Chapter 34 The Night Of The Full Moon
Malia’S POV
The blood moon rises at 8:47 PM. I know because I’m looking at the time, I’m counting down minutes like a prisoner on death row waiting to be executed.
It's tense but orderly at 8:45 a.m. on campus.
The first howl comes at 8:46—long, mournful, wild beyond desperation.
The moon rises 8:47 and everything goes to shift.
The resulting howl is not one voice. It’s hundreds.
A cacophony of wolves giving up the fight to the beasts within and surrendering to Instinct, finalising themselves into something primal and dangerous.
It makes all my hair stand on end.
My wolf, which is normally so quiet, so faint, rushes towards me with a desperation I have never experienced.
Out, she demands. Need out. Need pack. Need—
I'm squeezing her down, panting.
“Not tonight,” I murmur. “We stay inside. We stay safe.”
Another howl answers the first. Then another.
Then too many for me t make out individual howls—just one giant, horrifying wolf chorus claiming the night.
I'm in my room, door locked as promised. The front door of the suite is also locked and reinforced, warded with whatever supernatural protections the Moonfalls were able to muster.
But the brothers aren't here.
Emergency council meeting, Aiden had texted an hour ago. Required attendance. Security protocols dictate that all alpha heirs assist in keeping order during blood moons.
I’m alone.
The code-word is sanctuary. Should anyone knock who has not texted that first, I don’t open the door.
Simple…Terrifying.
It's 9:03 PM, and the screaming has begun.
Distant screaming. Panic, pain, anger — all delivered on a soundtrack that makes my stomach lurch.
I put my hands over my ears and try to block it out. But wolves hear very well, especially at full moons.
I hear everything. The snarls of dominancy fights, the moist noise of tearing flesh, the supplicating voices pleading for mercy that is not coming.
Stay in the suite, I tell myself, no matter what you hear. But the screaming gets worse, closer.
A 9:17 p.m. so-and-so race is coming up nearby, when someone races by my window.
I can't help myself — I look. A girl, maybe a year younger than me running across the courtyard in torn clothes, eyes wild with fear.
Behind her— My blood turns to ice.
A wolf.
It was huge, probably twice the size of any shifted wolf I have ever seen. Black fur, red eyes that glow in the moonlight.
And there’s something wrong with his shape — too angular, too sharp, with bulges of muscle in places that don’t correspond to the body of a wolf.
Corrupted.
Like something out of a nightmare.
The girl trips. The wolf is on her in seconds. She screams — a noise that will forever echo in my mind — the thing’s jaws snap round her ankle and she pulls her backward.
Not kill.
Taking.
Sobbing and begging, she claws the dirt.
The wolf doesn't stop. Just pulls her steadily toward the forest, her screams fading away.
So long and gone.
I'm frozen at the window, my hands pressed to the glass, terror squeezing my throat. That was not a normal shift.
That wasn't wolf instinct, or a dominance display.
That was something else. Something actively hunting.
My phone buzzes.
Cian: Stay away from the windows. Lock your bedroom door. Do NOT investigate the noises outside.
I have shaky hands as I type back:
Me: There’s something wrong. I just saw a student get taken. The wolf seemed to be tampered with. Wrong.
You immediately get three dots.
Then:
Cian: We know.Stay inside. We are handling this.
Me: Where are you?
Cian: Coming to you. Five minutes. Don't open the door until you get the code word.
My heart is hammering as I move away from the window. Something is hunting students on the blood moon.
Something who takes advantage of the chaos to hide. The disappearances. The ritual and I know somewhere in the campus, something or someone is trailing my scent.
It is happening. 9:31 PM and my wolf is freaking out. Just sudden, violent need. She surges forward herself, trying to force a shift, her terror and rage surpassing my control.
She snarls inside of me, driving me insane.
"No!" I wheezed, bending as pain lances through my body.
My bones begin to shift, not smoothly, like a real shift should feel. Jagged. painful and wrong
My hands lengthen, claws half-forming before retracting. Fur ripples across my arms then disappears.
My wolf is trying to break through, but she’s too weak, too small, and my body can’t take the forced shift. I fall to my knees, screaming. I collapse to my knees, screaming.
I’ve never felt pain like this—like I’m being ripped apart from the inside out.
Stop, I beg her. Stop please.
But she won’t listen, she is driven by something primal, somehow beyond me.
I screamed louder, the pain unbearable. I taste blood—I bitten my tongue. Darkening masquerades my sight at edges, blurred. In my heightened mind's eye I see movement.
