The last Moonbane

Seraphina's POV I awoke abruptly, the vibrations from my bedroom door slamming into the wall jolting me from my dreams. My heart raced, the sharp noise still ringing in my ears as I shot upright in bed. "Seraphina!" Stephen’s voice broke through the disorienting fog of sleep, pulling me into focus. Stephen. His voice trembled in a way I hadn’t heard since we were children. A primal instinct kicked in, my body immediately tense, every nerve alert. Stephen is my twin brother, with the same striking golden hair and sapphire-like eyes as mine. We’ve always shared an unbreakable bond, something deeper than just blood. His gaze is usually soft, comforting in its familiarity. I love staring into his eyes, the way they reflect my image back at me, a perfect mirror of ourselves. Seeing myself in his eyes, calm and serene, often brought me a strange, inexplicable joy. But now, those same eyes—those beautiful, kind eyes—were filled with terror. He burst into the room, and in one fluid motion, wrapped his arms around me. His embrace was desperate, almost crushing, his body trembling as he clung to me as though I might slip away. I felt the tremor of fear in his muscles, the way his breath hitched unevenly against my shoulder. Stephen rarely showed fear, which made this moment all the more unsettling. I instinctively reached up, resting my hand on his back, gently patting him to calm his racing heart, though I could feel my own pulse quicken in response to his. "What is it?" I whispered, though I already knew. It didn’t take long to understand why he was so afraid. The red moon hung ominously outside the window, its crimson light spilling into the room like blood seeping through the walls. The sight of it alone made my stomach twist. It was the same moon that had cursed our family for generations. The Moonbane family. We’ve always been taught that the wolves are the Moon Goddess’s blessing. From childhood, that’s been drilled into our minds. The Moon watches over us, guides us, strengthens us. As the purest-blooded wolves of the Moonbane family, we’ve inherited powers beyond the imagination of most wolves. I could shift at will by the time I was six years old. Most wolves couldn’t do that until they were nearly adults. By the age of twelve, I was already defeating the finest warriors from rival tribes. Stephen and I, along with every one of our ancestors, have always been called prodigies. But being a prodigy comes with its own kind of curse. And the red moon is the harbinger of that curse. When I was younger, I didn’t understand the weight of it. I remember asking Helena, the woman who raised us, why I didn’t have a father like other children in the tribe. She would always speak in riddles, dancing around the truth like she was protecting me from something I wasn’t yet ready to hear. “You did have a father,” she told me once, her voice heavy with sorrow. “But he died on the night you and Stephen were born. It was under the red moon.” I remember staring at her, confused. How could the moon, something so beautiful and revered, be connected to such a terrible event? Helena, with her kind eyes and worn hands, explained that it was part of our family curse. Just as every generation of the Moonbane family head must be a pair of purest-blooded twins, the male of the twins was always destined to die when the next set of twins was born. I didn’t fully grasp what that meant at the time. I think, deep down, I didn’t want to. It was easier to pretend it was just another story, one of the many legends Helena would tell us before bed. But as I grew older, the truth became harder to ignore. I’ve always seen Helena as my mother, more than anyone else. She was there for us through everything—she raised us, taught us, guided us. As for my real mother—the current head of the family—I rarely saw her. She was more like a ghost than a mother, a distant figure who only ever appeared on symbolic occasions. Birthdays, mostly. She would send us gifts, but they felt hollow, just another formality. I didn’t meet her in person until I was six years old, the day I awakened my bloodline powers. That was the first time I saw her. I’ll never forget that moment. She was breathtaking—an ethereal beauty, so much like me and Stephen, yet there was something otherworldly about her. Her eyes weren’t like ours. They were darker, deeper—like the stars themselves were trapped within her gaze. Mysterious. Distant. Her attitude toward me was always strange. Sometimes, she would look at me with such coldness, her eyes hard and emotionless, as if I were nothing more than an object—a tool for the family legacy. It made me uncomfortable, like I didn’t matter beyond my role in the bloodline. But there were other times, rare moments when her eyes softened. I’d catch glimpses of something deeper—love, even guilt. In those moments, I allowed myself to believe that maybe, just maybe, she cared for us in her own way. Even if she rarely showed it. Helena would always encourage Stephen and me to care for our mother, despite the distance between us. “Her burden is heavier than you can imagine,” Helena would say. “Being the family head isn’t just about power. It’s about the curse. The bloodline.” I didn’t understand what she meant back then. Curse. That word echoed in my mind, but I couldn’t grasp its full meaning. “Why is it a curse?” I asked Helena once, my voice small and hesitant. She hesitated, her usual warmth clouded with something I couldn’t quite place. “It just is, child. Some things are too old to be explained.” Then she’d change the subject, unwilling to give me a proper answer. Helena, despite raising us, doesn’t resemble us at all. Her skin is darker, while mine is pale, almost like porcelain—fragile and flawless. Her hair is a deep brown, common among humans, while mine gleams like gold, the trademark of our lineage. Her eyes are blue, like mine, but duller, clouded with age and something else. It’s hard to explain, but they lack the clarity of the bloodline. I’ve never seen her shift into a wolf. She’s always told me that, though she bears the Moonbane surname, her wolf blood is so diluted that the Moon Goddess no longer blesses her. It’s as if the divine power of our ancestors slipped away from her, leaving her only with the remnants of a once-great legacy. She told me once that, aside from our family’s main branch, the other members of the pack—the ones living on our estate—are descendants with similarly diluted bloodlines. They cannot fight to protect our home like the warriors from other tribes. They don’t possess the strength, the power, the innate connection to the Moon Goddess that flows through Stephen and me. But they’ve adapted. They’ve integrated into human society, using their cunning and connections to bring wealth and influence back to the family. It’s through them that Moonbane remains one of the wealthiest and most powerful packs, even if it’s not through strength alone. Still, other tribes have always coveted our land, thinking us weak. How foolish they were. When I was ten years old, I witnessed an invasion. It was a mid-sized tribe, nothing extraordinary, but their numbers were in the thousands. They thought they could take advantage of what they perceived as Moonbane’s lack of warriors. But they underestimated us—underestimated her. I watched from the shadows as my mother, the family head, tore through their ranks like a force of nature. Her claws cut through flesh and bone with terrifying ease, the power radiating from her like nothing I’d ever seen. It was over in moments, the invading army reduced to nothing but corpses. The sight haunted me for weeks after. I couldn’t stop thinking about the sheer ease with which she destroyed them. Later, I learned that the tribe had existed for centuries, a legacy wiped out in mere minutes. No one dared challenge Moonbane after that. As I grew older, I began to understand just how different our tribe was. "What happens if there’s no one to inherit the family head’s position?" I once asked Helena, my curiosity gnawing at me. "Would Moonbane fall?" Helena’s response was swift, her voice firm with conviction. "The family’s lineage has never been broken in a thousand years, and it never will be. As long as the moon remains in the sky, Moonbane will always be a tribe blessed by the goddess. We will always be at the top of the wolves." "But what about the red moon?" I asked, my voice quieter. "Does it only curse Moonbane?" Helena sighed, her expression troubled. "Yes. Just as it only blesses Moonbane."