Blood and Moon

The moonrise was bleeding.

I stood at the edge of the fighting ring, barefoot on dirt that had swallowed Alpha blood for generations. Blackwood Pack circled us, a wall of fur and teeth and gold eyes. Northfall’s wolves held the perimeter, Valeria at their head with her arms crossed. Neutral party. Executioner, if I lost.

Across from me, Rhys rolled his shoulders. The silver chains were gone. His chest was bare, the four claw marks I gave him yesterday now ugly black scabs. He grinned when he saw me looking.

“Ready to die, little hybrid?”

I didn’t answer. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Not from fear. From hunger.

Valeria wasn’t kidding. The fae side was awake. I felt it under my skin like vines, like electricity. The grass at my feet was growing. Literally. Curling toward my toes, green and alive. I stomped it down.

“Rules,” Elder Maeve called from the dais. Her voice shook, but she stood tall. “Challenge to the death. No weapons. No outside interference. Winner takes the Alpha seat, uncontested. Loser’s body goes to the winner.”

My stomach turned. Winner takes the body. Wolf law. Bronte’s body — I never got to bury him. Did Rhys burn him? Dump him? The thought made the gold flare in my vision.

“Begin,” Maeve said.

Rhys didn’t wait. He shifted mid-lunge.

One second, man. Next, a monster. Bigger than the wolf I’d seen in the woods. Bigger than Bronte. His fur was the color of dried blood, and his eyes were pure, mindless rage.

I barely dodged. His claws tore through the air where my throat had been.

“Shift!” someone yelled from the crowd. “Fight him!”

I couldn’t. Not on command. The wolf in me was tangled with something else. Something with thorns. When I reached for it, my fingers went green at the tips. Not now, I begged whatever was inside me. Not yet.

Rhys hit me like a truck.

We went down, dirt in my mouth, his weight crushing my ribs. His jaws snapped for my face. I got my forearm up. Felt teeth break skin, bone grind. Pain white-hot, then — nothing.

Numb.

The grass under us exploded upward, wrapping around Rhys’s muzzle, his legs. He yelped, tearing at it, but more grew. Fast. Unnatural.

Fae.

The pack gasped. Even Valeria’s eyes widened.

I used the second of distraction. Drove my knee up into Rhys’s stomach. He wheezed, wolf form stuttering. I rolled, came up spitting blood. My arm was already healing. I watched the skin knit, leaves falling away from the wound.

“What are you?” Rhys snarled, back in human form, vines falling off him in dead clumps.

Good question.

I didn’t get to answer. Because that’s when the pain hit.

Not from Rhys. From inside. Low in my stomach. A cramp so deep I folded in half. Bronte’s ring burned against my chest like a coal.

No. Not now. Please not now.

“Something wrong, Luna?” Rhys saw it. Smelled the blood. His smile went feral. “Oh. Oh. So Maeve was right.”

He moved fast. Too fast. His claws were at my throat before I could stand.

“Say goodbye to Daddy’s little mistake,” he whispered.

The ring exploded with light.

---

Gold and green.

That’s all anyone saw. Light pouring off my chest, my skin, my eyes. The vines came back, but they weren’t vines anymore. They were branches. Bark. Thorns as long as my fingers. They ripped out of the ground, out of me, and speared Rhys through the shoulder, pinning him to the dirt like a bug.

He screamed. The sound was human. Afraid.

I stood, and I wasn’t alone in my body anymore.

Mine, something said. Not my voice. Not Bronte’s. Older. Wilder. Ours.

“W-Wild fae,” Maeve choked out. She dropped to her knees. “The woods have chosen…”

The pack followed. One by one, wolves hit the dirt. Even Marcus. Even the ones who’d called me filth yesterday.

Only Valeria stayed standing. She was smiling.

Rhys thrashed against the thorns. “This isn’t — you’re not — pack law says —”

“Pack law says the strongest rules,” I said. My voice was layered. Mine, and something ancient. “Pack law says vengeance is a right.” I walked to him, every step making flowers bloom dead in my wake. “You killed my mate. You tried to kill his child.”

I put my hand on his chest. Right over his heart. The thorns tightened.

