Blood Beneath the Moon
Smoke curled over the eastern ridge.
Not from firewood.
From warning.
A long, winding column of black rose into the dusky sky, spiraling high enough for every wolf in the region to see. It stretched like a wound into the heavens, bleeding darkness into twilight. The birds had gone silent. Even the insects had ceased their hum.
It was the war signal of the Nightclaw Pack.
Liora stood beside Gonzalo on the overlook as the plume rose, her arms crossed, jaw tight. The wind tugged at her cloak, carrying the scent of ash and fur.
"So it begins," she murmured.
Gonzalo didn't flinch. His golden eyes locked on the smoke, calm and coiled. A predator waiting.
"They've been sniffing at our borders for weeks," he said. "Claiming we had something to do with the disappearance of their Luna."
Liora stiffened. "Vanya."
He turned to her, the corner of his mouth curling, not in a smile, but something sharper. "They say they never found her body. That she vanished. That something... else happened."
A beat of silence.
Liora's heart skipped.
Not from guilt. From something colder.
Fear.
What if they're right? What if I missed something?
The image flashed, Vanya's lifeless form, the gash across her throat, the blood cooling on stone. Liora had seen the light leave her eyes. She knew she had.
Still, a whisper of doubt flickered through her like a chill wind.
"She's dead," Liora said within her mind. She steadied her voice. "I made sure."
"This is desperation. Grief turning to madness. They want blood for a ghost."
"And now?" she asked, already knowing.
He looked at the smoke once more. "Now I show them why I was born Alpha."
Word spread quickly.
Wolves ran from den to den, alerting sentinels, messengers, and inner circle warriors. Mothers pulled pups close. Elders began chanting old protective verses beneath their breath. The very bones of the pack stirred.
The Nightclaws were one of the oldest bloodlines, brutal, strategic, patient. If they were provoking Bloodfang now, it wasn't recklessness. It was calculation.
They believed Gonzalo had weakened.
Perhaps they'd heard whispers about the missing scouts. About the exiled.
About Vanya.
Liora could feel the name thrumming beneath the surface of everything now.
She kept near Gonzalo as he moved through his preparations, watching how calm he was. Not emotionless, focused. Like war was not chaos to him, but art. Ritual.
He redrew the warding glyphs around the pack's perimeter by hand, claws dipped in his own blood. The lines hissed as they touched earth, glowing faintly, binding the old protection into the soil.
The scent of blood on the dirt stirred something primal in her.
And yet, beneath all of it, there was a shadow she couldn't shake.
They said they never found her body.
The memory returned, unbidden: the way Vanya's limbs had stilled. The way Liora had knelt over her, whispering apologies even as her blade dripped. She had burned the cloth she wore, scrubbed the blood from her hands until her skin turned raw.
But what if…
"Liora."
She snapped out of it. Gonzalo was staring at her, a smear of blood still drying across his forearm.
"You're pale," he said.
She forced a breath. "Just… the wind."
He studied her for a second longer than necessary, then turned to his warriors.
She followed him without another word.
That night, Bloodfang moved.
Not in secret. In dominance.
Gonzalo led from the front, a black tempest wrapped in muscle and myth. He wanted the Nightclaws to see him. To fear him. And they would.
Liora rode just behind, surrounded by the inner circle. Nyssa beside her, silent and sharp-eyed.
She kept her face calm. Unreadable. But inside her mind, the ghosts pressed in.
Vanya's body never turned up. What if someone found her before the river took her? What if she was breathing, barely, and someone saved her?
No. No. She had checked.
She had leaned in close, hand trembling as she felt the final breath escape.
And yet…
Her hand brushed the dagger at her hip, that dagger.
The one that pulsed now with unease, not hunger.
At the river, the Nightclaws stood waiting.
Their Alpha stepped forward, dark-eyed, lean, every movement honed by grief and fury.
"You've grown fat behind your walls, Gonzalo," he spat. "Soft."
Gonzalo cocked his head. "And you've grown bold, hiding behind your dead Alpha's name."
The Nightclaw Alpha's voice cracked slightly. "She was no Alpha. She was our Luna. And you murdered her. But where is her body?" He looked past Gonzalo, eyes sharp. "Did your whore burn it?"
Liora's pulse surged. Heat flared behind her eyes.
They don't know. They suspect. But they don't know.
Her fingers clenched around her dagger. But Gonzalo didn't give her the chance to respond.
He unleashed power instead.
A burst of raw, searing dominance slammed into the Nightclaws. They dropped. Staggered. Then the killing began.
Gonzalo tore through them like stormwind. Precision. Strength. The forest trembled beneath his steps. When he crushed the enemy Alpha's throat, silence followed like a curtain falling.
Blood soaked the soil. The river churned red.
And Liora stood on the ridge, trying to steady her breath.
She had watched death before. Caused it. Thrived in it. But tonight, every snapped bone felt louder. Every scream echoed closer to memory.
No body. No funeral pyre. No ashes.
Nyssa approached her later, as the howls of victory rang out through the clearing.
"You're quiet," Nyssa said softly.
Liora didn't answer.
"You still think she's dead?"
Liora's lips parted. "She is."
She hesitated. Then added, quieter, "She has to be."
The fire leapt high into the night, crackling like it too celebrated the kill.
Wolves danced and sang, their howls harmonizing in a wild, rhythmic pulse. Meat sizzled. Blood wine flowed.
Gonzalo sat at the head table, uninjured, glowing in triumph. Warriors came one by one to kneel at his feet. Some offered tokens, broken blades, torn insignias, even a ripped ear as tribute.
He said nothing. He only watched them with quiet satisfaction.
Liora sat beside him, smiling faintly, her cup of wine untouched.
Too strong, she thought.
Too protected.
The dagger at her hip pulsed like a heartbeat. But tonight, it didn't thrum with its usual hunger. It buzzed with unease.
It had tasted blood before. It had whispered for more.
But now it seemed to hesitate, like it, too had sensed something off.
Liora's hand slid beneath the table, fingers brushing the hilt.
It tingled beneath her touch.
Not eager.
Not angry.
Nervous.
She stared into the firelight.
What if she survived? What if they find her?
Liora's stomach turned.
Even the strongest bleed.
But something in her chest whispered, You killed the Luna. You killed a royal. And you left no ashes.
She closed her eyes.
Vanya's face rose behind her eyelids, not screaming. Not fighting. Just watching her. Blood at her mouth. A question in her eyes.
Liora's throat tightened.
"You saw what he did," Nyssa said beside her, voice low. "You still think he can be killed?"
Liora opened her eyes slowly. "I don't think. I know."
Nyssa hesitated. "Then just let go, what if you fail and you're caught"
"I won't fail."
But even as she said it, the dagger trembled again at her side, like it could hear her thoughts.
Like it remembered the river.
Like it feared what might crawl out of it.
The feast raged into dawn.
Gonzalo's laughter echoed through the dens, the fields, the trees.
He was the storm. The fury.
And she?
She would be the silence that followed it.
Soon.
Very soon.
He would fall.
And no one, no one, would rise to stop her.
Because they had seen the storm.
But none of them had seen what she buried in the dark.
And none of them heard it stirring.