Blood oath
1194 Words
The air in Aelwyn’s ruined halls was heavy with the scent of smoke, steel, and sweat. The firepits still burned, casting flickering shadows over the cracked stone, but there was no more howling. No celebration.
The pack was watching.
They had seen her change.
Seen her dominate one of their own.
Seen her lead, even when she didn’t want to.
Caela stood alone now, overlooking the ravine from the crumbled battlement, her silver armor discarded for a dark cloak and leathers. Her sword Ashreign was sheathed at her back, but it felt heavier than ever.
She should’ve felt triumphant.
But all she felt was the pressure in her chest.
The weight of expectation. And something deeper:
The pull of the beast.
She didn’t hear Thorne approach, but she smelled him wild musk, pine, and iron. He moved like smoke and heat, his presence always somewhere between threatening and intoxicating.
“You should rest,” he said.
“I’m not tired.”
“A lie.”
She didn’t argue. Her silence was answer enough.
Thorne leaned against the battle beside her. “You handled that challenge like an Alpha born.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“But you did.”
Caela looked out over the forest below, dark and whispering beneath the silver moon.
“I’m not like you,” she said softly.
“No,” he agreed. “You’re stronger.”
Later that night, Thorne called a gathering.
All Moonborne of age were summoned to the ruined chapel, now repurposed as a place of ritual. Vines crept down the stone pillars. Bones of deer and beasts hung in twisted patterns from the rafters. The moonlight shone through the broken roof, spotlighting a single obsidian bowl set on an altar of rock.
“This is where oaths are made,” Thorne told her, standing at her side. “Where blood speaks truer than words.”
Caela’s throat tightened. “What kind of oath?”
“The kind that binds us. To our kin. To you.”
The pack formed a wide circle. Dozens of them. Some in partial beast-form, others still clinging to their human skin. All eyes on her.
A woman stepped forward, tall and silent. She bore an armful of ceremonial blades—short, curved knives, each carved with silver inlays. She offered one to Caela, and another to Thorne.
Thorne sliced his palm without hesitation.
His blood spilled into the black bowl.
The air shifted.
Magic.
Old magic.
Not the kind taught in courts or druidic circles, but blood-deep, tied to earth, moon, and marrow.
Thorne looked at her.
She hesitated.
Her hands trembled, but not from fear. From memory.
From hunger.
Still, she sliced.
Her blood hit the bowl and sizzled.
The mixture turned dark silver, like moonlight trapped in water.
Gasps rippled through the circle.
“She carries the Queen’s Mark,” someone whispered.
“She bleeds silver.”
Thorne raised the bowl.
“She is Moonblood,” he declared. Chosen by the Old Moon. We are bound to her now. In one pack. One purpose.”
The pack knelt.
And Caela’s heart howled.
That night, the dreams returned.
Only this time, they didn’t feel like dreams.
They felt like memories.
She stood in a hall of mirrors, each one reflecting a version of herself. Knight. Beast. Queen. Monster. She tried to scream, but her throat was full of fur. Her hands were claws. Her eyes burned gold.
A voice echoed through the darkness.
“You cannot outrun what you are.”
She turned.
A woman stood in the distance. Silver-haired, regal, her armor etched with the same sigil now burned into Caela’s mind—the crescent moon and fang.
“Who are you?” Caela asked.
The woman smiled.
“Your beginning. And your end.”
She woke up gasping, chest tight, hands trembling.
Bramble lay beside her, breathing slowly and steadily.
His presence grounded her. Anchored her.
But the voice still echoed.
The blood still burned.
She didn’t go back to sleep.
By dawn, the scouts returned with news.
A human patrol had spotted a dozen knights in Eldorian armor, camped two miles east. They bore no flags. No heraldry.
Hunters.
Moonborne tensed.
Thorne’s jaw clenched. “They’re looking for you.”
Caela felt the shift inside her anger. Yes, but fear, too. Not for herself.
As to what she might do if pushed.
“I’ll speak to them,” she said.
Thorne arched a brow. “You’d walk into their camp?”
“I’ll go alone,” she said. No one else. If they’re after me, let them see who I am.”
“And if they attack?”
“I’ll know where they stand.”
She rode out by dusk.
No escort. No hound.
Just Ashreign at her back and a cloak around her shoulders.
The wind bit, but she barely felt it.
Her senses were sharper now. Every snap of the twig, every beat of the owl's wing above her head, she felt them like ripples on her skin.
She found the patrol camped near a riverbend, their fire low, their voices grim.
One of them stepped forward as she dismounted. A knight. Tall. Broad. Scar across his jaw.
Commander Marek Althorn.
Once her second-in-command.
Once her friend.
His eyes widened. “Caela?”
She nodded once. “Commander.”
“You were dead.”
“No. Just changed.”
His eyes flicked to her pendant. “Is it true?”
She didn’t answer.
He stepped forward. “We were sent to find you. And kill you.”
There it was.
No pretense.
She appreciated her honesty.
“And now that you have?”
Marek’s eyes searched hers. “You’re still you, aren’t you?”
Caela didn’t know how to answer that.
Marek’s men were uneasy. None had drawn blades yet, but their hands hovered close to hilts. One of them, a younger knight with twitching fingers, spat at her feet.
“You reek of rot.”
Caela didn’t flinch.
“I came to talk,” she said. “Not fight.”
“Then talk fast,” Marek said.
She told him everything: Greydawn Hollow, the pack, the Change. The oath.
The prophecy.
He listened.
And when she finished, he said only, “You should’ve stayed dead.”
He turned his back.
Caela’s fury surged.
Then died.
She rode back in silence.
And behind her, in the dark, another knight watched her leave.
Eyes glowing faintly.
Back at Aelwyn, Thorne waited with arms crossed.
“They won’t listen.”
“No,” Caela said.
“They’ll come for you.”
“I know.”
“Then we strike first.”
“No.”
Thorne bared his teeth. “They’ll kill you.”
“Let them try.”
He stepped forward. “They fear what you are.”
“And you don’t?”
“No,” he said. “I fear what you could become if you keep trying to be both.”
Caela’s voice was ice. “Then fear is the smartest thing about you.”
She turned and walked away.
But even as she did, she felt it.
The war had begun.
- Writer
