The dreams began that night.
Ember lay tangled in her sheets, breath shallow, sweat pooling at the small of her back. Outside, the cursed moon glared red and swollen through her window, casting eerie shadows across the floor. Inside her mind, however, another world had unfolded.
A field of ash stretched endlessly, where wolves with ember eyes prowled in silence, leaving trails of fire behind every step. At the center stood a girl herself but not quite. This version of Ember wore a cloak woven from smoke and flame, her hands dripping with fire that refused to burn her. Around her neck hung the mirror from her mother's chamber, now cracked down the center.
The girl looked up. Her eyes weren't her own anymore they burned red.
"You've chosen," the dream-Ember whispered.
Then the world ignited.
Crimson flames rose around her, swallowing the wolves, the sky, even the cursed moon. Ember screamed, reaching out but the fire didn't consume her. It welcomed her.
And then she woke up.
She bolted upright in bed, gasping, the scent of smoke still clinging to her nose. A faint crimson glow pulsed beneath her skin before fading, leaving her fingers trembling.
Someone knocked.
"Ember?" It was Arlo, the youngest of the sentries assigned to keep watch around her chambers.
"I'm fine," she lied. "Go back to your post."
He hesitated but obeyed.
Once alone, Ember moved to the mirror. Her reflection looked paler than usual, eyes darker. The mark on her palm gifted by the Forbidden Bond glowed faintly, a whisper of ancient power humming beneath her skin.
She wasn't imagining things. Something was changing inside her. She could feel it in her bones, in the way her magic pulsed now with a rhythm not her own. And worse, someone or something was calling to her through her dreams.
It wasn't just magic.
It was a memory.
But not hers.
Later that morning, Ronan found her in the old spell garden, barefoot in the dew-damp grass, her palms pressed to the soil as she tried to ground herself. His approach was quiet, careful, but she sensed him the way fire senses wind.
"I felt it too," he said, kneeling beside her.
She looked up, surprised. "The dream?"
He nodded. "Not all of it, but… pieces. The ash. The wolves. Your eyes."
She didn't speak, but her breath caught.
"I think we're connected now," he said, voice low. "Not just by instinct or emotion. Our minds are linked."
"The bond's evolving," she whispered.
"Or unraveling," he said.
They sat in silence, the weight of truth settling between them like mist. Around them, the morning air held a charge as something in the forest was watching.
Ember broke the silence. "In the dream… I wasn't myself. I was someone else. A version of me who's already embraced it all. The fire. The madness. The blood."
Ronan frowned. "Maybe it's a warning."
"Or a promise," Ember said grimly.
Back in the pack archives, Ember searched through the oldest scrolls, desperate to find anything about shared dreams walking through a mate bond. Most spoke only of soul-pairing, of Luna's design, of passion and unity. But nothing mentioned visions through fire.
Until she found it buried at the back of a crumbling, leather-bound tome.
The Crimson Dreaming
A rare phenomenon occurring only when a Forbidden Bond awakens under a cursed moon. Partners begin to share waking dreams that carry memories not always their own. Sometimes they are echoes from bloodlines past. Sometimes… glimpses of what fate intends.
Her heart pounded.
Glimpses of fate?
Was she seeing what was to come?
Or what had already been?
As she turned the page, a strange scent hit her smoke and cinnamon.
She blinked.
She wasn't in the archives anymore.
The dreamworld swallowed her again, but this time, she knew it wasn't a dream.
The realm was red and gold, fire roaring across a battlefield littered with torn banners and charred bones. She stood at the edge of it, barefoot, her hands dripping crimson fire.
Across the field stood a figure cloaked in flame. A man. Tall. Bare-chested. His skin shimmered like molten gold, and in his hand was a blade etched with runes that bled light.
He looked at her with eyes that mirrored her own.
"You were never meant to be Luna," he said. "You were meant to be Queen."
And just like that he was gone.
Ember jerked back into her body, gasping, the scrolls scattering across the floor.
She had seen the Flame King.
The first of their bloodline.
The source of her power.
And he had called her… Queen.
She didn't speak a word to Ronan that night, though his eyes followed her every move. He knew something had shifted, but for now, he gave her space.
Instead, Ember stood alone beneath the cursed moon, letting its sickly light soak into her skin. Her mark flared again, and this time, so did the one on Ronan's chest though he was nowhere near her.
The bond had gone beyond touch.
It now responded to thought.
And then the whisper came again, this time not in a dream but in her ear.
"When the Queen rises, the Forsaken will bow."
Her pulse roared in her ears. That phrase had been written beneath the Flame King's statue, long lost in ruins only spoken of in legends.
Was she truly his descendant?
And if so what did that mean for the world that feared her already?
She stared up at the cursed moon, her flame rising in silent defiance.
They want a Queen…?
Let them see what a Flamebound Queen truly is.
---
Now that Ember has awakened ancestral fire and seen the Flame King's vision, can she resist the destiny calling her or will she burn down everything she loves to claim the throne fate demands?