Chapter 1 BLOOD ON THE MOON
The first time the moon spoke to Aria Nightwolf, it tasted like iron on her tongue.
She stood alone at the edge of the forest, boots damp with evening dew, the wind carrying the scent of pine and smoke from the village below. Above her, the sky was a velvet bruise, clouds torn open just enough to reveal the swelling shape of the full moon.
But it wasn’t silver tonight.
It was darkening. Bleeding.
“Not yet,” Aria whispered, fingers curling into the worn fabric of her cloak. “Please… not yet.”
Her heartbeat thudded painfully in her ears, too fast, too loud, as if it belonged to something else—something bigger, wilder, trapped beneath her skin and desperate to claw its way out.
Behind her, faint music drifted from the village. Laughter. Voices. Someone shouted her name, distant, carried on the breeze.
“Aria! Aria, where are you?” It was her aunt’s voice, shrilly worried. “You shouldn’t be out alone tonight!”
Because everyone knew what tonight was.
The Red Eclipse.
The last time a Red Eclipse had risen, the stories said an entire royal bloodline was wiped from the map. Wolves turned on wolves. Packs devoured each other under the crimson light. A Luna queen burned alive, her screams echoing across the kingdom as the moon watched and did nothing.
Aria had grown up on those stories—always told with a warning in her aunt’s eyes, always ending the same way:
Stay small. Stay quiet. Don’t draw attention. Don’t let them see you.
She had tried. Moon help her, she’d tried.
But the moon was staring anyway.
Her breath fogged in the cooling air as the edge of the moon slowly slid into shadow. For a heartbeat it flashed silver… then deepened, a dark red stain spreading over its surface like spilled wine.
The back of her neck prickled.
Something inside her chest twisted.
It’s time, a voice whispered, soft and cold as starlight. You can’t run from what you are.
Aria staggered, one hand flying to her heart. “No,” she hissed, more to herself than to the voice. “I won’t let it happen. I’m nothing. I’m no one. I’m just—”
The wind shifted.
And she smelled them.
Not the familiar scents of villagers or the comforting musk of the forests she’d grown up in. No. This was different. Sharper. Heavier. A scent that crackled with dominance and cold command.
Wolves. But not from her pack.
Aria straightened, pulse spiking. Her own wolf stirred uneasily under her skin, pacing, whispering warnings she couldn’t quite shape into words.
Branches rustled somewhere behind her. The sound was deliberate, not the random skitter of animals. Her fingers tightened around the strap of the small satchel slung across her shoulder.
She didn’t need to turn around to know she was no longer alone.
“Aria Nightwolf?” a male voice asked, low and edged like steel.
Her muscles tensed. For one stupid second, she considered lying. Saying no. Saying she was someone else. Anyone else.
And then the moonlight caught her eyes in the reflection of a nearby puddle.
Not the dark, ordinary brown she’d lived with her whole life.
Silver. Liquid silver, glowing faintly as the Red Eclipse deepened overhead.
Her throat went dry.
Slowly, Aria turned.
Three wolves stood at the edge of the tree line, half-shadowed beneath the pines. Not fully shifted—caught in that eerie, half-human, half-beast form that made their silhouettes wrong against the night.
And behind them, stepping between their hulking forms like a shadow given shape, was a man.
He wore black from throat to boots, his long coat open, his dark hair ruffled by the wind. Broad shoulders, hands gloved in leather. His presence pressed against her like a weight, the air thickening around them as if the forest itself bowed.
His eyes were what froze her.
Not golden like the wolves she knew. Not the warm brown of the villagers. His eyes were a cold, impossible shade of storm-grey—metallic and unyielding, like the edge of a blade.
They landed on her face. On her silver eyes.
For the briefest heartbeat, something flickered there. Surprise. Recognition. A flash of some emotion she couldn’t name.
Then it was gone, smoothed away behind a mask of distant indifference.
“Step away from the cliff,” he said quietly. “You’re making my wolves nervous.”
Aria’s jaw clenched. She hadn’t even realised she’d edged closer to the drop, to the rocky slope that fell toward the dark ribbon of the river far below.
“Who are you?” she asked, hating that her voice shook.
One of the wolves snarled, but the man lifted a hand and the sound died instantly.
“I’m the one who’s been looking for you,” he said. “For a very long time.”
The moon pulsed overhead, red deepening, washing the forest in a faint, bloody glow. The voice inside Aria’s head rose again, stronger now, no longer a whisper but a steady, cold hum.
He’s the storm. You are the spark.
Aria wet her lips. “You’re… from the northern packs?”
His head tilted, just a fraction. “You know of us.”
