Silver Eyes

Blood Moon Ball

The next morning, someone knocked on my bedroom door.

"Princess Veronica, a gift was left at the Pack House gates for you," said Mira, one of our omegas, through the pack link. Her voice was excited. "A box. No name. The guards said it just... appeared."

A gift.

My heart leapt into my throat before I could stop it. Sandro.

I threw open the door. Mira stood there holding a large, flat black box tied with a blood-red ribbon. It smelled faintly of cold rain and old books. Of winter and power.

Of him.

I snatched it from her hands. "Thank you, Mira. Leave us."

When she left, I locked my door and sank onto my bed with the box in my lap. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely untie the ribbon.

Inside, folded in black tissue paper, was a gown.

Not just any gown. A red gown. The exact shade of his eyes when he is angry. Long, with a V neck that plunged low enough to make even me blush, thin straps that would leave my back completely bare, and a slit up the leg so high it was sinful. The fabric was like liquid, like it was made of captured sunset.

Underneath it, a small, folded note. Thick black paper, gold ink.

I picked it up with two fingers, as if it would burn me.

*Wear it next week. Let's party.*

That was it. No signature. No name.

Wear it next week. Let's party. Next week was the Blood Moon Ball in Brixhes. The night he was supposed to introduce his mate. His witch mate.

I stared at the gown. My first thought was, he remembered me. He sent this. He wants me to come. He wants me to be the one he introduces.

My second thought, cold and sharp like the Styx water, was, why would King Sandro, who can have any woman in any kingdom, send a gown that shows so much skin to the daughter of his enemy? Why would he write like a teenage boy?

This didn't sound like him. The King who spoke to me in the forest spoke in commands, in low, terrifying poetry. "Stay awake." "Drink this." He doesn't say "Let's party."

Someone else sent this.

"Who would give you this?"

I jumped. Luna was standing in my doorway, having opened the door without knocking. Her eyes went wide when she saw the gown spread across my bed.

"Goddess, Veronica," she breathed, picking up the fabric, letting it flow through her fingers. "This is... this is vampire silk. Only made in Brixhes. This costs more than our entire armory. Who sent you this?"

"I... I don't know," I said honestly this time. "There was no name. Just this note."

Luna read the note and her face lit up with a teasing smile, the first real smile I had seen from her in days.

"Well, well. My little Princess has a secret admirer. Is this from the mate you haven't found yet? The one making you ask if you are ugly?"

I felt my cheeks burn. "Luna!"

She laughed, holding the gown up against me. The red against my white hair, against my pale skin, against my silver eyes... it was striking. Dangerous. It didn't look like a Luna's gown. It looked like a Queen's gown.

"You have to wear it," she said. "There's a gathering next week, you know. The Blood Moon Ball. All the packs are invited, even us, for truce talks. Your father doesn't want to go, but..."

My head snapped up. "What? We are invited to Brixhes? To the palace?"

"For the first time in fifty years, yes. King Sandro sent a formal invitation. A truce meeting. He says he wants to discuss the border attacks. Your father thinks it's a trap."

A truce meeting. Next week. At the Blood Moon Ball. At the same night he is introducing his mate.

The pieces clicked together with a sickening lurch.

This gown was not a romantic gift. It was an invitation to a execution. Or a trap.

If I wear this to Brixhes, to his palace, in front of his court and his witch mate...

"What did you say?" Luna asked, seeing my face pale.

"Nothing," I said, taking the gown from her and folding it carefully back into the box. "It's... it's beautiful. I'll... I'll think about it."

That night, Alpha Magnus called a war council.

I wasn't supposed to be there, but I am the future Luna, so I stood in the shadows behind my mother's chair and listened.

"We are not going," my father said flatly, slamming King Sandro's invitation - a scroll sealed with black wax and a crimson S - onto the table. "It's a trap. He wants to lure us into his palace and slaughter us during their cursed Blood Moon. He does it every hundred years."

