Chapter 2 What The Moon Woke

~LEILANI RAVENWOOD~

The Fevered Moon made everyone stupid.

That was the only explanation for what I walked into that morning. Layla sprawled across my bed like she owned it, Hadleigh beside her, both of them still flushed and glowing from the night before, wearing their satisfaction like a second skin.

"Last night..." Layla sighed, the sound long and shameless, "changed my entire life."

Hadleigh laughed. "That good?"

"That good." Layla sat up, her hair a beautiful disaster around her face. "Kade kept me up until dawn. I still feel him everywhere."

The heat that crept into my cheeks had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with the fact that Layla proceeded to demonstrate. In detail. On my bed. She straddled Hadleigh's waist with theatrical grace, her hips rolling in a slow, deliberate rhythm that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

"He took me from every angle." She confessed, breathless and entirely shameless. "Front. Back. Top. I rode him for hours and I still wanted more."

Hadleigh screamed with delight. I turned back to the mirror.

"Goddess!" I said. "some of us are trying to brush our hair."

"Some of us should be doing far more interesting things with our mornings." Layla collapsed back against the pillows, dramatic and thoroughly satisfied. "Leilani. It's the Fevered Moon. The whole pack is losing their minds and you're in here brushing your hair."

"I like my hair."

"What about Rowan?" Hadleigh pressed, sitting up with that grin she wore when she already knew the answer and wanted to hear me say it anyway. "Don't tell me nothing happened."

"Nothing happened."

Layla gasped like I'd confessed to a murder.

"He's your betrothed." She said. "On the Fevered Moon. The goddess herself is practically begging you to have sex."

"Rowan and I are... waiting." I lied, searching for something that sounded reasonable.

"For what exactly?" Hadleigh demanded. "Divine intervention?"

I smiled faintly into the mirror and said nothing.

The truth was simpler and far crueler than anything I wanted to explain before breakfast.

The Fevered Moon touched everyone. Everyone except me.

While the rest of the pack burned, I remained cold. Untouched by the hunger that turned grown wolves feral and had the unmated scratching at walls. Rowan was perfect, handsome, loyal, and everything a betrothed should be. The ideal mate by every measure.

But even he couldn't stir anything in me.

When he kissed me, it wasn't quite what I expected, or as thrilling as others described. It was nice and warm but hollow. Nothing sparked. Nothing stirred. And since the Fevered Moon began last night, when I felt nothing while everyone around me was coming undone, I had been avoiding him like a plague.

"Maybe," Layla said slyly, her smile curling at the edges, "Leilani's waiting for someone darker."

The words landed somewhere they had no business landing.

I set the brush down.

**********

My father was in his study when I found him, already dressed for the evening, papers spread across his desk like he had been expecting this conversation and decided to be busy for it.

I opened my mouth anyway.

"I'm coming with you tonight." I said.

The nights of the Fevered Moon usually held no other activities apart from pleasure, but this time around, the annual meeting of all the Western District alphas was fixed on its second night. It was a gathering that united every major pack leader of the district and their councils, to discuss the state of our kind. A gathering I was meant to attend as my father's successor, yet once again, he planned to go alone.

"No." My father said sternly, not looking up.

"I'm your heir." I stepped further into the room, keeping my voice steady even as the frustration climbed. "Half the alphas in this district don't know I exist. How am I supposed to lead one day if you keep me locked away like I'm something to be ashamed of?"

"Leilani." A warning. Quiet and final.

"No." The word came out harder than I intended and I didn't take it back. "You've been saying the same thing my entire life. Danger. Protection. Trust me. But you never explain it. You never tell me anything real." I stopped directly in front of his desk. "What are you so afraid of? That someone will see the mark on my back? That some stupid prophecy might actually come true?"

He looked up then.

And what I saw in his eyes stopped me cold.

Not anger. Not authority.

Fear.

Raw and deep. The kind that had been living behind his eyes for years, quietly, and I had never been close enough to see it until now. My father was not a man who feared things easily. He had led this pack through wars and loss and things that would have broken lesser alphas without flinching once.

But he was afraid now.

"The mark on your back." He said quietly. "The prophecy that followed your birth. You think I kept you here because I was ashamed of you?" His jaw tightened. "I kept you here because the moment the wrong eyes see that mark, I lose you. And I will burn this world to ash before I let that happen."

The silence that followed was thick and airless.

"What prophecy?" I asked. My voice came out smaller than I intended. He never once told me details of it.

He looked at me for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes - the particular anguish of a man deciding how much truth to give and knowing none of his options were good.

"My decision is final." He said. And turned back to his papers.

I left the room.

His decision was final and so was mine. I would go to that meeting with or without his permission.

*********

Jeremy, the son of one of my father's council betas was cleaver, daring and amongst those who had no restrictions with going beyond our borders.

His door was slightly opened when I got there, so I didn't bother knocking before entering. However, I was repelled by the unmistakable moans and whimpers of a female.

"Goddess-" I stepped back sharply, "lock your door."

He scrambled upright, a girl giggling beneath him, his shirt half off and his dignity entirely absent.

"You could've knocked." He said.

"You could've locked it." I wrinkled my nose. "You smell like poor decisions."

The girl slipped out with a mumbled excuse. Jeremy dragged a hand through his hair and fixed me with the expression of a man who already knew he wasn't going to like what came next.

"What do you want?"

"I'm going to the alphas meeting tonight."

