The Heir To The Blood-moon

Threads In The Dark

Ivory was somewhere else long before the Blood-moon feast ended.

It felt like a trance — her breath catching in her throat like claws scraping bone, though she kept it locked behind a still face.

The gift demanded silence. It always did. In a blink the vision vanished, and she came back to herself, gasping quietly as the great hall reassembled around her.

Ivory had seen a great deal in her years as the pack's Diviner. Visions grim enough to break lesser minds, and she'd learned to relay them without a tremor in her voice — that was the price of the gift, the sacred burden: not to feel, only to speak when the spirits demanded it.

But this vision had left her rattled, trembling like a cornered mice.

As the feast broke up and the others scattered to their dens, cold dread settled over her. Strange, for a woman who'd looked into the eyes of things that fed on fear itself.

Why did this vision unsettle her more than all the others combined?

---

"You seem awfully quiet tonight, dear. What do those unwavering sights see?"

Madam Miranda's voice came from the shadows, and Ivory startled, her composure cracking.

"Madam Miranda... it's nothing, I..."

Miranda smiled before Ivory could finish, as though she could see the look on her face despite her blindness.

"Don't fret, dear. I'm a blind old wolf who can't even shift under the brightest moon anymore. But I can smell that you're not yourself tonight. Fear clings to you like morning dew. Was it the meal... or did the spirits speak?"

"It's nothing to worry about, madam. I'm not feeling well, that's all." Ivory forced a small laugh that sounded hollow even to her.

"It's been a hard day for us all, dear. Our Alpha is about to prosecute his own Luna. We grieve, whether we say it aloud or not. The clan bond feels this betrayal cut deeper than silver. Take care of yourself. My healing chamber's door is open, if you have need for it."

Miranda continued down the moonlit path, her walking stick tapping a steady rhythm against stone.

Ivory hurried back to her rooms, fragments of the vision still circling.

That night brought something worse.

She twisted in her sleep, sweat soaking through her nightgown, her wolf whimpering somewhere beneath her skin. Then her eyes opened — though she wasn't truly awake.

A trance had pulled her back to the Blood-moon room.

The six were seated exactly as before, Cyrus at the head. But the air tasted of iron and prophecy.

Then she saw it again, clearer this time — a shape watching with eyes like burning coals, ancient and hungry. It moved when nothing else did. It breathed when the room held its breath, when even the Alpha seemed frozen in time.

Wrapped around its throat: a silver chain, identical to the one Maureen wore. The Luna's necklace, passed down through generations of pack mothers.

The prophecy was unfolding faster than she'd feared. The threads of fate kept knotting tighter. And the vision that had woken her screaming three nights before, Cyrus standing in a river of blood that wasn't his enemy's, blood that belonged to pack, to family, suddenly felt close enough to touch.

She opened her mouth to warn them.

The shadow's eyes flashed once in warning, and the temperature dropped.

*Not yet*

something whispered directly into her mind — a voice older than the clan itself.

Her fingers trembled around her cup as the wine turned to vinegar and regret on her tongue.

She woke gasping, drenched in her own sweat, the sheets clinging like a shroud.

She didn't dare sleep again, not with what waited behind her eyelids. She lay awake turning the vision over like a puzzle with missing pieces.

Diviners were meant to stay neutral in clan conflicts — to speak only when the spirits led, when the ancestors demanded it. But her resolve was cracking.

Her visions never lied.

Something in her bones insisted Maureen had told the truth, however impossible it seemed.

A Luna, betraying her Alpha? And yet the spirits said otherwise.

By morning, exhausted but resolved, Ivory made her way to the dungeon where Maureen was held. She needed to see her, to ask what the spirits wouldn't yet explain.

She kept her hood low and walked with a pilgrim's humility.

But the guards wouldn't let her past.

"Sorry, madam. Master Enderlin's orders, no one visits the Luna. Only he and her handmaid have access. Alpha's command."

