The howls hadn't stopped since the Blood Moon rose.
They echoed across the Ghostpine Mountains, low, grief-stricken, filled with fury and promise for retribution. From the highest turret of Vaelspire Keep, it sounded like the kingdom itself was mourning.
But inside the Moon Chamber, Alaric Vaelthorn stood silent.
He faced the pool of still, red water, it was the Oracle Mirror, where generations of Alphas had received ancestral visions. Tonight, it reflected only a shadow. His.
He was dressed in ceremonial black leathers. The collar was stained with his sister's blood. He hadn't removed it. Couldn't. His claws extended at his sides, half-shifted, trembling with suppressed rage.
The image of Elyra's broken body was seared into his mind.
Slaughtered. Alone. Far from home.
"She never should have gone alone," he muttered.
"She went because she believed in peace," said Elder Rhelor, watching from the threshold. "She believed the Guild would listen."
"They listened," Alaric growled. "And they answered in steel."
Rhelor stepped inside, his cloak trailing ash behind him. "The Elders are demanding retribution. They want blood."
Alaric turned slowly, the shadows warping around him.
"I will give them blood," he said. "But not before I understand why I can still feel her."
Rhelor tensed. "You've scented the bond?"
Alaric stepped forward, his voice low and dangerous.
"She was there when Elyra died. The one who killed her. And something inside me… ignited. Then shattered."
Rhelor paled. "If she's your true mate—"
"She's human." Alaric cut him off, unable to bear the thought.
"Then it is a curse. One the Elders will not tolerate."
Alaric snarled, teeth sharpening. "Let them try to tear it from me."
The chamber dimmed. Shadows thickened.
Rhelor dropped his gaze. "What will you do?"
Alaric's eyes flared crimson.
"I'm going to find her. But not to kill her."
He turned to the Oracle Mirror again.
"I want the truth."
,,,
Ironhold's Southern Borderlands
The forest was wet with rot and early frost. The undergrowth hissed with steam where silver-laced lanterns burned. Seraphine Duskbane moved silently through the gloom, flanked by a team of six enforcers. They weren't meant to be here. She wasn't meant to be here.
This was punishment duty.
"Scouts confirmed werewolf activity in the ruins," said Dorian, his voice tight as he ducked beneath a branch. "Rogue movements. Possibly Outcast Packs."
Seraphine barely acknowledged him. Her mind was elsewhere.
She hadn't slept in two days. Not properly. Every time her eyes closed, she felt it, that tug in her chest, like something buried deep beneath her ribs trying to claw free. The mate bond. The bond that shouldn't exist. The bond she shouldn't feel because she's a human, damn it.
She wanted to scream out her frustration. She wanted to scream and rage and kill something. She felt she was going mad by the minute.
"You're too quiet," Dorian said.
"I'm thinking." She ground out.
"About the one you killed?"
She didn't answer, consumed with the thoughts of killing something.
He stepped in front of her. "Seraphine, look at me."
She did.
Dorian flinched. Her eyes were sunken, rimmed with shadows but held a feverish light like they were burning.
"You're not yourself," he said. "The Council sent us out here hoping you'd fail."
"I won't."
"You don't even know what's out here."
She drew her dagger in one smooth motion.
"That's the point."
,,,
The ruins were ancient long-abandoned vampire catacombs from the Old War. Bones littered the earth. Cracked tombstones jutted out like crooked teeth. The fog was thick, unnatural.
Seraphine and her group moved silently between the crypts then the wind shifted.
And they came.
Dark shapes lunged from the mist, they were half-shifted werewolves, their fur mangled, bodies bulked unnaturally by blood-alchemy. Not Purebloods. Not even Pack-born.
Hybrids.
Twisted creatures bred in the shadows of the Outcast Packs. Controlled by rage and raw instinct.
One of Seraphine's enforcers screamed as a hybrid claw tore his shoulder open.
Another enforcer was dragged into the fog before he could raise his blade, his shriek was the only alarm.
"Form up!" Seraphine barked and the remaining team fell into position, silver spears leveled. But the creatures were faster than the elixir enhanced enforcers could track.
"Something's wrong with them!" Dorian shouted, slicing through a lunging beast. "They're not shifting properly!"
Seraphine dodged a leaping hybrid and drove her blade into its eye. It shrieked, spasmed and exploded in a cloud of black smoke.
She staggered back. Her chest burned.
Then she saw it, a sigil branded into its throat. Ancient. Arcane. Not Pack-born. Alchemy-born.
"Guild blood?" she muttered. "These things were made…"
Behind her, Dorian shouted, "They're flanking us!"
