The Bloodbound Saga

The Girl in the Woods

“You were asleep for seventeen hours… If you were truly starved, you would be dust by now. What is protecting you?”

The voice was cool, precise, and belonged to Kahlan Mira, the Den Counsel, who stood at the foot of the simple cot. The room was Spartan with rough-hewn cedar walls, a small basin, and the oppressive scent of wild herbs and sterilization. Selene’s last memory was the suffocating weight of Dante’s presence, and waking to this clinical interrogation was a jarring change.

Selene sat up quickly, the action jarring the residual trauma in her head. Her porcelain skin felt dry, and her pale gold eyes were still fighting the lingering exhaustion. She tasted blood not her own, but the memory of the Pack sentinel’s scent, was rich and forbidden.

“I have survived on vigilance and a lack of sentimentality,” Selene replied, swinging her long legs over the side of the cot. She kept her answer direct, avoiding the soft vulnerability of her deeper thoughts. “Your Alpha trapped me. He should be grateful I’m not dust, or he’d have an internal investigation on his hands.”

Kahlan, with her severe streak of gray hair and steely eyes, offered a faint, skeptical smile. “Dante is the Alpha. He is accountable to no one but the moon and the Pack. You, however, are a sun-walker who crossed three sovereign boundaries and carries the scent of human hunters on your cloak. You are accountable to us.”

The door opened, and Dante entered. His presence immediately redefined the energy of the room, pulling the air taut. He wore dark gray training trousers and a simple, fitted black shirt. He ignored Kahlan, his wolf-gray eyes fixed solely on Selene. He moved like a disciplined warrior, every line of his broad-shouldered frame suggesting control.

“The hunters are gone. They tracked you here, smelled the Pack, and retreated,” Dante confirmed, his voice gruff and deliberate. “They know the line was crossed. Now they’d wait.”

“I told you, I ran from no one. I was leading them away,” Selene retorted, meeting his gaze without flinching. Her mind was a tactical chessboard, and she refused to be put in check.

Dante advanced slowly, forcing her to hold her ground. “You are the anomaly, Selene. I require an explanation for the sun. I require an explanation for the strength. Anomalies are vulnerabilities, and I do not tolerate weaknesses near my people.”

“The sun should burn you to ash. It doesn’t. Explain the anomaly,” Dante commanded, leaning on the desk in a predatory stance.

Selene’s soft side wanted to say it was the memory of the sun on her mother’s face, or the pure, spiteful will to survive. Instead, she offered the simple, defensive truth that kept her shields up.

“I was raised differently. My origins are not traditional, Alpha. I drink animal blood. I resist humans. That is my survival story. I have no complex science for you,” she said, her voice dropping to a low challenge. “Anomalies are for scientists, Alpha. I’m a survivor.”

Before Dante could press her, the door swung open again. Lyra Kestrel, the Beta’s daughter and pack bully, swept in. She was young, slim, and her sharp face was currently twisted with a sneer of jealous entitlement.

“A survivor who has to hide in the dark? A vampire who has to drink the blood of cattle?” Lyra mocked, stepping closer to Selene’s cot. “You are a disgrace to your own kind, and a threat to ours. You should have been left to burn.”

Selene’s pale gold eyes flared, the copper rising in immediate, defensive rage. She recognized the scent of the Pack’s favored daughter, the one who saw her as an immediate threat to the Alpha’s attention.

“You think a den gives you strength, pup? Try surviving when every dawn is a promise of ash,” Selene replied, her short, direct sentences acting like sharp blows. “I would choose the sun over your moon-dependence any day. I did not ask for your pity or your judgment.”

“You are right to fear the sun, Lyra,” Dante cut in, his tone cold, correcting Lyra with a sharp imperative. “The sun is predictable. This one is not. That is why she is here. Your fear does not serve the Pack, Lyra.”

Lyra immediately backed down, but her resentment was a toxic, visible aura. “The Pack deserves a Luna who remembers their roots, Alpha, not a sun-walker with a dubious diet. She smells of old blood and bad decisions.”

“Enough,” Dante stated, his voice was a low thunder that ended the conversation. Lyra glared at Selene one last time before exiting the room, slamming the door.

Selene felt a fleeting rush of gratitude for Dante’s intervention, quickly replacing it with strategic caution. “She hates me. Your pack will be divided if I stay.”

“My Pack is mine to command. And you are here because I chose for you to be,” Dante countered, stepping forward again. This time, he closed the distance entirely, leaning over her until his scent, the mix of raw power and the deep, unsettling comfort of his wolf, drowned out the herbs.

