Bloodmoon – Running With The Wolves

It was the day of the Bloodmoon.

Twenty days had felt like twenty minutes at first — a blur of panic and planning and pretending I wasn’t counting down every hour. Then it dragged like twenty years, every sunrise a reminder that the clock was still ticking. And now that it was here? Time was doing both at once. Too fast. Too slow. Like the world couldn’t decide whether to sprint or stall.

Eirwen had breezed through the ingredient hunt like it was nothing — one glance at the convoluted recipe and she’d shrugged, “child’s play.” Sometimes it pays to be related to a witch. Mage. Whatever.

But once she had everything… the days collapsed. The night before hit me hardest — queasy, restless, panicked enough that Dad nudged me during movie night because my wolf was trying to surface just from thinking too hard.

Sloane had stayed over at my place. We woke up together, both tense AF.

One wrong move now and… no. I couldn’t even finish that thought. But I did anyway.

If this went sideways, she wouldn’t just be stuck as a wolf — she’d be trapped in something she never asked for, something she might never forgive me for. And if it didn’t go sideways… if the cure worked… She’d be free. A normie again. Able to walk away.

And I had no idea if she would.

We were great together — not perfect, we bickered and argued — but it felt like we fit. Like we belonged. And yet, there was a version of the future where I lost her. And the kid — God — the kid would grow up in the fallout. Every path felt like heartbreak waiting to happen.

Sloane groaned at her phone. When I looked over, she handed it to me.

Another barrage of texts from her mother and Blair — judgments, demands, guilt trips. The usual. She looked worn down, pulled in every direction, and it hit me how precarious all of this really was. When she was here with me, it felt steady. But from the outside? From the life she came from? She was trading a bright, normal future for this poor backwoods one that would never change.

Her mother’s latest message: We need to talk! We can come to Vincent’s home if that’s easier for you both.

Sloane’s reply was instant. Her “NO” was so fast it practically left a scorch mark on her screen.

Which is how we ended up at her parents’ house again. She said they would never let up, and considering what lay ahead, this was ripping off the Band-Aid. The last thing I wanted to risk was the Stepford Wife from hell showing up with Prince Valium at Werewolf HDQ. Oh jeeze, no

The morning itself had been normal enough — a wolf‑sized breakfast with my family, Sloane wedged in the middle like she’d always belonged there. Eirwen came over to help Mom brew the concoction. All that was left was the Moonflower hunt — but we couldn’t pick it too early or it would wilt before midnight.

Somehow, the day felt strange. On one hand it flew by; on the other it dragged like molasses. Part of me wanted it over with. The other part feared that once it was, she’d realize she could do better than me and… well… leave.

And then came the sit‑down.

The Hartwell Hunger Games

The Sequel

Sloane’s parents greeted us with that brittle politeness that always made my wolf bristle. And of course — because fate hates me — Blair and Evan were already there. Blair looked surprised in that performative way she does, like she’d been caught mid‑halo adjustment. Evan gave me a polite nod, the kind that said he’d already decided who I was and nothing I did would change it.

We barely sat down before the dog — the monster cotton ball — waddled in like a tiny, self‑important warlord.

He saw me. Growled. Hackles up. Teeth out.

Paul muttered something about him “being protective,” which was code for we let him act like this because we think it’s cute.

Sloane scooped him up, settling him in her lap, turning him away from me every time he tried to twist around. She pet him gently, calmly speaking to him, kept murmuring, “Stop. No. Stop it. That is Vince‑y and Vince‑y is very nice, yes, he’s a good boy, can you be a good boy too,” like she was trying to negotiate with a furry little terrorist.

He didn’t stop.

And it wasn’t until Eleanor — with Paul, Blair, and Evan trailing behind her — left the room to “fetch the coffee, cake, and accoutrements,” which even the idiot part of my brain understood meant All of you, with me, to strategize Project ‘Erase Vincent from Sloane’s Life’, that Pip finally dropped the act.

