POV: Everly
The moon bled red.
Not figuratively. Not poetically.
It bled.
Rising thick and slow over Ironfang's horizon, its glow flooded the valley like a wound left open too long. Even the trees seemed to recoil, shadows stretched wrong, like the forest had stopped breathing.
Everly stood near the outer rim of the ritual grounds, clutching a basket of herb bundles and dried juniper. No one looked at her and she preferred it that way.
Torchlight flickered around the Moon Clearing. Stone circles carved with ancient runes formed a perfect ring in the grass. A ceremonial space that was rarely used. Reserved only for sacred rites or blood vows.
Tonight… it felt corrupted.
The Seer stood at the front, draped in violet-gray robes, her face drawn tight with something between fear and duty.
Kyran and Lyra stepped forward.
Everly flinched.
"Tonight, under the Red Moon," the Seer intoned, "we offer bond, blood, and breath. May the ties formed be tempered in truth."
Truth.
The word scraped across Everly's skin like a blade. She moved along the edge of the crowd, handing out juniper bundles to those who reached without looking. She kept her head down, but she couldn't stop her eyes from flicking upward when Kyran reached for Lyra's hands.
Lyra smiled way too bright and way too hungry. She looked like a girl who thought she'd won.
Kyran's face was unreadable. Blank. Cold. But Everly knew that face now. It was the face of a lie told too often.
The Seer motioned for silence. "Let the bond be witnessed."
As Kyran and Lyra began to speak the ancient words, ones meant only for fated pairs, Everly's vision blurred. A pulse cracked through her chest, then another. Pain bloomed in her sternum, twisting through her ribs like vines catching fire.
She couldn't breathe.
Selene screamed inside her. Not a word. Not a name. Just grief.
Everly stumbled back, clutching her stomach, eyes wide. No one noticed. Everyone was watching the false ceremony unfold.
She fell to her knees, the basket tumbling from her grasp. Her hands shook. Her teeth chattered.
It wasn't cold.
It was wrong.
The world tilted sideways. The moon burned crimson. The words spoken were knives. She heard them say it… "With this vow, I seal what fate could not."
That wasn't how it went.
It never went like that.
Something inside her split.
A thread pulled too tight. A bond stretched beyond what was holy. She gasped, then collapsed fully into the grass, her vision dimming.
In the dark between thoughts, Selene rose. Not as a girl. Not as a ghost, but as a wolf wrapped in moonlight, massive and radiant, eyes like liquid silver.
She stood over Everly's spirit, her body curled protectively around her like a great beast guarding a flame. "They cannot have you," she growled into the void. "Not this way. Not tonight."
A second presence flickered nearby. Not quite formed. A whisper of wildflower and gold, but it did not speak.
It only watched.
Back in the clearing, Lyra was smiling, holding Kyran's hands above their heads as the ritual concluded.
The Seer turned away.
Kyran's jaw clenched. His wolf stirred but he said nothing.
No one noticed the girl in the grass being carried away by a healer too young to question the silence. No one but Spirit, who stood at the forest's edge, half-shadowed beneath a hood of dusk.
She didn't smile.
She didn't speak but her gaze was heavy.
And as the Red Moon rose to its peak, she whispered into the wind, "A lie sealed in ritual still bleeds at the edges."