Betrayal Under The Blood Moon

Chapter Two

SADIE

The fever starts in my bones.

Not the skin-warm flush of normal sickness but something deeper, older. Marrow turning molten while my flesh stays ice. I grip the porch railing until wood groans, watching the Columbia turn black under dying light. Each breath tastes like copper pennies and ozone, like the air before lightning strikes.

Behind me, laughter spills through windows. My friends settled into their second bottle, voices rising with the loose joy of women without men or children or responsibilities beyond this moment. I should go back. Should pretend the world isn't tilting wrong on its axis.

Instead I count halos around the dock lights. One. Two. Three rings of prismatic fire that shouldn't exist. The medical websites never mentioned hallucinations as a side effect. Then again, the medical websites can't diagnose what I have. Twenty-six years of specialists, and the best they can offer is "autoimmune condition, unspecified."

My skin pulls too tight across my shoulders. I roll them, feeling the stretch and burn like I'm wrapped in shrink wrap two sizes too small. Inside my chest, something shifts. Not organs. Not muscle. Something else, pressing against the underside of my ribs like it's testing for weak spots.

"Sadie?"

Ella in the doorway, wine-flushed and concerned. The porch light frames her in holy fire, every edge burning rainbow. I blink hard. The halos remain.

"Just needed air."

"Bullshit. You look like death warmed over and served on toast."

"Thanks. Really selling the bachelorette party mood."

She crosses to me, bare feet silent on old wood. This close, I smell everything—the merlot on her breath, lavender fabric softener, the chicken she had for lunch, something underneath that makes my stomach clench. Fear-sweat. Sharp and acrid like burnt metal.

"Maybe we should head back early. Get you to a doctor."

"I'm fine."

"You're shaking."

Am I? Yes. Hands trembling against wood, muscles firing random patterns. The thing in my chest shifts again, pressing harder. Like that scene in Alien, right before the creature bursts through. I've always wondered if the character felt it moving first, if he knew something was wrong before the blood and screaming.

"Just cold."

"It's seventy degrees. And you're sweating." She touches my forehead, yanks her hand back. "Jesus, Sadie. You're burning up."

My phone saves me from lying again. Randall's face fills the screen, that professional photo from his first campaign. Even pixels manage to look disappointed. I consider letting it ring, but he'll just keep calling. Chinese water torture, Senate edition.

"Jesus, finally. I've been calling for an hour."

"No signal." Half true. I've been letting it ring, watching his name pulse like a wound I can't stop picking at.

"I looked up the property records." Of course he did. "That cabin is eight-point-three miles from the Portland Pack border. Do you understand what that means?"

"That you have too much time on your hands?"

"Sadie." That tone. The one that makes staffers cry and donors write bigger checks. "This isn't funny. The treaties only protect human settlements beyond ten miles. You're in the buffer zone."

"The cabin's been here since the sixties. If the big bad wolves wanted to eat Ella's grandmother, they've had plenty of chances."

"Don't be naive. Tensions are escalating. Last month—"

"Last month, three hikers ignored posted warnings in twelve languages and crossed into sovereign territory. They're lucky they only got escorted out."

"Lucky? They were terrorized. Held at gunpoint—"

"Clawpoint." The correction comes automatic, years of working for Patterson bleeding through. "And they were photographing pack children. What would you do if strangers were taking pictures of your kids?"

Silence. The thing Randall hates most, these moments when I sound too much like Senator Patterson. Like someone who thinks Otherkind deserve more than cages with scenic views. In our private moments, he calls it my "bleeding heart phase," something I'll grow out of once we're married. Once I understand how the real world works.

"We're having this discussion when you get back. About your... sympathies."

"My sympathies?"

"You know what I mean. It doesn't look good, Sadie. My fiancée working for the most pro-integration senator in Congress. People talk."

"People meaning your golf buddies who think the treaties go too far? Who want to repeal the Healthcare Inclusion Act?"

"People meaning voters. The ones who matter. Maine didn't elect me to coddle monsters—"

"They're not monsters." The words come out sharper than intended, edged with something that makes my teeth ache. "They're people with different biology."

