Blood Moon (MalexMale Paranormal Fantasy)

Chapter 2 ∞ DAIRE

Tiny fangs prick the bed-warm skin of my wrist. The batling messenger is one of a hundred of its kind, bred by vampyres for two purposes: carrying private communications between us and feeding us blood. This evening, there are no words forming in my mind, accompanying the euphoric prick of fang into flesh; this is a simple transfer of fluids stirring up my blood, fortifying it. The rush in my veins like a burst dam.

I stir and peel open an eye to find Mavis Blue, priestess of the rivers and seas, peering out my window into the enchanted temperate weather of the priestesses' island, Mt. Elant. Her white—almost iridescent—hair hangs long and plaited down her back. She's one of Satu's ten holy priestesses, and they all stand with the same unnerving grace and air of superiority, distantly lording over the weaker creatures of Demeria. How could they not with their eyes and ears everywhere, spies and informants planted within our coven, within wolf packs, and even in the human cities of the southern isles.

With a deep inhale of fresh air, she says, "There's power brewing. Stirring in the air and building like a storm soon to be unleashed."

I don't doubt her ability to sense such things. Each priestess holds divine powers tied to an element of our world that no one, not even I after living with them, can fully guess at.

The batling detaches and flutters past her, heading east toward the darkening coast. It's the only window in the room, arched and encased in worn stone like the rest of the castle walls. The priestesses had lent me this room almost two years ago when they first brought me here. A single view pointed toward the mainland of Demeria, where beyond the visible peaks of the Simik Range lies my coven on the far coast of the Demerian Sea.

I always wondered if this view was meant as a reminder. To keep me focused and ever cast toward a future that seems to be closing in, each day closer to either asphyxiation or freedom. What I do know is that everything they do is precisely calculated, so if my solitary view keeps my eyes on the distant prize, then it is as they've meant it to be.

"It won't be long now, Prince."

The use of my title startles me; an honorific dredged up from under years of repressed memories. A part of me erased, shoved into remote corners inside me and bolted down. To hear it exhumed and reanimated, slipping past her lips as if she had held the key to its livelihood all along, unsteadies me.

My breaths shudder and hands quake, but I can't manage any voluntary movement. I'm bound to this bed by the weight of that one word.

She turns to me, cornflower blue eyes round and deceptively innocent. "It is almost time for you to rise from ashes and claim your throne." Her gaze drifts, focusing beyond me as she says with breathless drama, "The coven's beloved prince, thought to have been murdered by his uncle the king, returns with the magic of the holy priestesses and the might of a thousand wolves—his reapers coming to collect their due."

A thousand wolves is a gross exaggeration, it's a couple hundred, at best, but the image she renders forces me to sit up and brace myself on my hands, arms flexed, shoulders squared. My instincts battle between shielding the truth and embracing my emergence after two years of hiding.

I knew the time was approaching, with the recent attacks on alpha wolves escalating and the island hideout we've used to shelter exiled wolves almost to capacity. They are my readied army, simmering with rage over how the vampyre king conspired and commanded a group of rogue wolves to murder their alphas and cast out those they deemed too weak or contentious—too hard to control—to stay in their pack.

Mavis snaps out of her reverie and side-eyes me as she retreats toward my bedroom door. "The batling gave you extra blood."

"Do I have a mission tonight?"