BLOOD MOON PROPHECY

The blade was already at my throat before I realized the moon had turned to blood. Cold steel pressed against the crescent mark on my collarbone with enough force to make my knees tremble. When I tried to steady myself against the stone altar, the rough surface scraped my palms. I barely noticed the pain. Something beneath my knees was vibrating. At first, it felt like a distant heartbeat buried deep beneath the courtyard, so faint that I wondered whether fear had finally made me imagine things. Then the vibration grew stronger, traveling through the stone and into my bones with every pulse, until I could feel it in my chest. Whatever was beneath the altar was awake enough to know I was here. Around me, the courtyard of Obsidian had fallen into an unnatural silence. The priests continued their low chanting. The chains around my wrists rattled whenever I moved. The guards held my arms so tightly that the metal had already cut into my skin. Above us, the Blood Moon hung enormous and crimson over the palace, bathing the walls, the altar, and every frightened face in a red glow that made the world look as though it had been drenched in blood. The air smelled of copper, incense, and old fear. Somewhere beyond the palace walls, a dog began to howl before its cry suddenly stopped. I lifted my eyes toward the old stone standing before me and felt another vibration pass through the ground. The Bleeding Stone was taller than a man, black and strangely wet despite the dry night air. Its surface was covered in symbols so old that even the palace scholars had never been able to translate them. I had seen it only once before, from a distance, when I was younger and had been sent to deliver supplies to the lower courtyard. Even then, something about it had made my skin crawl. Now, standing directly before it with a blade against my throat, I understood why. It did not feel dead. It felt as though it had been waiting. For twenty-one years, I had survived by making myself invisible. My name was Lyra Vane, but in Blackthorn, my name meant nothing. I was an Omega. A palace servant. Another quiet body carrying trays through royal corridors and scrubbing blood from expensive floors. I knew which servants could be trusted, which guards could be bribed with food, which corridors stayed empty after midnight, and which doors I should never open. I had learned all of it the night I was born. King Corin Black ordered every child carrying the crescent mark to be slaughtered. My parents were among those who died. I survived because a terrified maid hid me inside a laundry cart and convinced the guards the last marked child had already been burned. I was too young to understand the screaming or the smoke, but I remembered her trembling hand over my mouth. "Don't make a sound," she whispered. She saved my life that night. Surviving came with a price. So I learned to lower my head whenever an Alpha passed. To hide the mark beneath my clothes. To make myself so insignificant that no one would wonder where I came from. For twenty-one years, it worked. I scrubbed floors. I carried trays. I swallowed insults. I believed if I stayed unseen, no one would discover the truth. But tonight, beneath the Blood Moon, the secret my parents died protecting had finally been dragged into the light. "Hold her still." The high priest's command broke through my thoughts, and four guards tightened their grip around me. I struggled instinctively, but there was nowhere to go and no one coming to save me. My attention shifted toward the altar steps. The man who had signed my death warrant stood beneath the crimson moon. King Dorian Black wore black from his shoulders to his boots, his crown resting against his dark hair. His expression was as cold and controlled as the stone beneath my feet. Three days earlier, he had signed the order for my execution without ever asking my name. The parchment identified me only as Omega, as though taking away my name made my death easier. The servants said his son was colder than King Corin. Harder. Twice as difficult to read. I had never had reason to doubt them. Yet as I looked at him now, I remembered something from months ago. I had been carrying a tray through the east wing when I nearly walked into him. I lowered my head and stepped aside, expecting him to pass. But Dorian stopped. When I dared to look up, his eyes were fixed on the place beneath my collar where the mark was hidden. He stared for one strange heartbeat, as though something about me had caught his attention, before turning away without a word. I told myself it meant nothing. Kings did not notice servants like me. Yet now, with the execution altar beneath my feet, his eyes remained fixed on mine. I could not shake the feeling that there was something he knew that I did not. The high priest raised the ceremonial blade. My heart hammered against my ribs, and I searched Dorian's face for the smallest sign that he might stop this. I found none. The priest looked toward him for permission. After several silent seconds, Dorian gave a slow nod. "Do it," he said, his voice carrying across the courtyard. "The treaty demands it. Her sacrifice will preserve the