Silence.

"No." He said.

"Yes."

"Leilani-"

"You're my beta." I said. "That means you should obey me and do what I want."

"Well you're technically not Alpha yet. Also, if your father finds out I took you, he'll have my head."

I took a step forward. "He won't. I'll make sure he doesn't find out.

He stared at me for a long moment. The kind of stare of a man who knew better but was going to help anyway.

"This," he said finally, "is a terrible idea."

*********

The meeting was held in a massive hall in the outskirts of our lands. The sound of laughter, clinking glasses and voices of wolves filled the air. It almost made me feel constricted with the many scents and many eyes.

"Stay close." Jeremy whispered.

I nodded, scanning the sea of people. At the front, the main Alphas were already seated. My father sat amongst them, his posture rigid, his expression doing that particular careful work that meant he was holding something back. He hadn't seen me yet.

I intended to keep it that way.

An older alpha rose and tapped his glass. The room quieted.

"Brothers." His voice carried the weight of a man about to say something no one wanted to hear. "We gather tonight with grave concern. Entire packs have vanished. Villages reduced to ash. No tracks. No survivors. No explanation." He paused, letting the silence do its work. "Except one."

The room shifted.

"The dates align with the old calendar. The cycle of the cursed."

Murmurs rippled through the crowd like a stone dropped in still water.

"He's talking about Sebastian Kol." Jeremy said quietly beside me.

I looked at him. "Who?"

He stared at me like I'd just asked who the moon was.

"Do you even read the old texts at all?" He asked again and I shook my head. My father forbade my teacher from teaching me some selected books. He kept them locked in his private library. The only history i learnt were about the seven goddesses that ruled our kind. I knew not of this man being discussed.

Jeremy leaned closer, dropping his voice low. "A creature cursed by one of the goddesses centuries ago. They say he wakes every century and leaves nothing but ruin behind him." He paused. "But he's a myth. No one's actually seen him. He doesn't-"

"Lies." A man across the hall rose abruptly, his voice thick with contempt. "Fairy tales to frighten pups. No one has seen Sebastian Kol because he doesn't exist. We sit here frightening ourselves with ghost stories while real threats go unanswered."

Several alphas nodded, while others disagreed.

My father rose slowly from his seat.

"Enough." One word and the room went quiet the way rooms only go quiet for men who have earned it over a lifetime. "We will not feed panic with superstition. Sebastian Kol is a story. Nothing more."

The hall murmured its agreement.

But then the doors opened. Without anyone touching them.

They swung wide on their own and the temperature in the room dropped immediately. Not a chill. Something else entirely. Something that bypassed the body and landed in the most primitive part of a wolf, the part that had nothing to do with reason and everything to do with survival. The part that knew, long before the mind caught up, that something had just entered the room that was older and more dangerous than anything it had ever encountered.

The crowd parted.

No one gave the order. Every alpha, every beta, every wolf in the hall simply stepped back, creating a path through the center without fully understanding why, driven by an instinct older than any of us.

Then.

He stepped through.

Unhurried. Unbothered. Each step measured and deliberate, the kind of movement that belonged to something that had never once had a reason to rush. The dark cloak he wore trailed behind him like smoke. The quiet in the hall was absolute in a way that had nothing to do with silence and everything to do with the particular stillness that falls when something at the very top of the food chain enters a room.

He stopped at the center. Pushed back his hood, revealing his face and my world seemed to still.

His eyes which were a distinct blue, swept through the hall, assessing, unimpressed.

"A myth?" His voice was deep and unhurried, carrying effortlessly through the hall without him raising it. He looked around at the frozen crowd with something that might have been amusement if it had contained even a trace of warmth. "A story? Is that what you mortals call your king?"

Gasps erupted in the hall as the realization settled on everyone. I didn't know much about this man who had just walked in with a primal and ancient scent attached to him, but his presence struck fear in me.

The alpha who had spoken before- the one who had called him a fairy tale about a minute ago, stepped forward with a strong bravado.

"It's impossible! Sebastian Kol is just a made up story. Even if it were true and even if this man is the self acclaimed ancient cursed, he is no threat to us, brothers." He said, trying to convince us all, but my eyes remained fixed on the man who had just walked in and I don't miss when his lips curved slightly, almost amused.

"You're not welcome here." The alpha said. "Leave before-"

But he didn't finish.

Sebastian moved. Not walked. Not lunged. Simply ceased to be in one place and appeared in another, the way lightning doesn't travel so much as arrive. One hand closed around the alpha's throat, and a sharp crack split the silence.

Sebastian tore the head clean off, as easily as breaking a twig.

"Anyone else feeling opinionated?" His voice tore through the tensed atmosphere. The man's head was in one of his hand, and with slight movement, he tossed the body aside. It slid across the marble and stopped right in front of my feet.

Blood pooled outward in a slow, dark circle.

I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do anything except stand there while every instinct I had screamed at me to run and my legs refused to cooperate.

Sebastian turned.

His eyes swept the hall with that same cool disinterest, like a man surveying a room that had already bored him.

Then they found mine.

And stopped.

The mark on my back, the twin crescents I had carried since birth, and which had never once reacted to anything suddenly erupted in a violent heat that I nearly gasped aloud.

He tilted his head.

One degree. Barely anything. Then he spoke.

"Interesting."

Quiet as a thought, yet precise as a blade. And in a hall full of terrified wolves, it was directed entirely at me.