Blood On the Mistletoe
1565 Words
(December 28 – 2:14 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.)
The betrayal began with a single white berry.
Mira found it just after dawn.
She had slipped outside to practice shifting in private (sixteen was a hard age for control), when her bare foot brushed something sharp in the snow. A tiny sprig of mistletoe, tied with red ribbon, hung from the lowest ward-stone like a Christmas ornament placed by a malicious hand. One berry was crushed; the juice had frozen into a perfect crimson teardrop.
Mira’s scream shattered the morning.
Lucien was there before the echo died. Aurora stumbled after him, still pulling on boots, heart already in her throat.
The moment Lucien saw the mistletoe, something ancient and terrible cracked open inside him.
His eyes bled to molten silver. A growl rolled out of his chest so deep the snow vibrated. Every wolf within a mile radius dropped to their bellies in instinctive submission.
Aurora had never seen him lose control. Not once.
Until now.
He snatched the sprig from the stone. The moment his skin touched the crushed berry, black lines raced up his fingers like poison ivy. He hissed, fangs lengthening, and crushed the mistletoe in his fist. Green fire flared between his knuckles, eating the plant to ash.
But the damage was done.
“Null,” he snarled. “Inside the wards. Someone brought this here.”
The pack gathered in horrified silence. Children were hustled inside. Elders formed a protective ring. Torvald’s hand went to the silver knife at his belt.
Aurora’s stomach turned to ice. “How long has it been here?”
“Since last night,” Mira whispered, eyes huge. “I would have smelled it sooner if I hadn’t—” She stopped, ashamed.
Lucien’s gaze swept the crowd (slow, lethal). “Who?”
No one spoke.
Aurora felt the bond scream inside her chest, a sudden, violent flare of Lucien’s rage and grief and terror. It was so strong her knees buckled. She clutched the nearest tree to stay upright.
He was at her side in an instant, hand gripping her elbow. “Breathe, little star. I have you.”
But his voice shook.
Eira stepped forward, face pale. “We search the lodge. Every room. Every drawer. Every soul.”
They tore the lodge apart.
Books flew from shelves. Mattresses were flipped. Children cried as their toys were examined. Aurora helped search the library, fingers numb, heart pounding so hard she could barely hear.
In the attic, beneath a loose floorboard in the room once used by visiting human relatives, they found the rest.
A small bundle wrapped in brown paper: six more sprigs of mistletoe, each berry injected with clear liquid that glowed faintly under moonlight. A note in handwriting Aurora didn’t recognize:
The age of monsters ends with the Solstice.
Choose, Luna: your life, or his species.
Lucien read it once. Then again. Then the paper burst into green flame in his hand.
He looked centuries old and terrifyingly young at the same time.
“Someone in this house wants me dead,” he said quietly. “Or wants Aurora to watch me die slowly.”
Aurora’s knees finally gave out. She sat hard on the attic floor, the world tilting.
Lucien knelt in front of her, cupping her face with shaking hands. “Look at me.”
She did. His eyes were wild.
“I need you to listen,” he said, voice low and fierce. “Whoever did this is still here. I can smell fear, but I can’t tell whose. I’m going to lose control if I stay inside these walls. I need you to be safe.”
He pressed something into her palm: a small silver dagger with a wolf-head handle. “If anyone comes for you, use this. Aim for the throat.”
Then he was gone, shifting mid-stride into the biggest black wolf Aurora had ever seen, and vanished into the snow.
The lodge locked down.
Every door warded. Every window sealed with runes that bled silver light. Children were gathered in the great room under Eira’s watchful eye. Aurora paced like a caged thing, dagger clenched in her fist, the bond screaming with Lucien’s rage miles away.
Hours crawled.
At dusk, the temperature inside the lodge plummeted.
Aurora felt it first in the mate-mark: a sudden, searing pain that drove her to her knees in the hallway. She cried out. The silver runes flared white-hot, then black, then white again.
Eira found her curled on the floor, gasping.
