I didn't sleep.

How could I? Every time I closed my eyes I tasted her again: blood and lavender, moonlight and ruin. My lips still tingled where she'd bitten me, not hard enough to break skin, but hard enough to brand. My wolf wouldn't settle. She paced behind my ribs like a caged thing, whining, clawing, begging for something I refused to name.

By the time the pale grey of pre-dawn crept through the cracks in the omega barracks wall, I was already dressed. Black leggings, oversized hoodie stolen from the lost-and-found years ago, boots laced tight. I looked like any other exhausted pack member after a night of tragedy.

No one would guess I was the only witness to a nightmare wearing Selene Blackthorn's face.

The pack was in chaos.

Warriors milled outside the infirmary, eyes red, fists clenched. Mothers clutched pups close. The air stank of grief and rage and too much silver being cleaned from blades. Three dead. Hearts taken. No scent trail. No tracks. Nothing but the message burned into the mill beam and the bloody apology left for me.

I kept my head down and slipped through the crowd toward the Alpha's lodge. Someone had to report what I'd seen. Someone had to tell them their precious princess was-

"Elara!"

The voice cracked like a whip. Beta Rowan, Marcus's father. His eyes were wild, bloodshot, the grief so raw it looked like it might tear him apart from the inside.

He grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise. "You were first on scene. You will tell me everything. Now."

I opened my mouth. I closed it. The words stuck behind my teeth like shards of glass.

I saw Selene eating his son's heart.

I saw her eyes turn black.

She kissed me and I let her.

"I... found them like that," I lied. The lie tasted like ash. "There was no one else there when I arrived."

Rowan's grip tightened until bones ground together. "You're lying."

A growl rolled through the crowd. Heads turned. Too many eyes on me. Too many wolves scenting the fear-sweat pouring off my skin.

"Let her go, Rowan." Alpha Caelan's voice cut through the morning like a blade.

He stood on the lodge steps, tall and terrible in the half-light. Silver streaked his black hair, but his eyes were the same violet as his daughter's. The resemblance punched the air from my lungs.

Rowan released me so fast I stumbled. The Alpha's gaze pinned me in place.

"Inside," he said. Just that. One word, and my feet moved before my brain caught up.

The lodge smelled of cedar and old blood. Portraits of past Alphas glared down from the walls. Caelan didn't sit behind the massive oak desk. He prowled, a caged storm, until we were alone.

Then he turned on me.

"Speak, omega."

I swallowed. My throat clicked.

"I-"

Pain exploded across my collarbone.

Not from him. From inside me. Fire. Acid. A white-hot brand searing straight through hoodie and skin. I screamed, dropping to my knees, clawing at the fabric. The smell of burning flesh filled the room.

Caelan's eyes widened. He lunged, ripping my hoodie down my shoulder before I could stop him.

There, glowing like molten silver, was a mark.

A crescent moon cradling a drop of blood.

The Blackthorn family crest, but wrong. Twisted. The moon was broken, cracked down the middle, and the blood drop pulsed like a living heartbeat.

"What is this?" Caelan's voice shook. Actually, I was shaking.

"I don't know," I gasped. Tears streamed down my face. The pain was receding, but the mark stayed, raised and angry and beautiful. "It wasn't there yesterday."

He stared at it like it had personally offended him. Then his gaze snapped to my throat. I hadn't even noticed the second burn.

Lower. Just above my left breast. Smaller. A circle of tiny teeth marks surrounding a single word written in a language I didn't know. The letters shimmered, shifting like liquid mercury.

Caelan went pale beneath his tan.

"No," he whispered. "Not possible."

He backed away until his shoulders hit the wall.

"Alpha?"

He didn't answer. Just stared at the mark like it was a death sentence.

The door burst open. Luna Isolde, Selene's mother, swept in wrapped in a robe the color of fresh snow. Her beauty was legendary, but right now she looked like she'd aged a decade overnight.

"Caelan, the council demands-" She saw me on my knees, hoodie half torn, the mark blazing on my skin.

Her scream shattered glass in the windows.

I was dragged out of the lodge minutes later, wrists bound with silver cuffs that burned like acid. The entire pack watched as I was thrown into the detention cells beneath the infirmary. No trial. No explanation.

Just the mark.