Another came barreling toward Seraphine.
She twisted a little too late, ducked beneath its claws which grazed her side, and a crossbow bolt whistled past her and buried itself in the creature's skull.
The hybrid dropped.
Seraphine turned. A figure stood on the edge of the ruins. Cloaked. Watching.
She couldn't make out a face. Just eyes, they were neon bright. They were unnatural. And they were laughing at her.
"Who the hell is that?" Dorian shouted.
The figure vanished.
"Retreat!" Seraphine ordered. "Now!"
,,,
Vaelspire Keep, The Forbidden Vault
The Vault doors groaned open, revealing shelves lined with tomes bound in skin and bone. All the ancient and forbidden books of the old were stored and recorded there. Books with knowledge too ancient, too powerful and useful to their enemies was stored here.
Alaric stepped inside, torch in hand, his eyes scanning until they found the one he needed. It read, Bloodborne Bonds: Curses, Hybrids, and Abominations.
He flipped through the pages, stopping when he saw an illustration that made his heart freeze.
A wolf entwined with a human spine.
"In rare, cursed cases, a werewolf may bond to a human carrier who is a child of two worlds, neither wolf nor man. Their blood echoes both, but is claimed by neither. When the bond is triggered, chaos follows: the wolf begins to unravel. The human begins to change."
"If not united before the 3rd Blood Moon after the bond's call… both are doomed. One to madness. The other to death."
Alaric closed the book slowly.
He was unraveling and she was changing, where ever she was.
And if he didn't find her soon, one of them would die.
,,,
The Guild, Inner Chambers
"She's unstable," said Councilman Derrick, pacing before the fire. "She led a sanctioned patrol into a hybrid ambush."
"Survived," Vex Marron corrected smoothly, sipping from a black chalice. "And brought back proof of alchemical mutations. That's more than our last three commanders achieved."
"She's tainted," Derrick hissed. "You saw it. The bond. Her symptoms. She's turning."
Vex smiled. "Exactly."
"You want her to become one of them?"
"I want her to become a weapon. One we control. Imagine a hunter with a bonded link to the Alpha of the entire pureblood clan. She could destroy him from the inside. She could wipe them out and we wouldn't have to lift a finger."
"What if she turns?"
"Then we dispose of her."
,,,
That night, Seraphine paced in her quarters, still wearing her bloodied armor. Her hands shook, not from exhaustion but from the itch. The way her skin crawled beneath the surface. The way her senses buzzed unnaturally.
Her reflection in the mirror was pale. Foreign. Her pupils dilated and glowed with a feverish need.
She ripped the cloak from her shoulders and threw it across the room.
Then she froze.
A letter lay on her cot.
No one had entered.
She picked it up. Unsealed it.
One line.
"You're not one of them. You were never one of us."
There was no signature.
Only a drop of black blood staining the bottom of the parchment.
,,,
Vaelspire Keep In The Arena
Alaric stood beneath the open sky, surrounded by warriors in a circle of black sand. Before him was a feral, corrupted hybrid captured from the Outcast Packs. Over nine feet tall. Foaming at the mouth. Stripped of sanity.
It was a test.
If Alaric could not control the madness in himself, the Elders would demand he step down.
The beast lunged.
Alaric didn't move until the last second.
He dodged, slid behind, slashed its Achilles tendon. The creature roared, turned, slashed wildly at Alaric, its claws raking his chest. Blood sprayed the sand.
Alaric fell to one knee.
Then his wolf exploded out of him and the shadows wrapped his form.
His claws grew longer, blacker. His eyes burned with a wild flame.
He caught the beast's throat in one hand and ripped its lungs free from the body in one brutal tug.
Crimson rained down on his head and bathed his face, drenching him in the awful liquid but it did nothing to quell the swelling rage within him.
The arena went silent.
His body steamed in the cold.
A whisper echoed through the watching crowd.
"He's unravelling."
,,,
Seraphine jerked awake.
Something burned in her chest, searching deep. It seared, pulsing, alive.
She staggered to her feet, her heart pounding.
And then she heard it.
A howl.
Not distant.
It was inside her.
She clutched her ribs, eyes wide as a red glow burst through her irises in the mirror.
"No," she whispered as she struggled against the foreign emotions invading her. Raw emotions that had nothing to do with her and yet it called to the deepest parts of her soul.
Then she heard the howl again and her ears began to bleed.
And this time, she felt his raw agony, his rage and fury, his hatred, his confusion, and his promise for retribution.
The wolf wasn't outside.
It was inside her.