We all knew what we were giving up with this spell, not only our humanity but our identities as well. Who we were would die tonight.
It had started as a plan for survival.
We couldn’t live as humans anymore, not in a world ruled by monsters.
We had to become monsters as well.
The elders believed that we might remember bits of our humanity if we survived long enough. That we could claw it back from the darkness.
But I didn’t want it. Fuck humanity.
No, what I wanted was far simpler. I wanted to race away from this village tonight and tear into the beasts that had torn into my daughter. Who had snatched away the man I’d loved since I was sixteen years old.
I wanted to make the monsters afraid.
“It’s time,” Irina said from where she stood opposite me on the other side of the stones.
I could remember her sitting in our house sipping coffee when I was a little girl. My mother would braid my hair while they discussed potential new hunting grounds. She had a slight curve to her back, and her chestnut hair was mostly grey now, but she still had a will of iron. The Laurent family had been in this village even longer than the Harkers.
The whispers and shuffling died down as the elders started chanting, keeping their words slow and carefully enunciated.
Irina turned towards her right, and the woman standing there bared her neck. Tali, our neighbor. Her dark brown eyes used to be so warm and inviting. Now they were cold and hollow. She was the only surviving member of her family.
Neither hesitated nor flinched as Irina carved a symbol into her neck from a blade made from the same type of stone at the center of our circle. Once Irina was finished, she passed the blade to Tali, who did the same to the man standing at her right.
One by one, the elders marked each other until it was my turn.
I barely felt the blade dig into my neck. When the cool stone knife was placed in my hand, I turned around to face my daughter. My hand hesitated, but Nysa wrapped her fingers around mine and guided the knife to her neck.
Our bloodline was strong. And Nysa was owed vengeance too. I would not deny her this. The sharpened stone cut into her skin. The magic guided my fingers as I etched a crescent moon into the left side of her neck.
Choosing that particular symbol hadn’t been a conscious decision on my part.
The elders had convened for weeks to settle on what beasts we would turn into. It was impossible to know which ones would fare best against the monsters of our world, but if too many were chosen, we risked the spell being watered down and failing entirely. In the end, these were the three that were selected. Each bearing different strengths to better our odds of surviving.
The blood trickling down my neck started to burn, but I kept saying the words over and over, only vaguely aware of their meaning.
Across all of Lunaria, what remained of the humans had gathered to conduct the same ritual as we asked the moon to bless us.
A haze filled my mind, and I felt myself unravel. But I welcomed the feeling and begged it to take me faster, only wavering when I felt my daughter’s hand slip into mine. I turned towards her and watched as her light sky-blue eyes darkened until they were almost black.
She smiled at me for the first time in ages as the magic took her, the chant never faltering from her lips. I gave her a vicious grin in return as the last of the words rang into the night sky, their meaning revealed.
“We will give our lives for the blood.”
“We will yield our fates in the wild.”
“We will lose our souls to the fury.”
Chapter One
Samara
200 Years Later
“Is that what you’re wearing?”
I glanced away from the mirror outside my closet to the bed, where a man with auburn hair and light brown eyes lounged. Demetri’s lips twisted in a concerned frown as he gestured towards the dress I’d just put on.
