Chapter 4: Mercy From the Moon

Alpha Veyron Mordane

The water runs red.

I stand beneath the cascade—scalding, punishing—watching the blood spiral down the drain in thick, viscous ribbons. Eight women’s worth. Nine, if I count the one they dragged out three hours ago, her body limp as a slaughtered deer, her throat bruised from my teeth, her thighs painted with the evidence of my brutality. I’d marked her everywhere. Inside and out. I’d felt the moment her body gave up beneath mine, that sweet surrender of death that usually follows my touch.

But then—I’d woken to silence.

Usually, I wake to screaming. To begging. To the wet gurgle of a throat collapsing beneath my jaws as the frenzy fades and leaves me with nothing but cooling meat beside me. But this time... silence. I’d rolled over, expecting the familiar sight of a corpse cooling in my bed, and instead found her chest rising. Falling. Rising again.

An Omega.

I’d smelled it on her—the rich, cloying sweetness that pulls at something primal in my gut, the scent that drags me toward sleep after the frenzy takes everything. The others hadn’t been Omegas. Just regular women. Weak women. Pitiful sacrifices offered up by desperate families trying to clear their debts. But this one... she’d pulled me under with her scent, wrapped around me like a vine, and I’d assumed she’d die like the rest. They all died. Always.

She’d been muttering something when I woke. Words I couldn’t make out through the haze—prayers, maybe. Or curses. I hadn’t waited to find out. I’d roared for the guards, ordered them to remove her before she could die in my presence, before I had to watch the light leave her eyes like it always did. I’d assumed she was already gone—that her heart was merely finishing its last stuttering beats somewhere out of my sight.

I press my palms against the stone wall. The frenzy is fading now, leaving behind the familiar hollowness that gnaws at my ribs. Three hundred years. Three centuries of blood-moons turning me into something that wears my skin but isn’t me. Something that fucks and tears and consumes until the scent of death is the only thing that sates the hunger. I am the Supreme Alpha, the ruler of this forsaken continent, and I am cursed to destroy anything soft enough to love.

I stopped praying for the Moon Goddess’s mercy decades ago. Stopped hoping for a mate who could survive the taking. I am a monster wearing a crown, destined to walk alone until time itself crumbles.

The water turns clear. Finally.

I step out, naked, dripping. The mirror shows me nothing—just a man with black eyes and a jaw clenched tight enough to crack stone. My muscles are corded, tense, still vibrating with the residual violence of the frenzy. The wolf inside me is quiet now, sated, sleeping off the bloodlust. But there’s a restlessness there, too. A confusion. The beast knows something happened that shouldn’t have happened. Something impossible.

A knock.

"Enter," I bark.

The door opens. Kael steps in—my Beta, my shadow, the only one who dares approach after the frenzy. His eyes immediately drop to the floor, respectful, but I catch the tremor in his hands. Smart man. He’s seen what I do to those who meet my gaze when the wolf is still close to the surface. He’s buried the bodies. All eight of them. Nine, now.

"My Lord," he says, voice steady despite the fear-scent rolling off him in sour waves. "The servants have prepared your meal."

I move past him into the chamber, water still dripping from my hair, tracking wet footprints across the marble.

The maids are waiting—three of them, trembling, keeping their gazes fixed on the floor. Smart girls. They know what I am after the blood-moon. They know not to meet my eyes, not to speak unless commanded, not to exist too loudly in my presence. One of them flinches as I pass, and I catch the whimper she tries to swallow.

The table is set with raw venison. Bloody. Fresh. Still warm from the kill. I tear into it with my hands, not bothering with utensils. The meat is cold, coppery, barely satisfying the residual hunger that lingers after the frenzy. I eat like the animal I am, tearing strips of flesh, swallowing without chewing. My canines—still elongated, still sharp—rip through sinew and muscle with ease. Blood runs down my chin, dripping onto my bare chest.

Kael stands at a distance, waiting, his hands clasped behind his back. I can feel him vibrating with some secret, some news he’s desperate to spill but terrified to speak. He keeps shifting his weight, and the scent of his anxiety is making my wolf restless.

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, feeling the blood smear across my jaw. "Speak," I command, my voice guttural, still rough from the wolf. "You’re buzzing like a fly. Out with it before I tear your throat out just to stop the noise."

He steps forward, holding a silver chalice with both hands. "Wine, my Lord. From the northern vineyards. Aged thirty years."

I take it, drink deep. The alcohol burns, searing down my throat, but not enough. Nothing burns enough to erase the memories of what I did in that room. The way she’d screamed. The way she’d gone silent beneath me, her body breaking like dry twigs.

"The Omega," Kael says carefully, his eyes still fixed on the floor. "The one from the frenzy."

I freeze. The girl. The one I’d ordered removed like garbage, like offal, like the waste she was.

"What of her?" I growl. "She dead yet? Did she finally finish dying in the infirmary?"

Kael’s eyes widen. He drops to his knees, the impact echoing through the chamber like a gunshot. The maids gasp, scrambling back, pressing themselves against the walls. One of them sobs quietly.