He whipped around and bit Sloane. Not a nip — a bite. Sharp enough to draw actual blood, a bright bead welling on her finger.

She gasped — a sharp, startled cry — and jerked her hand back. “OW! Pip! What the hell!”

Now my inner wolf woke up hard. That feral instinct to protect family, especially your mate, was not a joke. Pip was lucky I was still trying so hard to keep the peace, for Sloane, or I’d be burping up white fur by now.

Before I could react, Pip launched himself off her lap and came straight for me, tiny jaws snapping like he thought he was auditioning for Cujo: Pocket Edition.

His teeth caught the side of my calf — barely a scratch, but enough to make my wolf surge up like a tidal wave. Another wolf thing that is the way it is: nobody attacks an Alpha‑line member and walks away from it unscathed.

Finally, my wolf snarled inside me, smug as hell. Permission to remove the rodent?

And that was it.

My wolf snapped.

I slid off the couch and ducked under the table after him, instincts firing before my brain could catch up. My vision sharpened. My bones shifted. Claws slid out. Not a full shift — just enough to make the dog rethink his life choices.

Then I growled.

Not a warning. Not a threat.

A floor‑deep, chest‑rattling, Alpha‑bred growl that vibrated through the table legs and into the hardwood.

Pip froze.

Every hair on his tiny body stood straight up. His ears flattened. His tail tucked so hard it nearly disappeared.

Then he made a sound I didn’t know dogs could make — a high‑pitched, panicked “REEEP!” — the kind of noise that says I have seen the face of God and it is angry.

Sloane slapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide, horrified… and then she snorted. Actually snorted. A strangled, half‑laugh, half‑oh‑my‑God‑Vince‑stop sound.

“Vince,” she hissed, whisper‑laughing, trying so hard to sound serious but failing, “you can’t just— you can’t— oh my God — YOU HAVE TO change back. NOW.”

I did so immediately, raising back up, but Pip was already gone.

He YEETED himself out of the room so fast he skidded sideways, claws scrambling for traction, nearly losing one of his tiny stumpy legs in the process. A blur of white fluff and terror.

Silence.

Then, from the hallway, a faint, traumatized whimper. Yeah, run to your mommy crying, you lil shit.

Good, my wolf said, smug and satisfied. Let the tiny usurper know his place.

Sloane wiped tears from her eyes — laughing now, fully, helplessly. “Oh my God. You are unbelievable.”

I slid onto the couch next to her, inspecting her wound which she had already dried with a napkin, then was fumbling a Band‑Aid from her purse, so I helped her, kissed her injury, and put the Band‑Aid on.

Sloane watched me, looking at my face. Finally our eyes met. She was not scared. Not horrified. She was smiling. Just a little. Just enough.

Then she reached over, her hand hooking around my neck, pulled me in, and kissed me. Man, I needed that. It felt like medicine.

We sat up just as Eleanor swept back in with coffee and cake, Blair and Evan trailing behind her like a judgmental procession.

Immediately, Eleanor shot me a nasty glare and cleared her throat, handing a napkin to me, gesturing at my lips. Sloane giggled, took the napkin, and wiped her lipstick off my mouth. Oops. I felt busted, but also defensive. I mean, I was her boyfriend, she was pregnant by me, obviously we kissed — and more. That woman had two kids so she had to be familiar with the whole concept. Looking at Paul, scurrying about like a beaten terrier though… who knows.

We both got distracted by coffee and cake and more questions, but she held my hand under the table until Blair noticed, nudged their mom, and Eleanor cleared her throat in that pointed way she does. Poor innocent naive Paul mistook it for a crumb down the wrong pipe and patted her back, which only agitated her more. I tried to pull my hand away to keep the peace, but Sloane grabbed it back and set both our hands in her lap, glaring at her mom and Blair, who rolled her eyes practically out loud. Now that was a line drawn in the sand if I ever seen one.

The rest was questioning, interrogation about the kid. Where would it live, with whom, what would happen to it when Sloane worked, who would cover the bills, which school would it attend, blah blah blah. Sloane wasn’t even showing yet unless you saw her without clothes and knew how she looked before, and still it could have been a gigantic dinner to blame.

