CHAPTER 2

The Taste of Crimson

The blood-red stone of the locket pressed heavily against Liora’s chest, humming with a low, unnatural vibration that seemed to synchronize perfectly with her racing pulse. The heat radiating from the gem was almost suffocating, seeping into her

skin like a physical weight.

She stared down at the intricate silver casing, her breath catching in her throat as she tried to process the sheer absurdity of the words that had just left her grandmother’s mouth.

"My blood..." Liora whispered, her voice trembling as she looked away from the heavy silver chain to meet Nymeria's unyielding gaze.

"What do you mean, my blood is a secret? Mom was a wolf, and Dad was... Grandma, you told me they died in a car accident! You’ve told me that story since I was eight years old. Why are you doing this now?"

Nymeria’s expression didn’t soften. The elderly woman stepped closer, the sharp, grounding scent of dried lavender, crushed sage, and old parchment rolling off her heavy woolen cloak.

"I told you what you needed to hear so that you would survive to see this day, Liora. A simple car crash doesn't leave a trail of silver-tipped arrows and ashes in the middle of a deserted highway. The high councils of both clans wanted them erased from history. If the vampires or the pack packs had known what you were...what your father truly was...you wouldn't have survived your first night in this valley."

Liora let out a dry, breathy laugh, backing away until her spine hit the cool, solid wood of the kitchen counter. She shook her head firmly, her hands tightening against the edge of the countertop until her knuckles turned white. This was completely absurd. Vampires? Werewolves? Ancient blood feuds? It sounded like the plot of a gothic horror novel, not the reality of her quiet life on the outskirts of Blackwood.

She didn't believe in myths. Stories about monsters were just things people told to make sense of the dark, or to keep naive children from wandering too deep into the dangerous, untamed woods.

"Grandma, stop it. Just stop," Liora said, her voice a fragile mix of rising disbelief and sheer physical exhaustion.

"I get it. You’re scared. Ever since Mom and Dad died, you’ve been terrified of losing me too. You watch me like a hawk, you panic whenever I’m late coming home from school, and now that I'm eighteen, you're terrified I’m going to leave. But you don't have to invent fairytales and monsters just to keep me safe and locked inside this house."

"You think this is a tale, child? You think I would desecrate the memory of my own daughter with a campfire story?" Nymeria asked, her ancient, dark eyes boring into Liora's with a terrifyingly sharp intensity that made Liora's arguments wither in her throat.

"I think I’m having a panic attack because it’s my birthday, and I miss my parents," Liora insisted, looking down at her trembling hands.

"Dad was human. I remember his smile, Grandma. I remember him holding me. He laughed, he walked in the bright afternoon sun, he ate dinner with us. He wasn't a monster. He wasn't a... whatever it is you're implying."

Nymeria let out a slow, heavy sigh, her gaze shifting past Liora toward the darkened kitchen window that faced the black abyss of the forest. "Sleep tonight, Liora," she commanded softly, her tone brooking no further argument. "Tomorrow, everything changes. Your protection cannot rely on an old woman's suppression spells anymore. I have summoned someone to ensure your survival, whether you believe me or not."

---

Liora retreated to her small bedroom upstairs, her mind a chaotic, spinning blur of Emi’s ridiculous five-day romance dare, Hael’s lingering looks, and her grandmother’s insane warnings. She collapsed onto her mattress without even changing out of her birthday clothes, pulling the heavy quilt over her shoulders. She was determined to force herself to sleep, determined to wake up tomorrow and prove to herself that she was completely ordinary. Just Liora. A normal human girl.

But when sleep finally dragged her under, it didn’t bring the peaceful oblivion she so desperately craved. Instead, it pulled her down into a familiar, suffocating darkness she hadn't faced in years.

The nightmare had returned.

For a long time, she had truly believed she was done with it. The night terrors of her childhood had faded into a dull, forgotten ache. But tonight, the dream didn't play out like a vague, disjointed blur of fear—it fractured into sharp, violent fragments of sealed memories, tearing through the mental barriers she had spent a decade building.