Three gigantic forms.
Werewolves? Friendly? Nice? Oh no wait.
One silver-gray, fur shining bright like moonlight—what a wolf should not be. One dark gray, nearly black, with predatory elegance.
One golden-brown, slow and sure.
The Moonfall triplets in their wolf bodies.
It's beautiful and terrifying. They make their way outside my window - they are not looking at me, but through me.
Guarding, protecting.
A kill zone of lethal force had been cradled between me and whatever hotly pursued in the shadows of the night.
The silver wolf—Aiden, has to be Aiden—turns his head slightly. Even as a wolf, those blue eyes are undeniable.
He finds me on the ground.
Howl rips from his throat – not truly a howl, something more painful.
I’m fine, I send out the thought, although I don’t know if he can receive it. I’m fine. Just stay out there. Keep others safe.
The wolf holds my gaze for another heartbeat.
Then he turns back to guard duty. My own wolf finally, finally stops fighting.
The pain recedes to a dull throb. I can breathe again, I lie on the floor panting.
At 9:47 PM, something tests their perimeter.
I hear it before I see it—low growling, multiple voices. Four wolves out of the shadows.
They move wrong – staccato, hostile, with that same corrupted aspect as the black wolf I saw earlier.
Red eyes, foam dripping from their jaws.
Hunting. The Moonfall wolves fan out, enclosing them in a tighter, protective circle.
The corrupted wolves circle, gauging.
Then one pounces. What happens next is brutal.
The silver wolf—Aiden—takes the brunt of the attack.
They clash like thunder, snarling and ripping.
The other two Moonfalls are like a single entity, intervening to confront the last corrupted wolves.
It's not a fair fight.
The Moonfalls are stronger and faster, and they fight with synchronized precision that would seem to derive from years of training together.
But the corrupted wolves don’t feel pain.
Didn’t retreat, didn't show fear.
But they fight like ravenous animals who are controlled by something other than simple wolf instinct, like mindless beasts. Aiden's wolf tears out the throat of his opponent.
The thing tumbles down and it twitches a little and then it goes still.
Cian and Rowan collaborate to finish off another.
The remaining two finally retreat, ghosting back into shadows.
But not before one turns and looks straight at my window. To me.
Those red eyes connect with mine.
And I see something that makes me shiver to my bones. Recognition, not random hunting.
They came for me specifically.
The wolf opens its jaws—not to howl, but as if laughing—then vanishes.
10:02 P.M. My door is bursting open.
I scream as I scramble, falling backward— I yell as I fall, scrambling backward
"Sanctuary!" Aiden's tone, rough and desperate. "Code word sanctuary!"
He's human now, barely—wearing pants he grabbed in a hurry, his body smeared with blood and dirt, his eyes still gleaming with wolf and human.
He makes it across the room in three strides, then drops to his knees at my side.
“Are you hurt?” His hands run over me, feeling for injuries. “Did you shift? Did anything get inside?”
“No, I’m—I'm fine. I just try to shift and I couldn't and…”
He pulls me to him so tight I could have been ripped in two.
“I felt it," he says in my hair. "It's through the bond. Felt your pain. Your fear. I nearly lost control entirely."
"The wolves outside--”
"Corrupted. Controlled somehow." Rowan is at the door now, also human, bloodied just as Adrienne said. "Along the lines of forbidden magic to transform people into hunting beasts."
“For the ritual,” I whisper.
“For you specifically,” Cian adds, walking in last.
His voice is cold, deadly. “They knew exactly which window was yours. They went directly to this place.”
“How—”
“Doesn't matter how.” Aiden pulls back enough to look at me, and his look is fierce. "They failed this time and they will not have the opportunity ever again."
“The night is not over,” Rowan says softly. “The moon does not set until the sun rises.” Five more hours.”
Five more hours of this. Five more hours of hunting and screaming and corrupted wolves trying to take me.
"I'm scared," I admit.
“Good,” Aiden says. “Fear keeps you careful. Keeps you alive.”
He stands, pulling me up with him.
“New plan. You're not staying in here alone. You’re staying in the main room, where we can all see you. No locked doors between us. Understand?”
I nod.
Because tonight proved — something terrifying:
Whatever’s hunting hybrids is powerful, organized and knows exactly where I am.
And the only thing between me and whatever end fate like Sara and the others had?
Three wolves that have claimed me as theirs,
to fight corrupted beasts and forbidden magic and whatever else threatens them.
Even if that bond is killing them. I feel sorry, thankful…