On the upside, Pip didn’t bother me again. He kept his furry butt at the edge of the room, and each time I shifted he jumped up and ran out, eventually peeking back in. When he deemed it safe, he curled up close to Eleanor’s chair but farthest away from me.

Yeah. That’s right. There’s only one Alpha in this room, and it sure as hell isn’t that little white pelted toad.

As we stood to clear the table, Evan’s phone buzzed on the coffee table — face‑up for once, screen lighting the room in a sharp white flash. He never left it like that. Ever.

It was one of those situational things. The others had left the room carrying dishes and just us were left.

A name popped up. Ben. But unless our Mr. Perfect here was secretly playing for the same team with a ladyboy, the preview I saw — which included a very naked, very not‑Ben body — made it pretty damn clear he wasn’t texting a coworker, unless he was a medical doctor doing after-hour tele‑consults, the Langford branch of the Hartwell Stepford illusion had some skeletons buried.

Before I could even blink, Evan lunged for it, snatching the phone off the table like it was a live grenade. Then he hit me with that testosterone‑soaked “bro‑code” glare guys like him swear is intimidating.

I didn’t say anything. Didn’t have to. He knew I’d seen enough to know it wasn’t good.

Sloane came back into the room just then, slipping her arm through mine. Evan plastered on a smile so fake it should’ve cracked his teeth. Blair watched him, brow pinched, like she’d caught the tail end of something she wasn’t supposed to see.

The whole room shifted — just a fraction, just enough. A hairline fracture in the Hartwell perfection.

I didn’t know what it meant yet. But wolves know when something’s rotting under the floorboards.

Into the Violet Hour

By the time we headed out, the sun was already low, the sky bruising into that deep violet that only ever happened over Wolf Hill. The place had a presence — old, heavy, alive. The kind of land that watched you back.

My whole family went.

Dad led the way, map and info sheets tucked under his arm. We all carried lanterns. Mom had the insulated case for the flower. Grandpa Mike and Esmee walked ahead, already arguing about soil composition and “selenium pockets” like two academics who hated each other’s methods.

They’d found the Moonflower before — a handful of times, for recently bitten people who’d needed the cure. They knew the terrain, the patterns, the subtle shifts in the earth that meant the right microclimate was close.

Wolf Hill wasn’t just a hill. It was a ridge — a spine of ancient stone rising above Lake Lunvik, where the mist drifted upward and settled into the moss beds. The air always felt different up here — colder, sharper, charged with something that wasn’t quite magic but wasn’t normal either.

Sloane stuck close beside me, her hand brushing mine. “This place feels… intense.”

“It is,” I said. “Howling Point is the oldest ground in the Mill.”

“Comforting. Cute name too. Wonder how it got it. Don’t answer — rhetorical.”

We split into groups.

Dad and Mom took the northern slope. Grandpa and Esmee took the crest. Sloane and I took the lower path, where the lake mist reached the roots of the old cedars.

The light faded fast. Shadows stretched long. The Bloodmoon began to rise — faint red bleeding into the horizon.

Sloane shivered. “It’s getting colder.”

“Wolf Hill does that,” I said. “The lake drops the temperature fast after sunset.”

She shot me a look. “Vince. You promised no weirdness.”

“I said I wouldn’t be weird. The hill didn’t sign anything. Everything’s weird here after dark.”

She huffed, but her smile was small and real.

We searched.

Every moss bed. Every hollow. Every patch of disturbed earth.

The Moonflower only grew where the soil was right — high in selenium and iron, enriched by centuries of wolf history, and dampened by the lake’s night‑time mist.

Even on Wolf Hill, it was rare.

At 9:30 PM, Dad radioed in. “Nothing yet.”

At 10:05 PM, Grandpa grumbled, “Found a false bloom. Damn thing tricked me again. Zilch otherwise. Fuck!”

