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, and when I tried to steady myself against the stone altar, the rough surface scraped my palms. I barely noticed the pain because 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, and 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, and 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 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 to the people who ruled this kingdom. 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 because 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 only because a terrified maid hid me inside a laundry cart and convinced the guards that the last marked child had already been burned. I was too young to understand why people were screaming or why smoke filled the air outside, but I remembered the maid pressing her trembling hand over my mouth and whispering that I must not make a sound. She knew that if the guards heard me, they would find me, and they would kill her with me. She saved my life that night, but surviving came with a price. I grew up knowing that the smallest mistake could expose me, so I learned to lower my head whenever an Alpha passed, to hide the crescent mark beneath my clothes, and to make myself so insignificant that no one would have a reason to wonder where I came from. For twenty-one years, it worked. I scrubbed floors. I carried trays. I swallowed insults. I kept the wolf inside me quiet. I believed that if I remained invisible, I could survive the rest of my life without anyone discovering the truth. But tonight, beneath the Blood Moon, the secret my parents had 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, where 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 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 had identified me only as Omega, as though taking away my name made my death easier to accept. Dorian had inherited the throne from his father, and the servants who had known King Corin said his son was colder, harder, and twice as difficult to read. I had never had reason to doubt them. Yet as I looked at him now, I remembered something that had happened months ago. I had been carrying a tray through the east wing when I nearly walked into him. I immediately lowered my head and stepped aside, expecting him to pass without noticing me, but Dorian had stopped. When I dared to look up, his eyes had been fixed on the place beneath my collar where the crescent mark was hidden. He had stared for one strange heartbeat, as though something about me had caught his attention, before turning away without a word. I had told myself it meant nothing because there was no other explanation that made sense. Kings did not notice servants like me. They certainly did not remember them. Yet now, with the execution altar beneath my feet, his eyes remained fixed on mine, and 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 began hammering 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 to continue, and after several silent seconds, Dorian gave a slow nod. "Do it," he said, his voice carrying clearly across the courtyard. "The treaty demands it. Her sacrifice will preserve the peace." The priest brought the blade down, and pain flashed across my collarbone as the edge cut into the crescent mark. I gasped, but before the blade could go any deeper, the first drop of blood fell onto the Bleeding Stone. The world changed. A sound like 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 entire courtyard shook violently beneath us. Priests screamed. Guards stumbled. Windows shattered somewhere inside the palace, and horses shrieked from the royal stables as servants fled through the gates. I felt the chains fall loose from my wrists, but I barely noticed because something had entered my blood. It was freezing at first, so cold that my lungs seemed to stop working, and 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 crescent mark beneath my torn dress began to glow. Then Ash woke. For most of my life, my wolf had been nothing more than a distant presence inside me, quiet and unreachable, as though she had been sleeping behind a door I could never open. Other Omegas spoke about hearing their wolves clearly, feeling their emotions, sensing their strength, but Ash had always remained different. Tonight, that door shattered. She surged forward with such force that I nearly screamed, and suddenly the entire courtyard became painfully clear. I could hear the frantic beating of the guards' hearts, the priests whispering prayers beneath their breath, the horses stamping in their stables, even the rapid breathing of Dorian several steps away. Ash lifted her head inside my mind, and instead of fear, I felt something I had never felt from her before. Recognition. She was listening to something beneath us. Another sound rolled through the earth, too deep to be called a growl and too old to belong to any creature I had ever known. The Bleeding Stone pulsed beneath my hands, and Ash went completely still. I had spent my entire life believing that the Blood Moon Prophecy demanded the death of every child born with the crescent mark because our blood was cursed and dangerous, because sacrificing us was the only way to preserve the old treaty between wolves, vampires, witches, and humans. But as the stone cracked beneath my blood, I understood something that terrified me more than the execution itself. My blood had not completed the ritual. It had broken it. The prophecy had not brought me here to seal something away. It had brought me here to wake it. Another violent tremor tore through the courtyard, throwing several priests from their feet. The guards released me completely, and I fell to my knees as the Bleeding Stone split with a deafening crack. Dorian moved before anyone else could react. He crossed the altar steps in three strides and caught my arm just as another wave of pale light burst from the stone. "Stop!" His command cut through the chaos, and everyone froze. The high priest stared at him in disbelief. "Your Majesty, the prophecy—" "Is wrong." Dorian's gaze remained fixed on the shattered stone. "Whatever you believed this ritual would accomplish, it has failed." The priest's face went pale. Dorian turned toward the guards. "Take her to the west tower." They hesitated, staring at the trembling stone. "Now." They moved immediately, but my body refused to follow. Something inside me was pulling toward the Bleeding Stone, a strange force that felt like an invisible thread tied directly to my heart. I turned toward it without thinking, 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 could hit the ground, he lifted me into his arms. I should have fought him. He was the same man who had ordered my execution only three days earlier, yet I was too exhausted to resist. My cheek rested against his chest, and I could hear his heartbeat pounding beneath his clothes. It was far too fast for a king who was supposed to be completely calm. Dorian carried me away from the altar as the courtyard dissolved into panic behind us, but just before we passed beneath the palace archway, three horns sounded in the distance, the first from the eastern border, the second from the north, and the third from beyond the western mountains. Dorian stopped because he did not need to explain what they meant. The other kingdoms had felt it. The Vampire Kingdom, the Witch Coven, and the Human Council had all sensed the moment the old seal broke, and whatever had awakened beneath the Bleeding Stone was no longer a secret buried inside Blackthorn. Dorian continued carrying me through the palace corridors while servants pressed themselves against the walls, their frightened eyes following us. No one dared speak. When we reached the western passage, the torches burned lower and the stone walls became older, colder, and strangely silent. Dorian looked down at me, his expression once again hidden behind the mask of the king. "What did it do to you, Lyra Vane?" I tried to answer, but before I could speak, Ash suddenly went silent. Every hair on my body seemed to rise. Something moved inside my mind, not my wolf this time, but a presence so vast that I could barely comprehend it. A name surfaced from somewhere deep within 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 on the other side. His skin was unnaturally pale, his dark hair falling across his forehead, and beneath the torchlight, his eyes carried a faint red glow. Vampire Prince Cassian looked first at Dorian, then at me, and finally at the crescent mark glowing beneath my torn dress. A slow smile spread across his face, but there was nothing surprised about it. He looked like a man who had been waiting for something to happen and had finally received the news he wanted. "Well," Cassian murmured, his 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?"