1. Simone

“Ican do this.” I let loose a breath to try to ease the tension lining my body. It does nothing so I take another. “I can do this.”

But still it feels like I can’t breathe.

The sweltering night closes in, thick with the sickly-sweet stench of magnolias and swampwater. I pace the confines of my stifling chambers draped in the pack”s ancestral mating gown, an itchy confection of crushed velvet and moth-eaten lace.

My skin prickles, aware of the imminent blood moon straining against the horizon and the ravenous eyes of the pack awaiting my claiming. Pawing at my constricting bodice, I gasp for breath, memories swirling like muddy swamp water through my mind.

Mama”s anguished cries, begging the pack to accept her strange, violet-eyed pup. The sting of pebbles hurled by jeering playmates. Whispers drifting behind shuttered windows of cursed blood and bad omens.

A perpetual outsider, until tonight.

Chanting swells beyond the cracked pane, ancient words imbued with power and threat.

They”re coming.

Panic flutters against my ribs like a caged bird.

A gnarled fist pounds at the door before it bursts open, revealing the wizened face of Elder Bannon, eyes obscured behind his ceremonial hood. ”It”s time, girl. Everyone”s waiting.”

I lift my chin and step across the threshold into the soupy night.

There is no choice.

It’s simply my time.

Fairy lights flicker through the trees, illuminating a twisting path to the glade and the stone altar at its heart. My bare feet find the trail, soft loam giving way to jagged rock that bites my flesh. Pain is an old friend.

“We’re here,” the Elder growls at me, shoving me forward.

The ceremonial grounds are where my mother and my mother’s mother were claimed, like so many before them. As the hungry pack circles the primeval altar, their naked forms undulate under the blood moon”s enthralling glow, casting sinister shadows across the ancient stone. The visceral chorus of yips and growls rises to a feverish crescendo, entwining with the seductive rhythm of the ceremonial drums.

Strong hands, adorned with onyx claws and silver signet rings, lift my trembling body onto the obsidian slab, still warm from the day”s unforgiving sun. Jessup, my fated mate, looms over me, his chiseled visage obscured by a hood. His smile is a slash of alabaster in the darkness, canines glinting with primordial hunger.

”Mine.” The word escapes his lips in a rumbling growl, heavy with dark promise.

With a fluid movement, he casts back his cowl, revealing eyes of molten amber, two predatory orbs searing into my very soul. His skin is a canvas of arcane sigils and twisting runes, painted in the ashes of gods long forgotten. Musky scent mingling with the heady perfume of incense and night-blooming jasmine.

The drums surge to a frantic tempo, whipping the pack into a lustful frenzy as they bay their encouragement. I surrender myself to the maelstrom of sensation, to the ecstasy of the claiming.

It is finally my time.

Jessup pulls me to my knees before the ancient altar, its surface gleaming darkly in the firelight. With shaking hands, I unlace my gown, baring myself to the night and the bestial gaze of the pack. The ritual words rasp in my ears, ancient, guttural, laced with forbidden power.

“Now it is time to join the mates!” the Elder announces as Jessup steps up to my side.

He draws the ceremonial blade across my palm, splitting skin and fate. My blood smokes as it hits the altar, sizzling like damnation. The chanting rises to screams. He seizes my hair, forcing his mouth to mine in a savage kiss that floods me with coppery heat.

Power, dark and ecstatic, rips through my body.

But something is wrong.

Very wrong.

I pull back.

“Wait,” I mumble, but Jessup reaches for me again. No one is listening, and that suffocating feeling wraps around my throat again. “Wait-”

Something shatters inside me, a dam bursting. Agony explodes behind my eyes as violet flames erupt from the ancient altar. Ravenous tendrils of witchfire lash the glade, searing fur and flesh. Screams pierce the night. Jessup staggers back, clutching his ravaged face.

I convulse on the altar, my body no longer my own as it”s remade in blood and shadow and flame. The flames consume me, shredding my mortal flesh, leaving something new and terrible in its wake.

Tears of blood rolling down my cheeks.

I turn to face the pack, my violet eyes blazing. They fall back, horror and revulsion twisting their faces.

”Cursed abomination!”

“The witchblood taints her!”

”Slay the demon spawn before it dooms us all!”

Suddenly everyone I ever knew and loved is looking at me like I’m this deplorable monster thing, but all I know at the moment is searing pain, and confusion. I look to my mate to be, but already his fangs are bared.

”Cursed witch!” Jessup spits, eyes flashing with betrayal and loathing as he wipes the blood from his blistered face. ”I should have known your tainted bloodline would rear its ugly head.”

He backhands me away from him.

I stumble back, mind reeling, heart shattering into jagged shards. How can this be happening? An hour ago I was to be a bride, minutes ago I was reborn in flames and fury. Now I”m... what? A monster? An abomination?

