Blood Marked: The Bone Moon Alphas

CHAPTER 10 Silver Eyes Exposed

Lira Ashworth had been waiting nineteen years to destroy me, and she finally figured out how.

She didn't do it with fists. She did it with a phone.

I didn't even know she had hidden it in my kennel room — taped under my cot, camera facing my little cracked mirror. She knew I talked to Nyx out loud when I thought I was alone.

The video was 43 seconds long.

Me, at 3AM after Silas left the Archive, my hair a mess, eyes flashing silver as I argued with the air.

Nyx: You have four mates and you still sleep alone? Pathetic.

Me, out loud, exhausted: "I have four stalkers with superpowers and a tree that bleeds, I don't have time for a harem, Nyx."

Nyx: You have a harem. You just haven't done the paperwork.

Me, rolling my eyes, and my eyes fully shifting — silver, glowing, slit-pupiled — "I am not calling them my mates."

Lira had cut it there, with my eyes blazing, and added text in pink glitter font: WOLFLESS?? OR LYING b***h WHO STOLE ALPHA POWER?? #VESSEL #FAKE

She played it at dinner.

Nocturne's dining hall was carved from obsidian, 300 Alphas eating raw meat and laughing. The main screen was supposed to show the Alpha rankings. At 7PM sharp, it flickered.

My face, huge, silver eyes blazing, filled the screen.

Silence fell like a guillotine.

Lira stood on her chair in her perfect uniform, pointing at me where I sat frozen with Rhys's tray in my hands.

"She's been lying! She said she was wolfless! She's been seducing the Bone Moon Alphas to steal their power! My father took her in and this is how she repays us!"

Three hundred heads turned to me. Three hundred noses flared. They could smell it now — I wasn't hiding anymore. My scent had changed. No longer nothing. Rain and blood and shadow and storm and old paper. Alpha. But wrong. Too many Alphas at once.

A fourth-year girl from North Fang stood up, claws out. "Vessel. She's an unregistered Vessel. My mother died because of a Vessel!"

"She marked them!" someone else shouted, pointing at Kieran's table. Kieran had come in late, his collar open, my shadow crescent visible on his throat where he had let me mark him back last night. Rhys's blood moon glowed faintly. Jax's wrist had my little wolf paw. Silas's eye mark was on his inner wrist.

All four marks. On them. From me.

Chaos exploded.

"ENOUGH!"

Kieran's voice wasn't loud, but his shadows slammed every door shut at once. The lights went out. Only his eyes glowed.

He vaulted onto the Alpha table, shadows pouring off him, and pointed at Lira. "You. You planted a camera in a girl's room. You recorded her without consent. That's expulsion."

Lira paled. "She's the Vessel! The Council law says —"

"Council law says Vessels must be presented at eighteen," Silas said coldly, standing, his silver eyes making half the hall clutch their heads. "She is nineteen. Someone hid her. That's not her crime. That's her protection."

Jax jumped up next to Kieran, lightning crawling over his skin, making the air smell like ozone. "Anyone who has a problem with her has a problem with me. Come say it to my face, Lira. Come on."

No one moved. They were Alphas, but the Four were... more.

Then the main doors blew inward.

Black cloaks. Silver masks shaped like bone moons. Council Enforcers. Six of them.

"Kaia Thorne," the lead one said, voice modulated. "Unregistered Vessel, born under Bone Moon. You are to come with us to the Moon Temple for inspection and bonding. By order of the Alpha Council."

Rhys stepped in front of me so fast I didn't see him move. His hands were already black-veined, ready to rot them.

"Touch her and I will make your blood boil in your veins," he said softly, smiling his dangerous gentle smile.

The Enforcer looked at my marks, then at their marks. "You have already started unauthorized bonding. That is a capital offense. The Vessel must be shared equally among worthy Alphas, not hoarded by four cursed boys."

That was it. That word. Shared.

Kieran moved so fast he was shadow. He was behind the Enforcer, claws at his throat. "Say that word again."

The Enforcer laughed, even with claws at his throat. "You think you can stop us? The full Council is coming. The Bone Moon returns in two weeks. If she is not on the altar, you all die. Your curse will eat you."

I stood up. My legs shook, but I stood.

I let Nyx come forward just enough. My eyes went full silver, glowing so bright the obsidian walls reflected them. My hair lifted like I was underwater. The faint bone-white fur rippled over my skin.

"Tell the Council," I said, and my voice was layered with Nyx's, making the Enforcers step back, "that the Vessel they are looking for died in a field nineteen years ago when her mother begged to be nothing. I am Kaia Thorne. I am Alpha Prime's daughter. And I am not going anywhere."

I howled. Not a human howl. A Prime howl.

Every wolf in the hall, all 300 Alphas, including the Enforcers, felt their knees buckle. Some shifted against their will, whining, bellies exposed.

The Four didn't kneel. They stood behind me, shoulders touching mine, four pillars.

The lead Enforcer ripped off his mask, revealing an old man bleeding from his nose from Silas's pressure.

"This isn't over," he hissed. "Two weeks. The Bone Moon. Be on the altar or we will drag you."

They left.

The hall was silent.

Then Lira, stupid, brave, terrified Lira, screamed: "You see! She's a monster!"

I looked at her. My former sister. The girl I had braided hair for, cleaned up after, protected.

"Monster?" I said, my voice still echoing. "You recorded me in my room, Lira. You sold me to the Council for a Luna title."

I walked to her table. Every step, my paws left silver prints that faded. The crowd parted.

I leaned close. "I am not wolfless anymore. So you don't have a servant anymore."

I didn't hit her. I didn't need to. I just let her smell me — true Alpha, true Prime — and her wolf, small and yapping, rolled over inside her and whined.

Lira collapsed onto the floor, sobbing.

Kieran came up behind me and put his coat around my shoulders. Jax laced his fingers with mine, his lightning warm. Silas pressed a kiss to my temple. Rhys wiped a tear I didn't know I had shed.

Headmaster Lucien appeared in the doorway, pale, looking at the broken doors and my glowing eyes.

"Kaia," he said quietly, "the tree... the bone tree bled silver when you howled. Ossara has woken up early."

Above us, through the glass roof, the sky cracked. For a second, just a second, a second moon appeared behind the purple one — white as bone, with a c***k down the middle, staring right at me.

Nyx whispered, terrified for the first time: He sees us now. He knows we're ready.