Bloodthirsty Luna: Unsatiable Cravings

Elona Pov "I'm sorry, my love." Rylan said it so quietly that, for a moment, I wondered if the fever had finally made me delirious. He stood across from my bed, one hand resting on the back of the wooden chair, his jaw set in that unreadable way that used to make my heart race and now just made my stomach drop. A single candle burned low on the table between us, catching the silver ring he kept turning on his finger, over and over, like a man rehearsing an apology he'd already decided not to change. "Sorry?" My voice was barely stronger than a breath. His eyes dropped briefly to my swollen belly before lifting it back to my face. "I spoke with the elders. They've begun discussing another Luna." "You mean... another woman." I forced myself upright despite my burning lungs. "Say it properly, Rylan. Don't dress it up as elders and discussions." "Another woman," he said, flat, like the words cost him nothing. "How efficient of you, Rylan. It sounds more like I don't know you at all," she said with a small smile on her face. "Elona—" "No, let me guess how this works." I lifted a hand, mock-formal, though my fingers shook. "You'll wait until the child is born, present her to the pack as a tragic widower's second chance, and everyone will call it noble instead of convenient." "That isn't fair, I know that, but the rules are the rules, Elona, and they are not meant to be disobeyed." "Isn't it? You've clearly rehearsed this. I'm only pointing out the parts you left unsaid." His jaw ticked at me. "I am the Alpha, Elona. You have no idea what it is for me." "You're my fiancé first. Or you used to think so, back when that title meant something to you." For a moment, neither of us spoke, and the silence pulled me somewhere I hadn't meant to go; back to his study, three months earlier, the night of our engagement, when he'd caught me staring and laughing instead of retreating from duty. "You're staring again," he'd said, sleeves rolled to the elbow, dark hair falling over his forehead in that way that undid me completely. I'd asked him, foolish and brave in equal measure, whether he regretted choosing me. He hadn't answered with words. He'd crossed the room slowly, tipped my chin up with one finger, and murmured that I worried too much, and when his mouth finally found mine, every insecurity I had ever carried simply dissolved. That night, I had given him everything, believing, with the whole foolish certainty of first love, that he had finally chosen me the way I'd chosen him. I hadn't understood yet that a man could hold you like that and still, eventually, hand you a countdown. "It still does mean something," Rylan said now, dragging me back into the cold room, the cold bed, the cold space where that memory no longer belonged. "Then act like it," I said, "instead of standing there turning that ring like it's the only thing in this room you're afraid of losing." That landed at him very hard this time. I saw it land, a flicker of something raw before he smoothed it back into composure. "I have a duty to this pack," he replied. "You have a duty to me too. Or did the elders forget to mention that part." "I haven't forgotten anything, it is just..." "Could have fooled me. The man from that night certainly didn't act like duty was the only thing he cared about." His eyes flickered, he remembered, then. That was almost worse than if he hadn't. "That was different." "Was it? Or was it just easier, before there was a dying woman and an unborn heir standing in the way of what's convenient?" "Elona, you're dying." He said it like a fact he could hide behind, and it hollowed me out worse than any insult could have. "Then let me die married to the man who once looked at me like I was worth choosing, instead of auditioning my replacement while I'm still breathing, Rylan, please," I said, trying to soothe him with my hands at least. "That's not what this is," he said, slowly withdrawing my hand from his. "Isn't it? Tell me you fought them. Tell me you said no." He said nothing. The silence answered for him, the way it always did lately. "That's what I thought," I finally said,because I already knew in my heart, but love won't make me possibly accept it. The cough came out of nowhere, tearing up through my chest before I could stop it, doubling me over the blanket. Rylan was at my side instantly, hand hovering, not quite touching, like he'd forgotten whether he still had the right. "I'm fine." Another cough ripped through, worse, and I pressed my sleeve to my mouth on instinct, praying he wouldn't see. He saw anyway. Whatever color remained in his face drained out of it. "You're worse." "I said I'm fine." But my body wouldn't cooperate with the argument I was trying to win, coughing again, sharp and wet, shaking my whole frame. "Let me call the healers, you are literally not getting better." "No. I don't want them fussing while you stand there discussing my successor." Another cough seized me, and beneath the fury still burning in my chest, something colder crept in, the proof that my body was betraying every point I was trying to make. I wanted to tell him he had no right to look that afraid for me now, after that night in his study, after everything since. Instead, I could only gasp while he crouched with his hands hovering uselessly between us. "Say something cruel," I managed finally. "At least then I'll know which version of you I'm fighting with." "I'm not trying to fight you," he replied. "Then tell me if any part of you still wants to fight for me instead of just informing me of the outcome." He didn't answer. My chest tightened, not from illness this time, but from watching him choose silence over the one honest thing I needed. "Rest," he said, rising, retreating into that single useless word. "How convenient," I whispered, and this time, it wasn't bitterness. It was grief for the man who used to cross a room for me instead of away from me. He left. The door clicked shut with the finality of a verdict. Later, the pain woke me violently, the same cough returning, worse, alone this time, until the handkerchief came away dark red. I shoved it beneath the pillow just as something shattered on the floor. "Elona?" Kael, in the doorway. "I'm fine," I lied. He came in anyway, crouched for the glass, and his fingers stilled over the blood. "I won't tell anyone," he said, when I begged him not to. "Promise?" "I promise." The baby moved beneath my palm. "You're going to be a good mother," he said. "If I live long enough to ever meet her, that is," I said, uncertainty and fear already within my grasp. Before I could hear his answer, pain tore through me again. He caught me, and then I heard it. Not my heartbeat. His. Thump. Thump. Thump. Deafening, the only sound in the world. My mouth went dry, my eyes fixed on the pulse at his throat, and I could smell something rising off his skin, warm, metallic, unbearably sweet. Blood. I recoiled, shoving back against the wall, horror and hunger tangling until I couldn't separate them. "Elona?" His fear wasn't of me. It was for me. "Get away from me." "Why?" he asked, utterly confused and yet, afraid. "I don't know." Tears spilled before I could stop them. The hunger sharpened into something with teeth, something that made the fire crackling low in the hearth feel like the only safe thing left in the room. For the first time in my life, I was afraid of someone I loved. Kael stepped back, hands raised, voice gentle. "Look at the fire, Elona. Not me. Just breathe." I couldn't. His heartbeat roared louder than the flames, louder than every warning left in my mind, and beneath the fear and the grief still lodged in my throat, a hollow whisper rose from somewhere I no longer recognized as myself. I was hungry. Not for food. My fingers curled against the wall. And before I could stop them, before I even understood what my body was about to do, they were already reaching toward him.