The Blood Moon Decay
1744 Words
Lucien's POV
Susan screamed as the shift took her.
It always started the same way, bones grinding, skin stretching, the body trying to remember what it was born to be. Her spine arched violently, muscles tearing and reforming, fur bleeding through skin in ragged patches. For one heartbeat, she was almost there.
Almost wolf.
Then the curse finished what it started.
Her chest convulsed. A wet, sickening sound filled the room as something inside her ruptured. Blood sprayed the walls. Flesh splatted where it shouldn't. The half-formed wolf howls once high, broken, terrified, before her body collapsed in on itself like it was never meant to exist. She turned into a puddle of bones, blood, furs, and, flesh.
Silence crashed down.
The smell filled the room. Iron. Burnt marrow. Death.
Susan Voss was gone.
She was my friend before she was my Omega. Before the curse. Before the Moon decided she'd lived long enough at twenty-nine.
I didn't move. My wolf stilled, trying to hold the grief.
"Clean it," I said flatly.
My Betas stepped forward immediately. Black gloves. No hesitation. This wasn't their first time scrubbing blood from the apothecary floor. Wouldn’t be their last.
The Moon has been trying to kill my pack for over three hundred years.
It doesn't do it quickly. That would be mercy.
It does it slowly. Methodically. Like rot spreading beneath skin.
Every full moon, something breaks.
Sometimes, it is bones.
Other times, it is minds.
Most times, it is children.
We call it the Blood Moon Decay, but curses don't need names to be understood. You understand them when you bury your first Omega at twenty-two. When you watch a grown wolf convulse on the floor, foaming, claws tearing at his own chest because his body can no longer decide what it is.
Human? Wolf ? Monster!
No herb has ever worked. No medicine. No modern science. We've tried it all. Wolfsbane derivatives. Ancient roots. Synthesized suppressants. Every full moon, Omegas still fall sick first, fevers so high their skin burned, seizures violent enough to snap restraints. Some beg to be killed before nightfall.
Others didn't get the chance.
And when the sickness lingers too long, when the Moon chews at their mind instead of the flesh, the real horror begins.
Feral contagion.
Madness.
A wolf goes quiet first. Withdrawn. Then the eyes changes, too bright, too empty. Language slips away. Names disappear. Instinct takes over. They attack packmates. Tear into walls. Bite until there's blood on their teeth and they don't remember whose it is.
I've executed five in the last year alone.
Men I trained with. Boys I watched grow up.
I don't sleep well anymore.
Tonight should have been different. I was assured the new remedy would work. I wanted to save my best friend, or perhaps what was left of her before her wolf was plunged to madness.
Susan's remains were carefully wrapped. Respectfully, As if dignity still mattered after what the Moon had done to us again.
I turn to the elder standing stiffly by the worktable.
Maeve Voss. Susan's aunt. Witch. Herbalist. Elder.
Her hands were trembling.
"That was the nine-hundredth formulation," I said, my voice steady despite the pressure cracking my ribs from the inside. "Nine hundred attempts. Nine hundred failures."
Her eyes flashed. "Because there is no cure, Alpha."
The word Alpha carried weight here. It always does. Especially when spoken like accusation.
"You told me this blend would stabilize her shift," I continued. "You said the fever would break."
"I said it might," Maeve snapped. "And it did, briefly. But you know as well as I do, Lucien, that herbs don't undo divine punishment."
My wolf snarled, furious at the truth.
"Don't say it like that," I warned.
"Like what?" she challenged, stepping closer, grief hardening her spine. "Like extinction?"
The word landed heavy.
"This pack is dying," Maeve continued. "Your Omegas first. Your breeders refusing to mate. Your Betas losing control. And you," her gaze drops to my chest, where my heart was beating too fast, too hard, "you're thirty-four."
I didn't answer. I knew my ultimatum as an Alpha and I'm fast approaching my expiration date.
She didn't need me to.
"The Blood Moon will finish you," she said quietly. "And when it does, the curse will devour whatever's left of us."
I slammed my hand into the wall.
"There has to be another way."
"There isn't," Maeve said. "Not unless you stop fighting what the Moon demands."
"And what is that?" I asked coldly.
She met my gaze, unflinching.
"Your true mate!"
The word made my wolf recoil and surge at the same time.
"I don't have one," I snapped.
Maeve exhaled, tired. "You haven't found her yet. There is a difference."
"I've tried," I growled. "Every eligible she-wolf. Every bloodline. Every ritual you elders could bleed me dry with."
"And none of them answered," she said softly. "Because the Moon doesn't make mistakes."
Anger coiled hot and vicious in my gut. "Enough!"
