~LEILANI RAVENWOOD~

The Fevered Moon made everyone stupid.

That was the only explanation for what I walked into that morning. Layla sprawled across my bed like she owned it, Hadleigh beside her, both of them still flushed and glowing from the night before, wearing their satisfaction like a second skin.

"Last night..." Layla sighed, the sound long and shameless, "changed my entire life."

Hadleigh laughed. "That good?"

"That good." Layla sat up, her hair a beautiful disaster around her face. "Kade kept me up until dawn. I still feel him everywhere."

The heat that crept into my cheeks had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with the fact that Layla proceeded to demonstrate. In detail. On my bed. She straddled Hadleigh's waist with theatrical grace, her hips rolling in a slow, deliberate rhythm that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

"He took me from every angle." She confessed, breathless and entirely shameless. "Front. Back. Top. I rode him for hours and I still wanted more."

Hadleigh screamed with delight. I turned back to the mirror.

"Goddess!" I said. "some of us are trying to brush our hair."

"Some of us should be doing far more interesting things with our mornings." Layla collapsed back against the pillows, dramatic and thoroughly satisfied. "Leilani. It's the Fevered Moon. The whole pack is losing their minds and you're in here brushing your hair."

"I like my hair."

"What about Rowan?" Hadleigh pressed, sitting up with that grin she wore when she already knew the answer and wanted to hear me say it anyway. "Don't tell me nothing happened."

"Nothing happened."

Layla gasped like I'd confessed to a murder.

"He's your betrothed." She said. "On the Fevered Moon. The goddess herself is practically begging you to have sex."

"Rowan and I are... waiting." I lied, searching for something that sounded reasonable.

"For what exactly?" Hadleigh demanded. "Divine intervention?"

I smiled faintly into the mirror and said nothing.

The truth was simpler and far crueler than anything I wanted to explain before breakfast.

The Fevered Moon touched everyone. Everyone except me.

While the rest of the pack burned, I remained cold. Untouched by the hunger that turned grown wolves feral and had the unmated scratching at walls. Rowan was perfect, handsome, loyal, and everything a betrothed should be. The ideal mate by every measure.

But even he couldn't stir anything in me.

When he kissed me, it wasn't quite what I expected, or as thrilling as others described. It was nice and warm but hollow. Nothing sparked. Nothing stirred. And since the Fevered Moon began last night, when I felt nothing while everyone around me was coming undone, I had been avoiding him like a plague.

"Maybe," Layla said slyly, her smile curling at the edges, "Leilani's waiting for someone darker."

The words landed somewhere they had no business landing.

I set the brush down.

**********

My father was in his study when I found him, already dressed for the evening, papers spread across his desk like he had been expecting this conversation and decided to be busy for it.

I opened my mouth anyway.

"I'm coming with you tonight." I said.

The nights of the Fevered Moon usually held no other activities apart from pleasure, but this time around, the annual meeting of all the Western District alphas was fixed on its second night. It was a gathering that united every major pack leader of the district and their councils, to discuss the state of our kind. A gathering I was meant to attend as my father's successor, yet once again, he planned to go alone.

"No." My father said sternly, not looking up.

"I'm your heir." I stepped further into the room, keeping my voice steady even as the frustration climbed. "Half the alphas in this district don't know I exist. How am I supposed to lead one day if you keep me locked away like I'm something to be ashamed of?"

"Leilani." A warning. Quiet and final.

"No." The word came out harder than I intended and I didn't take it back. "You've been saying the same thing my entire life. Danger. Protection. Trust me. But you never explain it. You never tell me anything real." I stopped directly in front of his desk. "What are you so afraid of? That someone will see the mark on my back? That some stupid prophecy might actually come true?"

He looked up then.

And what I saw in his eyes stopped me cold.

Not anger. Not authority.

Fear.

Raw and deep. The kind that had been living behind his eyes for years, quietly, and I had never been close enough to see it until now. My father was not a man who feared things easily. He had led this pack through wars and loss and things that would have broken lesser alphas without flinching once.

But he was afraid now.

