Waking Up New Moon

Chapter One: The Wolves Who Stare The first thing Savannah Cross noticed about New Moon High was the silence. Not the absence of noise, there was plenty of that. Bells, sneakers squeaking on polished floors, half-bored chatter echoing off lockers. But the silence behind it all... that watched her. City noise had a heartbeat. Sirens, shouting, late-night music rattling apartment windows. Even the concrete had rhythm. This town? It was a whisper with teeth. She adjusted the strap of her bag and walked past the front office without checking in. If they wanted her schedule, they could come find her. Savannah didn’t do hand-holding. The hallways parted like water. Students glanced up from their conversations, and a few boys did that annoying full-body scan like they had x-ray vision and no shame. She didn’t smile. Let them stare. She knew what she looked like long legs, brown skin kissed by the late summer sun, black curls spilling past her shoulders like she meant it. Eyes lined sharp enough to cut. Boots with steel toes. Her walk said: I don't need permission. She’d crafted this version of herself like armour. The city taught her that don’t show weakness, and if you had to bleed, make it look like a threat. Savannah turned a corner and nearly ran face-first into them again. The trio. Luca, Jace, Rowan. God, of course, they had to be that kind of beautiful. Too symmetrical. Too confident. Too still. They didn’t move like teenagers—they moved like predators humouring prey. Luca tilted his head when he saw her, that black hair falling into his eyes like a movie cliché. “Missed us already?” “I never hit you in the first place,” Savannah said smoothly. “You must be confusing me with someone who plays nice.” Jace laughed, hands in his pockets, like everything she said amused him. Rowan just watched. She hated how aware she was of their eyes. Their focus wasn’t human it was clinical. Like they were cataloguing her heartbeat, her scent, the way her weight shifted from one foot to the other. She hated it even more that it didn’t scare her. “City girl,” Rowan said quietly, like he was naming a species. “You say that like it’s a problem,” Savannah snapped. “Not a problem,” Luca said. “Just rare. Not many people come here by choice.” She didn’t flinch. “I didn’t say it was my choice.” That made them pause. A flicker of something passed between them some silent communication she wasn’t meant to catch. She did anyway. Savannah raised her eyebrows, daring them to pry. They didn’t. Which meant they were smarter than they looked. She stepped between Luca and Jace like they were trees, and she had somewhere better to be. “Don’t get cute,” she said over her shoulder. “You won’t like how I bite.” Luca’s laugh followed her down the hallway, low and hungry. Rowan’s voice cut through it, quiet but clear: “She doesn’t smell like prey.” Savannah kept walking. Didn’t smile. Didn’t let herself enjoy it. But in her chest, something old stirred something that remembered what it meant to run with wolves. Let them wonder why she was here. She was wondering, too. Room 104 was buried at the end of the science wing—cold, windowless, and somehow already filled with a smell Savannah could only describe as bleach and boredom. She was five minutes late, but she walked in like she was early. The teacher—a rail-thin woman with an old punk band tee under a cardigan—looked up mid-sentence. “You must be the transfer.” “Savannah Cross.” She said it like it was the only name that mattered. The teacher gestured vaguely toward the back. “Find a seat. Don’t let the others bite.” Savannah didn’t laugh. She scanned the room. The usual suspects—overachievers up front, i********: clones to the left, burnout boys pretending to sleep. And then her gaze landed on him. Jace. One half of the beautiful problem. Blond curls pulled back today, like he was trying to look more responsible. Button-down shirt. Clean, pressed. But his jaw was tight, and his hand gripped the desk like it had wronged him. So. He hadn’t expected her here. Or maybe he had—and didn’t like it. Good. Savannah slid into the empty seat beside him without asking. She could feel it instantly: his posture stiffened, and his warmth radiated like heat from a too-close fire. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t need to. She smirked to herself and pulled out a pen. The lesson resumed, but the room felt warped around the edges. Like the moment had teeth. Jace leaned in slightly, voice low enough only she could hear. “You picked this seat on purpose?” Savannah didn’t glance at him. “You think I rearranged the universe just to sit next to you? Cute.” His voice dropped, silk over stone. “You’re attracting attention.” “Good. Maybe someone’ll ask me to prom.” He exhaled sharply through his nose, not quite a laugh, not quite a growl. She finally turned her head and met his eyes. Those ridiculous, sunlit eyes that didn’t belong in a town this cloudy. “You’re really bothered by this, aren’t you?” she asked. “Is it because your little fan club is