The night I learned what I was, the moon hung low and red, like it was bleeding for me.
I had always hated full moons. Not because of old wives' tales or whispered fears, but because something in my bones never rested when the sky glowed silver. On those nights, sleep avoided me. My skin felt too tight. My heart beat like it was running from something I couldn't see.
My name is Elara Veyne, and until that night, I believed I was human.
The war had already begun long before I understood my place in it. Vampires and werewolves had hated each other for centuries, their conflicts disguised as folklore and forgotten battles. Humans were the dust beneath their feet—useful, fragile, replaceable. I lived on the edge of the Ashen Territory, a no-man's-land where borders blurred and rumors breathed louder than truth.
I was a courier. I ran messages through forests others were afraid to enter. People said I was fearless. That wasn't true. I was just poor, stubborn, and tired of being powerless.
That night, the message I carried was sealed in black wax marked with a sigil I didn't recognize. Halfway through the forest, the air shifted. The trees went quiet. Even the insects held their breath.
Then I heard it—a growl, low and vibrating, not threatening but curious.
I ran.
I don't remember falling. I remember pain, sharp and tearing, like my body was being rewritten. My scream echoed through the forest, but no one came. The moonlight burned my eyes. My bones cracked. My veins felt like fire.
And then—silence.
When I woke, my clothes were torn, my hands stained with blood that wasn't mine. My senses were wrong. Too sharp. Too alive. I could hear the pulse of the forest itself.
"You survived," a voice said.
I turned and saw her.
She stood between the trees, tall and scarred, with eyes like molten gold. A werewolf. Unshifted, but unmistakable. Power clung to her like heat.
"You shouldn't have," she added softly.
I should have been afraid. Instead, something ancient in me recognized her. Accepted her.
"What did you do to me?" I asked.
She hesitated. "I awakened you."
That was the first lie anyone ever told me out of kindness.