"The mark on your back." He said quietly. "The prophecy that followed your birth. You think I kept you here because I was ashamed of you?" His jaw tightened. "I kept you here because the moment the wrong eyes see that mark, I lose you. And I will burn this world to ash before I let that happen."

The silence that followed was thick and airless.

"What prophecy?" I asked. My voice came out smaller than I intended. He never once told me details of it.

He looked at me for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes - the particular anguish of a man deciding how much truth to give and knowing none of his options were good.

"My decision is final." He said. And turned back to his papers.

I left the room.

His decision was final and so was mine. I would go to that meeting with or without his permission.

*********

Jeremy, the son of one of my father's council betas was cleaver, daring and amongst those who had no restrictions with going beyond our borders.

His door was slightly opened when I got there, so I didn't bother knocking before entering. However, I was repelled by the unmistakable moans and whimpers of a female.

"Goddess-" I stepped back sharply, "lock your door."

He scrambled upright, a girl giggling beneath him, his shirt half off and his dignity entirely absent.

"You could've knocked." He said.

"You could've locked it." I wrinkled my nose. "You smell like poor decisions."

The girl slipped out with a mumbled excuse. Jeremy dragged a hand through his hair and fixed me with the expression of a man who already knew he wasn't going to like what came next.

"What do you want?"

"I'm going to the alphas meeting tonight."

Silence.

"No." He said.

"Yes."

"Leilani-"

"You're my beta." I said. "That means you should obey me and do what I want."

"Well you're technically not Alpha yet. Also, if your father finds out I took you, he'll have my head."

I took a step forward. "He won't. I'll make sure he doesn't find out.

He stared at me for a long moment. The kind of stare of a man who knew better but was going to help anyway.

"This," he said finally, "is a terrible idea."

*********

The meeting was held in a massive hall in the outskirts of our lands. The sound of laughter, clinking glasses and voices of wolves filled the air. It almost made me feel constricted with the many scents and many eyes.

"Stay close." Jeremy whispered.

I nodded, scanning the sea of people. At the front, the main Alphas were already seated. My father sat amongst them, his posture rigid, his expression doing that particular careful work that meant he was holding something back. He hadn't seen me yet.

I intended to keep it that way.

An older alpha rose and tapped his glass. The room quieted.

"Brothers." His voice carried the weight of a man about to say something no one wanted to hear. "We gather tonight with grave concern. Entire packs have vanished. Villages reduced to ash. No tracks. No survivors. No explanation." He paused, letting the silence do its work. "Except one."

The room shifted.

"The dates align with the old calendar. The cycle of the cursed."

Murmurs rippled through the crowd like a stone dropped in still water.

"He's talking about Sebastian Kol." Jeremy said quietly beside me.

I looked at him. "Who?"

He stared at me like I'd just asked who the moon was.

"Do you even read the old texts at all?" He asked again and I shook my head. My father forbade my teacher from teaching me some selected books. He kept them locked in his private library. The only history i learnt were about the seven goddesses that ruled our kind. I knew not of this man being discussed.

Jeremy leaned closer, dropping his voice low. "A creature cursed by one of the goddesses centuries ago. They say he wakes every century and leaves nothing but ruin behind him." He paused. "But he's a myth. No one's actually seen him. He doesn't-"

"Lies." A man across the hall rose abruptly, his voice thick with contempt. "Fairy tales to frighten pups. No one has seen Sebastian Kol because he doesn't exist. We sit here frightening ourselves with ghost stories while real threats go unanswered."

Several alphas nodded, while others disagreed.

My father rose slowly from his seat.

"Enough." One word and the room went quiet the way rooms only go quiet for men who have earned it over a lifetime. "We will not feed panic with superstition. Sebastian Kol is a story. Nothing more."

The hall murmured its agreement.

But then the doors opened. Without anyone touching them.

They swung wide on their own and the temperature in the room dropped immediately. Not a chill. Something else entirely. Something that bypassed the body and landed in the most primitive part of a wolf, the part that had nothing to do with reason and everything to do with survival. The part that knew, long before the mind caught up, that something had just entered the room that was older and more dangerous than anything it had ever encountered.

