.

Seraphine’s blood turned to ice.

“Whose sister did we just kill?” Dorian asked, his voice barely a whisper.

No one answered. The silence stretched over the woods.

                                                                                    ,,,

Far to the north, in one of the caves of a mountain fortress carved from obsidian, Alaric Vaelthorn stood motionless beneath the twin moons.

He was barefoot, his shirt soaked in rain and blood, his claws half-shifted.

He felt her die.

A painful howl tore right from his soul and echoed deep into the caves. The cave bats screeched in response and created a flutter wave as they flew out of their hiding place.

His sister was dead.

And somewhere in that blood-soaked forest… was the one who killed her.

A mere human.

His jaw tightened. Bones cracked beneath his skin. His wolf clawed just beneath the surface, howling in grief and rage.

“Alaric,” said Elder Rhelor and his late father’s brother, approaching cautiously. “The Elders are convening. We must respond to the humans. But not without —”

Alaric turned, his eyes glowing a fiery red. Rhelor shrank back.

“I want her brought to my feet,” he growled. “And I don’t care if it starts a war.”