~Selene~
The wind was colder than usual that night.
Selene pulled her coat tighter as she stepped out of the clinic, her boots crunching against the gravel road of the quiet mountain town of San Ezra. Her shift had ended hours ago, but a feverish child had kept her in. That was the thing about being the only doctor in a sleepy place like this—you were never really off duty.
The moon hung low and full above the pines—watchful, almost unnerving. It bathed the entire town in silver, turning every shadow into a shape. It had always made her uneasy, though she didn't know why.
Maybe it was the dreams.
For weeks now, she'd been waking up at exactly 3:06 a.m., drenched in sweat, her sheets tangled like she'd been fighting something—or someone. The same image haunted her: a pair of glowing gold eyes in the woods, staring at her… calling her by a name she didn't recognize.
"Lunaria."
It made her heart pound even as she tried to laugh it off.
She told no one. Not her nurse, not her landlord, not even Father Tomas who sometimes dropped off herbs from the chapel garden. Who would believe her? This wasn't a horror movie. She was a woman of science. She believed in logic, diagnosis, and medication—not fate or supernatural whispers in the dark.
But things had started to change.
Her senses were sharper. She could smell things others couldn't—woodsmoke, rot, the sweetness of citrus on someone's breath. She could hear whispers across the street. Once, she'd caught the sound of a fly landing on the wall behind her. And then there was the incident last week—when a stray dog lunged at her in the alley behind the pharmacy, snarling like it meant to kill… and then stopped.
It met her eyes. Whimpered. And fled.
Selene hadn't told anyone about that either.
She reached her apartment and paused by the door, eyes drifting toward the thick woods behind the building. A low mist slithered between the trees like breath, clinging to branches and stones. The wind carried something sharp and wild with it—like iron and pine and blood.
A shiver danced along her spine. She didn't know it yet, but she was being watched.
Not by a man.
Not even by a beast.
But by something in between—Alpha Kael Drevan, leader of the Blackridge Pack. And tonight, he had come for her.
---
Selene jolted awake, breath caught in her throat.
The clock read 3:06 a.m. again.
Her skin burned. Her heart pounded against her ribcage like it was trying to escape. She sat up, panting, the sheets damp beneath her. The room felt too hot, too small, like it couldn't contain her body anymore. Her limbs tingled, muscles twitching.
She tried to stand—but her legs gave out, sending her crashing to the floor.
A low, guttural sound tore from her throat.
Pain gripped her from the inside. It was like every bone in her body was cracking all at once. Her back arched, fingers spasming. Her nails thickened into claws. Her jaw ached, lengthened.
"What's—what's happening to me—"
Tears streamed down her face as she crawled toward the mirror on the wall.
But what she saw wasn't herself.
Her irises had turned silver, glowing faintly in the dark. Her cheekbones were sharper. Her skin looked paler, almost translucent, and her veins glowed faintly beneath it. Her teeth—she opened her mouth and gasped—were sharper, elongated, like an animal's.
Then came the howl.
Not hers.
But it reached into her and yanked something out—a response, raw and primal. A howl of her own escaped her lips, shattering the silence of her apartment and the picture frame on her bedside table.
Her body shook again as her bones cracked, shifted, rearranged. Her spine lengthened. Her limbs twisted unnaturally. Her muscles tore and reshaped. It was agony. Fire and fury and rebirth.
Then it stopped.
She collapsed to the floor, half-naked, half-changed. Her breathing was ragged. Her skin itched and tingled. Her senses were still wild—she could hear the heartbeat of the neighbor's baby, the drip of the kitchen faucet, the wind slicing through trees.
And deeper, under everything else... she could smell something.
Blood.
She stared at her hands. They were her hands—but not quite. Stronger. Wrong.
The door creaked. The shadows in the room shifted.
Selene turned sharply toward the window.
Outside, the mist in the woods had thickened.
And from the edge of the forest, barely visible through the fog, a pair of glowing gold eyes watched her.
---
Kael stood beneath the trees, cloaked in shadow.
"She's awakened," he murmured, voice low and cold. The pack behind him remained silent, still.
"She doesn't know what she is," said a smaller voice beside him—his Beta, Torin.
Kael's jaw clenched. "She will."
His eyes remained locked on the glowing apartment window, his senses pulsing with the power now radiating from her. She was more than he expected. Not just a Luna.
She was the heir.
And she would change everything.
If she survived.