The acrid smell of scorched earth clung to Lúcia's cloak as she stumbled past the last smoldering tree. The battle had ended hours ago, yet her ears still rang with the clash of steel and the howls that had torn through the night. She pressed a trembling hand to her side—not from any wound, for her kind healed too quickly—but from the weight of what she'd witnessed. Men she'd grown up with, wolves she'd once called monsters, all bleeding the same crimson onto the forest floor.

The forbidden woods stretched before her like a black wound in the earth. Every step felt like betrayal. Her father's voice echoed: *These lands belong to beasts, daughter. Step past the boundary stones, and you step into death.* But death had already come tonight, hadn't it? Death wore the faces of both wolves and vampires, and she'd watched them fall like wheat before a scythe.

Moonlight filtered through the canopy in silver shards, illuminating paths no Valemont foot had touched in three hundred years. Lúcia's boots sank into moss that felt strangely warm, alive. She should turn back. Should return to the cold marble halls where her people would be tallying their losses, sharpening their fangs for revenge. Instead, her feet carried her deeper, drawn by something she couldn't name. A pull in her chest like an invisible thread, tugging, tugging.

The scent hit her first—pine and wild earth, yes, but beneath it something warmer. Fur and fire and something indefinably male. She froze, every instinct screaming danger, but her body refused to flee. Through the trees, she saw him.

Dario stood in a clearing where the moonlight pooled like liquid mercury, his back to her. Even at rest, he held himself like a warrior—shoulders squared beneath a leather jerkin dark with what might have been blood. His dark hair fell to his shoulders, and when he tilted his head, she caught the glint of amber eyes reflecting the light. A wolf's eyes in a man's face.

"You shouldn't be here," he said without turning. His voice carried the rough edge of someone who'd spent the night screaming orders over battle-mad howls.

Lúcia's hand went to the silver dagger at her hip—a reflex that made her stomach turn. They'd all carried silver tonight. "Neither should you."

He turned then, slowly. The movement was too fluid for human, too controlled for beast. When their eyes met, something electric raced down her spine. His face was all sharp angles and old scars, but his mouth—God, his mouth looked like it had forgotten how to smile.

"You're Valemont's daughter." Not a question. He inhaled, and she realized he was scenting her. "I can smell the castle on you—cold stone and old blood."

"And you're the wolf king's whelp." The insult came automatically, but it felt hollow. The man before her was no whelp. He carried himself like someone who'd held dying friends in his arms, same as she had.

Dario stepped closer. Each footfall made no sound, yet she felt them in her bones. "Your people killed three of mine tonight."

"Yours took two of mine." The words tasted like ash. "Including my cousin Julian. He was seventeen."

Something shifted in those amber eyes. "My brother Marcus won't see another moonrise. He had a mate. A child."

They stood three paces apart, close enough for her to see the way his jaw clenched, the faint tremor in his hands that he controlled through sheer will. The air between them crackled like summer lightning.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

"I..." The truth lodged in her throat like a stone. She'd fled the battlefield, unable to bear another moment of the dying. But that wasn't the whole truth, was it? "I felt... called. Like something in these woods wanted me to come."

His eyes widened slightly. "The old valley. You feel it too."

"The what?"

But he was moving closer, close enough that she could see flecks of gold in his irises, could count the small scar that cut through his left eyebrow. When he reached toward her, she didn't flinch away. His fingers stopped an inch from her cheek.

"The elders speak of it," he said quietly. "A binding older than our hatred. They say the first wolf and first vampire were—"

"Lovers." The word escaped before she could stop it. Something ancient stirred in her chest, a recognition that made her sway. "I thought it was just stories. The kind nursemaids tell to frighten children."

"Stories have roots." His hand dropped, but he didn't step back. "My grandmother used to say the valley remembers what we forget. That sometimes, when the moon is full and the blood runs hot, the old magic wakes hungry."

The ground beneath their feet trembled—just slightly, like a giant shifting in its sleep. Lúcia's breath caught. "Did you—"

"Feel that? Yes." Dario's gaze swept the treeline. "It's stronger tonight. The battle... the blood..."

Another tremor, stronger this time. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled—not the battle-cry of earlier, but something mournful and old. Lúcia's skin prickled. She could feel her fangs threatening to extend, not from hunger but from some deeper instinct.

"We should go," she said, but made no move to leave. "Both our clans... they'll be hunting by now."

"Hunting each other." His voice carried a weariness that made her chest ache. "Hunting us, if they knew."

The thought should have terrified her. Instead, it sent heat pooling low in her belly. When had she started leaning toward him? When had his hand found hers in the darkness between their bodies?

"Tomorrow night," he said suddenly. "There's a place where the old river bends. Neutral ground. No clan has claimed it in centuries."

"The Moonfall Clearing." She knew it from maps, a place so steeped in legend even her father's soldiers avoided it. "Dario, if anyone saw us—"

"Then we'll be careful." His thumb traced across her knuckles, a touch that shouldn't have burned but did. "I have to see you again. Have to understand why the thought of you walking away feels like losing something I didn't know I'd been missing."

The confession hung between them like a bridge across a chasm. Lúcia's heart hammered against her ribs—not the slow, measured beat of the undead, but something wilder. More alive.

"How?" she whispered. "My father's guards... your pack..."

"Leave that to me." He lifted her hand to his lips—not a kiss, just the brush of his mouth across her knuckles that made her knees weak. "Same time tomorrow. Come alone, or don't come at all."

Another tremor rippled through the earth, stronger now. The trees around them began to sway though no wind touched their leaves. Somewhere below, something ancient shifted and stretched, and Lúcia could swear she heard a sound like chains snapping one by one.

"I have to go," she said, but didn't release his hand. "If they find me missing—"

"Then go." But his fingers tightened. "But remember this moment, Lúcia Valemont. When the killing starts again—and it will—remember that for one breath, one heartbeat, we chose something else."

She pulled away then, the absence of his touch like a physical wound. As she backed toward the trees, she saw him lift his face to the moon, and for just an instant, his shadow on the forest floor was wrong—too large, too terrible, with wings that shouldn't exist.

Then she was running, her feet finding paths her mind didn't know, the invisible thread in her chest stretching thinner with each step but never breaking. Behind her, she heard him call once—a sound that was part howl, part something achingly human.

The trees blurred past. She burst from the forest edge into familiar territory, nearly colliding with her father's night patrol. Their silver spears glinted in the moonlight as they surrounded her, questions dying on their lips at the sight of her face.

"My lady," the captain began, "your father has been—"

"Take me home." The words came steady, though her pulse still raced. As they escorted her toward the castle's black spires, she felt the thread pull taut, a connection that crossed battle lines and centuries of hate.

Tomorrow night. Moonfall Clearing.

She pressed her hand to her chest where the invisible thread pulled toward the forbidden woods, toward amber eyes and a promise made in the space between heartbeats. Somewhere beneath the valley, something old and hungry smiled in its chains.

The war wasn't over. But for the first time in three hundred years, it might have a different ending.

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