"Different biology." He laughs, ugly sound. "Is that what Patterson calls it? Different biology when they tear each other apart during full moons? When they can't control their base instincts?"

The fever spikes, turning his voice into wasp buzz. I brace against the railing as the world slides sideways. Inside my chest, that presence thrashes harder. My mouth floods with saliva, too much, tasting of copper and wild.

"I have to go."

"We're not done discussing—"

I hang up. Let the phone drop to the deck, watch it bounce once and go dark. The screen cracks, spider-webbing from the corner. When did I get strong enough to break a phone by dropping it?

Ella stares. "Did you just hang up on a senator?"

"My fiancé. Different thing."

"Is it?" She steps closer, and the fear-smell intensifies. "Sadie, your eyes—"

The world tilts. Not metaphorically. The deck actually angles forty-five degrees, or maybe that's just my perception going haywire. My knees buckle. Not graceful movie swooning but ugly collapse, muscles going liquid. Ella catches me halfway down, wine bottle shattering on wood.

"s**t. s**t. JINSOO!"

They come running. Hands everywhere, voices overlapping. Someone's fingers find my pulse, counting too fast. The world fractures into shards—Melanie's face upside down, mascara smeared from laughter now looking like war paint. Julie kicking glass away, movements too slow, like swimming through honey. Suki's prayer beads clicking, the sound enormous, each bead strike a thunderclap.

"Her temperature's through the roof." Jinsoo in doctor mode, all traces of wine-warmth gone. "One-oh-four, maybe one-oh-five. Sadie, what did you take?"

"Just... just the usual."

"The injection this morning? The pills?"

"And a booster. An hour ago."

"f**k. With alcohol? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I've done it before." Words thick, tongue swollen. It feels like there are too many teeth in my mouth. "Never like this."

"We need a hospital." Melanie already moving for her purse, designer heels clicking on wood. "I'll drive."

"No signal." Julie waves her useless phone. "I've been trying for the last hour. Tower must be down."

"Then we go. Find signal on the road." Jinsoo helps me sit, world spinning lazy circles. Her hands are so cold, or maybe I'm so hot. Steam rises where she touches me. That can't be right. "Can you walk?"

"I'm fine."

"You're seizing."

Am I? The tremors feel normal now, baseline existence. Just me and the thing trying to claw out of my chest, casual Friday night. I laugh. Or try to. What comes out sounds like breaking glass, like something learning to use vocal cords for the first time.

"The booster." Words tumbling loose. "I need another booster."

"Absolutely not. Your body's rejecting the medication. We need to get you—"

"I need it."

The conviction comes from somewhere deeper than thought. If I don't get more medication, if I don't push down this writhing wrongness, something will tear free. Something that's been sleeping for twenty-six years, waiting for one moment of weakness. I can feel it uncurling, stretching against the chemical chains I've wrapped around it every week since memory begins.

"Sadie, no."

But I'm already moving. Crawling more than walking, following instinct to my bag. The medical kit spills open—preloaded syringes gleaming like promises. My hands shake too hard for precision. First attempt misses, needle skittering off skin that seems suddenly too thick. Like trying to pierce leather. Second finds the vein, but I have to push harder than normal, the needle bending slightly.

The plunger depresses in slow motion.

Ice races up my arm. Not medication-cold but absolute zero, entropy given liquid form. It hits my heart and the world whites out. For a moment, I exist in two places—on the cabin floor and somewhere else, somewhere dark and wild where things with yellow eyes wait between trees.

I'm flying. Falling. Burning from inside while something tears at the walls I never knew existed. My back arches off hardwood, spine bending to angles that shouldn't exist. I hear things breaking—my bones? The floor? Someone screams. Might be me. Might be the thing inside finally finding its voice.

"Hold her head!" Jinsoo commanding through static. "She's seizing. Full tonic-clonic."

