Chapter 1:
Silver Eyes
The letter arrived on a Tuesday, which should have been my first warning that everything was about to go straight to hell.
I stood at our broken mailbox, the cream-colored envelope pristine against my dirt-stained fingers, while the rest of Pine Hollow's residents pretended not to stare. They'd been doing that my whole life—staring but not quite staring, whispering but not quite whispering. You'd think after seventeen years, I'd be used to it.
You'd be wrong.
"Aria Blackwood," I read aloud, tracing the elegant calligraphy with my thumb. No one in Pine Hollow received mail with such beautiful writing. Hell, most of us were lucky if the bills arrived without coffee stains.
The return address made my blood turn to ice: Crimson Moon Academy.
"No," I whispered, my hands starting to shake. "No, no, no."
But there it was, the official seal pressed into blood-red wax—a crescent moon wrapped around a wolf's head. Everyone knew what that meant. Every human between seventeen and nineteen knew what that meant.
I'd been selected.
"Aria!" Mrs. Chen called from her porch, her voice pitched high with false excitement. "Is that what I think it is? Oh, how wonderful! Your grandmother must be so proud!"
Proud. Right. My grandmother would probably cackle herself into a coughing fit when she heard about this. Nana had a weird sense of humor about the world's cruelties.
I shoved the letter into my jacket pocket and headed home, ignoring the sudden burst of whispers that followed me down the street. The news would spread through Pine Hollow within the hour. By dinner, everyone would know that Aria Blackwood—the weird girl with the silver eyes who lived with her crazy grandmother—had been chosen for Crimson Moon Academy.
Lucky me.
Our house sat at the very edge of town, where the forest pressed close enough to scratch at our windows during storms. It wasn't much—two bedrooms, a kitchen that leaked when it rained, and a living room full of Nana's "collections." Herbs hung from every ceiling beam, crystals cluttered every surface, and books written in languages I couldn't read lined the walls. The whole place smelled like sage and something else, something wild that I could never quite identify.
"Nana?" I called, closing the door behind me. "You home?"
"In the kitchen, child."
I found her standing over the stove, stirring something that bubbled and hissed in her favorite cast-iron pot. Her silver hair was braided down her back, and she wore one of her many flower-print dresses that had probably been fashionable fifty years ago. She didn't look up when I entered, but I saw her shoulders tense.
She knew. Somehow, she already knew.
"The letter came," I said, pulling it from my pocket and tossing it onto the kitchen table.
"Hmm." She kept stirring, the wooden spoon moving in slow, deliberate circles. "Took them long enough."
I froze. "What do you mean, 'took them long enough'? You knew this would happen?"
"I suspected." She finally turned to face me, and her eyes—the same strange silver as mine—held a sadness that made my chest tight. "Sit down, Aria. We need to talk."
I remained standing. "About what? About how I've just been selected to be some werewolf's chew toy? About how I'm supposed to be grateful for the 'honor' of attending their twisted academy?"
"About the truth," she said quietly. "About what you really are."
The words hit me like a physical blow. "What I really am? I'm human, Nana. Just like you. Just like everyone in Pine Hollow."
She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Oh, child. Is that what you think? That you're just like everyone else?" She moved closer, reaching out to cup my face in her weathered hands. "Have you never wondered why your eyes are silver when everyone else's are brown or blue or green? Why animals follow you through the forest? Why you can sense things others can't?"
I jerked away from her touch. "Stop it."
"Why you heal faster than you should? Why you're stronger than any seventeen-year-old girl has a right to be?"
"Stop it!"
"Why you dream of running on four legs under the full moon?"
The words exploded out of me: "Because I'm a freak! Okay? I'm a freak, and everyone knows it, and now I'm going to be shipped off to some academy where they'll probably use me for entertainment before some alpha decides I'm worth keeping as a pet!"
Nana's expression didn't change. She simply walked back to her pot and resumed stirring. "You're not a freak, Aria. You're something far more dangerous."
I laughed bitterly. "Dangerous? I can't even stand up to Jenny Patterson and her stupid friends at school. How am I dangerous?"
"Because you're not supposed to exist," she said simply. "You're an impossibility. A miracle. A mistake. Call it whatever you want, but the fact remains—you are something that hasn't walked this earth in over two centuries."
My mouth went dry. "What are you talking about?"
She turned off the stove and faced me fully. "Your mother wasn't human, Aria. Neither was your father. Well, not entirely."
The room spun. I grabbed the back of a chair to steady myself. "My parents died in a car accident when I was a baby. You told me—"
"I told you what you needed to hear to stay safe." Her voice was gentle but firm. "Your parents were killed, yes, but not in any accident. They were hunted down and executed for the crime of creating you."
"Creating me?" My voice came out as a whisper. "What am I?"
Nana was quiet for a long moment, studying my face as if memorizing every detail. Finally, she spoke: "You're a hybrid, Aria. Part human, part werewolf, and part... something else. Something ancient. Something that was supposed to have been wiped out in the Great War."
I sank into the chair, my legs no longer able to hold me. "That's impossible. Hybrids can't exist. Everyone knows that. The biology doesn't work. Werewolves and humans can mate, but they can't create... whatever you're saying I am."
"Not naturally, no," Nana agreed. "But your parents found a way. They used old magic, forbidden magic. Blood magic. And they paid the ultimate price for it."
My mind raced, trying to process her words. "Why? Why would they do that?"
"Because they believed you were the answer to a prophecy," she said. "A prophecy that speaks of a silver-eyed child who will either unite the races or destroy them all."
I laughed, high and hysterical. "You're insane. You've finally completely lost it."
"Have I?" She walked to one of her many bookshelves and pulled out a leather-bound journal. She set it in front of me, opening it to a page covered in unfamiliar symbols. But as I stared at them, something strange happened. The symbols began to shift, rearranging themselves into words I could read:
*When moon bleeds red and silver eyes wake,
The boundary between worlds will break.
Born of three bloods, raised in disguise,
The forgotten one will rise.
Four princes will hunt, four hearts will claim,
But only one will speak her true name.
In the academy where lambs are led,
The hunter shall become the hunted instead.*
My hands trembled as I pushed the journal away. "This is crazy."
"This is your destiny," Nana corrected. "And now that you've been selected for Crimson Moon Academy, it's begun."
"I won't go," I said firmly. "I'll refuse. I'll run away."
"You can't. The selection is binding. If you refuse, they'll send hunters. If you run, they'll track you. The only way forward is through." She sat down across from me, taking my hands in hers. "But you won't be going there as a lamb, Aria. You'll be going as a wolf in sheep's clothing."
"I don't know how to be a wolf," I whispered.
"No," she agreed. "But you're about to learn."