She was eight years old again, sitting in the back seat of her father's car. The memory was suddenly so vivid she could smell the vanilla air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. Then came the blinding screech of metal against metal, a violent, bone-rattling impact that sent the world spinning upside down. Shattering glass rained over her skin like ice. The suffocating smell of burning rubber and gasoline filled her lungs.

She remembered screaming. She remembered crying out for her mother, for her father, but there was only a horrific, heavy silence coming from the crumpled front seats.

Then, out of the dark, the crumpled passenger door was ripped entirely off its hinges with a terrifying, agonizing screech of tearing steel. A normal human couldn't do that.

A tall shadow leaned into the smoking wreckage. Strong hands grabbed her, dragging her out of the twisted metal before the flames could catch. Liora remembered the feeling of that rescue with a sudden, terrifying clarity that made her blood run cold in her sleep. The stranger's skin was deathly cold—like blocks of river ice pressing against her bare, scraped arms. Yet, as he pulled her out of the thick black smoke, he held her tightly against his chest, and that chest felt intensely, fiercely warm.

For ten years, she had wondered about that paradox. Was it the stranger’s chest radiating an unnatural, hidden heat? Or was it just her own blood, slick, hot, and pouring from her wounds, coating them both? She couldn't recall. Before she could look up to perceive his face through the smoke, the memory fragmented, shattering into dark, jagged pieces that left her gasping for air.

Liora snapped awake, sitting bolt upright in bed. She was drenched in a cold sweat, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped wild animal. She gripped her sheets, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.

The nightmare felt entirely different this time. It felt less like a trick of her subconscious and more like a heavy iron door ICC finally unlocking inside her mind.

Worse than the residual fear was a sudden, dry, agonizing ache in the very back of her throat. It was a burning, desperate thirst that she had never experienced in her life—a sensation so intense that it made her tongue scrape against the roof of her mouth. She threw off the covers and stumbled over to her vanity, pouring a glass of water from her ceramic pitcher. She chugged it down, but it did absolutely nothing. The water felt like empty air, leaving the fiery itch in her throat completely untouched.

She checked the digital clock on her nightstand; it was just past dawn. The cottage around her was dead silent, wrapped in the eerie stillness of early morning. Walking downstairs in a daze, she noticed the faint scent of lavender and ozone still lingering in the living room, but her grandmother’s chair was empty. On the wooden kitchen table, a fresh note written in Nymeria's elegant, sloping script read:

*Do not leave the house under any circumstances. I am securing the outer boundary.*

Liora stared at the note, the walls of the small cottage suddenly feeling like they were closing in on her. The echoes of her nightmare, the burning in her throat, and the suffocating silence were too much to bear. She needed air. She needed to run, to clear her head before the world woke up.

Defying the note, she stepped out onto the front porch, pulling the hood of her oversized sweatshirt tightly over her dark hair. The Blackwood Forest greeted her, shrouded in a thick, low-hanging silver mist that crept along the damp earth like a living thing. Liora took a deep breath, intending to calm her racing heart, but instead, her senses exploded.

Every breath she took felt incredibly heavy, filled with a thousand distinct, overwhelming scents she had never noticed in her life. She could smell the exact mineral composition of the damp earth, the sharp tang of decay on the fallen pine needles yards away, the sweet, metallic scent of a wild animal nesting deep in the brush. It was too much, too loud, too intense.

Driven by a strange, magnetic pull she couldn't control, Liora began to walk, her boots sinking into the moss as she wandered deeper into the forbidden tree line than she ever had before. Her mind was still entirely trapped in the fragments of her childhood accident, trying to reconcile the cold skin and the warm chest of the man who had saved her.

Suddenly, her boot caught violently on a thick, exposed tree root hidden beneath the mist. Liora stumbled blindly, crying out as she pitched forward onto the rocky, uneven earth. She instinctually threw her hands out to break her fall, her palms scraping harshly against the sharp gravel and jagged stones.

"Ow..." she hissed, rolling over to sit up, cradling her right hand against her chest.

Deep, crimson beads of blood immediately began to well up along the raw gashes on her palm.

