Chapter Four – The Blood Moon Looms

I didn’t speak of what I saw in the forest.

Not to Elara, not to the other girls in the washroom who gossiped about whose blood stained the arena next, and certainly not to Mistress Tessa, who would’ve slapped the visions from my mouth. Some things, once spoken aloud, become too real. Too dangerous.

So I buried the memory beneath soap suds and silence.

But the burn on my palm wouldn’t fade.

Every night, I rubbed at it beneath the covers, tracing the shape of her fingers where they’d seared into me. The pain was gone—but something had taken root beneath the skin. A hum. A pull. A secret I hadn’t been ready to carry.

And with it came the dreams.

Hot, fevered things that tangled my limbs in the sheets and left me gasping into the dark. Always him—the Alpha. His hands rough on my hips, his mouth against my throat, his voice like thunder in my ear whispering things I wasn’t supposed to want. I woke each time with aching thighs and the shameful heat of longing.

I didn’t understand why. I barely knew him. But whatever had awoken inside me—planted in my skin like a spark waiting for dry timber—knew him intimately.

Too intimately.

And all the while, the Hollow changed.

The air grew tighter. Thicker.

The final ceremony was three nights away.

The blood moon was rising.

---

Preparations consumed everything.

Silks were steamed. Flowers gathered. Bones polished white and hung like garlands over the arena gates. The priestesses walked barefoot through the Hollow, blessing the stones, marking doors in ash.

Helena was paraded through the central courtyard like she was already Luna, her neck draped in silver, her hair bound in ceremonial gold thread. She wore the mark of every trial she had conquered: a braided leather band on her wrist for each girl she’d bested, each dream she’d ended.

The other contenders had become shadows beside her.

And still, she looked angry.

“Because she doesn’t want to be chosen,” Elara whispered to me as we scrubbed the blood from the arena gates. “She wants to take the crown. On her own terms.”

“She’s going to get it either way,” I muttered.

Elara glanced at me. “You sound like you don’t want her to.”

I didn’t answer.

---

That night, I crept out.

Sleep had become a battlefield. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt him—his hands, his breath, his hunger tangled with mine. It wasn’t real, but it left its mark on my skin all the same.

So I went back.

Not because I expected her to be there—she was too old, too strange, too much like the things I tried not to believe in.

I went back because I couldn't sleep. Because every breath I took felt like a promise not yet broken. Because the dreams had gotten worse.

In them, he touched me like I belonged to him. Not with tenderness, but with hunger. A claiming. Each time I woke up, my body ached, not from fear—but from want.

So I went back.

Back into the forest. Back to the place where the hooded woman had stood.

But the clearing was empty. Cold. Silent.

Still, I stood there in the dark, staring at the trees, willing her to return. To explain. To finish what she started.

Nothing came.

And yet the wind shifted around me, whispering in a tongue I didn’t recognize but somehow understood.

Not yet.

Not until the blood moon.

A branch snapped behind me.

I froze.

Not the wind this time.

Real footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. I ducked low behind a thicket, barely breathing.

The scent hit me first—pine, smoke, frost. Him.

The Alpha.

He stepped into the clearing like the forest belonged to him. Like everything did. His eyes scanned the trees, sharp and still glowing faintly in the dark.

"You can come out," he said softly. Not a threat. Not a plea. Just certainty. "I know you’re here."

My heart slammed against my ribs. I pressed a hand to my mouth, willing myself not to make a sound.

He turned his head slightly, eyes locking onto the shadows where I knelt.

"Ilia."

My name. Spoken low. Knowing.

I bolted.

Through thorns. Over roots. The night swallowed me whole as I ran, heart in my throat and his voice echoing behind me.

He hadn’t followed.

But something told me he didn’t need to.

I turned and walked home with dirt on my hem and the weight of something ancient in my chest.

Something was coming.

And it wanted me ready.