And the whispers that followed me like wolves:

Moon-Cursed.

Blood-bound.

The Alpha's daughter's mate.

Mate.

The word rattled around my skull as I curled on the cold stone floor, cheek pressed to the ground, trying not to vomit from the silver poisoning.

Selene had kissed me.

Selene had marked me.

Selene had vanished.

Hours bled into each other. The pain in my collarbone settled into a dull throb, but the smaller mark over my heart kept pulsing, slow and deliberate, like it was counting down to something.

Footsteps eventually echoed down the corridor. I expected guards. Or Rowan came to finish what grief started.

Instead, the cell door opened and Selene walked in.

She looked untouched. White dress replaced with jeans and a soft grey sweater, hair braided neatly down one shoulder. No blood. No black eyes. Just the girl I'd loved in silence for five years.

The door locked behind her.

"How did you-" I started.

She knelt in front of me, cupped my face with gentle fingers, and kissed my forehead like a mother soothing a child.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I never wanted this for you."

Her thumb brushed the crescent mark. Where she touched, the burn cooled instantly.

"What did you do to me?" My voice cracked.

"I saved your life." Her smile was sad. "And damned us both."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small silver dagger. Before I could react, she sliced her own palm. Blood welled, dark and fragrant.

"Drink," she said, pressing it to my lips.

I jerked away. "Are you insane?"

"Elara." Her eyes flickered, just for a second, black bleeding into violet. "The cuffs are killing you. My blood counters silver. Drink, or you die before moonrise."

I wanted to refuse. Wanted to spit in her face and demand answers.

But the pain was creeping back, fire licking up my arms, and her blood smelled like lavender and home.

I drank.

Three drops. No more. The relief was instant, silver burns fading to dull aches.

She rocked back on her heels, watching me with something like wonder.

"You're stronger than I thought," she murmured.

"Start talking, Selene."

She glanced at the door, then leaned close.

"Three hundred years ago, my ancestor made a bargain with something older than the Goddess. Power in exchange for a vessel. Every generation, the curse chooses a Blackthorn daughter on her twentieth birthday. It wakes me up hungry."

Her fingers found the smaller mark over my heart.

"I turned twenty yesterday."

My stomach dropped.

"The hearts," I whispered.

"Fuel," she said simply. "It needs life to stay quiet. Three hearts every new moon, or it takes whatever's closest." Her hand pressed harder against my chest. "It wanted you, Elara. Has wanted you since we were fourteen and you smiled at me across the training field. I felt it stir that day."

I laughed. It came out broken. "You're saying some ancient curse is... what? In love with me?"

"Obsessed," she corrected. "It thinks if it marks you, binds you, you'll keep it fed willingly. Forever."

Horror coiled cold in my gut.

"That's why you kissed me."

"That's why I ran," she said. "I thought if I stayed away-"

The lights flickered. A low growl rumbled through the stone, not from any wolf throat. From the walls themselves.

Selene went rigid.

"It knows I'm here."

She stood so fast she blurred. The dagger flashed in her hand again.

"Listen carefully," she said, voice urgent. "Tonight is the new moon. It will force me to hunt again. Three more hearts, or it starts with the pack. Starting with the weakest."

Omegas.

Me.

"I can't fight it much longer," she continued. "But you-your blood sings to it. If I complete the bond-"

"No." I surged to my feet, chains rattling. "You don't get to decide that for me."

"I'm trying to save you!"

"You ate Marcus's heart!" I screamed. "You murdered them!"

Tears filled her eyes. "I know."

The growl grew louder. The temperature plummeted. Frost crawled across the cell bars.

Selene's face twisted in agony. Black bled fully into her eyes now, swallowing violet entirely.

"Time's up," the thing inside her said, voice like grinding ice. "Pretty wolf. Mine."

She lunged.

I threw myself sideways, chains snapping taut. The dagger sliced air where my throat had been.

"Selene, fight it!"

"I'm trying!" she snarled through clenched teeth. Blood, her own this time, trickled from her nose. "But it's stronger when you're close. You smell like salvation."

Another swipe. This one caught my forearm, four shallow lines burning open.

The thing smiled with her mouth.

"Bleed for me, Elara."

The cell door exploded inward.

Alpha Caelan stood there, flanked by six warriors, all shifted, eyes glowing gold.

