7. The Awakening Flame
441 Words
The cave pulsed with warmth. Not from fire, but from the stones themselves.
Lucas led me deeper inside, torch in one hand, the other clasped tightly around mine. The walls glittered with veins of silver. The air hummed with energy.
“This is where I shifted for the first time,” he whispered. “Where my father brought me.”
I felt it—the pulse. Alive. Waiting. Ancient.
“I’m scared,” I admitted.
“You should be.” He cupped my cheek. “It’ll hurt. You’ll burn. You’ll see pieces of yourself that make no sense. But I’ll be here. Through every second.”
I nodded.
The floor of the cave opened into a wide circle etched in runes, scattered with candles. In the center lay a single object: a leather-bound book, weathered with time.
I knelt before it, fingers trembling. The moment I touched it, heat bloomed through my chest.
My vision blurred.
Suddenly I was standing in another time.
A woman stood before a fire, tall and dark-eyed, her body strong with age and magic. Her voice wrapped around me like a song I’d forgotten.
“You are moonborn, Selena. Just like me. Just like the women before us.”
She pressed her palm to mine.
“You will bleed. You will break. But you will burn brighter than any of them.”
Then the fire swallowed us both.
I gasped back into the cave.
The book glowed under my hand.
Lucas was beside me, shirtless, kneeling. “What did you see?”
“My grandmother,” I whispered. “She was… a shifter. And more.”
He nodded, as if he’d known.
The pain started slowly. A sharp, burning stretch in my spine. My hands trembled. My skin felt too tight. Too thin.
I screamed.
Lucas caught me as I fell to my knees. “Breathe. Let it happen. Don’t fight it.”
I thought it would kill me.
My bones cracked. My vision blurred. My heart thundered, faster than humanly possible. Then heat exploded in my chest. My skin ripped, but I felt no blood, only light. Like moonfire spilling out of me.
I roared.
And when I opened my eyes I saw through another world.
The cave was sharper. The air is thicker. My body lowered to the ground. Powerful.
I was on all fours.
I was a wolf.
Silver-furred.
Eyes like starlight.
Lucas let out a howl, deep and proud.
I howled back.
And the cave trembled with it.
We ran together under the blood moon.
Not as a man and woman.
But as mates.
Bound by heat.
By magic.
By blood.
- Writer