"My Lord," Kael breathes, his voice cracking with something that sounds like awe. Or terror. Or both. "The Moon Goddess has shown you mercy. My Lord... she survived."

The chalice stops halfway to my lips.

"What?"

"She lives, my Lord. The physicians—they worked on her for hours. Her heart stopped. She was clinically dead, my Lord. But they revived her. Used the defibrillation paddles. Pumped her full of adrenaline and healing tonics." Kael looks up at me, his face pale as parchment, his eyes wide with disbelief. "She breathes. She walks. She spoke to the Matron this morning. Coherent. Alive. Asking questions."

I stare at him.

The room goes silent. The maids hold their breath. Even the wolf inside me—usually dormant after feeding—stirs, ears perking, hackles rising. Curious. Suspicious.

"No," I say flatly. "You’re mistaken. Or they lie to save their skins from my wrath."

"My Lord, I swear on my life, on my blood, on my oath to you—she lives." Kael swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. "Her name is Evelina Sinclair. A slave, my Lord. A sacrifice from the debtor’s auction, sold by her stepmother to clear a gambling debt. She’s—she’s in the infirmary now, under guard. The doctors say she shouldn’t have survived. The internal bleeding alone should have killed her. The trauma, the rib fractures, the—"

"Silence," I snap.

Kael’s mouth snaps shut with an audible click.

I slam the chalice down. Wine splashes across the table, soaking the raw meat, staining the white cloth crimson. It looks like blood. It always looks like blood. "You lie. You must lie. Three centuries, Kael. Three centuries, and not one survived. Not the strong ones. Not the willing ones. Not the ones who begged and prayed and tried to endure my curse. I break them. I kill them. It is what I am." I step toward him, my bare feet silent on the stone, and I grab him by the throat, lifting him easily. His feet dangle, kicking, his hands coming up to claw at my wrist. "And you tell me this scrap of a girl—this virgin sacrifice, this slave, this nothing from a debtor’s prison—lived?"

Kael chokes, his face turning purple, his eyes bulging. "N-no... my Lord... s-she... lives... I swear... check yourself... see her..."

I drop him.

He crumples to the floor, gasping, clutching his throat, coughing wetly. His breath comes in ragged, desperate pulls. I turn away, pacing to the window, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. The moon is still high, mocking me. The blood-moon, fading now, but still red at the edges, still watching. Still hungry.

She survived.

Impossible.

I close my eyes and I can smell her—suddenly, violently—her scent imprinted on my memory from the frenzy. Sweet. Too sweet. Like jasmine and honey and something else. Something sharp. Something that smells like... defiance. Like a heartbeat that refused to stop simply because I commanded it to.

"Explain," I bark, not turning around. "Everything. Now."

Kael drags himself to his knees, still coughing. "She—she was dead, my Lord. For three minutes. The physicians had declared her. But then... her heart restarted. They don’t know why. They say it’s impossible. She’s healing faster than she should. The Matron wanted to return her to the slave quarters, but I—I told her no, my Lord. I told the Matron that if the girl truly survived, she shouldn’t return to the slave quarter. I said a room should be made for her. In the residence. Away from the others. That if she lived through your taking, she deserved... she deserved to be kept."

I whirl around. "You what?"

Kael flinches, dropping his forehead to the floor. "I overstepped, my Lord. I know. I’m sorry. I just thought—if she is the one, if she is the one who can survive you—she should be close. Not in the slave quarters. Not where she can be... harmed. Before you have a chance to... to study her."

Study her.

The word rolls through my mind like a stone.

I stalk back to the bed—the bed where I’d destroyed her, where I’d taken her apart piece by piece—and I grab the sheets. I press my face into the fabric, inhaling deeply, letting her scent flood my senses.

There.

Jasmine. Honey. And beneath it, something dangerous. Something that smells like survival. Like stubbornness. Like a heartbeat that refused to stop.

My cock stirs. Not from desire—no, not yet—but from challenge. From the hunt. From the sudden, violent need to understand how this girl—this slave, this nothing—did what no one else could do.

She survived me.

I throw back my head and laugh.

It sounds like breaking glass. Like bones snapping. Like the screams of the eight who died before her. The maids whimper, pressing themselves against the walls, trying to become invisible.

The Moon Goddess hasn’t shown me mercy.

She’s shown me a puzzle.

And I have never been able to resist taking things apart to see how they work.

"Kael," I say, my voice dropping to a dangerous purr.

"Yes, my Lord?"

"Move her. Tonight. To the East Wing. The room beside the library. I want her close." I press my face into the sheets again, drinking in her scent. "And Kael?"

"Yes, my Lord?"

"No one touches her. No one speaks to her. No one even breathes in her direction without my permission." I turn, and I know my smile is feral, inhuman. "She’s mine. My survivor. And I’m going to find out exactly what makes her heart keep beating."

Kael bows low, his forehead touching the floor. "As you command, my Lord."

I look back at the moon, still bleeding red at the edges, and I feel something I haven’t felt in three hundred years.

Curiosity.

And the first, faint stirrings of obsession.