“I am trying to protect my own people, Selene. The Mafia hunters, the Savior’s network, have been quiet for months. Your appearance is the pin that bursts the calm. I need to know who you are and what you signed away to them,” Dante pressed, using a gruff whisper that felt dangerously intimate.

Selene felt the bloodlust urges, intensify under his proximity, a terrifying consequence of the exhaustion and the sheer rightness of his presence. She confessed, using slow, rhythmic lines that softened her intensity. “I remember only fragments. Like being orphaned at an early age and rescued by a man who taught me half-truths. I remember a glowing pen, a paper I didn’t understand… and running.”

She swallowed hard. “I drink only animal blood, Alpha, because the alternative is… this.” She gestured vaguely at her trembling hands. “It is a constant, exhausting resistance.”

Dante knelt, suddenly bringing their eyes to the same level. He studied her face, his thumb brushing a dark bruise near her temple from the fight in the woods. “You’re surviving on instinct, not power. You need proper rest, not animal blood.”

He rose, walked to a hidden latch in the wall, and pulled out a small, secured package wrapped in thick linen. He placed it on the desk.

“This is a temporary measure. Pack custom requires you to be confined until the matter of the hunters is resolved. I am placing you under the Den’s protection, but you will not leave this wing,” Dante ordered, his voice returning to the short, commanding imperatives of the Alpha.

“I do not take orders from a wolf, Alpha.”

Dante moved to the door, his hand on the latch. He paused, turning back. “You think a ledger gave you life? It only wrote you down for the hunt. You are right to want to write your own name now. But while you’re on my land, you follow my law and now, you will rest.”

Then he was gone, and the heavy door clicked shut, locking her in.

Left alone, Selene walked to the desk, her pale gold eyes immediately drawn to the linen-wrapped package. Curiosity warred with paranoia. She slowly peeled back the rough cloth.

Inside was a simple, sturdy wooden bowl containing thick, concentrated Pack broth; meat, herbs, and dark minerals, designed to sustain the wolves during long periods of rest or healing. Beside it lay a small, black obsidian shard, no bigger than a thumbnail. It was cold, unnervingly smooth, and pulsed with a faint, almost undetectable occult warmth.

Selene picked up the shard. The moment her skin touched it, a clear, powerful vision flashed through her mind: a blurred image of the Savior’s office, a deep-red ledger, and a name written in flowing script: Aurelio Varelli. The vision faded instantly, leaving behind a sharp, localized pain in her wrist.

She dropped the shard, her breath catching in her throat. The obsidian was not random; it was a key, tied to her past and the enemies hunting her. It was a secret she could not share, even with the fiercely protective Alpha.

Hours had passed and the Pack outside settled into the quiet rhythms of the late day. Selene, unable to ignore the command and the overwhelming fatigue, curled up on the cot, clutching the empty linen cloth. She finally allowed herself to drift into a shallow, fitful sleep.

When she woke, the moon was high, it was a massive, silver disc hanging directly over the highest trees. It was a spectacular, almost blood moon tonight, illuminating the clearing outside her small, locked window with an intense, haunting crimson hue.

The hunger she had suppressed all day was now a screaming, feral beast in her throat, intensified by the moon’s raw power. The bull blood was gone, the Pack broth was untouched. The trauma residue and the exhaustion had weakened her defenses completely. She felt the skin on her face tighten, and her pale gold eyes were now a solid, blazing copper.

She was blood-mad.

She moved to the window, her hands gripping the thick sill. Through the trees, past the Pack’s low barrier, she saw a figure; a human man, dressed in a familiar, cheap hunter’s jacket, staggering clumsily through the darkness. He was alone, bleeding from an unseen wound, moving towards the perimeter, a beacon of raw, needed life.

Selene watched, her breathing shallow and ragged, the primitive predator fully awake. She could taste the blood in the air, she could feel the hunter's panic. Every rational thought vanished, replaced by the single, driving need to feed. She could not move away from the window. Her control had been completely fractured.

Suddenly, a loud, choking gurgle sounded from outside her window, which was immediately followed by the heavy thud of a collapsing body. The man, who had been staggering just feet from the exterior wall of the cabin, was now silent.

Selene couldn't see the body, but she could smell the scent: fresh, warm, human blood suddenly and violently spilled. A hunter was dead, his throat likely slit. But she was locked inside, still clinging to the sill.

The overwhelming scent of the kill slammed into her, and the raw hunger in Selene’s throat finally broke. She doubled over, gasping, her control was shattered.

Then, a deep, familiar growl sounded just outside the door. Dante. He had returned, and he had smelled the slaughter.

Was the hunter’s throat slit by another member of the Pack to frame Selene, or did the blood moon’s intensity truly break Selene’s suppressed control, forcing her to feed in a fugue state she could not recall?