Cursed by the Wolf Moon

The Voss estate had a thousand rooms, and Aria Voss had memorized every hiding place in each of them by the time she was ten years old. Tonight, she needed all of them. "Absolutely not." Her father's voice carried down the marble hall like a verdict already signed. "The alliance is set. You marry into the Draven line before the next full moon, or this family loses everything we've spent three generations building." Aria pressed her back against the cold stone of the corridor, listening. Through the crack in the study door, she could see her father pacing, and across from him, unmoved, stood a man she didn't recognize — tall, dressed in black that seemed to drink the candlelight rather than reflect it. "The Draven line doesn't need your money, Voss," the stranger said. His voice was low, rough at the edges, like something that hadn't been used gently in years. "It needs your daughter's blood. There's a difference, and you'd do well to remember it before you sell her like livestock." Aria's stomach turned to ice. Blood. Not marriage. Not alliance. Something older than either word. She didn't wait to hear more. She turned and ran — not toward her room, but toward the garden, the one place in this gilded prison where the walls didn't listen. She didn't get far. A shape detached itself from the shadow of the hedge maze, and she collided with something that felt less like a person and more like a wall wrapped in a coat. Strong hands caught her before she hit the ground, and for one dizzying second, she stared up into a pair of eyes so pale gold they didn't look human at all. "Careful," the man said. "Running blind in the dark tends to end badly for people like you." Aria scrambled back, heart hammering. She knew this face — vaguely, the way you know a servant you've passed a hundred times without truly looking. Kade. One of the new hires her father had brought on for the household staff a month ago. Broad-shouldered, quiet, always exactly where he shouldn't be. "People like me?" she repeated, straightening her spine, refusing to let the tremor in her hands show in her voice. "And what does that mean, coming from the help?" Something flickered across his expression — amusement, maybe, or warning. "It means the Heiress of Voss shouldn't be sprinting through a garden at midnight in her bare feet, unless she's already figured out what her father's guest actually is." Aria went very still. "You were listening." "I hear everything that happens on this property." He said it, without pride, the way someone states a fact about the weather. "It's sort of the job." "Then you know what he said. About—" She swallowed. "About blood." Kade's jaw tightened. For a moment, the golden color in his eyes seemed to catch fire, brightening unnaturally in the dark, and Aria's breath caught somewhere between fear and fascination. "I know," he said quietly, "that the Dravens aren't the kind of family your father should be doing business with. And I know that if you go back inside that house tonight, you're going to find out exactly why, whether you want to or not." "So what am I supposed to do? Stand out here in the dark with a stranger?" "I'm not a stranger." His mouth curved, just slightly, at one corner — not quite a smile, something more dangerous than that. "You just haven't been paying attention." Before she could ask what that meant, a howl split the night air, distant but unmistakable, rolling over the estate walls like a warning bell. Every hair on Aria's arms rose at once. Kade's whole body changed in an instant — shoulders squaring, breath going sharp and controlled, like a soldier hearing the first shot of a war he'd been waiting for. "Go inside," he said, all trace of softness gone from his voice. "Lock your door. Don't open it for anyone tonight — not your father, not the man in the study, not even me." "Why would I trust you over my own father?" He turned to look at her one last time, and in the moonlight his eyes weren't human at all — molten gold, ancient, endlessly old in a face that couldn't have been older than twenty-five. "Because your father sold you to a Draven," he said. "And I'm the only thing standing between you and the price they intend to collect." Then he was gone — not walking, not running, simply gone, faster than her eyes could track, disappearing into the tree line as the second howl rose, closer now, close enough that she felt it in her chest. Aria stood alone in the garden, bare feet numb against the cold stone path, and understood with sudden, bone-deep certainty that the life she'd known until tonight — the galas, the empty engagements, the family fortune built on secrets she'd never been allowed to ask about — was already over. Something ancient had just noticed her. And it was hungry. It wanted more from her, but she was not sure what yet; she was definitely eager to find out, and no one could stop her. Not this time, not after what she had just discovered: a bloody alliance. Generations now depended on her blood. End of Episode 1. Next time, on Cursed by the Wolf Moon: Aria discovers what — and who — Kade really is, and the price her father agreed to pay comes due at the door of the Voss estate.