The crowd parted.

No one gave the order. Every alpha, every beta, every wolf in the hall simply stepped back, creating a path through the center without fully understanding why, driven by an instinct older than any of us.

Then.

He stepped through.

Unhurried. Unbothered. Each step measured and deliberate, the kind of movement that belonged to something that had never once had a reason to rush. The dark cloak he wore trailed behind him like smoke. The quiet in the hall was absolute in a way that had nothing to do with silence and everything to do with the particular stillness that falls when something at the very top of the food chain enters a room.

He stopped at the center. Pushed back his hood, revealing his face and my world seemed to still.

His eyes which were a distinct blue, swept through the hall, assessing, unimpressed.

"A myth?" His voice was deep and unhurried, carrying effortlessly through the hall without him raising it. He looked around at the frozen crowd with something that might have been amusement if it had contained even a trace of warmth. "A story? Is that what you mortals call your king?"

Gasps erupted in the hall as the realization settled on everyone. I didn't know much about this man who had just walked in with a primal and ancient scent attached to him, but his presence struck fear in me.

The alpha who had spoken before- the one who had called him a fairy tale about a minute ago, stepped forward with a strong bravado.

"It's impossible! Sebastian Kol is just a made up story. Even if it were true and even if this man is the self acclaimed ancient cursed, he is no threat to us, brothers." He said, trying to convince us all, but my eyes remained fixed on the man who had just walked in and I don't miss when his lips curved slightly, almost amused.

"You're not welcome here." The alpha said. "Leave before-"

But he didn't finish.

Sebastian moved. Not walked. Not lunged. Simply ceased to be in one place and appeared in another, the way lightning doesn't travel so much as arrive. One hand closed around the alpha's throat, and a sharp crack split the silence.

Sebastian tore the head clean off, as easily as breaking a twig.

"Anyone else feeling opinionated?" His voice tore through the tensed atmosphere. The man's head was in one of his hand, and with slight movement, he tossed the body aside. It slid across the marble and stopped right in front of my feet.

Blood pooled outward in a slow, dark circle.

I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do anything except stand there while every instinct I had screamed at me to run and my legs refused to cooperate.

Sebastian turned.

His eyes swept the hall with that same cool disinterest, like a man surveying a room that had already bored him.

Then they found mine.

And stopped.

The mark on my back, the twin crescents I had carried since birth, and which had never once reacted to anything suddenly erupted in a violent heat that I nearly gasped aloud.

He tilted his head.

One degree. Barely anything. Then he spoke.

"Interesting."

Quiet as a thought, yet precise as a blade. And in a hall full of terrified wolves, it was directed entirely at me.

~LEILANI RAVENWOOD~

My heart pounded hard in my chest at the set of eyes that now watched me in a predatory manner-piercing and stripping me bare before him. The hall fell completely silent and everyone's gaze turned to me too.

A man referred to as 'the Cursed', and one meant to exist in myths only, had walked in and called me interesting. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't trembling with fear.

What happened next was fast and striking.

One moment his eyes were on mine across the hall. The next he was gone from where he stood and the air behind me shifted.

A hand gripped my chin, firmly and unyielding, forcing my head back until I had no choice but to face the ceiling. My back met something solid and warm and I didn't need to see him to know who it was. The mark on my back already knew. It burned the moment he touched me, a deep electric heat that had no business feeling like anything other than pain and yet it did.

"Let go of me." I twisted against his hold, but it felt like pushing against a wall.

His fingers were ice cold against my jaw and the contact sent heat straight through me.The mark burned hotter. I couldn't tell if it was agony or something worse.

"You reek of ancient blood." His voice came from directly behind me, low and unhurried, like a man making an observation about the weather.

Before I could speak, his other hand found the back of my dress. The fabric tore like paper as he pulled at it. Cold air hit my back all at once at my exposed skin. The only thing that stopped the dress from falling entirely were my own hands clutching it at the front.

"And you bear the mark of the goddess."