Hands pin me down. I fight them, strength that isn't mine surging through failing muscle. The coffee table splinters under someone's weight—did I do that? Glass from the wine bottle grinds into my palms, and the blood smells like—

Like—

Wrong. All wrong. This isn't how blood should smell. This isn't how anything should smell. The world floods with information my brain can't process. Julie's terrified tears (salt and stress hormones and something else, something prey-like). Suki's rapid prayers (frankincense from morning mass clinging to her skin). Melanie's designer perfume (too strong, chemical, hiding the natural scent underneath). Something else underneath it all, wild and hungry and closing in.

"We need to move. Now." Ella's voice cuts through chaos. "Get her to the car."

They lift me, carry me, my body one long electrical short. Each muscle fires independently, making me twitch and spasm in their grip. The night air hits like water, drowning-thick with scent. Pine sap (sharp, medicinal). River rot (sweet decay and fish scales). Something else, something that makes primitive parts of my brain scream warnings. Predator. Pack. Hunt.

We're fifteen feet from the Tahoe when they come.

Shadows first. Then eyes reflecting porch light like coins, like stars fallen to earth and gone feral. Then bodies flowing from forest dark, too fluid for human gait. My vision fractures but I count three, four, five shapes circling. Maybe more. They move between the trees like smoke, there and gone and there again.

"What the fuck." Melanie stops dead, her heels sinking into gravel.

"Get in the car." Julie fumbles for keys, hands shaking so hard they jingle like bells. "GET IN THE CAR."

Too late.

They move like water over stone, like thought becoming action without the delay of consideration. One moment empty space, the next impact. Suki goes down screaming, something gray and wrong on top of her. Jinsoo swings my medical bag like a weapon, connects with something solid. The sound that comes back isn't human—a yelp-snarl that makes my bones ache.

I hit the ground hard, friends scattering like bowling pins. Through the seizure-haze, I see them clear—not quite men, not quite wolves, caught in between like broken transformations. Muzzles too long for human faces. Hands that end in claws. Bodies wrong-angled, like someone started to shift and got stuck halfway.

Rogues. The word surfaces from nowhere, carrying the weight of campfire stories and border warnings. The ones who lost themselves between forms. The ones who hunt because they can't remember how to do anything else.

"Run!" Ella dragging me backward, gravel tearing skin. Blood wells up, and the scent makes everything worse. "f*****g run!"

But there's nowhere to go. They flow around us, herding with predator patience. No words. No demands. No human thought left behind those yellow eyes. Just hunger given form, focused on—

On me.

The realization hits as one breaks from the pack, moving low and fast. Others are obstacles. I'm the target. The thing in my chest responds, thrashing harder, trying to meet threat with threat. But the medication holds it down, chemical chains I forged myself with twenty-six years of needles.

I try to stand. Try to fight. My body refuses, muscles locked in electrical storm. The seizure has me puppet-string tight, every nerve firing messages that make no sense.

The rogue reaches me in two bounds. I see it all with seized-slow clarity—yellow eyes too human for the face, like someone trapped behind animal features screaming to get out. Teeth too sharp for any mouth, designed for tearing not chewing. Claws reaching for my throat, still caked with old blood from other hunts.

I kick.

Barefoot, desperate, all instinct. My heel connects with its jaw, snapping the head back with a crack like breaking wood. For one moment, I think *maybe*—

Then fire opens across my throat.

Not deep. Not yet. But claws part skin like paper, and blood runs hot down my chest. The smell hits everyone at once. My friends screaming. The rogues freezing, nostrils flaring. Me, understanding with crystal clarity that I'm about to die here, eight-point-three miles from safety, in a designer sundress at my own bachelorette party.

"No no no." Jinsoo ripping at her shirt, trying to make bandages. "Stay with me. Sadie, stay with me."

But I'm already going. Darkness eating vision from the edges in. The last things I see:

Julie swinging a tire iron she found somewhere, connecting with a rogue's skull.

Melanie throwing herself over Suki's body, screaming words in a language I don't recognize.

The thing in my chest finally going still, giving up its fight against chemical cages.

And through the trees, moving faster than physics should allow, something black as night and twice as large as the rogues. Not loping like them but flowing, pure predator grace. Eyes that burn gold in the darkness, focused on me with intensity that feels like being known.

Then nothing.

Then black.

Then the copper taste of my own death, filling my mouth like prophecy.