Chapter 5 Moonlight and Monsters (Mira POV)

Sleep was an impossibility.

I lay in my narrow dorm bed, staring at the ceiling while Zara's soft breathing filled the darkness. My mind replayed the day's revelations on an endless loop: the Nightbloods were vampires, everyone knew it, Silvercrest was some kind of supernatural integration experiment, and I'd been sent here completely unprepared for the reality I'd walked into.

The blessed silver bracelet stayed around my wrist. What else had my mother lied about?

At 2:47 AM, I gave up on sleep entirely. I slipped out of bed, pulled on jeans and a hoodie, and crept from the room with practiced silence. Years of hunter training had taught me how to move without waking anyone.

The dormitory halls were deserted, illuminated only by emergency exit signs that cast everything in an eerie red glow. I made my way downstairs and out the side entrance, into the October night.

The air bit at my exposed skin, sharp with the promise of an early winter. I pulled my hood up and started walking with no destination in mind, just a desperate need to move, to think, to process everything without Zara's concerned eyes tracking my every move.

My feet carried me toward Moonstone Forest, the woods that bordered campus on three sides. Victoria's briefing had warned me away from the forest. "Dangerous terrain," she'd said. "Unstable ground, wild animals, students have gotten lost."

Now I wondered what she'd really meant. What supernatural threats lurked between those trees?

The thought should have scared me. Instead, it pulled me forward.

The tree line loomed ahead, ancient pines and oaks forming a wall of shadow. The campus lights didn't penetrate far into the woods, just enough to illuminate the first few yards before darkness swallowed everything whole.

I stepped across the threshold.

The forest swallowed sound differently than I expected. 

I walked deeper, following a narrow trail that wound between massive tree trunks. Moonlight filtered through gaps in the canopy, creating pools of silver light that made the shadows seem darker by contrast.

A branch snapped somewhere to my left.

I froze, every hunter instinct screaming alert. My hand went automatically to my waist where I'd normally carry a silver knife. Nothing there. Victoria had forbidden weapons during my "observation phase."

Another sound, wet and tearing, like fabric ripping.

My breath came faster. I should turn back. This was exactly the kind of reckless behavior that got hunters killed. But my feet moved forward instead, drawn by morbid curiosity and something else I couldn't name.

I rounded a massive oak and stopped dead.

Twenty feet away, crouched over the carcass of a deer, was something that made every logical thought flee my mind.

It was roughly human-shaped but wrong in ways that defied easy description. Taller than any person, with limbs too long and muscles that bulged beneath skin covered in dark hair. Clawed hands—actual claws, curved and wickedly sharp—gripped the deer's broken body. But it was the head that transfixed me with horror and fascination: wolf-like but larger, with intelligent amber eyes that gleamed in the moonlight.

Those eyes fixed on me.

Time crystallized into a single moment of mutual recognition. Predator acknowledging predator.

The creature's lips pulled back, revealing teeth designed for tearing flesh. Blood matted the fur around its muzzle—the deer's blood, fresh and steaming in the cold air.

My body made the decision before my brain caught up. I took one step backward.

"Don't run."

The voice was human, male, rough with an edge of warning. The creature's mouth hadn't moved, but the words had definitely come from it.

I stopped. Every survival instinct screamed at me to flee, but something deeper held me in place. Maybe it was the year of training with Aleksander, the endless drilling that panic equals death. Maybe it was exhaustion with being afraid.

Or maybe it was the realization that I was tired of running from what I was.

The creature straightened to its full height—easily seven feet tall. As I watched, frozen between terror and awe, it began to change. Bones cracked and reformed with sounds that made my stomach turn. Fur receded into skin. Claws retracted. The wolf head reshaped itself into human features.

Thirty seconds later, a very naked nineteen-year-old guy stood where the monster had been.

I recognized him from the dining hall; Jax Sterling. Senior. Captain of the lacrosse team. The kind of effortlessly charismatic person who collected friends like other people collected Instagram followers.

Also, apparently, a werewolf who hunted deer in the forest at night.

He made no move to cover himself, completely unselfconscious about his nudity. His body was all lean muscle and old scars—claw marks across his ribs, what looked like a bullet wound in his left shoulder. His amber eyes remained wolf-bright, studying me with an intensity that made me want to squirm.

"You should be more careful," he said conversationally, as if we'd bumped into each other at the library instead of me discovering him mid-kill. "Wandering the forest alone at night. Dangerous things in these woods."

My voice came out steadier than I expected. "I'm beginning to realize that."

He tilted his head, and the gesture was pure wolf—curious, calculating. "You're not screaming. Most humans would be screaming by now."

"I'm not most humans."

"No." His nostrils flared slightly, scenting the air. "You're definitely not. Question is... what are you?"

The million-dollar question. The one I'd been asking myself since I arrived at this impossible school.

"A student," I said. "Just like you."

Jax laughed. "We both know that's a lie. I can smell deception, did you know that? And right now, you are full of it."

He started walking toward me. Not threatening, exactly, but deliberate. I held my ground even as my pulse hammered.

He stopped three feet away—close enough that I could see the gold flecks in his amber eyes, smell the coppery tang of blood and something wild, like pine and autumn leaves.

"You smell wrong," he said quietly. "Not quite human. Not quite... anything I recognize. What are you hiding under that pretty bracelet?"

His gaze fixed on my wrist. The blessed silver gleamed in the moonlight.

I resisted the urge to touch it. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Another lie." He circled me slowly, and I forced myself not to track his movement. Showing weakness to a predator was suicidal. "I've been watching you since you arrived. The way the vampires react to you. Cain can barely look away, and Lyra looks like she wants to rip your throat out."