looking at me instead of you?” His jaw clenched. “It’s not them I’m worried about.” Savannah paused. Her gaze sharpened. So he knew others were sensing her. Reacting to her. Not just people. Pack. “You’re not like the rest of them,” he said. “I get that a lot.” He shook his head. “You don’t smell like a normal girl. And the pack—Luca, Rowan—they feel it too. It’s…pulling at them.” Savannah’s lips parted slightly, not in surprise—but in calculation. So they were already feeling it. The shift. The weight. She’d wondered if they were smart enough to notice. Alphas usually are. “I’m flattered,” she said softly, her voice like smoke. “But let’s get one thing straight.” Jace turned fully to face her. The air between them buzzed. “I don’t care that you’re Alphas,” Savannah said, voice like a knife wrapped in silk. “I didn’t come here to follow anyone. Least of all, a boy with pretty eyes and anger management issues.” His expression barely changed. But the colours in his eyes deepened just a shade. The tension between them thickened, like the moment before lightning strikes. The teacher called on Savannah to answer a question. She blinked slowly, then rattled off the correct answer without looking away from Jace. The class murmured in surprise. Jace stared at her like she was a glitch in the system. Something wrong. Something wild. She leaned in, just enough to make him flinch. “Relax, golden boy. I didn’t come here to start a war.” She smiled. Not sweetly. “But I will finish one.” Chapter Two: The Palace and the Price Savannah Cross left school faster than a bullet leaves a barrel. One second, she was there, face expressionless as stone, the next gone. No one saw her slip out the side doors. Not the girls who whispered in bathrooms or the boys who thought they were subtle with their staring. Not even the ones who should have noticed. The wolves. They should’ve caught the shift in the air. The way tension snapped around her like an electric fence. But even they underestimated just how fast a girl could disappear when she was two seconds from breaking. She walked until the school disappeared behind her until the buzz of it faded beneath the blood in her ears. Savannah had taken exactly six steps into the building that morning before someone commented on her scent different, they said. Not human. Not pack. She didn’t know which insulted her more. By lunch, she was the subject of open stares and not-so-subtle sniffing. A few people had tried to be cute. Flirty. One i***t had actually squeezed her ass in the hallway. He got an elbow to the gut and dropped like a bad habit. Savannah hadn’t even broken stride. Now, hours later, her fingers were still trembling. She hated it. The way the stares clung to her like a second skin. The whispers. The scent of male attention is like stale cologne and ego. Every footstep echoed in her skull. She wanted to scream. Not because she was scared. Because she was furious. This place. This town. This pack. She hadn’t chosen this life. She didn’t ask to be sent to the New Moon pack like some pawn on a board she hadn’t agreed to play on. Her father had made the call, all cold logic, and zero explanation. Just a letter. Just a sentence. “It’s time you came to New Moon. The palace requests it.” The palace. Like that word was supposed to mean something. It meant betrayal. It meant leaving the city behind—her crew, her rooftop views, her midnight runs across skyscrapers. The people who knew her, who let her be sharp and loud and flawed. Who didn’t care if she growled when cornered. Savannah stormed up the gravel path to the cottage she was staying in—some forgettable thing on the edge of town, surrounded by trees and silence. She slammed the door behind her, locked it, and stood with her back against it, chest rising and falling like she’d just outrun something bigger than herself. She hadn’t cried when she left. Not when her best friend said, “He’s sending you where?” Not when she kissed her city goodbye through a cab window. Not even when her father hugged her, tight but distracted, like he couldn’t even meet her eyes. But now, alone in a too-quiet house, with wolves on her scent and a palace pulling puppet strings, she didn’t understand Savannah’s mask cracked. Only for a moment. She clenched her jaw and dug her fingers into her palms until they ached. She wouldn’t scream. She wouldn’t cry. But she would remember. She would remember every face that watched her like prey. Every step she took alone in that godawful hallway. Every breath she swallowed when she wanted to fight. And she would never forgive her father. Not for dragging her here. Not for keeping her in the dark. Not for taking away everything that made her feel like herself. The moon was rising now—full and red-tinged, glowing through the window like it knew something she didn’t. Savannah turned her back on it. “Let them watch,” she whispered. “Let them stare. I’m not here to belong.” She looked at her reflection in the hallway mirror—eyes sharp, mouth set like a weapon. “I’m here to burn it down.”