~Elara~
The moon was calling me.
I stood on my apartment balcony, watching Seattle's skyline blur through sheets of silver-gray precipitation, trying to control my breathing as another wave of sensation crashed through me.
Inside, my phone buzzed for the fifth time in twenty minutes. Caleb. Again.
I didn't need to check the message to know what it said. The same thing he'd been saying since we'd parted ways at the gallery three hours ago: Let me help you through this.
But something primitive and fierce inside me resisted. This transformation—whatever was happening to my body as the full moon approached—felt intensely private. Something I needed to face alone, at least initially. To understand what I was becoming on my own terms before I let anyone else witness it.
A sudden, sharp pa