"Selene," he said, voice breaking. "Step away from the girl."

The thing wearing Selene's face laughed. "Hello, Father. Did you bring me dinner?"

Caelan's gaze locked on the mark blazing on my collarbone.

Then he did the last thing I expected.

He dropped to one knee.

And bared his throat.

"Take me," he said. "I'm stronger. My heart will quiet it longer. Let the girl live."

Selene's body jerked like a puppet with cut strings.

"No," she gasped, fighting through. "Daddy, no-"

But the curse was done asking.

Black veins crawled up her arms. Her mouth opened impossibly wide.

Caelan closed his eyes.

I didn't think so. I just moved.

Silver cuffs be damned, I threw myself between them, wrapping my arms around Selene's waist and slamming us both to the ground. My blood, still on her lips from earlier, smeared across her mouth as I kissed her.

Not soft. Not sweet.

I kissed her like I was drowning and she was air.

The curse screamed.

Power exploded outward, shattering stone, flinging warriors like dolls. The mark over my heart ignited, white-hot, and I felt it, felt the bond snap into place like teeth closing on bone.

MINE, the curse roared inside my skull.

And then, softer, Selene's real voice, broken and wondering:

Elara?

The blackness receded from her eyes.

She stared up at me, violet again, tears streaming.

"What did you do?" she whispered.

I looked down. The crescent mark on my collarbone had changed. Now it cradled two drops of blood.

One silver.

One black.

Footsteps pounded closer. More warriors. The council. Chains. Someone shouting for silver nets.

Selene touched my cheek.

"Run," she said. "Please. Before they-"

Too late.

The cell is filled with wolves.

And the last thing I saw before darkness swallowed me was Selene mouthing two words I would carry like a death sentence:

Find Nyx.

Then cold silver closed around my throat, and the world went black.

I woke up tasting iron and moonlight.

My head throbbed like someone had used it as a war drum. The air was thick with damp stone, old blood, and something sweeter-jasmine and decay. I was chained again, but not in the pack's detention cells. These chains were black iron, etched with runes that glowed sickly green whenever my skin brushed them. They drank my strength like leeches.

I was underground.

Deep.

The kind of deep where screams never reach the surface.

A single torch flickered in the distance, throwing long shadows across a cavernous chamber. Stalactites dripped somewhere far above. And in the center of it all, carved into the living rock, was a circle of thirteen ancient thrones.

Twelve were empty.

On the thirteenth sat Selene.

She wasn't restrained. No chains. No guards. Just her, barefoot in a black silk dress that pooled around her like spilled ink, hair loose and wild, violet eyes fixed on me with an expression I couldn't name.

Relief. Terror. Hunger.

"Elara," she breathed, and the sound echoed off the walls like a prayer.

I jerked against the chains. They didn't budge. "Where the hell are we?"

"Under the mountain," she said softly. "The Hollow. Where the first Blackthorns made the bargain."

She rose, gliding toward me as if the floor itself moved her feet. When she reached me, she knelt, cupped my face with trembling hands.

"You're awake. Thank the Goddess. I thought-" Her voice cracked. "I thought I'd lost you."

"You drugged me," I snarled. "Silver collar. Tranquilizer dart to the neck. Ring any bells?"

She flinched. "I had no choice. They were going to execute you at dawn. The council voted. My father couldn't stop them."

"Your father offered himself to that thing inside you!"

"And you stopped it," she whispered. "You bound yourself to it. To me." Her fingers brushed the new mark on my collarbone-two drops now, silver and black, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. "Do you feel it?"

I did.

A thread. Thin as spider silk, strong as steel, stretching between my chest and hers. When she breathed, I felt it in my lungs. When her heart raced, mine answered.

I hated it.

I hated how much I didn't hate it.

"Unchain me," I said.

"I can't." She showed me her wrists. Matching black runes circled them like bracelets, glowing the same poison green. "We're both prisoners now."

"Of who?"

She glanced over her shoulder at the empty thrones.

"The Covenant of the Hollow Moon," she said. "The original thirteen bloodlines. They've been waiting three hundred years for a vessel strong enough to hold the curse without breaking."

"And you're it."

"We're it," she corrected. "The curse chose me as host. It chose you as anchor. Together, we're... complete."