peace." The priest brought the blade down. Pain flashed across my collarbone as the edge cut into the mark. I gasped. Before the blade could go deeper, the first drop of blood fell onto the Bleeding Stone. The world changed. A roar erupted from the stone, and pale light tore through the old symbols carved across its surface. Cracks raced from the base to the top as the courtyard shook violently beneath us. Priests screamed. Guards stumbled. Windows shattered inside the palace. Horses shrieked from the royal stables as servants fled. I felt the chains fall loose from my wrists, but I barely noticed. Something had entered my blood. It was freezing at first, so cold my lungs seemed to stop working. Then the cold became fire. Heat tore through my veins, spreading from my collarbone into my chest, my arms, my legs, until I could no longer tell where my body ended and the power began. I collapsed against the stone, fighting for breath as the mark beneath my torn dress began to glow. Then Ash woke. For most of my life, Ash had been a door I couldn't open. Other Omegas heard their wolves. Mine stayed silent. Tonight, that door shattered. She surged forward with such force I nearly screamed. Suddenly the courtyard became painfully clear. I could hear the guards' hearts, the priests' prayers, the horses in the stables, even Dorian's breathing several steps away. Ash lifted her head inside my mind. Instead of fear, I felt something new. Recognition. She was listening to something beneath us. Another sound rolled through the earth, too deep to be a growl and too old for any creature I knew. The Bleeding Stone pulsed beneath my hands, and Ash went completely still. I had believed the Blood Moon Prophecy demanded our deaths because our blood was cursed. Because sacrifice was the only way to preserve the treaty between wolves, vampires, witches, and humans. But as the stone cracked beneath my blood, I understood something worse than execution. My blood had not completed the ritual. It had broken it. The prophecy hadn't brought me here to seal something away. It brought me here to wake it. Another tremor tore through the courtyard, throwing priests from their feet. The guards released me, and I fell to my knees as the Bleeding Stone split with a deafening crack. Dorian moved before anyone else. He crossed the altar steps in three strides and caught my arm as another wave of pale light burst from the stone. "Stop!" His command cut through the chaos, and everyone froze. The high priest stared in disbelief. "Your Majesty, the prophecy" "Is wrong." Dorian's gaze stayed on the shattered stone. "Whatever you believed this ritual would accomplish, it has failed." The priest's face went pale. Dorian turned to the guards. "Take her to the west tower." They hesitated. "Now." They moved, but my body refused to follow. Something inside me pulled toward the Bleeding Stone, an invisible thread tied to my heart. I turned toward it, and Dorian caught me around the waist before I could take another step. "Don't go near it," he said quietly. I looked up at him, barely able to keep my eyes open. "Why?" He didn't answer. My knees buckled, and before I hit the ground, he lifted me into his arms. I should have fought him. He was the same man who ordered my execution three days ago. Yet I was too exhausted to resist. My cheek rested against his chest. I could hear his heartbeat pounding beneath his clothes. Too fast for a king who was supposed to be calm. Dorian carried me away as the courtyard dissolved into panic. Just before we passed beneath the palace archway, three horns sounded. One from the eastern border, one from the north, one from beyond the western mountains. Dorian stopped. He didn't need to explain. The Vampire Kingdom, the Witch Coven, and the Human Council had all felt it. The seal had broken. Whatever slept beneath the Bleeding Stone was no longer a secret buried in Blackthorn. He carried me through the palace corridors while servants pressed themselves against the walls, frightened eyes following us. No one spoke. When we reached the western passage, the torches burned lower. The stone walls grew older, colder, silent. Dorian looked down at me, his expression hidden behind the mask of the king. "What did it do to you, Lyra Vane?" I tried to answer. But Ash suddenly went silent. Every hair on my body rose. Something moved inside my mind. Not my wolf. A presence so vast I could barely comprehend it. A name surfaced from the darkness. "The First Beast." Dorian's steps stopped. "What did you say?" Before I could answer, the doors to the west tower exploded inward. A man stood waiting. Skin unnaturally pale. Dark hair across his forehead. Beneath the torchlight, his eyes held a faint red glow. Vampire Prince Cassian looked first at Dorian, then at me, then at the mark glowing beneath my torn dress. A slow smile spread across his face. He looked like a man who had been waiting for news, and had finally received it. "Well," Cassian murmured, gaze fixed on me, "the dead girl finally woke up." Dorian's arms tightened around me. Cassian's smile deepened. Then he looked directly into my eyes and said, "Tell me, Lyra does Ash remember who she really belongs to?"