"You are running out of months, Lucien," Maeve pressed. "When the feral madness takes you, you won't get a clean death like Susan. You'll tear through your own pack first."
I turned away.
"This meeting is over!"
Her voice broke as I reached the door. "She could have lived if you'd accepted it sooner."
I didn't look back.
The apothecary reeked of loss as I stepped outside. Night air bit my lungs. Two of my guards fall into step behind me, black suits sharp against the dim city street. They didn't speak. They never do unless I command it.
Every full moon, the Omegas suffer first. Fever. Seizures. Some bled from the eyes. Some begged to be restrained. Others don't survive the night. Those who do sometimes wake up, wrong.
That's when we lock them away.
Or put them down.
My wolf clawed at my insides, restless. Pain flared in my joints, a warning. The curse was tightening its grip. My shifts are becoming violent. Unstable. I wake up with blood under my nails and no memory of earning it.
I won't die like that.
I won't let my pack die like that.
I reached the parking lot when the scent hit me.
Warm, ripe, darkly sweet. Not perfume. Not soap. Something richer. Like crushed fruit and skin heated by fear. My wolf reacted instantly, recognition roaring through my blood before my mind could catch up.
It hit me in the parking lot like a blade to the chest.
My wolf surged so violently I had to stop walking.
What the hell was that?
I turned slowly, scanning the concrete lot, the parked cars, the tired city lights. And then I saw her.
She was standing by an old sedan that had seen better decades, keys clenched in her fist like a weapon she didn't trust. Plain coat. Plain shoes. No makeup worth mentioning.
Hair the color of sunlit honey pulled back carelessly, strands loose around her face like she hadn't bothered taming them.
She was human. A weak, fragile, mortal and my wolf wanted her? Could she be the cure to the curse?
My jaw tightened. "Impossible," I muttered.
Humans were off-limits. Always had been. They were liabilities. Breakable. Dangerous in the wrong way. The Moon did not bind us to them.
So why did my chest feel like it was tearing open?
I took a step closer without meaning to.
That's when the male appeared.
I smelled him before I saw him, arrogance, entitlement, something sour underneath. He stepped into her space like he owned it. She stiffened instantly. Fear flickered across her face, then something else.
Pain.
Recognition.
"Vic."
The way he said her name made my hands curl into fists.
She turned, shock written all over her. "James?"
He held out a bouquet of red roses like a shield, like a bribe. Too many. Too deliberate. The kind of gesture meant to perform, not apologize.
"What are you doing?" she asked, voice tight.
He dropped to one knee.
My wolf snarled.
"Marry me," he said. "Let's stop pretending we don't belong together."
The crowd gathered fast. Phones came out. Eyes lit up with voyeuristic hunger. She went pale, breath hitching, shoulders locking like she was bracing for impact.
I felt it then. The truth beneath the scent.
She was hurt.
Not fresh. Not shallow. This was the kind of wound that lived deep. The kind that never really closed.
Her heart was still bleeding for him.
Disgust coiled in my gut.
He reached for her.
She stepped back. "Don't," she said.
He didn't listen.
Of course he didn't.
His hand lifted like he was going to strike her face for rejecting him.
That was as far as he got.
I crossed the distance in two strides and caught his wrist mid-swing. Bone grated under my grip. He screamed, dropping the roses, petals scattering like blood on concrete.
I leaned down, voice calm, lethal.
"Men who hit women don't deserve hands."
Silence slammed into the lot.
I twisted.
James collapsed, sobbing, clutching what remained of his pride. The crowd backed away instinctively. They didn't know why, only that something dangerous had just stepped into the light.
I turned to her.
Up close, she was devastating in a way that had nothing to do with polish. Hazel eyes, flecked with gold, sharp with shock and fury and something that looked dangerously like hope she didn't trust. Her pulse thundered in her throat. I could hear it. Feel it.
My wolf pressed forward, urgent.
Mine.
I ignored it.
"You're safe," I said.
"Did you see that?" Someone from the crowd said, "He was about to hit her." A woman gasped softly. No one stepped forward.
James stayed on his knee, clutching his broken wrist, roses scattered at his feet like evidence. He didn't look like a lover anymore. He looked small. Exposed.
My bodyguards dragged him away while he kept screaming. "Victoria, you belong to me!"
She didn't look at him. "I'm okay," she whispered, and I felt the lie.
She leaned into me instead. "What's your name?"
"Lucien." I answered, searching into her eyes. The crowd became a blur and all I could think of was why I wanted to protect and keep this human I barely knew, by my side for the rest of my life.
Something shifted in my chest. The mate bond eased. My wolf bowed its head.
The Moon Goddess had finally answered my prayers.
- Writer
