Blood Moon Rising

The blood moon hangs in the sky like a wound against the darkness.

I've been watching it through the tall windows of Kael's chambers for hours, unable to sleep, unable to look away. Something about the crimson light makes my skin crawl with restless energy. Makes my bones ache in ways that have nothing to do with kneeling on stone floors.

Kael noticed my restlessness during dinner - the way I kept glancing at the windows, the way my hands trembled when I accepted wine from his fingers. He said nothing, but I caught him watching me with those dark eyes that miss nothing.

"Sleep," he commanded hours ago, but sleep feels impossible. Every time I close my eyes, I see silver light and running feet and the taste of freedom on my tongue.

Dreams, maybe. Or memories of dreams I've never had.

The moon climbs higher, and with it comes a heat that has nothing to do with the fire crackling in the hearth. My skin feels too tight, too small to contain whatever is stirring beneath it. I press my palms against the cool stone floor, trying to anchor myself to something solid, something real.

"Can't sleep?"

Kael's voice cuts through the darkness like a blade. I turn to find him sitting up in bed, sheets pooled around his waist, watching me with an intensity that makes my breath catch.

"The moon," I whisper, not trusting my voice. "It's so bright."

"Blood moons have that effect," he says carefully, and there's something in his voice - knowledge he's not sharing. "They... stir things that should remain sleeping."

"Look at me," he commands, and I turn to face him fully.

His breath catches. "Your eyes."

"What about them?"

"They're changing." He moves to the mirror on his dresser, angling it so I can see my reflection. "Look."

The face staring back at me is mine, but not mine. The same features, the same bone structure, but my eyes... my eyes are shifting from gray to silver, flickering like candlelight.

"What's happening to me?" I breathe, unable to look away from the stranger in the mirror.

Kael's reflection appears behind mine, his face carefully neutral. "I don't know," he lies smoothly. "But we'll figure it out."

The heat under my skin intensifies, and with it comes a pressure that makes my bones ache. I double over, gasping, as something tries to rearrange itself inside me.

"What did you do to me?" I manage through gritted teeth.

"This isn't my doing," he says, and that much is true. His voice carries wonder and something that might be fear. "This is all you."

The pain hits like a lightning strike. I collapse to my hands and knees, vision blurring, as something fundamental tries to shift inside me. My spine arches, joints popping, muscles stretching - but then everything stops. Freezes. Like hitting a wall I can't break through.

"I can't..." I gasp, clawing at the stone floor. "Something's wrong. Something's blocking it."

I watch Kael's reflection in the window glass. His face shows recognition - not surprise, but confirmation of something he already suspected. When he speaks, his voice is carefully controlled.

"The transformation," he says quietly. "It's incomplete."

"Transformation into what?" I struggle to my feet, movements jerky and unnatural. "What am I?"

He stares at me for a long moment, and I see the war playing out behind his dark eyes. Truth warring with secrecy. Ancient stories his mother whispered to him as a child - tales of the great wolf bloodlines that once ruled alongside vampires, before they were hunted to extinction.

Before his father ordered them all killed.

But he doesn't know that last part. Doesn't know his father's role in the massacre. All he knows are his mother's bedtime stories about noble wolves with silver eyes and crescent moon birthmarks who could shift under the blood moon.

Stories that are standing in front of him now, broken and incomplete.

"You're tired," he says finally, deflecting. "The moon affects everyone differently."

"Don't lie to me." I move toward him, and he doesn't back away. "You know what I am. I can see it in your face."

"Can you?" His smile is sharp as winter wind. "Then tell me - what do you see?"

"I see someone who's been waiting for this moment. Someone who recognizes what's happening to me even when I don't understand it myself."

He circles me slowly, studying the way my eyes still flicker silver, the way my fingernails have grown slightly longer, the way I move with newfound grace despite the failed transformation.

"Your blood," he murmurs, almost to himself. "That's why it tastes like wildness. Like moonlight and ancient forests."

"You've been feeding from me while I sleep."

"Just tastes. Just enough to..." He pauses, realizing he's revealed too much.

"Enough to what?"

"To confirm my suspicions." He stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell the hunger rolling off him in waves. "You taste like the old stories. Like something that shouldn't exist anymore."

"What stories?"

But he's already retreating, the moment of honesty closing like a door. "Stories for another time. Right now, you need rest."

"I'm not tired." I reach out to touch his face, and electricity shoots between us. Not painful this time, but warm. Familiar. "I feel more awake than I have in twenty years."

His hands come up to frame my face, thumbs tracing along my cheekbones. "Your eyes are still glowing."

"So are yours."

And they are - a faint red luminescence that speaks of vampire power, of bloodlines that stretch back to the beginning of time.

"What are we to each other?" I whisper.

"Dangerous," he breathes, but he doesn't pull away. "We're dangerous."

When he kisses me this time, it's not soft or hesitant. It's fierce and desperate and full of twenty years of buried truth trying to claw its way to the surface. I kiss him back with equal hunger, tasting secrets on his tongue, promises he's not ready to make.

When we finally break apart, we're both breathing hard.

"Sleep," he commands, but his voice lacks its usual authority. "Tomorrow..."

"Tomorrow what?"

"Tomorrow we pretend this never happened."

But as I settle onto my furs and he retreats to his bed, we both know that's impossible. The blood moon has awakened something in me, shown him something he hoped never to see again.

Outside, the crimson light bathes the world in the color of old blood, old secrets, old sins coming home to roost.

The last wolf lives.

And the vampire prince who should kill her can't bring himself to let her go.