Chapter 18 Wolves’ Full Moon

Chapter 18 Wolves’ Full Moon
Dante’s POV 

The moon wasn't just a celestial body tonight. It was a physical weight, a silver-white hammer beating against the back of my skull.

I stood on the balcony of the ruins of my safehouse, my claws digging into the charred stone railing. Below, the Iron Sea was a churning mess of black and white foam, but I couldn't hear the waves. All I could hear was the frantic, thundering rhythm of my own blood.

Every Full Moon was a challenge, a test of the Alpha’s willpower to keep the beast on a leash. But this wasn't a normal moon. This was the first moon since the Bond had been forged, rejected, and then fed in that shipping container.

My wolf wasn't just restless. He was starving.

"Alpha, we have reports of movement in the Northern Woods," Enzo’s voice came through my comms, sounding like it was coming from a mile underwater. "The Council is moving the Silver Sentinels. They think the witch is hiding in the old hunting lodge. Dante, are you listening? You sound like you're losing it."

I ripped the earpiece out and crushed it between my fingers.

The scent hit me then. It was faint, carried on a northern breeze, but to my heightened senses, it was like a flare in the dark. Burnt cinnamon. Ozone. And the deep, musk-sweet scent of a woman who was bleeding power.

She’s there.

I didn't call for a car. I didn't grab a weapon. I vaulted over the railing, a thirty-foot drop that I met with the grace of a predator. I shifted mid-air, the sound of my bones snapping and reforming a sickening, wet symphony. I hit the ground on four paws, a massive, black-furred beast with eyes of molten gold.

I didn't run. I hunted.

The forest was a blur of grey and silver as I tore through the underbrush. My instincts were screaming, a singular, obsessive command echoing in my brain: Find her. Claim her. Mark her so the world knows she belongs to the King.

I found her in a clearing near the Blackwater Stream. She was standing in the center of a circle of ancient oaks, her arms raised to the moon. She was naked, her skin glowing with a terrifying violet luminescence, the Corazón hovering between her palms like a miniature sun.

She looked like a goddess of the end-times.

I didn't shift back. I didn't want to be a man. I wanted to be the animal that could keep up with her. I let out a low, guttural growl that vibrated the very leaves on the trees.

Marisol turned. Her eyes were solid violet, no white, no iris—just a void of ancient power.

"Dante," she whispered. Her voice wasn't human; it carried the weight of the Vein. "You followed the scent of your own destruction."

I lunged.

I didn't bite to kill. I tackled her, my massive weight pinning her to the damp, mossy earth. I shifted back to human form as we hit the ground, my body steaming in the cold night air. I was raw, naked, and completely driven by the lunar madness.

"I'm going to ruin you," I rasped, my hands pinning her wrists above her head. My teeth were still elongated, my eyes glowing a feral, unblinking gold. "I'm going to fuck the magic out of your blood until you remember who you belong to."

"Try it, you golden-eyed bastard," she hissed, her legs wrapping around my waist, her heels digging into my back.

The sex was a slaughter.

There was no tenderness, no soft words of the safehouse. This was animalistic, primal, and fueled by a week of betrayal and blood. I entered her with a brutal, single-minded thrust that made her cry out, her back arching off the moss.

I was a man possessed. I bit her shoulder, the mark of the rejection glowing white-hot as I reclaimed it with my teeth. She didn't pull away; she bit back, her teeth sinking into my neck, her magic surging into my veins like liquid fire.

"Yes," I groaned, my hands moving to her hips, my fingers bruising her skin. "Give me all of it. Give me the rot. Give me the Vein."

We were a tangle of limbs and sweat in the mud. Every time I slammed into her, the forest seemed to pulse in rhythm. The violet light of her magic and the gold of my wolf-aura clashed, creating a shimmering, distorted halo around us.

It was tension in its rawest form—unfiltered, desperate, and filthy. I wasn't just taking her body; I was trying to consume her soul. I wanted to be so deep inside her that the Council, the Elders, and even the Vein couldn't find her.

"Dante," she sobbed, her fingernails leaving bloody furrows down my chest. Her magic was peaking, a localized storm of energy that made the air taste like metal. "I hate you... I fucking hate you..."

"Then hate me harder," I snarled, my pace turning frantic, my vision blurring into a haze of gold and violet.

We hit the climax together—a psychic explosion that felt like the world ending. I roared into the night, my seed and her magic fusing into a singular, blinding spark of creation and destruction. For a second, the forest went silent. Even the wind stopped.

I collapsed onto her, my heart hammering like a trapped bird. The lunar fever began to recede, leaving behind a cold, hollow exhaustion.

I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, the smell of her skin the last thing I knew.

I woke up to the sound of a crow cawing in the distance.

The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon, casting long, grey shadows across the clearing. The moss was cold and damp against my back. My body felt like it had been put through a meat grinder.

I tried to move, but a sharp, cold pressure against my windpipe stopped me.

"Don't move, Alpha," a voice whispered.

I opened my eyes. Marisol was standing over me. She was dressed in a tattered cloak she’d pulled from the brush, her face smudged with mud and dried blood. She looked exhausted, her eyes back to their normal amber, but they were hard. Cold.

She was holding her silver-handled dagger to my throat. The blade was pressing just hard enough to draw a single, thin line of red.

"You're a fucking animal, Dante," she said, her voice trembling with a mixture of rage and something that sounded dangerously like grief. "You tracked me like a dog. You used the moon to take what you couldn't get with words."

"Mari..." I rasped, my throat dry.

"Be quiet." She pressed the blade harder. "I could do it right now. I could end the Valerius line in the mud. I could take your head back to the Cauldron and hang it from the market gate. Silas would thank me. The city would be free."

I looked up at her, my golden eyes meeting her amber ones. I didn't reach for her. I didn't try to shift. I just laid there, my life in her hands.

"Then do it," I said, my voice steady. "If you think it'll stop the war, do it."

She stared at me for a long, agonizing minute. I saw the struggle in her eyes—the battle between the revolutionary who needed me dead and the woman who had just screamed my name in the dark.

Her hand shook. A tear tracked through the mud on her cheek.

"You're not worth the blood," she spat.

She pulled the knife back and stepped away. She looked toward the Northern Woods, where the distant sound of baying hounds told us the Silver Sentinels were closing in.

"They're coming, Dante," she said, her voice flat. "Your people. Your hunters. If they find you like this, they'll know. They'll know you're compromised. They'll know you're the one who’s been protecting me."

"Mari, come with me," I pleaded, sitting up. "I can hide you. We can go to the coast—"

"No." She looked back at me, a dark, finality in her gaze. "I'm going back to the Cauldron. I'm going to lead my people. And the next time I see you, Dante Valerius, I won't be holding a knife to your throat."

She backed into the shadows of the oaks.

"I'll be holding the torch that burns your palace to the ground."

She vanished into the mist before I could stand.

I stayed on my knees in the mud, my heart feeling like a lead weight in my chest. I looked at the spot where she’d been standing, then at the blood on my hands.

I had survived the Full Moon. I had claimed my mate.

But as the first of the Silver Sentinels broke through the brush, their guns leveled and their faces masks of suspicion, I realized that surviving her was the easy part.

The real war hadn't even begun. And as I looked at the lead Sentinel—Silas’s right-hand man—I realized I was no longer the one leading the hunt.

I was the prey.