The night she was sold, the moon did not rise whole.
It hung fractured in the sky, a jagged white wound bleeding light over the forest road. Elara felt it watching her through the iron bars of the carriage, judging her worth the way monsters did—by scent, by pulse, by how easily she might break.
The chains around her wrists were silver-threaded. Not enough to burn, just enough to remind her that she was owned.
The carriage lurched over roots and stone, wood creaking like it might splinter apart and scatter her pieces into the dark. She counted the jolts to keep herself from screaming. Twenty-three since the last turn. Eleven breaths between the guards' murmured exchanges. Three heartbeats too many whenever the horses slowed, as if something out there paced them, curious.
She had not cried when her uncle signed the contract.
She had not cried when the seal burned itself into her skin, glowing red beneath her collarbone like a fresh brand.
But now, as the forest thickened and the air grew heavy with pine, blood, and something feral, Elara felt tears gather—not from fear.
From rage.
"I told you," she said hoarsely, voice scraping the bars, "I won't survive this."
A guard laughed softly from the front seat. "You weren't sold to survive, girl. You were sold to balance scales."
Balance. As if her life were a weight easily shifted.
She pressed her forehead against the cold iron, breathing through the ache in her chest. The contract had been read aloud in the market square so everyone could hear. Humans pretending this was law, pretending this was order.
One human female, unbonded, unclaimed. In exchange for protection of the southern villages for seven cycles.
Seven years of safety bought with her body.
Her blood.
Her silence.
The carriage slowed.
Then stopped.
The forest fell quiet in the way prey does when it senses the apex predator has arrived.
Elara lifted her head.
The guards stiffened.
A presence pressed down on the world, thick and suffocating, like the air before a storm breaks bones instead of rain. She smelled him before she saw him—cold iron, night-blooming flowers, and something old enough to have learned patience by force.
The door opened.
Moonlight spilled in, pale and merciless.
A man stood there.
No—not a man.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in black that drank the light instead of reflecting it. His hair was dark, pulled back at the nape of his neck, and his eyes—
His eyes were wrong.
Silver, like a blade honed for centuries.
They dragged over her slowly, clinically, as though she were already laid out on a stone table.
"So," he said, voice low and smooth, threaded with something that curled inside her chest. "This is the offering."
The guards bowed. Actually bowed.
"My Lord Kael," one of them said. "She's untouched. As specified."
Kael.
The name rippled through her like a warning bell. She had heard whispers in taverns and back alleys. The Alpha who did not age. The enforcer of the Night Accords. Half the forest wolves answered to him. The vampires negotiated through him.
The monster they sent when treaties failed.
His gaze flicked to the silver in her chains. "Remove them."
"She's human," the guard said quickly. "But—"
Kael stepped closer.
The air shifted. Pressure slammed into Elara's lungs, stealing her breath. She gasped, fingers tightening around the bars.
"I did not ask," Kael said softly. "I commanded."
The chains fell away with shaking hands.
Elara swayed as circulation rushed back into her wrists. She expected pain. What she didn't expect was the way Kael's eyes sharpened when she stumbled—like he'd scented blood.
"Stand," he said.
It wasn't loud.
It didn't need to be.
Her body obeyed before her mind caught up, legs moving stiffly as she stepped down from the carriage. The ground was damp beneath her thin shoes. Cold bit through the soles.
She lifted her chin, meeting his gaze because refusing felt worse than dying.
"I know what you are," she said. Her voice trembled, but it held. "And I know what this is. If you think I'll beg—"
"I don't care if you beg," Kael interrupted. His mouth curved, not into a smile but something close to contempt. "I care whether you survive the first month."
Her breath caught.
"That depends," she said, hating the weakness in her tone. "On what you plan to do with me."
His eyes flicked to her collarbone.
The brand burned.
Elara cried out, clutching her chest as heat tore through her veins, white-hot and vicious. She collapsed to her knees, vision blurring. The forest spun. Her heartbeat thundered too fast, too loud.
Kael crouched before her.
He did not touch her.
Yet the pain intensified.
"Interesting," he murmured. "The seal recognizes my authority."
She forced herself to look at him through tears. "What… does that mean?"
"It means," he said quietly, "that you weren't sold to me."
The world tilted.
Her stomach dropped. "Then why—"
"You were bound to me," Kael continued. "Long before tonight."
His fingers hovered inches from her throat. She felt the heat of him there, the pull, like gravity sharpening its claws.
"Humans don't trigger ancient seals," he said. "They don't carry dormant bloodlines strong enough to answer a call this old."
The forest answered him then.
Howls rose from the darkness—deep, resonant, echoing with submission and hunger.
Elara's pulse stuttered.
"I'm human," she whispered. She had been told it all her life. She had believed it.
Kael straightened, eyes gleaming. "No," he said. "You are a mistake someone tried very hard to bury."
She staggered to her feet, backing away. "You're lying."
"I don't need to," he replied. "Your blood will prove it."
Before she could react, he grabbed her wrist.
His touch burned.
Not like the seal—deeper. Older. Something inside her answered, coiling awake with a scream that never reached her mouth.
Her vision exploded into red.
She saw flashes—moonlight through unfamiliar eyes, claws slick with blood, a throne of bone and iron, and a woman screaming as wolves bowed.
Elara screamed.
Kael released her.
She collapsed, gasping, body shaking violently.
When she looked up, his expression had changed.
The contempt was gone.
In its place was something far more dangerous.
Interest.
"Take her," he ordered the guards. "Lock her in the eastern wing. No silver. No feeding."
"Feeding?" Elara croaked.
Kael looked down at her one last time.
"If you survive the transformation," he said, voice cold and intimate all at once, "you'll wish I had killed you tonight."
Then he turned away.
The howls grew closer.
And deep beneath her skin, something ancient stretched—and began to wake.