His fingers grazed the crescents on my back.

The mark detonated.

Pain and heat and something electric seized my spine and forced the breath from my lungs all at once. I cried out before I could stop myself. He pulled away instantly, as though burned, and shoved me forward hard.

I fell to the ground.

"Leilani." My father's voice cracked as he rushed toward me. I clutched the ruined fabric tighter, my jaw locked from the embarrassment.

Then a growl rolled through the hall. Resonant and laced with an authority that made every instinct I had go very still.

Chaos erupted through the hall as Sebastian began to shift. I had never seen anything like it. His frame stretched, bones cracking audibly in the horrified silence, his form expanding into something that had no business existing in the same room as the rest of us. He rose to his full height and what stood there was not a werewolf.

It was older and more monstrous than that.

Wrong in a way I had no words for. An embodiment of something ancient and wrathful that the world had clearly hoped was gone. The hall drowned in fear. I could smell it on everyone around me. I could smell it on myself.

When he spoke again his voice carried two registers at once. One human. One most certainly not.

"I brushed it off when I heard whispers of the prophecy." The words moved through the walls. "But it seems the goddess isn't done playing her games with me."

His gaze swept across the trembling crowd.

"I, Sebastian Kol, one of the very First Bloods, have awoken." Each word landed like a stone dropped from a great height. "Spread the word. Swear your allegiance to me as your high king. Or be met with suffering and death."

The hall visibly shook with fear.

Then his eyes came back to me.

"Your daughter bears the sacred mark." He said to my father. Not loudly. He didn't need to be loud. "She carries a prophecy that binds her fate to mine. You must have known that." A pause. "Surrender her to me on the night after the Fevered Moon."

My father stepped forward. "I will not..."

"Or I will come for her myself." Sebastian continued, like my father hadn't spoken at all. "And when I do, there will be nothing left of your lands but ash and the memory of what they were."

His eyes held mine one moment longer. And in that single moment, something shifted deep in my chest. Something nameless and unwelcome and horribly certain.

Then he turned and dissolved into the shadows as though he had never been solid at all, leaving behind only the sound of my racing heart.

The night after the Fevered Moon was two nights away.

**********

I didn't sleep.

I lay in the dark of my room with the sheets twisted around me and his voice turning over and over in my head like something that had taken up permanent residence without asking permission.

'Surrender her.'

'Or I will come for her myself.'

Eventually exhaustion won.

I shouldn't have let it.

**********

The cold came first. Licking against every inch of my skin, merciless and intimate all at once, raising goosebumps along my bare flesh.

I became aware of myself in pieces.

There was a huge rock beneath me, rough and cold against my spine and thighs. The Fevered Moon hung in the sky above with a reddish hue. Every breath I took felt too loud in the quiet of the night.

Then the rest of it hit me.

I looked down.

I was bare, sprawled helplessly on the massive rock and clad in nothing but a thin scrap of underwear that clung uselessly to my waist, doing nothing to protect me from the cold or the exposure. My nipples hardened instantly against the chill, the sensation sharpening my awareness of every inch of my own skin in a way that made me feel more naked.

Then I tried to move.

The bite of cold metal around my wrists and ankles stopped me immediately. I was chained. My hands pulled above my head to iron spikes driven into the rock, and my ankles bound as well, forcing my legs apart.

I pulled harder, but they went nowhere.

Panic rose fast and vicious in me. I twisted, searching for anything, a face, a way out, and I found nothing except stone, sky and silence pressing in from every direction.

Then his voice came.

"The Fevered Moon doesn't touch you."

Low. Quiet. Like something that had been watching long enough to already know the answer.

"Does it, little wolf."

Not a question.

Every muscle in my body locked, a mix of terror and unwelcome heat flooding my veins instantly. I knew that voice. One encounter was apparently all it took for it to carve itself somewhere it didn't belong.

I twisted my head, straining to catch a glimpse of him, but he remained out of my sight. Like a predator lurking in the shadows, watching his prey. Only his voice told of his presence.

