Chapter 1: The Girl Beneath the Blood Moon
The night Liora Vale learned that she was different, the moon turned red.
She stood alone at the edge of the forest, her thin coat pulled tightly around her shoulders as cold wind moved through the trees.
Behind her, the lights of Blackthorn Village flickered in the distance.
Nobody had noticed she had left.
Nobody ever noticed Liora.
That was how she preferred it.
For twenty-two years, she had learned how to survive quietly.
She had learned not to ask why the other girls in the pack avoided her.
She had learned not to ask why the elders looked at her with fear whenever she entered the room.
Most importantly, she had learned never to ask about her mother.
Her mother had died when Liora was five.
At least, that was what everyone told her.
Liora had never believed them.
She touched the silver pendant hanging around her neck.
It was the only thing her mother had left behind.
A crescent moon carved into black stone.
“You shouldn’t have come here.”
Liora froze.
The voice came from behind her.
She turned.
Elder Rowan stood between the trees.
His old face looked unusually pale beneath the red moonlight.
“What are you doing here?” Liora asked.
Rowan didn’t answer.
Instead, his eyes moved toward the moon.
Then back to her.
“Go home.”
“Why?”
“Because tonight isn’t safe.”
Liora frowned.
“It’s just a full moon.”
“No.”
His voice became almost a whisper.
“Tonight is the Blood Moon.”
A strange sensation moved through Liora’s body.
Her fingers tightened around the pendant.
“What does that mean?”
Rowan stepped closer.
For the first time in her life, Liora saw fear in the eyes of an elder.
“It means,” he said slowly, “that some things which have been sleeping for a very long time are beginning to wake.”
Before Liora could respond, pain exploded behind her eyes.
She dropped to her knees.
A scream escaped her lips.
Her pendant became burning hot.
The forest disappeared.
For one terrifying second, she saw a woman standing beneath the same red moon.
Her mother.
“Run, Liora.”
The woman’s face was covered in blood.
“Don’t let them find you.”
Then another figure appeared behind her.
A massive black wolf.
Its eyes glowed silver.
And beside it stood a man.
Tall.
Broad-shouldered.
His dark hair moved in the wind.
Liora couldn’t see his face clearly.
But she knew him.
Somewhere deep inside her soul, she knew him.
The vision vanished.
Liora gasped and collapsed against a tree.
Rowan caught her before she hit the ground.
His hands were trembling.
“You saw him,” he whispered.
“Who?”
Rowan stared at the pendant.
“The Alpha.”
“Which Alpha?”
He didn’t answer.
Then a howl echoed through the forest.
Not an ordinary wolf’s howl.
Every wolf in the surrounding mountains answered.
Rowan’s expression changed.
“They’ve found you.”
“Who?”
But the old man was already pulling her toward the village.
“Run.”
That night, Liora dreamed of a wolf standing beneath a silver moon.
When she woke, there was a mark on her wrist.
A crescent.
And beneath it—
three words had appeared in faint silver lines.
HE REMEMBERS YOU.
….