“Wait!” he gasped. Blood ran from his mouth. “I can help you! You don’t know what you are! You don’t know what’s coming for you!”

I leaned down. “Then tell me.”

His eyes flicked to the tree line. To the shadows where the moonlight didn’t reach. “They know. The Courts. The Hunters. They killed Bronte because he hid you. They’ll come for —”

A whistle.

An arrow took him in the eye.

Rhys’s body jerked, then went limp. Dead weight on my thorns.

The pack erupted. Howls, snarls, wolves shifting and surging toward the trees. But it was too late.

More arrows. Silver-tipped. One hit a Northfall wolf in the throat. He dropped, shifting back to human as he died.

“Hunters!” Valeria roared. “Form up!”

Chaos. That’s what it was. Chaos and blood and moonlight.

I couldn’t move. The fae thing inside me was screaming, but not at Rhys. At the forest. At the iron in the air. Iron burned fae. Burned me.

An arrow came for my heart.

It stopped mid-air, six inches from my chest. Tangled in a wall of thorns that grew from nothing.

“Found you,” a voice said from the trees.

A man stepped into the clearing. Human-shaped. Human-scented. But his eyes were wrong. Too bright. Too green. Like broken glass.

He was beautiful. And he was looking at me like I was something he owned.

“Hello, little cousin,” he said. “Mother’s been worried sick.”

---

Three Hours Later

“You’re safe here.”

Valeria’s safe house was iron-lined. Literally. The walls, the windows, even the plates we ate off. It made my teeth ache and my skin itch, but it kept the fae man — Silas, he’d called himself — out. For now.

Safe. Right. Rhys was dead. A Northfall wolf was dead. Hunters had crashed my challenge. And I was apparently some kind of fae-wolf princess with a target on my back and maybe a baby I didn’t know about.

Safe was a joke.

“He’s Court,” Valeria said, pacing. She had a cut on her cheek from a silver arrow. It wasn’t healing. “Wild Court. They’ve been extinct for three centuries. Until you.”

“Great,” I said. My hands were still green at the tips. Leaves kept sprouting from my hair. I ripped them out. “So I’m related to the guy who wants to kidnap me?”

“Not kidnap,” Valeria corrected. “Coronate. You’re the last of their line, Wellie. Direct descendant of the Thorn Queen. Your mother —”

“Was human,” I said automatically. Then stopped. Was she? I didn’t remember her. Foster care. Lost records. Bronte saying it doesn’t matter.

Valeria gave me a look. “Bronte told me your mother died in childbirth. That your father was wolf. That he bound your fae side to save you from the Courts. They kill hybrids, Wellie. Or they use them.”

Use them how? I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know.

A knock at the door. We both went for our weapons. Valeria relaxed when she saw who it was.

Marcus. Blackwood’s Beta. He looked like hell. Dirt, blood, and shame.

“Luna,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “The pack… we’re waiting. For orders.”

Orders. From me. The librarian. The hybrid. The thing that killed their Alpha with tree branches.

I looked at Valeria. She shrugged. “Your pack. Your call.”

I thought of Bronte. Of what he’d want. Peace. He always wanted peace.

“Tell them to burn Rhys’s body,” I said. My voice didn’t shake. “No burial rites. He doesn’t get them. Then fortify the den. Double patrols. No one goes into the woods alone. Not until we know what the hunters want.”

Marcus blinked. Then he bowed. Deep. “Yes, Alpha.”

When he was gone, I sank into a chair. My hand went to my stomach without thinking. Still flat. Still… maybe nothing. Maybe grief. Maybe fear.

Valeria watched me. “You need to know for sure. If there’s an heir, the Courts will come harder. The Hunters will too. A fae-wolf child? That’s power, Wellie. That’s war.”

“I know a guy,” I said quietly. “In town. Human doctor. He won’t ask questions if I pay cash.”

Valeria nodded. “We go at dawn. Together.”

I didn’t sleep. Couldn’t. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw gold. Bronte’s eyes. Rhys’s eyes. Silas’s eyes.

Not yet, love.

“Please,” I whispered to the dark. To him. To whatever was inside me. “Just tell me what to do.”

The ring on my chest pulsed once. Warm.

And in the woods outside, something with too many legs and too many teeth started to sing.