A laugh tore out of me, sharp and bitter. "You think I'm going to help you murder people every new moon? You're insane."

"I think," she said quietly, "you're going to help me kill the curse instead."

Silence stretched between us, thick and heavy.

Then she did something that broke me all over again.

She laid her head on my lap, right over the chains, and cried.

Not the pretty tears of the girl I once loved. These were raw, animal sobs that shook her whole body. I felt every one of them through the bond like knives.

"I didn't want this," she choked out. "I tried to fight it. I starved it. I locked myself in the cellar during my twentieth birthday and swallowed wolfsbane until I blacked out. But it just... waited. And when it woke up, it was so hungry, Elara. So hungry."

Her fingers clawed at my thighs through the iron.

"The first heart it took was my little brother's."

The world stopped spinning.

She wasn't lying. I felt the truth of it through the bond-grief so vast it threatened to swallow us both.

"Leander," she whispered. "He was eight. I woke up covered in him. My mother found me holding what was left. She covered it up. Told the pack he'd been taken by rogues. That's when they brought me here. When they told me the truth."

I wanted to rage. Wanted to scream. Instead I found myself threading my chained fingers through her hair, holding her while she shattered.

"I'm a monster," she said against my leg.

"You're not."

"I ate Marcus's heart in front of you."

"You fought it. You warned me to run."

"I marked you without consent!"

"I kissed you back, you idiot."

She went still.

Then she looked up, eyes red-rimmed, and laughed-wet, broken, real.

"We're so fucked," she said.

"Yeah," I agreed. "We really are."

A gong sounded somewhere deep in the mountain. The torch flames turned blue.

Selene tensed. "They're coming."

"Who?"

"The Covenant. They want to test the bond."

The empty thrones began to fill.

One by one, figures stepped out of the shadows-men and women in robes the color of dried blood, faces hidden behind bone-white masks carved into screaming moons. Twelve of them. The thirteenth throne remained empty.

Selene's.

An old woman stepped forward, mask etched with silver tears.

"Vessel," she intoned. "Anchor. The Hollow welcomes you."

Selene rose, placing herself between me and them.

"Release her," she said, voice steady now. "The bargain was for a Blackthorn daughter. Not her."

The woman tilted her head. "The curse chose differently. You know this."

"I know you're afraid," Selene said. "Afraid of what happens when the vessel stops obeying."

A ripple went through the masked figures.

The woman raised a hand. The chains around my wrists tightened, cutting deep. Blood welled, dripping onto the stone.

Selene snarled, eyes flashing black for a heartbeat.

"Touch her again," she said, "and I'll show you what happens when the vessel stops pretending."

The woman smiled behind her mask. I saw it in the way the eyes crinkled.

"Very well," she said. "A test. If the anchor can withstand the Hunger's call for one night unchained, she earns the right to walk free. With you."

"And if I can't?" I asked.

The woman's eyes found mine.

"Then the vessel feeds. And the Covenant takes what's left of your soul to bind her forever."

Selene spun toward me. "No. Elara, say no-"

But I was already nodding.

"Unchain me."

The runes flared. The iron fell away.

I stood on shaking legs, blood dripping from my wrists.

The woman clapped once.

The torches went out.

Darkness swallowed the chamber.

And then the Hunger came.

It didn't creep. It slammed into me like a tidal wave-cold, endless, ravenous. My vision bled to black and silver. My mouth filled with the taste of hearts and screams.

I heard Selene scream my name.

I heard the Covenant chanting in a language that hurt to hear.

And then I heard the curse, clear as a bell inside my skull:

Feed me, anchor. Feed me, or I take her piece by piece.

I dropped to my knees.

We came up out of the Hollow like two corpses crawling out of a grave.

The tunnel spat us into the world just before dawn, somewhere on the edge of the Cascades, miles from Blackthorn territory. The sky was the color of a healing bruise, and the air tasted of pine sap and freedom and terror.

Selene's hand was still in mine.

Neither of us had let go since the Hollow.

My arm had healed wrong. The place where I'd torn a chunk out of myself was a raised, silver-white scar shaped like a crescent moon. Every time the wind touched it, the bond flared-hot, possessive, alive. Selene felt it too; I saw her shiver.

"We can't go back," she said quietly. "Not ever."

"I know."

