BLOOD MOON PROPHECY I was born on the night the moon bled, and for twenty-one years, I believed surviving that night was the greatest miracle of my life. I was wrong. Tonight, beneath that same crimson moon, I am being dragged in chains to the Bleeding Stone in the heart of Obsidia, where the priests intend to sacrifice me for a crime I never committed. They call me Lyra Vane, an insignificant Omega who scrubs their floors, but they do not know the truth hidden beneath my collarbone. I am the last child born with the crescent mark. The mark that made a king slaughter every child born that night. Including my parents. The man who signed my execution order is King Dorian Black. Colder than his father. More ruthless than any king alive. And the last man I should ever trust. Yet when the execution blade rises and my blood touches the ancient stone, his eyes remain fixed on mine, full of doubt. Then everything changes. The Bleeding Stone does not accept my sacrifice. It cracks open. The ground beneath Obsidia trembles. And something ancient answers from beneath the earth. Power tears through my veins as the wolf inside me awakens, and I realize the truth the four kingdoms buried for a thousand years. The Blood Moon Prophecy was never about my death. It was about what would happen when I lived. The First Beast is no longer sleeping. Now vampires, witches, and the last three kings are marching on Obsidia. Each one wants to chain me before anyone else can. They believe I am the key to controlling the creature beneath the Bleeding Stone. They are wrong. I do not control it. It knows me. Dorian knows what will happen if they take me. So the king who once condemned me now chooses to stand between me and the world. The ancient treaty gives him one way to keep me: claim me. If he does, it is war. If he does not, I am dead. But the greatest danger is not the armies outside our walls. It is not the Beast beneath the earth. It is the truth. I spent twenty-one years believing I was the girl who survived a massacre. But when the First Beast speaks my name from beneath the ruined seal, I understand. My parents were not killed because I was cursed. They were killed because the world was terrified of what I would become. And now that I have awakened, I will decide if the world deserves to be saved at all.