Liora stared at the liquid. The moment the scent of her own blood hit the air, the dry burning in her throat flared into an agonizing, sharp, demanding heat. It felt as though a physical fire had been lit beneath her skin. Her vision shifted, narrowing until the entire world went dark around the edges, focusing entirely on the dark red liquid pooling on her skin. A primal, terrifying urge surged from the very depths of her stomach, completely overriding her human logic, her sense of sanity, and her upbringing.

Without thinking, entirely driven by a raw, overwhelming instinct that felt older than the forest itself, she brought her hand to her mouth and pressed her lips to the open wound on her palm.

The taste of her own blood hit her tongue like a spark thrown into a room full of gasoline.

It wasn't metallic, copper-like, or sickeningly warm as she would have imagined. It was intoxicating. It tasted like pure, distilled life, rich and sweet. The exact moment the liquid entered her system, a violent jolt of pure adrenaline snapped through her bones, so powerful it made her back arch. The localized, sharp ache in her jaw flared as her canine teeth rapidly lengthened, pushing past her gums into lethal fangs. At the same exact moment, the dark brown of her eyes vanished, replaced by a brilliant, predatory golden glow that flared behind her irises.

She gasped, tearing her hand away from her mouth in absolute horror. She stared at her blood-stained fingers, her breath coming in frantic huffs, feeling the sharp points of her new teeth resting against her lower lip.

*What am I?*

The denial she had fought so hard to maintain just hours ago shattered into a million unrecoverable pieces. Grandma hadn't been lying. She wasn't crazy. The monsters were real, and one of them was staring back through her own eyes.

Instinct caused her to snap her head up. A sudden chill swept through the clearing, slicing right through the heavy morning heat.

A long distance away, standing deep within the dense cluster of ancient pines where the mist was thickest, a figure was watching her. The silhouette was tall, broad-shouldered, and completely still, half-swallowed by the shadows of the trees. Liora couldn't make out the details of his face, but she could feel the absolute intensity of his gaze piercing right through the fog. The sheer force of his presence sent a heavy, suffocating wave of power crashing over her.

Blinking through her glowing vision, Liora tried to focus on him. But in the single second it took her to blink, the space between the trees went entirely empty. The stranger had vanished, leaving nothing behind but the faint, rustling echo of disturbed leaves.

"Liora!"

A sharp, authoritative voice broke the silence of the woods. Liora whirled around, her heart leaping into her throat as Grandma Nymeria materialized from the mist behind her. The elderly woman’s face was pale, her expression etched with a mixture of dread and urgency. She took one look at Liora’s elongated fangs, her glowing golden eyes, and the blood smeared across her hand, and instantly understood what had happened.

Before Liora could utter a word of explanation or give into her rising panic, Nymeria reached into the deep folds of her woolen cloak. She pulled out a small, ornate silver flask and flung a handful of shimmering, misty powder directly over Liora.

The glittering dust hung in the air for a fraction of a second before settling over her skin.

The effect was instantaneous and violent. A cool, tingling sensation rushed over Liora’s face and hands. The intoxicating taste of crimson vanished from her tongue, and the burning fire in her throat was instantly extinguished, forced back down into the dark corners of her soul. She watched in sheer bewilderment as the dark blood stains on her skin dissolved into thin air, evaporating like mist under a hot sun. Beneath the vanishing blood, the jagged, bleeding gashes on her palm closed up, the torn skin knitting itself back together until it was entirely smooth, leaving no scar behind.

Her fangs receded, and the golden glow in her eyes faded back to a soft, human brown.

The sudden, forced suppression of her awakened power was too much for her physical body to handle. A profound, overwhelming wave of dizziness hit Liora like a physical blow. The towering pines began to spin violently around her, and the gray morning sky tilted on its axis. Her legs turned to water, completely unable to support her weight anymore.

"Grandma..." Liora choked out, her vision rapidly tunneling into a heavy, suffocating darkness.

As her knees buckled and she collapsed toward the damp forest floor, the last thing she felt was Nymeria’s surprisingly strong arms catching her, before the black oblivion took her completely.

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