I could feel something stirring in me at the thought that he was seeing me in that position. Bare and almost naked. He was right. The Fevered Moon had never affected me once. I had never felt arousal. But ever since he touched me back at the meeting, it felt as though something had been awakened. I could feel my core throbbing, heat coiling low in my stomach in a place it had never reached before.

"You've been thinking of me. Haven't you, little wolf?"

His words slid over my skin like cold fingers. I tugged uselessly at the chains, trying to break free, but the metal clanged uselessly against the stone. It made my breasts bounce slightly, drawing my awareness to every inch of my exposed skin. The rough granite scraped against me as I shifted, the friction igniting sparks of unwanted sensation.

"This isn't real." My voice came out steadier than I felt. It couldn't be. I didn't remember anything that could have led to this. All I remembered was lying on my bed, struggling to sleep.

It had to be a dream. Yet it felt real.

"Perharps. But what you're feeling says otherwise." He said. "I can sense the purity of your body. You've known no man's touch. Yet at this very moment, your body calls for me. It aches for me to claim every virgin inch of you."

I gasped, mortified heat flooding my face at the truth of it. My thin underwear had become soaked and slick and my core pulsed with a forbidden need. No man, no beast, had ever laid a hand on me, let alone stirred this kind of fire.

"You've wondered why." He continued. "For years. Through every Fevered Moon. Through every attempt with your betrothed. Through every moment your body stayed cold when it was supposed to burn."

How did he know about Rowan? How did he know so much?

"Now you're burning." He said simply. "And I haven't even touched you. Yet."

The truth of it was unbearable. Because he was right. My skin was on fire. Electric. Every inch of me lit up in a way that no man or beast had ever managed. Yet he had done it with nothing but his presence and the sound of his voice. I was aroused. I could feel the heat pooling at my core and my hips bucked off the stone in a desperate search for friction I couldn't find.

"Damn the goddess for intertwining our fates." His voice was low and certain. "You belong to me now. Your mind and your body. And I always take what is mine."

"I already hate you." The words came out fierce yet they contradicted everything my body was feeling.

"Say it again." Quiet. Unbothered. "If it helps."

Of course, it wouldn't.

He felt closer now, like he was whispering just above my ear, yet still out of sight.

"One more night for your father to surrender you to me. Else his lands will burn and his people will drown in blood and screams. And I shall hunt you down myself and have you chained in chains far thicker than these."

His words held more than a threat.

They held promise.

The chains loosened. The stone melted to softness beneath me. My eyes snapped open and I was met with my room's interior, sheets tangled around my sweat dampened body, the Fevered Moon still bleeding red outside my window.

It had been a dream.

But the fire still burning beneath my skin was very much real.

~LEILANI RAVENWOOD~

My father's council chambers echoed with the sound of raised voices. Desperate ones.

I pressed myself against the cold stone wall outside, peeping through the narrow crack in the heavy door. The air inside was thick with tension. My father sat at the center of it, surrounded by his betas, his expression carved from stone.

"Alpha, we are out of time." One of his betas said. "The deadline is tomorrow night. If she isn't surrendered...."

"I know what the deadline is." My father cut him off, his voice quiet. That was always worse than when he shouted.

Another stood. "The Eastern District packs have bent the knee. All of them. They call him high king now. Even some of our own Western packs have gone to his side." A pause. "He's feeding alphas with his blood. It makes them stronger, more feral, more vicious than anything natural. They tear through enemies like rabid beasts and feel nothing doing it."

"He's taken the House of Veils." Another added. "Every pleasure house, every fighting pit, every black market in the district runs through him now. Humans and wolves alike are flocking to him. He gives them what they want and they give him their loyalty."

The room murmured its dread.

My father's hand came down on the table.

"Enough."

Silence fell immediately.

He looked at each of them in turn, his voice dropping to something cold and absolute. "I will not hand my daughter to that monster. I would rather die defending her than live with the shame of it."

"Alpha." One began carefully. "We don't have the strength to stand against what he is. I fear there may be no other choice."