"They'll hunt us. Both sides. My father will call it mercy when he puts the silver bullet in my brain."

I stopped walking. I turned to her.

"Then we don't give him the chance."

She stared at me for a long moment, violet eyes wide, lips parted like she was seeing me for the first time.

"You really mean that," she whispered. "You'd burn the entire pack down for me."

"I'd burn the world down if it kept you breathing," I said. The words came out raw, honest, terrifying. "But right now I just need you alive long enough to help me kill this thing inside you. After that... we will renegotiate."

A crooked smile tugged at her mouth. "Romantic."

"Shut up."

She kissed me instead.

We stole a truck from a logging camp an hour later-old Ford, rusted red, keys still in the ignition because humans are trusting idiots. Selene hot-wired it anyway, out of habit. I drove. She navigated using a burner phone she'd lifted from one of the Covenant guards.

First stop: Seattle.

Because the only clue we had to Nyx was a name, a rumor, and a photograph taken twenty-three years ago in the underground beneath Pike Place Market.

A blind woman with no eyes-just smooth skin where they should have been-feeding pigeons with hands covered in old burn scars shaped like full moons.

The picture had been tucked into the lining of Selene's silk dress. A gift from the Covenant, or a curse. We weren't sure yet.

We hit the city at noon.

Seattle smelled wrong to wolf noses-exhaust and fried food and too many humans packed too tight-but underneath it was something else. Something ancient and watchful. The bond between us kept flickering like a dying bulb.

Selene went rigid in the passenger seat.

"It's here," she whispered. "The Hunger. It's... tasting the city."

I found parking in a garage that stank of piss and old blood. We changed in the stairwell-hoodies up, baseball caps low, anything to hide the glowing marks on our skin. Mine had started bleeding light again, thin threads of silver and black seeping through my shirt like veins.

We looked like runaway teenagers.

We felt like a walking apocalypse.

The underground tour entrance was closed for "renovations," which translated to yellow tape and a bored security guard who took one look at the hundred-dollar bill Selene slid into his palm and suddenly remembered he had somewhere else to be.

We descended alone.

Seattle's underground is a maze of brick corridors and shattered skylights, purple glass crunching under boots, the ghosts of opium dens and brothels still clinging to the walls. Every step echoed.

Selene's breathing grew shallow.

"She's close," she said. "I can smell her. Ash and moonlight and... regret."

We found the pigeons first.

Hundreds of them. A living carpet of grey and white feathers, cooing softly in a dead-end alley lit only by a single shaft of dusty light. In the center sat the woman from the photograph.

Nyx.

She hadn't aged a day.

Skin pale as bone, hair long and white, wearing a tattered black coat that might once have been velvet. Her face was smooth where eyes should be, just gentle curves of scar tissue. She tilted her head as we approached, like she heard heartbeats instead of footsteps.

"Little vessel," she rasped. Voices like smoke over gravel. "You brought me a leash made of love. How quaint."

Selene stepped forward. "We're here to end it."

Nyx laughed. The pigeons took flight in a thunder of wings.

"End it?" She rose, and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. "Child, I swallowed the moon to cage it. I tore my own eyes out so I would never have to watch it feed again. And still it found you."

She turned her blind face toward me.

"And you, anchor. You smell like devotion and suicide. Delicious."

I bared my teeth. "Touch her and I'll-"

"You'll what?" Nyx stepped closer. The air around her rippled, distorted, like heat over asphalt. "Rip out your own heart and offer it up? You already started, didn't you?"

She touched my scarred forearm with ice-cold fingers.

The hunger roared inside Selene so loudly I felt it in my teeth.

Selene doubled over, claws slashing out, black veins racing up her arms.

"No," she gasped. "Not here-"

Nyx smiled without warmth.

"Run," she said. "Both of you. Before I decide to finish what I started three centuries ago."

We ran.

But the underground had changed.

Corridors twisted, bricks bled, and every turn led us deeper instead of out. The pigeons followed, a grey storm overhead. Nyx's laughter echoed from every direction.

We burst into an abandoned speakeasy-rotting velvet booths, shattered mirrors, a bar carved with crescent moons-and found we weren't alone.

Five wolves waited.

Blackthorn enforcers.

Led by Beta Rowan.

His eyes were dead. Grieving. Murderous.

