MOON-BOUND BRIDE

They say every girl dreams of her wedding day. I suppose I did too once. Back when I still believed in fate, in mates, in the sacred whispers of the Moon. Back when I thought my heart would guide me toward a prince, and not a predator. But those dreams bled out the night they debonded me. They used a moonspell dark, twisted magic to sever the tether between me and the one I was born to love. So that I could be sold to the very creature who murdered my father. All to end a war that never should’ve started. Today, I am the bride of Valerius Draven, King of the Sangriven Court. And I am the last daughter of the Lunaris Bloodline, sister to five, and daughter to none. My name is Princess Seraphina Kaelwyn Lunaris. And this... is the tale of my undoing. The sun never shines on wedding mornings like these. My chamber is flooded with moonlight, pale and sickly through the crystal arches carved into the stone towers of Kaelwyn Hold. I sit, wrapped in silver silks, corseted until I can barely breathe, as if they’re trying to shape me into something I’m not. Something he’ll find pleasing. Everything smells like crushed violets and grief. Maids flutter around me like moths. They call me “Your Grace” now. As if a new title will make this less humiliating. I don’t look in the mirror. I don't want to see the girl they're dressing like a doll. I remember the child who used to chase stars barefoot in the gardens. I remember the warrior who once swore she’d never kneel. But none of that matters now. I am a bargain. A symbol. A bride. And they’re here. The horns shook the sky first loud and ancient. Like war drums kissed with lightning. I rushed to the balcony before they could stop me. I needed to see it. The Vampires do nothing quietly. Their procession came like a storm down the Moonspine Road: obsidian carriages plated in crimson glass, pulled by six-eyed shadow beasts that had once been horses. Cloaked riders with silver hair and golden eyes flanked every wheel. Their banners bled with House Draven's sigil a silver serpent coiled around a dying sun. Behind them, an airship hovered like a predator, wings gleaming like mirrors, casting the entire courtyard in shadow. And in its center, beneath a canopy of blood roses and thorns... sat Valerius himself. He was breathtaking in the worst kind of way. Ageless. Inhuman. Dressed in black and red, lined in ancient runes, crowned in a circlet of living flame. He looked like a myth coming to claim a kingdom. But he was no prince. No savior. He was the reaper who had taken my father’s head. And now he came for mine... wrapped in a bridal veil. There was a murmur behind me as my brothers entered. Five kings of five divided kingdoms once ruled by my father, now fractured and barely held together by my eldest brother, King Thaelen of Kaelwyn. The others rule cities across the Lupine Realm: Stormhollow, Frostfang, Duskwarren, and Embermere. They’ve all come to give me away. “Choose one,” Thaelen said gruffly, nodding toward the line of my handmaidens. “You may bring a companion with you. One wolf. That was our only successful negotiation.” They thought I’d pick a lady. A friend. Someone quiet and obedient. But I turned to the guards. To him. He stood taller than the rest, skin bronzed from training under suns no longer mine. His eyes, that deep storm gray, locked on mine. He had once sworn to die for me. Long before titles. Long before blood. Rael. My shadow. My blade. My first love. My almost-mate. And I chose him. Gasps followed. A scowl darkened Thaelen’s face. But I didn’t care. If I must walk into the mouth of hell, I’d do it with a wolf at my side. Not a lamb. We descended the steps in silence. The vampires waited below, their sneers masked as smiles. Their king held out his hand, pale and waiting. There he was, in the center of it all. Valerius Draven. King of the Sangriven Court. The Crimson Throne. The Reign That Does Not End. My groom. He was nothing like the monsters in children's tales. He was worse. Valerius didn’t look like death; he wore it. Like a tailored cloak stitched in silence and storm. Skin pale as moonmilk stone, smooth as if carved by time itself, yet unscarred by it. Not a single wrinkle. Not a single sign of age. A thousand years old, and yet... untouched by time’s hand. His eyes were molten gold, glowing softly even in daylight the kind of light that saw straight through skin and sin. And his hair... thick, jet-black, long enough to brush the collar of his obsidian armor, dusted with silver at the temples not from age, but from something older. Cursed blood, perhaps. Or the whisper of an ancient crown. He looked like a prince sculpted by grief. And made cruel by it. There was something impossibly still about him. A predator’s patience. He didn’t blink. Didn’t move. He simply watched. Like a god studying his latest offering deciding whether to bless it... or burn it. And for a breath just one traitorous breath I wondered if he could feel my hatred from here. If it stirred anything in him. But his face was unreadable. Beautiful, yes. In the way that venom in a glass can be beautiful. In this way a noose made of silk can still kill. He was the kind of man girls like me were warned about. And now I would belong to him. Forever. And as I placed mine in his, a fire ignited in the mark across my spine the same place they’d debonded me months ago. A sharp, searing pain like chains being reforged. His touch did something. Something ancient. Something is wrong. I don’t know what this marriage will become. But I know this: I may be walking into his kingdom as a bride, but I will become his curse.