CHAPTER 51
A MUCH LARGER EILARALITH CRYSTAL hovered behind Lenore, suspended within a white gazebo bathed in soft blue hues. She stood near it, her gaze sweeping across the unfamiliar surroundings—an open plaza, she realized—before she felt herself being pulled forward.
Edmund was beside her, holding her hand tightly as he took the lead, following the tail-end of Varek’s pack.
Their boots clicked against the smooth stone underneath, their pace hasty but controlled.
Lenore grasped the vial around her neck, as if to guard the precious item from any mishap.
Some werewolves patrolled the outside, watching with intense scrutiny.
One of them locked eyes with Lenore—the predatory focus sending her heart racing.
But the werewolf moved away, leaving her alone with the adrenaline still rushing through her body.
Cade and Gwyneth waited for them just ahead. Their pace matched theirs as soon as they passed, following the rest of the werewolves ahead. “Looks like nothing’s happened yet,” Cade said. “But I’ve never smelt so much tension and bloodlust in one place.”
Lenore glanced around—catching a glimpse of a familiar statue of a man with his outstretched hand raised above his head, angled outward.
The tips of his fingers were shaped into claws, while a leaping wolf curved around him, its tail woven around his legs, reaching down to his feet, where an inscription was carved at the base.
Lenore gasped. It was Ieric—resembling the photo shown in the book she had read in the library.
But there was no time to linger—the statue fell behind as they passed through giant archways leading toward the main ballroom.
Heat brushed her skin each time they skirted past pillars, their carved niches burning bright with hovering stars.
A massive dome of glass arced overhead as they entered the ballroom.
She had never seen so many werewolves gathered in one place before.
Every pack stood alert—muscles taut beneath resplendent gowns and fine suits.
The beauty of the grand building was fractured by barely veiled aggression.
Elegant wolf sculptures, shaped as if a gentle wind moved through their stone fur, stood in stark contrast to the guests’ bared teeth and barely restrained aggression.
Lenore scanned around. Arisa wasn’t here—nor was the rest of the Lunavie pack. No familiar scents reached her.
“No one’s been marked with a red crescent here.” Azelf’s voice was behind them, and they turned to face him. Pip was tucked into his breast pocket, his head peeping out just enough to look around. “What if the Lucyn had other plans?”
“Just stay on guard,” Edmund said. “They’re—”
Warning howls from the outside cut through the rest of his words.
The howls were stifled as quickly as they came—an ill sign that spurred nearly every werewolf in the ballroom to shift into their upright form—towering on two legs, claws bared.
Hackles were raised, snarls rising with frenzied ferocity.
Lenore stayed human—for now. The vial was easier to control this way.
But if the fight closed in, she was ready to shift to survive. Edmund hovered protectively over her.
Beyond the windows, beastly figures loomed near the glass—the thin panes the only barrier between them and the ballroom. A faint red glow flickered across their faces, half-hidden in shadow. Veins of frost crackled along the glass.
Resounding footsteps echoed through the massive archways, growing louder by the second. The sharp scent of blood soured the air. Lenore’s right arm burned with an icy chill.
Many heads turned toward the intruding procession, their darkening presence gradually overtaking the ballroom.
A crescent dipped in crimson marked the foreheads of the Lucyns—many unfamiliar—and far more than Lenore expected.
Among them moved others with no such mark—only streaks of black running down their blank faces.
Lenore spotted Nox and Brynn among the unmarked, their hollow, unseeing eyes making her clutch her vial tighter.
Beren too was among them once more, trapped in the umbral thistle’s power.
But Auden and Fia were nowhere in sight, no matter how many times she looked. She gritted her teeth. They needed to save them—every last one they could.
“Oh dear, oh dear.” A dreadfully familiar feminine voice rang out, a subtle ripple of dread threading through the air with every measured syllable. The ballroom turned hushed. “Are you already starting the party without us?”
A delicate giggle followed, before Arisa slowly emerged. Enraged snarls tore from Edmund and his siblings’ throats, their claws already twitching to kill.
She strode toward them at an unhurried pace, gliding past waterfalls of moon nectar that spilled from marble basins above the guests, the streams vanishing into depths hidden by flowers and lush shrubbery.
A train of black trailed behind her, drawn up like a sash over one of her shoulders.
Underneath was a dark purple dress that darkened at the ends, splitting on one side to reveal her leg.
Jeweled ornaments and chains adorned her, clinging to her like drops of moonlight.
Her ash-blonde hair was left loose and wavy.
The red crescent marred her beauty, as though freshly seared into her skin—still burning bright from the flame. The longer Lenore stared, the more Arisa’s skin morphed into a sickly, chalky-white. Orange rings consumed the green of her eyes, distorting her human face into something uncanny.
Spindly fingers traced the mark on her face, then across her brow before she lowered her hand. The warmth that Arisa had all but diminished. What remained was only a predator, ready to devour.
“This mark only speaks the truth of our greater ascendance. The full moon offers its powers to all—but those who follow me will be the ones to claim it.” Her voice was quiet, velvet-soft.
But the sound carried everywhere, slipping into every wolf’s ear.
She smiled coldly. “The Lunar Ball has gathered us all together, where a new era rises beneath the goddess’s eye… the goddess of the moon itself.”
The orange of her eyes burned brighter.
“Kill them all.”