The wind howled like a wounded beast over the scorched remains of Hollowmere. Blackened timbers jutted from the earth like broken teeth, ash curled in the air, and blood stained the dirt where a little human village had once stood.
Seraphine Duskbane crouched over a half-burnt human skull, the bone still warm. She dipped two fingers into the blood pooled beside it and smeared a crude symbol across her jaw, three slashes down the cheek, a hunter's mark. Her silver-daggered fingers were steady. Her heartbeat wasn't.
A full Blood Moon glared overhead, painting the ruins crimson.
"Tracks end here," said Dorian Vale, her second-in-command, stepping over the wreckage with a crossbow slung across his back. "But the scent's strong as hell. Must've shifted mid-fight. It's fast but it's wounded."
Seraphine stood. "Pureblood?"
Dorian nodded grimly. "High-ranking. No feral stink. We caught something big tonight, Commander."
Commander.
It still felt foreign in her ears.
Less than a week ago, Seraphine had been a field enforcer, a ghost in the dark, a mere blade in the shadows. Now she was leading the Guild's most elite hunters through cursed woodlands on a sanctioned Blood Moon strike. She hadn't asked for the promotion. She hadn't cared for it. But when High Commander Verrax was found torn to pieces inside his locked chamber, the Guild had needed a fast replacement.
They chose her.
She wiped the blood off on her sleeve. "Form a crescent. Push forward. She's heading east, probably toward the river to mask her scent."
"It's hunting alone…" Dorian frowned. "Seems off. A Pureblood wouldn't stray this deep into Guild territory without backup."
"It made a mistake," Seraphine said coldly, already moving through the ruins. "Now we make it fatal."
The moonlight spilled silver through the trees as the hunting party fanned out, ten enforcers in black armor stitched with silver thread, eyes glowing faintly blue from the elixirs they'd drunk before the hunt. All except Seraphine. She never drank the odd potion.
She didn't need to, her senses were sharp enough on their own.
The trail reeked of pain. Broken branches, a streak of blood on a moss-covered boulder. The Pureblood was fast, but bleeding out. A clean cut which was likely from Seraphine's throw earlier in the ruins. A silver blade had caught the wolf between the ribs before it vanished into the forest.
Seraphine could smell it now, clover and blood, and something else.
Something eerily familiar.
She stopped suddenly, heard a rustle in the trees to her right.
"Circle up," she snapped. Her team froze in motion. "The beast is close."
A low snarl split the silence.
Then the woods exploded.
The werewolf came out of the trees like a meteor, fur rippling black-blue under the moonlight, eyes glowing gold. The strike was near fatal as Dorian barely dodged a claw that would have shredded him. Another enforcer went down screaming, his throat torn out in a single swipe.
"Hold the line!" Seraphine shouted, already launching forward, twin silver daggers in each hand.
The Pureblood was tall, lean, fast. The beast was obviously mortally injured with the blood coating its side, but its movements were surgical. It was buying time, distracting them from something.
Seraphine danced around the wolf, slashing low, drawing a line of burning silver across the beast's thigh. The creature howled, staggering.
Then its golden eyes locked on Seraphine's.
The wolf hesitated for a breath too long.
And that's when Seraphine struck.
She drove a dagger up under the ribcage, twisting until the blade lodged between bone. The werewolf shrieked, clawing at her face, but Seraphine ducked away and rammed her second blade into the creature's neck.
A spray of hot blood hit her.
The wolf collapsed, shifting mid-fall. Human skin peeled through fur, bones cracked. And there, in a crumpled heap of blood and silver, lay an eerily beautiful young woman, she looked barely twenty.
Raven-haired. Regal features. Eyes wide with pain.
Seraphine stood over her, panting. Her guard was up in case the beast reared up again.
The girl gasped. "You... don't know… what you've done."
Seraphine's grip tightened on her blade. "I know exactly what I've done."
The girl coughed blood. "He'll come for me. And when he does, he'll tear you apart."
Then her body went still and an eerie silence fell over the woods.
Seraphine wiped her blade clean and stood.
"She was guarding something," she murmured, shaking off a strange feeling, "Search the area."
They found it minutes later, a message satchel, sealed in bone and buried beneath loose stones, marked with runes only old blood would recognize.
Seraphine open the satchel to reveal a small scroll with a royal seal pressed into red wax.
