The Luna's Blood Moon

“She should not exist…”

Those are the first words spoken by the midwife on the night Mayari is born.

That night, the moon did not shine the way it normally would, instead it bled. Like a crimson stain spreading across the face of the night, it turned the atmosphere into a rust-tinted veil.

The moon loomed low over the forest, its eyes darting across the earth and watching her birth unfold like the heavens themselves had come down to watch.

As the winds passed through the trees, they shivered like they were alive, their leaves uttering a rustling paranoid whisper that seemed to be warnings of the impending danger associated with the night.

Even the wolves that are natural creatures of instinct and dominance know better than to not keep their distance away from the birthing den.

“Push!" the midwife yells, her voice sounds like a snapped rubber band in the way her words are clipped short and tense. There's also an undertone of something even worse…a fear so raw, everyone around the birthing den could practically taste it.

Outside the den, the pack gathers in unease. Their eyes dart away whenever it threatens to meet with the eyes of their neighbor, their attention focused on the entrance of the den instead and palpable fear festering beneath the surface.

Every warrior, elder and even children not yet old enough to understand the happenings of the night are drawn to the den not from curiosity, but from the heaviness of the moon pressing against their ribs like a warning, making it almost impossible for them to breathe.

“Something is wrong with the moon," one of the members mutters under their breath. One look at his silvery black robe and his long white hair indicates that he is a member of the Moon Council.

“Is it the moon though?" one of his colleagues asks, head automatically turning in the direction of the birthing den where the screams of the mother are heard still ringing loud and clear.

“What if it's the child and not the moon?”

His question remains heavy like a thick fog of uncertainty clinging to the air and going unanswered.

A final cry rings through the night and then immediately followed by silence that stretches so thin between them, it felt like one wrong move would cause it all to snap messily.

“Wahhhhhhhhhhh," a single wail pierces through the blanket of silence, but something is not right. The cry is too sharp, almost like knives piercing through the ears of all the wolves present. The cry is also layered, like two voices trying to merge as one but failing miserably, instead leaving behind a shrill raucous sound shredding the air.

Inside the den, the air leaves the midwife's lungs and refuses to come back, her legs not listening to her brain when she wills them to move as her eyes are now fixed on the child in her arms.

At first, the child is nothing but a quiet almost resting breath, and then suddenly, her eyes snaps open.

“Two different eye colours…” the midwife gasps under her breath. The child bears two eye colours, one a shade of red similar to the moon and the other a shade of blue similar to the moon on a clear day.

The child is neither wolf nor human, but a rough combination of both. A glow of fractured silver lights cuts through the streams of red light that pulsed beneath her veins.

“No…no…no” the midwife flinches so violently, it almost feels like she is trying so hard to crawl out of her own skin.

“My baby girl…,” the child's mother reaches out with weak and trembling hands, trying to hold onto her baby, but the midwife makes no attempt to hand the child over to her.

“She should not exist…,” the midwife stumbles backwards, her knees suddenly too tired to hold her weight up. The child is still in her arms, her tiny fingers curled in a fist. Instead of soft skin around her finger tips, there are little sharp claws not fully formed yet…she is what they will later call “the half-shifted one."

The air in the den grows heavy with an ancient force, the air itself hanging thick and still, almost like it is refusing to circulate. Whatever is in the air feels like it's observing everyone, waiting for the right opportunity to strike.

Outside, at the mouth of the den, the murmurs that previously died down with the birth of the child, has now reached a feverish pace, everyone trying to hastily fill the oppressive silence.

“A blood moon birth…”

"To birth a child under the blood moon is forbidden…”

"A child born under the eyes of the blood moon is a curse…”

"No child born under the blood moon ever survives…”

Just then, the Alpha walks into the frantic sounds of voices all around, bringing with him an unnerving quiet that cuts through the crowd like a blade, the instant he steps into the den.

“What abomination has been born among us?" He demands, his expression maintaining a stony composure and his features are as unyielding and as cold as a statue staring straight at the child still in the hands of the midwife, totally oblivious to the chaos around her.

The midwife pauses, her hand hoovering over the child trying to decide if to take her to the Alpha or not. Although she utters no words in reply, her action or rather, the lack of it, is enough to tell the Alpha what he suspects.

“Show her to me…” he commands immediately, the colour in his eyes deepening from sky blue to a stormy midnight blue and his voice infused with so much power, making it difficult for her to disobey.

Gathering every last ounce of her willpower, the midwife slowly turns like her limbs are made of lead. The Alpha took a step closer to get a better look and for the first time in years, genuine fear flickers across his face. The child stares back at him, her eyes searching deep into his soul for secrets he could not dare speak out.