"There is always another choice." My father's voice cracked through the room like a whip. "I will not sacrifice her. Before I am Alpha, I am her father. And I will not give her up without a fight."

The silence that followed was suffocating.

I pulled away from the door.

They were fighting because of me. Because of a mark I was born with and a fate I never chose. And my father, the man who had kept me locked away my entire life, was willing to die for it.

I should have listened and never wandered outside our territory. Sebastian wouldn't have set his eyes on me then.

I turned away before the tears could fall, and ran.

**********

The night air was cold against my skin as I fled the packhouse, heading straight to a place I hardly ever wandered to.

Rashidat's hut.

The priestess seperated herself from us, in the woods, in a place where silence hung heavy and the only whispers were the ones from the trees. When I reached her door, my hand hesitated before knocking.

It opened before I could.

Rashidat stood there, draped in white linen that shimmered faintly under the moonlight. Her hair, white as frost, fell to her waist. Her blind eyes, clouded and silver, met mine as though she could see right through me.

"I've been expecting you, child." She said softly. Her voice always sounded like it knew all the secrets of the world.

My throat tightened. "Then you know why I'm here."

She stepped aside, gesturing for me to enter. The air inside her hut was warm and thick with incense. Candles flickered on every surface, and a bowl of moonwater sat in the center of the room, glowing faintly.

I sank to my knees before her, my body trembling. "Tell me why, Rashidat. Why did the goddess mark me? Why did she have my path intertwined with Sebastian Kol. I did nothing to deserve this fate."

Her eyes appeared to study me in silence for some long seconds. Then, she said, "You call it a curse because you see only the suffering it brings. But the goddess's touch isn't punishment. It is purpose."

"Purpose?" I choked out, bitter laughter escaping my lips. "To doom everyone I love? To tie my fate to a monster? I hate her for it. I hate the goddess."

Rashidat's hand came down gently on mine, the touch warm and grounding. "Do not blaspheme against the mother, child. Even pain serves its place in her weaving. The threads of your life are not random. They were spun long before you drew breath."

I shook my head, tears sliding freely. "He's stronger than anything I've ever seen. You didn't see him that night, Rashidat. He isn't a wolf, he's something else, something wrong and ancient. I could feel it in my blood when he touched me. I'm powerless against him." I said, last night's dream flooding back into my memory. He had infiltrated my dreams and spoke to me, and even did something more. His powers were something I'd neither heard nor seen before.

"No, you're wrong, Leilani." Rashidat smiled faintly.

I blinked, lifting my head. "What do you mean?"

"You hold more power over him than he dares to believe." She said, voice low and rhythmic, like a chant. "You are not merely bound to him. You were made to balance him."

"Balance him?" I echoed, confused.

"Yes." She reached out, her wrinkled hand finding mine. Her touch was warm, pulsing with strange energy. "You are his cure and key to freedom but more importantly, his undoing and damnation. The same blood that burns in his veins answers to you. You can reverse what he has corrupted."

My heart skipped. "Reverse? You mean the Alphas? The ones who've taken his blood?"

She nodded slowly. "Yes. You can break his hold on them. Undo the curse he spreads like wildfire. Heal what he poisons."

Her words barely made sense. "I don't understand. How could I possibly-"

"The mark on your back bears the goddess's crescents. One for creation. One for destruction. You are the moon's child, Leilani. You were born to undo the night."

I sat there, trembling, her words echoing in my head. Undo him? Heal what he poisons? Reverse the effect of his blood? It was all too much to digest.

"I never asked for this," I whispered. "I never asked to be her weapon."

"No one ever does " Rashidat said softly, her clouded gaze seeming to look through me. "But destiny does not wait for permission. When the goddess calls, every wolf submits."

Her hand pressed lightly to my shoulder. "Be careful, little one. The beast hunts what he fears most, but be not afraid for neither will the goddess stop protecting you." She murmured.

*********

The woods were quiet on the walk back.

Too quiet.

And I felt it in my bones. A shift in the atmosphere. A wrongness in the air that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. The kind that didn't belong to the forest and the kind that said 'You are not alone'.

I stopped walking.