“Everyone knows the northern Alphas,” she replied. “They say your king has no heart.” The words slipped out before she could stop them.
The wolves behind him stiffened. A low growl vibrated in the air, more warning than sound. But the stranger only watched her, unreadable.
“And what do they say about you, Aria Nightwolf?” he asked. “The girl with no pack, no parents… and eyes that turn silver when the Blood Moon rises?”
She flinched. “They say nothing,” she bit out. “Because there’s nothing to say. I’m nobody.”
He took a step closer.
The forest seemed to hold its breath.
“Look at the sky,” he said.
She didn’t want to.
But she did.
The moon was fully caught in shadow now, a deep, dark crimson against the black. The Red Eclipse. The same one from the stories. The same one that had marked her birth eighteen years ago.
Her chest tightened. A strange heat washed through her veins, licking under her skin like ghost-fire. Her fingertips tingled. Her teeth ached.
“Stop,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure who she was talking to—him, the moon, or the wild, rising thing inside her that clawed against her ribs.
“Do you feel it?” the man asked softly, his gaze never leaving her face. “The pull? The change? The moment the world begins to remember what it forced itself to forget?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aria lied, even as her knees threatened to buckle.
“That’s unfortunate,” he murmured. “Because you, little wolf, are standing in the very center of a prophecy people have killed to erase.”
The word hit her like a slap. Prophecy.
Her aunt’s terrified eyes. All those times she’d grabbed Aria’s chin, forcing her to look down, to hide, to dull herself.
Never show them your eyes, child. Never. If they see the silver, they’ll come for you. They’ll drag you to a king who doesn’t believe in mercy.
Her heart stuttered.
No.
No, no, no.
“You have the wrong girl,” Aria said quickly. “I’m—not important. I don’t belong to any prophecy. I don’t even shift properly. I’m nothing.”
For the first time, something like anger flickered across the stranger’s face.
He closed the distance between them with slow, unhurried steps until he stood only a few feet away. His scent rolled over her—smoke, pine, steel, and something darker beneath it all. Dominance. Power.
His voice dropped, quiet but dangerous. “Do not lie to me.”
Aria’s wolf cringed and bristled, confused, wanting to bare its teeth and bow all at once.
He lifted his hand.
Instinct screamed at her to run. To step back. To fight.
But she couldn’t move.
His gloved fingers came to hover just beneath her chin, not quite touching. The air between them seemed to spark. Her skin buzzed. The moon’s red light slipped between their bodies like a secret.
“Your eyes,” he said, almost to himself. “The eclipse in your blood. The pull of the moon. You feel it, even if you don’t understand it.”
He finally met her gaze fully—and for a heartbeat, the world tilted.
The forest, the river below, the village lights in the distance—all of it blurred, fading to nothing but the cold storm-grey of his eyes and the roaring in her blood.
A tether snapped into place between them. Invisible, unbreakable. Her lungs seized. Her wolf went silent, then howled inside her chest, not in fear this time—but in brutal, aching recognition.
No. No, please, no.
The stories flashed through her mind. Fated bonds. Mates. Lives tied together whether they wanted it or not.
“Moon, no,” she whispered. “You can’t— You can’t be—”
His jaw clenched once, as if he were fighting the same ugly realisation.
“Aria Nightwolf,” he said, voice low and roughened now. “My name is Roman Blackthorn. Alpha King of the Northern Packs.”
The world seemed to drop out from under her feet.
The heartless king. The shadow on the border. The one everyone whispered about in taverns and around dying campfires.
And he was looking at her like she was the one thing he wished he’d never found.
“By blood and by moon,” Roman said quietly, with the heaviness of an oath he clearly despised, “you are under my claim.”
The tether between them pulled tight, burning hot.
Aria’s vision swam.
“No,” she managed, tears pricking the corners of her eyes. “I don’t want this. I never asked—”
“Neither did I,” he said, and there was a bleak honesty in his tone that made her throat close. “But destiny doesn’t care what we want.”
Behind him, lightning flickered silently along the horizon, distant but growing closer. The wind rose, throwing her hair into her face. The moon burned red above them, watching.
Roman gave a small, sharp nod to his wolves.
“Take her,” he ordered. “The Lost Luna has finally been found.”
Aria opened her mouth to scream, to protest, to run—but her legs refused to obey. The heat under her skin surged, her wolf twisting, caught between terror and that awful, magnetic pull toward him.
Hands—clawed, strong—closed around her arms.
The last thing she saw before they dragged her into the trees was the Alpha King’s face: cold, controlled… and beneath it, a flicker of something like regret.
Then the forest swallowed her, and the moon’s red light went with her into the dark.