"The moon never forgets its own. Even the cursed."
Raventhorn Saying
The forest had a heartbeat tonight.
Not the steady, gentle rhythm I grew up knowing but something wild. Uneven. Like a warning before the storm breaks. The trees whispered in a language older than time, and though the wind was soft, it carried something sharp on its back.
Something coming.
I moved between the trees like I belonged to them. Maybe I did. I was raised here trained to hunt, track, lead. But tonight, even the woods didn't feel like mine anymore.
They felt like hers.
And I hadn't even met her yet.
I crouched low, pressing my palm into the damp earth. Pine needles clung to my fingers, sticky with sap and... something else.
Blood.
It was faint, almost buried beneath the damp of the recent rain, but it was there.
Warm.
Human.
My wolf stirred under my skin, muscles tightening. Not out of hunger. Not even anger.
Curiosity.
Danger had a smell. This wasn't it.
This was something worse.
My name is Keal Raventhorn, son of the late Alpha Drevan. He left me this land. This pack. This mess of a legacy. What no one said out loud, though everyone was thinking it, was this:
He also left me cursed.
At sixteen, I got the mark. Burned straight into my chest during the full moon, like the Goddess herself pressed her brand into me. Every Elder froze when they saw it — that black crescent with twin wolves clawing at each other. Nobody touched me for days.
They called it the Moonbound curse.
I didn't believe it at first. I was a fighter, not a fairytale. But the mark stayed. And the dreams started. Then the prophecies resurfaced. Whispers turned into stares. Stares turned into fear.
And fear? That turns family into strangers real fast.
"Alpha," a voice called through the bond. Jorah, my Beta. Always calm, always loyal — and always worried about me like he was twice my age.
"Southern ridge. Movement."
"Where?" I replied mentally, standing up.
"Too fast to be human. Alone. Could be a rogue."
Could be. But the air didn't feel like a rogue.
It felt like a choice.
I moved, shifting silently through the underbrush until I reached the break in the trees. The clearing was bathed in silver light, and that's where I saw her.
She didn't walk out.
She stumbled.
Like the earth didn't know what to do with her weight.
She wore a thin dress, torn and soaked in something darker than water. Her bare feet left red prints behind her, and her skin was pale not from fear, but from something deeper. Something wrong.
But her eyes, They stopped me.
One gold. The other? Black as the pit.
My breath caught, and not from shock. From recognition.
The pull was instant. Bone-deep. Every instinct I had screamed one word.
Mate.
But it didn't make sense.
She wasn't wolf.
She didn't even smell like anything real. No pack. No signature. No identity. Just air. And blood. And… magic?
She looked at me like she knew who I was.
And then she collapsed.
I was by her side in seconds.
I should've called for backup. Should've followed protocol. But all I could do was catch her before she hit the ground.
Because the second she touched me, the mark on my chest burned again.
Just like it did the night I was cursed.
"You brought her here?"
Jorah stared at me like I'd dragged in a ticking bomb.
"She's injured," I said.
"She's not pack," he snapped. "She's not anything. Keal, you said it yourself — she smells like air. Things that smell like nothing usually want to kill something."
I didn't answer. I just looked down at her this strange, broken girl with the eyes of a monster and the soul of a storm. She was unconscious, her head resting on the spare bed in the healer's den. Her skin was clammy. Her lips pale. But her body pulsed with energy, like something ancient had claimed her bones.
"She said my name before she passed out," I murmured.
Jorah blinked. "What?"
"Whispered it. Barely. But she knew me."
Silence.
"You think she's the one from the prophecy?" he finally asked.
I didn't know what I thought. But I couldn't ignore what was right in front of me.
The forest reacting. The mark glowing. The way my wolf had stilled the moment she touched me.
Everything about her said danger.
Everything inside me said mine.
That night, I sat by her bedside, listening to the wind outside shift from a whisper to a scream.
The forest was alive with fear.
Wolves howled in the distance, not in unity but in warning.
The moon rose blood-red.
And somewhere deep in the heart of the woods, the ancient seals cracked open.
Letting something out.
Something that had waited long enough.