Iris Montgomery's POV
I wake up gasping like I've been underwater.
My eyes fly open and for a moment I don't recognize anything. The ceiling above me is wrong. The smell of the room is wrong. My entire body feels wrong, like I'm wearing skin that doesn't quite fit anymore.
Luna is sitting in a chair beside my bed.
She looks like she hasn't slept. Her eyes are red. Her curly hair is a mess. She's still wearing the clothes she had on at the bonfire, and there's dirt all over them.
"Thank god," she says, and her voice cracks. "I thought you were going to sleep forever."
I try to sit up but my body won't cooperate. Everything hurts. Not pain exactly, but more like my entire body is sore from something I can't remember doing.
"What happened?" I ask. My voice sounds strange to my own ears. Rough. Like I've been screaming.
Luna moves closer to the bed. She reaches out like she wants to touch my face but stops herself.
"You collapsed," she says quietly. "After Kael rejected you. You just went down like someone turned off your power switch. Everyone was staring but nobody was helping. They were just laughing and staring. So I picked you up and I carried you out of there before they could do worse."
Luna is strong. I've always known that. But carrying me all the way from the bonfire to my grandmother's house should have been impossible. Luna's wolf is powerful for her age, but not that powerful.
I don't ask her how she managed it.
I don't want to know.
The door opens and my grandmother walks in carrying a cup of tea. Steam rises from it. Whatever is in it smells like herbs I don't recognize. Her face is different now. Like something shifted during the night. Like she's wearing a mask she hasn't needed in years.
She's scared.
I've never seen my grandmother scared.
"Drink this," she says, sitting on the edge of my bed. She hands me the cup and waits until I take it.
The tea tastes bitter. Like earth and old magic. Like things that have been sleeping for a very long time.
"We're leaving," my grandmother says. No preamble. No explanation. Just words that land like stones in still water.
Luna's head snaps up. "What? No. Iris is sick. She needs to recover. She can't travel like this."
My grandmother doesn't even look at Luna. She just keeps watching me drink the tea like my life depends on it.
"We're leaving today," my grandmother continues. "Right now. Pack whatever you can carry. We're not coming back."
"That's insane," Luna says, standing up. "You can't just leave the pack. Iris's family is here. Her life is here. She needs time to process what happened."
"Her family turned their backs on her," my grandmother says, and her voice is sharp enough to cut glass. "And her life as she knows it ended the moment Kael rejected her."
I want to argue. I want to tell them both that I can't leave. That I have to stay and figure out what happened. That my parents will come looking for me and apologize and everything will go back to normal.
But I know that's not true.
Nothing is ever going back to normal.
And the mate bond. Oh god, the mate bond. It's broken and bleeding inside my chest. I can feel Kael somewhere in the pack house. I can feel his confusion. I can feel him wondering what he did wrong. And the worst part is that some sick twisted part of me still wants to run to him. Still wants to beg him to take back the rejection.
I hate that part of myself.
I finish the tea and my grandmother takes the cup away.
"Why?" Luna demands. "Give me one good reason why we need to leave right now."
My grandmother goes very still. I watch her make a decision. Watch her weigh the cost of telling the truth against the cost of keeping secrets.
She looks at Luna for a long moment.
"Because people will kill Iris for what's in her blood," my grandmother says finally. "Because her bloodline is old and powerful and everyone thinks it's dead. Because if the wrong people find out what she is, they'll hunt her down and use her for things she doesn't even understand yet."
Luna's face goes white.
"What do you mean, what she is?" I ask. My voice comes out small.
My grandmother looks at me and I see something ancient in her eyes. Something that's been watching and waiting and protecting me my entire life.
"Your family," she says slowly, "isn't what everyone believes. Your mother wasn't just a regular wolf. Your bloodline goes back further than pack records. Further than anyone remembers. There are people in the supernatural world who would spend their entire fortunes trying to get what runs through your veins."
I try to process what she's saying. My mother. My grandmother's daughter. My entire family history suddenly becoming something dark and secret.
"I don't understand," I whisper.
"That's why we need to leave," my grandmother says. "Because you're about to understand. And when you do, people will sense the change. They'll feel your power waking up. And they'll come."
Luna sits back down hard like her legs gave out. "This is crazy. This is absolutely crazy."
I push myself up on my elbows. My body is still weak but my mind is getting clearer. The herbs in the tea must be helping because suddenly I can think again. Suddenly I can ask the question that matters.
I look at my grandmother and I ask the thing that's been screaming inside my chest since I woke up.
"Grandmother, what am I?"
She goes completely still.
The silence stretches out between us like something alive. I watch her face. I watch her deciding how much to tell me. I watch her weighing the truth against everything she's spent sixty years protecting me from.
Then she turns toward the window.
And her face goes white.
Through the glass, the Blood Moon is rising.
But it's not rising when it should be rising. The Blood Moon only comes once every hundred years. My grandmother told me that when I was little. Once every hundred years, the moon turns red and old magic wakes up in the world.
But it's only been a few hours since the Moon Festival.
It's only been a few hours and the Blood Moon is already in the sky.
"That's impossible," Luna breathes.
My grandmother stands up slowly. She walks to the window like she's moving through water. She presses her hand against the glass and I see her entire body tremble.
"It's starting," she whispers.
The words hang in the air like a warning. Like a curse. Like the beginning of something that can't be stopped now that it's been set in motion.
"What's starting?" I ask. But I think I already know.
The same ancient presence that woke up inside me at the bonfire is still there. Still moving toward me across impossible distance. Still reaching for me with hands that are three hundred years old.
"The awakening," my grandmother says, and she doesn't turn away from the window. "When the Blood Moon rises, old magic wakes up. Old bonds activate. Old destinies come calling."
She finally turns to look at me.
"And something very old is coming for you, child. Something that's been waiting a very long time."
The temperature in the room drops.
Outside, the Blood Moon burns blood red against the darkness.
And somewhere far away, I feel it moving closer.
I feel it claiming me.