The pack circles me, closing in with fangs bared and claws unsheathed. Their faces, once so familiar and dear, are twisted masks of revulsion. ”We must purge the hexeblood before she brings ruin upon us all!” the elders cry, voices rising in a frenzied cacophony. ”Slay the demon!”

I whirl to face Jessup, desperate, pleading. ”My love, please! I”m still me, I”m still your Simone!”

But his eyes are cold flint, his mouth a cruel slash. ”I have no love for witchbreed.” He turns to the pack. ”Kill her. Kill her now before her curse spreads!”

They lunge for me, a mass of tooth and claw and murderous rage. Choking on a sob, I flee into the bayou, bare feet flying over treacherous roots. I’m not even sure how I outrun them, but my body is moving out of necessity and I don’t realize what I’m doing until I’m already gasping and alone. Grasping thorns tear at my skin, branches claw my face, but I feel nothing but the pain shredding my heart.

Breathless, terrified, I crash through the underbrush, swamp water splashing my bare legs, mud sucking at my feet, vines whipping my face.

Behind me, the baying of the pack echoes, hungry for my blood. The elders” damning decree rings in my ears - Hexeblood. Abomination. Cursed.

My lungs are bursting, muscles screaming as I tear through the night. How could a kiss, a claiming, go so wrong? The violet inferno that ripped through me felt like hellfire and revelation all at once. Power thrums through my veins, wild and exhilarating and utterly alien. The slumbering swamp comes alive in its wake, savage and fae, bent to my will.

But none of it matters now. All that matters is escape, survival. I have to run, disappear. I have to-My foot catches on a cypress knee and I go sprawling in the fetid water, gasping and spluttering.

The pack”s howls are closer now, I can almost feel their hot breath on my neck.

Rolling over with a sob, I scramble backwards on hands and knees. I”m done for. This is how I die. Hexeblood or not, I”m no match for a bloodthirsty pack of shifters.

A dark shape comes flying out of the underbrush in a spray of swamp water. A wolf, huge and black as sin. My scream dies in my throat as it lands in front of me.

I raise my hands in a futile attempt to shield myself from the wolf”s lunge, knowing it”s hopeless. Suddenly, an unearthly violet light erupts from my palms, engulfing my arms in searing flames.

“No!” I cry, wanting to pull myself away from it. The agony is blinding, my flesh bubbling and charring before my eyes. They dance over my skin like a living cloak, cocooning me in their eerie radiance.

Yelping in pain and fear, the massive wolf skitters back from the writhing violet flames engulfing my arms. Its ears flatten against its skull as it cowers, tail tucked between its legs. With a final whimper, the beast turns tail and bolts, crashing through the underbrush until the sounds of its panicked flight fade into the night.

My hands and arms continue to sizzle from the unnatural blaze, I lurch to the swamp”s edge and plunge my arms into the inky water. The flames hiss and spit as they hit the surface, throwing up coils of steam that curl around me like ghostly fingers. Gradually, the fire sputters out, leaving my skin raw and tender but miraculously unburned.

I sink to my knees in the muck, trembling uncontrollably as I stare at my reflection in the dark water. Wide, haunted violet eyes stare back at me from a face pale with shock and streaked with muddy tears. As the adrenaline fades, a bone-deep exhaustion rolls over me and I slump forward, barely catching myself on shaking arms.

Hot tears stream down my face, carving trails through the grime. How could everything have gone so wrong? One minute I was the cherished daughter of the pack, the next a hunted fugitive. Betrayed by my own blood, my own magic. This ceremony that should have been a blessing is now a death sentence.

Despair threatens to swallow me whole.

My old life lies shattered behind me. The elders” decree rings in my ears, an ominous portent of the dark and unknown path stretching before me.

Exhaustion weighs down my limbs as I drag myself through the muck to the shelter of a gnarled cypress. The damp, fetid air clings to my skin. I shiver, only partly from the chill.

Leaning against the rough bark, I squeeze my eyes shut, but there is no escaping the flickering visions - blood staining still waters, shadows twisting into impossible shapes, beckoning male figures cloaked in darkness.

I force down the rising tide of panic. I can”t go back. There is nothing for me in Babylon but the pyre and flame.

The future yawns before me, a terrifying void. Where can I go? What place is there in this world for a monster like me? The weight of my ignorance, of all the secrets kept from me, crashes down. Hopelessness threatens to smother me.

No. I will not succumb. If I am to burn, let it be on my own terms. Lifting my chin, I haul myself up, brace my shoulders, and take one shaky step into the unknown.

Then another.

And another. Until the swamp swallows me and it all fades into a memory.

I am reborn in this fetid place, baptized in muck and fear-sweat. What I am, I know not.

But I will meet my fate as mistress of myself for the first time.

The thought is... exhilarating.

Let them come.

I am done running.