The guard's voice was firm but apologetic; refusing a Diviner was its own kind of bad luck.

Ivory pressed, invoking tradition, her office, her standing.

It made no difference. No omega would defy a direct order from their Alpha. His word was law, absolute.

She left in frustration, heart heavy for the woman locked away in the dark — rejected, despised by everyone she'd once called family.

For a wolf, that kind of isolation was its own death.

The Crimson Ceremony was one day away now, and the pack grounds were already dressed for it — crimson banners hung from every building, the color of blood and judgment.

Ivory took no part in the preparations. She sat alone in her chambers instead, thinking of her visions, of Maureen's fate, of everything she couldn't stop.

---

"Master Enderlin, is it wise to see her in your current state, sir?"

Zuri trailed behind Cyrus, struggling to match his punishing pace down the corridor.

The Alpha's presence alone made lesser wolves bow their heads without thinking. "I worry you might lash out. Your control has been..."

"Don't worry, Zuri. I've accepted she'll be prosecuted at the Crimson Ceremony. I'm not doing anything reckless." Cyrus's smile never touched his eyes — the same cold, calculating eyes that had watched empires of wolves rise and fall. "Wait here. I'm going alone. Let me see my once true love one last time before judgment falls."

He left Zuri standing at the dungeon entrance like a dismissed servant.

The guard opened the cellar door without meeting the Alpha's gaze.

Cyrus descended into the dark.

Maureen lay near-lifeless on the cold stone, barely stirring. Weak light filtered through cracks overhead, doing nothing to soften the scene. The Luna who once commanded a room now looked broken.

"How are you holding up, my love?" Cyrus's mockery was casual, cruel. "Had anything to eat today? The guards say you refuse every meal."

She didn't move. She didn't speak — only sat with silver burning her wrists raw.

He crouched, invading her space, brushing a strand of matted hair from her face.

The gesture might have looked tender, if it weren't so vicious.

"You shouldn't let this go on, Maureen. Tell me who fathered the pup. An Alpha from a rival pack? An omega you pitied? A stray from your charity work? Or perhaps some warm-blooded human?" Each guess dripped with venom and possessive rage.

Maureen said nothing. Her spirit had already surrendered to whatever the Crimson Ceremony would bring.

"I loved you, Maureen. I truly did." His voice dropped, dangerously soft. "Every vow before the pack, every promise under the full moon... it was real. It hurts me to hurt you, though I swore on your father's grave I never would. But you've left me no choice."

A pause.

"Please, don't let this go any further. I'm willing to set you free. We'll say it was a mistake... a medical confusion. Just give me a name. If it's too heavy to speak, write it down." He set paper and a pen before her like a final lifeline.

She didn't flinch. Her body shook with the effort of breathing before she let out one exhausted gasp and went still again. Defiant, even in defeat.

Cyrus held his fury with an iron will built over decades of rule, though the thought of another male's child growing inside his Luna gnawed at something primal in him.

Finally he rose, towering over her.

"I'll leave you to it, then. I'd have loved to stay and watch you suffer a while longer, but I have business with the head of the Clans. Matters of law and old tradition." He straightened his cuffs, unhurried. "Whenever you're ready to talk, I'll be around. But don't take too long, Maureen. The clock is ticking."

He climbed the stone steps and slammed the door behind him, a sound like a death knell.

The moment he was gone, Maureen's control broke. She screamed into the empty cell, cursing the earth, the moon, the fate that had brought her here. Her life felt finished before it had truly begun.

She prayed for the pain to end, for her, and for the child she refused to call a mistake.

Above, in her chambers, Ivory felt the Luna's anguish move through the pack bond and wept quietly, already knowing what tomorrow would bring.

"Spirits, give me strength." She held her crystal until it bruised her palm. "Speak to me, revered ones."

Ivory's eyes snapped open, violet and wide with sudden, terrible awareness.