"Selene," he said softly. "Your father sends his regards."

Silver nets flew.

I shifted mid-leap, clothes shredding, silver-grey wolf exploding out of my skin. I took the first net on my back-burning, searing-but rolled, flinging it off before it could tighten. Selene was slower; the Hunger was riding her hard. A net caught her mid-shift, silver threads biting deep.

She screamed.

The sound cracked something inside my skull.

I went feral.

Three enforcers went down in seconds-throats opened, spines snapped. Rowan shifted into a massive black wolf and met me head-on. We crashed together, fangs and fury, blood spraying across the bar.

He was bigger. Stronger. Trained.

I was faster. And I was done losing people I loved.

I feinted high, went low, locked my jaws around his foreleg and twisted until bone shattered. He howled. I used the moment to slam him into the bar, glass exploding.

Selene was on her knees, silver net smoking against her skin, black veins crawling up her throat.

Rowan shifted back, human and bleeding.

"You can't save her, omega," he spat. "She's a walking graveyard."

I shifted too, naked and bleeding and past caring.

"Maybe," I said. "But she's my graveyard."

I looked at Selene.

Her eyes were fully black now.

The remaining two enforcers backed away slowly.

"Rowan," one whispered. "We should go-"

Too late.

Selene rose.

The net melted off her like water.

She walked forward, barefoot over broken glass, and the temperature plummeted so fast my breath fogged.

"Uncle," she said, voice layered with a thousand hungry ghosts. "You smell like grief. I think I'll start with your tongue."

Rowan tried to shift again. Couldn't.

The Hunger held him frozen.

Selene reached for his face.

I stepped between them.

"Selene," I said softly. "Look at me."

The blackness flickered.

"Elara," she rasped, fighting. "Get out of the way."

"No."

Tears-actual tears-cut tracks down her bloodless cheeks.

"I'm going to kill him," she said. "Then everyone else. Then you. I can't stop it."

"You can." I took her face in both hands. "Because I'm not moving."

Rowan tried to run.

Selene's hand shot out, claws punching straight through his shoulder, pinning him to the wall like a butterfly.

He screamed.

Selene leaned in, mouth opening wide-too wide-fangs lengthening into something from nightmares.

I kissed her.

Not gentle.

I kissed her like I was drowning and she was the only air left in the world.

The hunger shrieked.

Power exploded outward-mirrors shattered, the bar split in half, pigeons rained from the ceiling dead.

Selene's claws retracted from Rowan's shoulder.

She collapsed into my arms, shaking, human again.

Rowan dropped, whimpering.

The two surviving enforcers bolted.

We didn't stop them.

Nyx's voice drifted from the shadows.

"Interesting," she said. "Love as a weapon. Crude. Effective."

She stepped into the ruined bar, coat swirling.

"You want to kill hunger?" she asked. "Then you need the Blade That Cuts Moonlight. Forged from the first silver the Goddess ever wept. Hidden where no wolf would ever look."

"Where?" Selene demanded, voice raw.

Nyx smiled.

"Inside the heart of the man who made the bargain three hundred years ago."

She pointed one scarred finger at the far wall.

A portrait hung there, half burned, half intact.

A man with violet eyes and a cruel mouth.

The first Blackthorn Alpha.

Selene's ancestor.

And-he looked exactly like Alpha Caelan.

Nyx laughed at our faces.

"Your father," she said, "has been lying to you your entire life, little vessel. He is the bargain. He is the cage. And he is coming for you both."

The ground shook.

Far above, sirens wailed.

Then Nyx did something neither of us expected.

She knelt.

Not to us.

To me.

"Anchor," she whispered, pressing something cold and sharp into my palm. A single black feather that hummed with power. "When the time comes, cut deep. Cut true. And do not hesitate."

She stood.

"Now run. He's almost here."

We ran.

Up collapsing stairs, through abandoned tunnels, into the blinding grey daylight of Seattle streets.

Behind us, the underground began to collapse-stone screaming, dust billowing like smoke.

We didn't look back.

We had twenty-four hours until the new moon.

We had a feather, a name, and the knowledge that the man who raised Selene was the monster we needed to kill.

And somewhere in the distance, church bells began to ring backwards.

The hunger was laughing inside both of us now.

And it sounded just like her father.