Uninvited guests
469 Words
It happened without transition. One moment, the full moon hung white and benevolent overhead.
The next, it bled. Crimson light flooded the courtyard, painting every face in shades of rust and gore.
The torches flickered and died. The pack's wolves—still in human skin—felt their animals cower.
And the howls began.
From the east. From the west. From the cemetery on the hill where generations of Red Moon wolves had been buried.
The dead rose in voice if not in body, their howls filling the air like a second sky, and every wolf in the courtyard felt the weight of a thousand ghosts pressing down on their chests.
Kael clutched his sternum. Something was burning there—not the phantom pain of the snapped bond, but something real. Something physical. He tore open his shirt.
The mark was already forming.
A red moon. Cracked in half. Branded into his skin like he'd been held down and pressed against an iron.
Beside him, Serena screamed.
Her hand was rotting.
Not metaphorically. Not slowly. The flesh of her fingers blackened and split, revealing bone beneath, and the rot was climbing—up her wrist, toward her elbow, toward her heart.
She fell to her knees, clutching her arm, her perfect face twisted into something unrecognizable.
"Kael!" she shrieked. "Kael, stop it! Make her STOP IT!"
He couldn't. He couldn't even move.
The pack was in chaos. Wolves were clutching their chests, their hands, their throats—the curse didn't touch them all equally, but it touched everyone who'd cheered.
Everyone who'd watched. Everyone who'd done nothing while the Alpha rejected his fated mate in front of a full moon.
Serena's father—the Beta—collapsed. His legs gave out. He crawled toward the dais, dragging useless limbs behind him, his eyes wide with a terror that had nothing to do with pain.
"What have you done?" he gasped. "What have you done?"
Elara stood in the center of the courtyard, unchanged. Unharmed. Her silver eyes glowed like lanterns in the red light, and her spirits flanked her—visible now, to everyone.
Three translucent wolves, teeth bared, guarding a queen they'd been waiting eleven years to crown.
"The Red Moon throne was not empty," Elara said. Her voice echoed off stones that had stood for centuries. "It was waiting."
---
The howling stopped.
In its place, a new sound.
Engines.
Black SUVs breached the border—not slowing, not stopping, tearing through the pack's defenses like paper.
The pack panicked. Wolves shifted mid-stride, some running toward the threat, most running away.
The courtyard became a stampede of fur and fear and the wet copper smell of blood.
Kael stood frozen on the dais, one hand pressed to the cracked moon on his chest.
"What have I done?"
- Writer