"He has never invited werewolves before," Yidramo argued cautiously. "And the attacks have stopped since Princess Veronica's incident. Perhaps... perhaps he truly wants peace. He is young for a King, but he is not a warmonger like his father."

"He is a vampire!" Gamma Lorcan snarled. "They all want war! We should attack Brixhes first, tomorrow, before he announces his new Queen and gets stronger! If he mates a powerful witch, his bloodline will be unstoppable!"

My blood went cold at the words *new Queen*.

"We will not attack," my father said. "But we will not go to his palace and bow either. We will send a scout. One scout, to observe."

"I will go," I said before I could stop myself.

Every head in the room turned.

My father stared at me, his amber eyes hard. "No."

"Why not? I am the best scout you have. I am fast, I am -"

"You are my daughter," he said, his voice final. "And you were almost killed three nights ago. You will not set foot in Brixhes. That is an order, Veronica Althea."

I bowed my head to hide the silver flare in my eyes.

"Yes, Alpha."

But inside, my wolf was already howling with glee.

*We are going. We are going to see our mate. And we are going to wear the red gown.*

Later, alone in my room, I took the gown out again. I held it up in front of the mirror. The red fabric glowed against my skin. The note lay on my bed.

*Wear it next week. Let's party.*

Whether it was from Sandro or from his enemies, it didn't matter. It was my ticket into that palace. Into the Blood Moon Ball. To see with my own eyes who the witch is that sleeps in my mate's bed. To look King Sandro in the eye and ask him why he kissed me like I was his salvation and then went home to another woman.

I pressed the soft fabric to my cheek. It still smelled faintly of him. Or maybe I was imagining it.

A sharp pain shot through my chest again, but this time it wasn't just pull. It was anger. Jealousy. Possessive, burning jealousy that was not my own.

He was feeling me again. He was feeling my jealousy through the bond.

Good. Let him feel it. Let him feel what it's like to be the one left wondering.

I looked at my reflection - white hair, silver eyes with ember flecks, red gown in my hands - and for the first time in my life, I didn't see the Alpha's daughter.

I saw a Queen who was about to walk into her enemy's palace and burn it down.

High up in Brixhes palace, in his black tower, King Sandro stood in front of his window, looking out at Aigupta's forest in the distance. His palm, where he had cut himself three nights ago, was still bleeding faintly, refusing to heal. Royal blood only heals when its mate accepts it.

His second-in-command, General Rhys, a vampire with ice-blonde hair, stood behind him, nervous.

"My King, the scouts found nothing at the river. No scent. But the wards... the wards at the Styx flickered last night. Someone crossed."

Sandro didn't turn around. His red eyes glowed in the dark.

"I know," he said, his voice low, hoarse. He touched his chest, where a strange, foreign ache had been living for three days. An ache that felt like jealousy, like heartbreak, like a girl in a black dress crying in the mud. "She was here. My little wolf was here, Rhys. She stood in my market and heard them talk about my so-called mate."

"The witch? But my King, Lady Seraphine is just a -"

"I know what she is," Sandro cut him off, his eyes flashing dangerously. "A decoy. A shield. To protect the packs from my elders who want war. But my mate... she doesn't know that."

He finally turned, and Rhys took a step back from the raw, possessive fury on his King's face.

"She thinks I have another woman. She is jealous. And she is coming back. I can feel it. She has something of mine."

"What does she have, my King?"

Sandro looked down at his bleeding palm and smiled, a slow, terrifying, beautiful smile that showed just a hint of fang.

"My blood. My mark. And next week... she will wear red for me. Find out who sent the gown, Rhys. And make sure every male in that ballroom knows that if they touch what is mine, I will rip their hearts out with my teeth."

He looked back out the window, towards Aigupta, towards the girl with silver eyes who had no idea she had just declared war on a witch, on a court, and on the heart of a King who had not loved anyone in three hundred years.

"Come back to me, little wolf," he whispered to the wind, and the wind carried his scent, his power, his longing, all the way across the river, all the way to the Pack House, where Veronica shivered in her sleep and clutched the red gown tighter.

"Come back, and I will show you who you really belong to."