“The Null,” the old woman whispered. “It’s spreading through the wards. Someone opened a second bundle.”
Aurora’s vision tunneled. She could feel Lucien (wherever he was) stagger and fall to his knees in the snow, black lines crawling up his arms toward his heart.
She was on her feet before she made the conscious choice.
“I can find him,” she said. “The bond—it’s pulling.”
Eira tried to stop her. Aurora shook her off and ran.
Out the side door, into the blizzard that had suddenly returned with a vengeance. Snow lashed her face. Wind screamed. She followed the bond like a silver thread through the dark, dagger in one hand, the other pressed to the burning mark on her chest.
She found him three miles from the lodge, collapsed against a pine, half-shifted (human torso, wolf legs, claws dug into the bark). Black veins crawled across his chest, reaching for his throat.
Aurora dropped beside him and did the only thing she could think of.
She sliced her own palm with the dagger (deep, deliberate) and pressed the bleeding wound to the worst of the black lines on his skin.
“Take it back,” she ordered through clenched teeth. “Take it from me.”
Silver light exploded between them.
Aurora felt the poison surge into her veins like liquid nitrogen. She screamed. Lucien roared, trying to pull away, but the bond locked them together. The black lines reversed, flowing out of him and into her, burning a path straight to her heart.
When it was done, Lucien was free. Aurora was not.
She collapsed against him, shaking uncontrollably, veins glowing sickly silver-blue under her skin.
He shifted fully human, cradled her against his chest, and ran.
Back through the storm, back to the lodge, back to the hot-spring chamber where the moon still poured through the crystal ceiling like mercy.
He laid her in the water fully clothed again. This time he didn’t ask permission. He sliced his own palm and pressed it to her lips.
“Drink,” he commanded, voice breaking. “Take my blood, Aurora. Take everything.”
She did.
The taste was copper and starlight and wild, impossible warmth. The moment his blood touched her tongue, the poison reversed again (slower this time, gentler). The black lines retreated, leaving only faint silver scars that looked like frost flowers across her collarbone and his.
They stayed in the water until the moon moved west and the storm quieted.
Eventually he carried her out, wrapped her in towels, and sat on the marble steps with her cradled in his lap.
“I almost killed you,” he whispered against her temple.
“You didn’t,” she said. Her voice was hoarse. “We killed it together.”
He made a broken sound and kissed her (slow, reverent, tasting of blood and gratitude and something that felt a lot like worship).
When they finally returned to the great room, the pack was waiting.
Eira held the traitor by the arm: gentle, gray-haired Sigrid, the elder who had braided Aurora’s hair on Christmas night and told her stories of the old country.
Sigrid was crying silently.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “They have my granddaughter. They said if I didn’t—”
Lucien’s face went very still.
Aurora stepped forward and took Sigrid’s trembling hands.
“We’ll get her back,” she said. “All of us.”
Something shifted in the room (fear into resolve, grief into purpose).
Later, much later, after Sigrid was confined but not harmed, after plans were made and wards redoubled, after the children were finally asleep, Lucien found Aurora in the library staring at the box of her dream sketches.
He closed the door softly.
“I need to tell you the rest,” he said.
She turned. Moonlight painted silver across his cheekbones.
“The second seal,” he continued. “Blood and truth. We just broke it. Willingly shared, willingly taken. There’s no going back now.”
Aurora walked to him slowly. “Good.”
She rose on her toes and kissed him (not desperate this time, but deliberate). He groaned and kissed her back, hands sliding into her hair, angling her head so he could taste her deeper, slower, like he had all the time in the world and intended to use every second.
When they broke apart, both were breathing hard.
“Four days,” she whispered.
“Four days,” he echoed, and rested his forehead against hers.
Outside, the aurora burned brighter than ever, as if the sky itself was impatient for what came next.
Inside, two people who had spent lifetimes running from love discovered that some bonds, once forged in fire and blood and moonlight, could never be broken again.
- Writer
