MARKING HIS VIRGIN MATE

FULL RED MOON

I watched as my mother was tied and lifted onto the stake. They made me watch. I was only five. The ropes ate into her skin. He hair hung in tangled ropes across her face

Her eyes searched for mine through the crowd, and even at five, I understood she wasn’t afraid for herself. She was afraid for me.

Immediately after giving birth to me, she had been thrown into the dungeon. For five long years, they kept her alive not out of mercy, but so I could witness her execution. A warning. A lesson for the future… if I ever had one.

Each year, on my birthday, they would march me past the iron door where she sat in the dark. They wanted me to see what disobedience looked like. They wanted me to smell the mildew, to hear the clank of chains, to memorize her hollow eyes. “This is your mother,” they whispered. “This is what happens to traitors.”

The ring leader of the execution was my stepfather, yes my mother’s husband. He was happy, too excited for a man that was about to lose the love of his life… or maybe not. The sunlight glistened on his face as if it approved of what he was about to do to my mother.

I remember how he picked up a stone and threw it at my mother before the others joined him.

Her screams are still vivid in my head as the fire swallowed her. The scene is entrenched in my head for eternity. I remember how they laughed… how they celebrated the death of an “unfaithful” queen. The smell of burning hair and skin rose in black coils, sticking to my clothes. My throat ran dry, no words, just silent wailing. Nothing I could do to save my mother.

Years had passed and for the first time, I dared to go to my stepfather to ask for a favour, I wanted to know who my real father was if the pack was yet to destroy him. Stupid of me, very much aware.

I regretted my actions immediately I slowly opened my stepfather’s door when I heard strange noises from within. I wish I hadn’t.

He was having s*x. Not just one woman, three at the same time. Nightlight pouring through his window lit his face exactly the way it did the day my mother was killed. I felt nauseous.

A king of the pack was forbidden to take another mate once he’d marked his queen. But maybe that rule was for show, not enforcement. Maybe rules were only weapons for the powerful to use against the weak.

Soon, he had more children, some older than me and some younger than me. Step-siblings if I could even call them that, they all began to come out of the shadows, a clear significance of my father’s unfaithfulness to my dead mother even while she was still alive, but still nobody cared or did a thing.

My step-siblings were mean, cruel, and always trying to put me in my place. And my stepfather encouraged it. I was a living scar, a reminder of my mother’s rebellion of her choosing a human mate over him, even if only for one night.

Sometimes, I wondered why they even let me live.

“You should be lucky wolf blood flows through your veins,” he would growl every morning. “If not, I would’ve killed you myself.”

He meant it. His eyes a solid evidence of a predator that was held back by chains to prevent it from devouring its prey.

The sacred laws were the chains that prevented him from doing so; A wolf without sin cannot be killed.

And so, I was cast into the shadows. Forgotten. Watched. Despised for a crime I was innocent of, born to be an evidence and a vessel of shame. I spent most of my time hiding in empty kitchens and memorizing doors that caused noise and the ones that didn't, so that I could move like a ghost.

My life was measured in quiet breaths and invisible steps.

Then came the night of the full moon. And it was not just any full moon, it was the full red moon.

The entire pack is prepared. The long-awaited night, what every werewolf looked forward to, when they would ascend in strength and Mystidan, their bodies would be a better version of the previous one.

But not me.

The full red moon was a curse. For me, it was a war, my human blood clashing violently with the wolf within. Every full red moon, it tore me apart. My body wasn’t made to handle the shift fully. The priests said I was “tainted,” a living contradiction of bloodlines that never should have mixed.

While the others prepared, I was ordered to stay far from the ceremonies. They said my presence brought bad luck.

I ran into the woods as usual during the full red moon, trying to escape the growing pain. The trees served as support as my speed reduced.

The familiar ache had been awoken by the red moon, the shift, like a volcanic eruption trapped in my body. My bones snapped. My breath grew short. My fingers twisted unnaturally. I fell on my knees grabbing the soil with my fist, as if begging the earth to take the pain away.

It hurt, gods, it hurt.

My chest became heavy as if it carried a time bomb. My veins burned. My teeth went sharp then normal as if trying to reveal their true identity. The wolf inside me bellowed, but my human part screamed back.

Two creatures in one weak body, each fighting against the other.

I screamed until my voice went flat and became nothing but a whimper.

I collapsed on the rough, dry grass, trembling. The world spun in red and black and silver.

Only this time it wasn’t just grass.

Something held me. Strong. Furry. Solid.

I thought it was another hallucination, my mind trying to calm itself while my body tore apart. But the warmth was real. The scent was different, it had an aura I wasn't so familiar with. It lifted me like I had no weight.

My head fell back. The moon burned white above, framed by a halo of trembling leaves. The shape above me was huge, shadowed, but unmistakably alive. Fur brushed my cheek softly, but powerful enough to feel like steel under velvet.

The pain began to fade away and the agony in my chest dulled. I was weak… but not alone.

For the first time in years, I felt something like safety. Not comfort safety. The difference is clear. Safety is when the world stops hating and attempting to kill you for a second.

Just before I lost consciousness, I heard a deep, masculine voice.

“Wake up.”

The voice awakened something in me that I couldn't describe, my eyes opened. For a split second, I saw them, golden eyes brighter than my stepfather’s crown, staring down at me with something between hunger and recognition.

Then everything went black.