Dorian stared. "That's the Vaelthorn crest."
Seraphine's blood turned to ice.
"Whose sister did we just kill?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
No one answered, the silence stretched over the woods.
,,,
Far to the north, in one of the caves of a mountain fortress carved from obsidian, Alaric Vaelthorn stood motionless beneath the twin moons.
He was barefoot, his shirt soaked in rain and blood, his claws half-shifted.
He felt her die.
And in the next second, he felt her.
A pulse of scent. A rush of heat searing through his chest. Something impossible. A tether forming out of nothing.
A painful howl tore right from his soul and echoed deep into the caves. The cave bats screeched in response and created a flutter wave as they flew out of their hiding place.
His sister was dead.
And somewhere in that blood-soaked forest… his mate was the one who killed her.
His jaw tightened. Bones cracked beneath his skin. His wolf clawed just beneath the surface, howling in grief and rage.
"Alaric," said Elder Rhelor, approaching cautiously. "The Elders are convening. We must respond. But not without strategy—"
Alaric turned, and his eyes glowed red and Rhelor shrank back.
"I want her alive," he growled. "And I don't care how many corpses it takes."
Early The Next Morning at the Hunters Guild Headquarters, Ironhold
The grand hall buzzed with argument and accusation. Commanders barked orders, scribes ran with blood-inked scrolls, and the upper tiers watched Seraphine like a pack of vultures.
Seraphina stood in full gear, blood still on her leathers, before the Inner Circle.
"You killed a Pureblood of royal descent," spat Councilman Derrick. "Do you understand what this means? You've provoked war."
"She was on Guild land," Seraphine replied coldly. "She single-handedly massacred two border villages. We had orders to hunt. I did my job."
"She was a princess!" another accused.
"She was a beast." Seraphine snapped.
Terse silence echoed in the room until Councilman Derrick stood up, his face reddened with ire.
"Y-you low blooded filth, you dare snap at me?"
Seraphine took a step towards the councilman and High Commander Vex Marron rose. "And yet," he said, smoothly ending the altercation, "the issue is not the death. It's what came after. You said you... felt something?"
Seraphine stiffened. "I didn't say that."
"Dorian did."
All eyes turned to her second-in-command. He looked away.
"It was during the final strike," he muttered. "Seraphine froze. Just for a moment. She said the word 'bond.'"
Shocked gasps resonated around the room.
Vex smiled while Dorian continued his report, "Her nose bled, her ears bled, she screamed quite painfully if I might add and then she collapsed. All textbook signs of a rejected mate bond."
"That's not possible," Seraphine growled, taking a step towards him. "I'm human."
"Are you?" Vex's eyes gleamed. "You've never taken the elixir, and yet you hunt better than any hunter in the history of the guild. Your senses are sharper than our elixirs can mimic. And now, a Pureblood Alpha scents you as his mate?"
He stepped forward.
"You are the greatest weapon this Guild has ever created. And now... perhaps the most dangerous."
Seraphine's throat dried and she stumbled back. This was all she knew, the only family she'd ever had since her family…
She cleared her throat and stood back at attention, "What do you want me to do?"
"The alpha will come for you." Vex declared and was met with noises of agreement from all over the room.
"But-" Dorian tried to cut in and Vex threw him a sharp glance.
Vex leaned in, his voice as soft and sharp like a blade.
"Go with the Alpha, seduce him, earn his trust, learn his secret and kill him."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you burn where you stand as one of the beasts you've killed your entire life. Your history with the hunters guild will be completely wiped out of the record books. You will have nothing but traitor to your name."
That night, as the moon rose high and red again, Seraphine stood alone atop the Ironhold tower. Her hand rested over her heart, where something pulsed beneath her skin of her chest.
Something ancient.
She looked out over the dark forest.
He was out there somewhere.
She had killed his sister.
And now, somehow, she had become his mate.
A werewolf and a human,how was this possible?
,,,
Meanwhile, somewhere far north across the mountains, in Vaelspire Keep,
Alaric crouched over a map of Ironhold, about two dozen warrior purebloods surrounded him, waiting on his command.
"Bring me the one they call Duskbane," he growled, his voice low with rage and something else.
"Do Not kill her."
He rose, eyes glowing like burning coals.
"I'll do it myself."