Return of the Crimson Luna

Imagine being in a family where your father thinks you're a fool, a disgrace, and your mother — well, stepmother actually — thinks you are a ticking time bomb. Well, that's what my life was. I spent eighteen years doing everything in my father's way. Tonight, I want to do it my way. My name is Kaia Ashborne and I am the only Wolfless girl in Silver Ridge. If you are not a werewolf, that probably means nothing to you. If you are, you just sucked in a breath for me. In our world, you get your wolf at twelve. Twelve. You shift for the first time, you hear her voice in your head, you get access to the pack mind-link. That is when you stop being a pup and start being a person. I am eighteen. I have never shifted. I have never heard a wolf in my head. The pack link is silent for me. When the other girls were getting their fangs and their claws and their pretty wolf eyes, I got nothing. Just taller. Just human. That makes me a curse. A defect. The Moon Goddess's mistake. The night of the Mating Ceremony was supposed to fix it. Every girl in Silver Ridge spends her whole life dreaming about this night. You wear white. You stand in the Moon Temple under the full moon. The High Priestess calls the Goddess and she reveals your fated mate. And the legend says, if you are Wolfless, finding your mate will shock your wolf awake. Your mate's scent, his touch — it pulls her out. This was my last chance. "Stop fidgeting. You're making the dress look cheap." Seraphine's hands were iron on my shoulders. My stepmother. She wasn't ugly-evil-stepmother. She was worse. She was beautiful-evil-stepmother. Perfect dark hair, perfect Beta Female posture, perfect smile that never reached her eyes. She had been lacing me into this white ceremony dress for twenty minutes like she wanted to strangle me with it. "It's too tight," I gasped. "It's supposed to be tight. Maybe if you didn't eat like an Omega you'd fit into it properly," she hissed, but her hands were shaking. They had been shaking all day. "Listen to me, Kaia. When you go in there, you do not speak unless spoken to. You do not look at the Alpha table. You do not embarrass your father. If you don't get a mate, you walk out quietly. Do you understand?" That was Seraphine. She thought I was a ticking time bomb. Always watching me like I was going to explode and take the whole house with me. She picked up the little clay cup from my vanity. My daily tea. Wolfsbane and ash and something bitter she said would "help the wolf come forward." I had been drinking it every morning since I was twelve. Six years of drinking poison that never worked. "Drink," she said. "I'm going to throw up if I drink anything," I said. "Drink it." I drank it. It tasted like dirt and pennies, like always. My stomach cramped instantly. She watched me swallow, and for a second, her perfect mask cracked. She looked... scared? Guilty? Then it was gone. "Good girl," she whispered. She pressed a small, cold pouch into my palm. Dried herbs and a tiny, sharp dagger with a bone handle. "If anything goes wrong tonight, you take this and you run north. Don't go to the main road. Go through the old forest. Don't stop. Don't ever come back to this house. Do you hear me?" I stared at her. "What are you talking about? What's going to go wrong?" She grabbed my face, her nails digging into my cheeks. "Promise me." "Mother, you're hurting me." "I am not your mother!" she snapped, then immediately let me go like I burned her. Her eyes filled with tears. Actual tears. I had never seen Seraphine cry. "Just... just promise me, Kaia." Before I could answer, a heavy knock shook my bedroom door. It was my father. Beta Marcus Ashborne didn't need to shift to look like a wolf. He was big, broad, grey starting in his black hair, with the permanent scowl of a man who was born disappointed. He looked at me standing in my white dress and his scowl got deeper. That was it. That was my father's look for his only daughter on her eighteenth birthday. Like I was a stain on his rug. "Is she ready?" he asked Seraphine, not me. He never spoke directly to me anymore. He spoke about me. "Yes," Seraphine said quickly, wiping her eyes. He finally looked at me, up and down. "You look ridiculous. White is for pure wolves. Not for..." He didn't finish. He didn't need to. For Wolfless girls. "Marcus, please," Seraphine whispered. "You have one job tonight, girl," he said to me, his voice low and hard. "Do not make us a laughing stock. For once in your godforsaken life, try not to be a disgrace. You walk in, you stand where they put you, and when no one wants you — because no one will want you — you walk out with whatever dignity you have left. Which is none." I felt that rejection before the real one even happened. My throat closed up. "I did everything you asked," I said, and I hated that my voice shook. "I trained every morning. I ran with the pups. I did the lessons. I drank the tea." "And you are still Wolfless," he said flatly. "An Ashborne does not break. So you must not be an Ashborne. Let's go." He walked out. I stood there in my too-tight white dress, holding a pouch of what I thought was more poison, with my stomach cramping from the tea, while my stepmother looked at me like I was already dead. I spent eighteen years doing everything in my father's way. Trying to be smaller, quieter, better, more wolf-like when I had no wolf. Tonight, I just wanted the Moon Goddess to look at me once. The Moon Temple was full. Every unmated eighteen-year-old in Silver Ridge stood in a circle in the middle of the stone floor. Twenty girls, all in white, all shaking. All with their wolves pacing excitedly under their skin. I could see their eyes flickering gold. I had no wolf pacing. I just had Nyx — except I didn't know her name was Nyx yet. Back then she was just the silence. The empty room in my head where a wolf should have been. The air was thick with scents. Pine, rain, leather, smoke — the scents of the unmated boys lined up outside the circle. Alphas, Betas, warriors, all waiting to find out who the Goddess gave them. At the high table sat Alpha Blackwood and Luna Blackwood, and beside them, their son. Jax. Jax Blackwood. He was the reason I even braved the temple steps. When we were kids, before my wolf didn't come, he was my best friend. He taught me how to climb the pine trees behind the packhouse. He told me when we grew up he would be Alpha and I would be his Luna and we would run the pack together. Then I turned twelve and didn't shift. And he started sitting at the Alpha table. And he started calling me "the Wolfless Beta's kid" when his friends laughed. But in my stupid, desperate, eighteen-year-old heart, I still had a tiny, pathetic hope that maybe, just maybe, the Moon Goddess was funny like that. His scent hit me first. Pine and winter storm. Cold and clean and home. It slammed into my lungs so hard my knees buckled. My empty chest — the place where a wolf should have been — suddenly roared awake with heat. For the first time in six years, I felt something move inside me. Mate. The word wasn't a thought. It was a feeling. It was a wire from my heart to his, pulling tight. I looked up, eyes filling with tears, and I found him across the circle. He was already looking at me. His golden eyes were wide. His lips parted. He smelled me too. He smelled his Wolfless disgrace of a childhood friend as his fated mate. The whole temple went silent. You could feel the bond snap into place between us, bright and hot and undeniable. The High Priestess smiled. Jax's face twisted. Not with joy. With horror. He took a step back. Then another. "No," he whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear. "No. Goddess, no. Not her. Anyone but her." My smile died. "Jax?" I whispered. And then he did it. He lifted his chin, looked right at me — at me, in my too-tight white dress, with my father's disgrace still ringing in my ears — and he used his Alpha Heir voice. "I, Jax Blackwood, Alpha Heir of Silver Ridge, reject you, Kaia Ashborne, the Wolfless disgrace, as my mate and Luna." The bond didn't just break. It ripped. I felt it tear out of my chest like barbed wire. I heard myself scream. I didn't know a human could make a sound like that. I collapsed to the stone floor, clutching my chest where a silver-white burn was spreading over my skin in the shape of a broken crescent moon. The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was my father's face. He didn't move to help me. He just closed his eyes, like he was finally, completely ashamed of me. And my stepmother in the crowd, mouthing one word: RUN.