My stomach clenched at Cain's name. I kept my expression neutral. "Maybe I'm just that charming."

"Maybe." He completed his circle, facing me again. "Or maybe you're something special. Something dangerous."

Was that what I was? The weapon my mother had forged, designed to kill the very creatures I was now surrounded by?

"My brother was dangerous too," Jax said suddenly, his voice rough. "Not because he wanted to be. Because he was born different. Born wrong, according to some people."

"What happened to him?"

"Two years ago, group of campers wandered into our territory during a full moon. My brother Tyler was seventeen, barely in control of his wolf. But when he heard them screaming—there was a grizzly, defensive about her cubs—he ran toward the danger instead of away from it."

Jax's hands clenched into fists. "He saved six people that night. Killed the bear, got the campers to safety. And when the hunters arrived, they didn't see a hero. They saw a monster covered in blood, standing over human bodies. They shot him with silver bullets while he was still in wolf form, unable to speak, unable to explain."

The bitterness in his voice was palpable, corrosive. "He died protecting humans. And they murdered him for it."

I thought of Victoria, of the absolutism in her worldview. Vampires were evil. Werewolves were monsters. There were no shades of gray in her war, no room for nuance or individual choice.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly. And I meant it.

Jax studied me with those too-bright eyes. "You're a hunter, aren't you? You've been trained to kill things like me."

My breath caught. "How did you..."

"I told you. I've been watching." He stepped closer, and this time there was threat in the movement. "So here's my question, Mira Ashford. Are you here to hurt my pack? Because if you are, I'll kill you right now. Consequences be damned."

The honesty was startling. No games, no manipulation—just a direct threat delivered with absolute sincerity.

I met his gaze and made my own choice for honesty. "I don't know what I'm here to do anymore. A week ago, I knew exactly who I was. Now..." I gestured helplessly at the forest, at him, at everything. "Now I don't know anything."

He searched my face for a long moment. Whatever he saw there must have satisfied him because he nodded slowly. "Fair enough. But let me give you some advice, hunter girl. Whatever you're hiding, it's going to come out. Secrets have a way of bleeding through in places like this. And when yours does, you better hope you're on the right side."

Without another word, he turned and walked back toward the deer carcass. I watched him kneel beside it, and within moments the shift began again—human folding into wolf, civilization giving way to nature.

The werewolf picked up the deer in its jaws and loped into the forest, disappearing between the trees like smoke.

I stood there for several minutes, heart pounding, trying to process what had just happened. A werewolf. I'd just had a conversation with an actual werewolf who'd casually threatened to kill me.

Victoria's voice echoed in my head: "They're monsters, Mira. All of them. Never forget that."

But Jax hadn't seemed like a monster. Dangerous, yes. Capable of violence, absolutely. But also grief-stricken over a brother who'd died being a hero. Also someone who valued honesty and gave warnings instead of simply attacking.

Nothing about this place matched what I'd been taught.

The blessed silver bracelet suddenly felt unbearably heavy. All my life, it had been my protection, my anchor. Victoria had clasped it around my wrist when I was six years old and told me to never remove it. "It will keep you safe," she'd said. "It will hide you from the monsters."

But what if it was hiding me from myself?

Before I could talk myself out of it, I reached for the clasp. My fingers trembled as I worked the intricate mechanism—Victoria had it specially made, designed to be difficult to remove accidentally.

The clasp released with a soft click.

The moment the blessed silver separated from my skin, everything changed.

Heat exploded through my veins like liquid fire. I gasped, stumbling backward against a tree as my entire body ignited from within. I looked down at my arms and bit back a scream.

My veins glowed.

Silver light pulsed beneath my skin, illuminating the network of blood vessels like a grotesque roadmap. It was beautiful and horrifying—my arms, my hands, even visible through my jeans on my legs. I was lit from within, a living constellation of silver fire.

The heat was intense but not painful. It felt like coming home to something I'd always been but never acknowledged. Like a limb that had been asleep my entire life suddenly waking up with pins and needles.

This was what I really was. What the bracelet had been suppressing.

I raised my hands, watching the silver fire pulse in time with my heartbeat. What would happen if I touched something? If I touched someone?

"Beautiful and terrifying," a voice said from the darkness. "Much like you."

I spun around, heart leaping into my throat.

Cain emerged from the shadows between the trees. He moved with that impossible vampire grace, silent as death. His dark eyes reflected the silver light emanating from my skin, making them look almost metallic.

"How long have you been there?" My voice came out breathless.

"Long enough." He stopped at the edge of the clearing, maintaining careful distance. "I followed you from campus. I was going to intervene with the wolf, but you seemed to be handling it."

"You were spying on me?"

"What are you?" he whispered.

"I don't know." The admission cost me, but it was the truth. "My mother never told me. She just gave me this bracelet and said it would keep me safe."

"Safe." He laughed, bitter and short. "Or controlled?"

The word struck deep. Controlled. Was that what Victoria had been doing all along? Not protecting me, but controlling what I could become?

Cain took a step closer, then another. I should have warned him away, told him to keep his distance, but my voice seemed to have abandoned me. The silver fire blazed brighter with each step he took, as if my very blood was reaching for him.

He stopped just outside of touching distance. This close, I could see the conflict playing across his face, desire warring with caution, fascination fighting fear.

"I should stay away from you," he said quietly. "Everything in me says you're dangerous."

"I'm not Cain."

"You should go back to your dorm, you have a class in a few hours." He said and then he was gone.