FIRST
1026 Words
The dungeons were cold.
Aria sat against the stone wall, knees drawn to her chest, the wedding dress—white silk stained with mud—crinkling when she shifted. The chains on her wrists were heavy, iron burns already forming on her skin.
She had stopped crying hours ago.
The Alpha who had dragged her here—Kael, they called him, leader of the Shadowfang pack—had been clear. The wedding was a farce. She was not a bride. She was a vessel. A container for his heir. And when the blood moon rose in three days, she would be sacrificed to strengthen the pack's magic.
She was nineteen years old, and she was going to die.
Aria closed her eyes.
Her family had sold her. Not for money, not for power—for survival. The wolves had demanded a "bride of noble blood" or they would burn the family estate to the ground. Her father had hesitated for exactly one night before signing the contract.
She was the second daughter. Expendable.
The moon shone through the tiny barred window above her head, silver light pooling on the floor like spilled milk. Aria watched it move, slow and indifferent, and felt something stir in her chest.
Not fear.
Something older.
"Little one."
Aria's head snapped up.
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere, ancient and warm, like wind through autumn leaves.
"Grandmother?"
But her grandmother had been dead for seven years.
"You have the blood."
The voice again, soft as moonlight. "You always had it. They hid it from you, but I see it now. In the curve of your spine. In the way the moon follows you."
Aria stood, chains clinking. Her heart was pounding, but not from fear anymore.
"Who are you?"
"You know who I am."
And she did.
The dreams came back to her—fragmented, half-remembered. Her grandmother, old and weathered, pressing a silver locket into her hands before the fever took her. "Keep this hidden, little one. When the time comes, the moon will show you."
The locket had disappeared in the chaos after the funeral. Aria had assumed it was buried with her grandmother.
But now, staring at the moonlight pooling on the dungeon floor, she felt the locket's phantom weight against her chest.
She lifted her hand.
The moonlight fell across her palm.
And her skin——
Glowed.
Not metaphorically. Not subtly. Her palm shimmered like polished silver, fine lines of light tracing beneath her skin, forming patterns that looked almost like—roots. Branches. A tree made of moonlight, spreading from her wrist to her fingertips.
"What——"
Aria's voice caught. She stared at her hand. The light faded as she watched, retreating slowly, but something had fundamentally changed. She felt different. The cold of the dungeon no longer bit as sharply. The despair that had been crushing her chest felt distant now, like a bad dream she's had years ago.
She had the blood.
The Witch of the Moon. The lost lineage that her family had buried for generations because they feared what it meant.
The door to her cell groaned open.
Aria spun, the moonlight still clinging to her fingertips, and found Kael standing in the doorway.
He was tall—even for an Alpha, towering above her by nearly a foot. His dark hair fell to broad shoulders, and his eyes, golden as aged whiskey, were fixed on her with an intensity that made her breath catch.
But what stopped her was his reaction.
The great Alpha of Shadowfang—feared by hunters and rivals alike, known for his cruelty and absolute dominance—had gone still.
His nostrils flared.
His pupils dilated.
His hand, the one resting on the doorframe, was trembling.
"What did you just do?"
His voice was low. Rough. Nothing like the cold command she had heard hours ago.
Aria raised her chin.
She refused to show fear. Not now. Not when she finally understood what she was.
"I don't know what you mean."
Kael stepped into the cell, the door swinging shut behind him. The space between them shrunk to inches. Aria had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.
She should have been terrified.
He was a monster. She had heard the stories. Three rival Alphas, disemboweled in a single night. A hunter pack wiped out when they tried to take one of his omegas. His hands were stained with enough blood to fill a river.
But she felt nothing.
No fear. No submission. Just a strange, cold certainty that settled into her bones like iron.
And then she understood.
The moon's power. It didn't just give her magic. It gave her authority.
Over wolves.
Over Alphas.
Over him.
"You——"
Kael's voice broke. His hand shot out, grabbing her wrist—the one still faintly glowing with moonlight. His grip was iron, but Aria felt it not at all.
She could feel his pulse through his fingertips. Rapid. Erratic.
Like a wolf caught in a trap.
"Tell me." His golden eyes searched her face, and for the first time, Aria saw something behind the cruelty. Something almost like——fear. "What. Are. You."
Aria met his gaze.
She smiled.
It was not a kind smile.
"I am the last daughter of the Moon Witch bloodline."
She watched his face change. Watched the blood drain from beneath his dark skin. Watched his composure—a thing she had been told was absolute, impenetrable—c***k down the middle like ice over a frozen lake.
"Which means, Kael Shadowfang, that you have made a very, very costly mistake."
She leaned closer, close enough to feel the unnatural heat radiating off his body, the wolf's fire that never quite went out.
"Three days until the blood moon? I think not."
She pulled her wrist free. His fingers fell away as though they had been burned.
"I'll be gone by then. And when I return——"
She let the moonlight pulse in her palm, watched his golden eyes track its movement with something like reverence, something like horror.
"You'll kneel."
- Writer