At 10:40 PM, Esmee snapped, “Are we sure those damn flowers didn’t go extinct since last time, Michael? It’s been decades!”

We heard Grandpa’s offended sputtering before she hung up.

Sloane whispered, “Is that possible?”

“No,” I said. “Those flowers were here long before humans. They’ll outlast us all.”

We kept going.

The forest grew darker. The Bloodmoon climbed higher. The air thickened with that strange, electric stillness that only came once a year.

Then — at 11:12 PM — Sloane stopped.

“Vince,” she whispered. “Look. Is that it? It looks like the photo you showed me.”

I followed her gaze.

There — nestled between two gnarled cedar roots, half‑hidden under a curtain of moss — was a faint shimmer. Not bright. Not obvious. Just a soft, trembling glow, like moonlight caught in a heartbeat.

My chest tightened.

We approached slowly.

The glow strengthened.

A single bloom unfurled as we neared — pale petals edged in silver, pulsing gently with the rising Bloodmoon. Not magical. Not supernatural. Just a rare alpine flower reacting to the exact wavelength of moonlight it had evolved to depend on.

“Yeah,” I said softly. “It is.”

Sloane’s breath hitched. “It’s beautiful.” She knelt beside it, careful, reverent. “So… how do we pick it?”

“Very carefully,” I said.

I slid my hands under the stem, digging into the earth, feeling for the roots just as Dad had taught me. The flower warmed against my palms — not magic, just the delicate heat of a living thing responding to touch.

Sloane watched, wide‑eyed. “Vince… it’s glowing brighter.”

“It’s reacting to me,” I said. “It can feel the wolf within me.”

“That’s… creepy.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But also kind of amazing. I’ve never seen one of these in person either.”

I lifted it gently, cradling it like something alive and fragile — because it was.

Sloane exhaled shakily. “We did it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We did.”

I radioed the others. “Found it. Howling Point. Heading back.”

Grandpa whooped loud enough to echo off the ridge. Mom cheered. Esmee muttered something triumphant and unholy. Dad said, “Good. Now hurry.”

Sloane slipped her hand into mine as we started back down the hill, the Moonflower glowing softly between us.

“Vince?” she murmured.

“Yeah?”

“We’re really doing this.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We are.”

And for the first time, the fear in her voice wasn’t fear.

It was hope.

All We Ever Knew

So here we were now.

My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my teeth. I couldn’t even imagine what Sloane was going through — her pulse must’ve been a trapped bird in her chest.

Minutes to go.

We stood in the river, water slicing around our legs like liquid ice. Sloane wore my flannel again, sleeves rolled, jaw clenched, shivering so hard I could feel it through the current.

Dad was on the shore with the timer app open, synced to an atomic clock, the screen glowing like a countdown to the end of the world.

Sloane held the potion in one hand — the glass vial trembling between her fingers. I held the Moonflower in its insulated case, the faint glow leaking through the seams like a heartbeat.

“When I hand it to you,” I said, forcing my voice steady, “you drink the potion. All of it. One go. Then crush the Moonflower in your hand over your mouth and let the juice run down your throat. In that order. Potion, then Moonflower. You have to crush it first. Got it?”

She nodded — a tiny, fragile motion — then looked over at my family lined up on the bank like witnesses at a trial.

Mom blew her kisses. Dad gave a solemn nod. Grandpa Mike threw her a thumbs‑up like she was about to run a marathon instead of rewrite her entire fate.

Sloane managed a small, tense smile.

I handed her the Moonflower.

She took it carefully, reverently, staring at it like it was something holy.

“Vince… it’s beautiful. It… pulsates. Like it’s alive.”

“It is,” I said. “It gives its life to save yours.”

“Didn’t you say it dies anyway?”

“That’s what the case is for. In that, it lives forever. Grandpa still has his. Long story. But they only work as a cure the same night they’re picked. You can’t harvest early. You can’t use an old one.”

“Got it.” She swallowed. “Goodness… look at it. The light changes. Like it’s… talking to me.”

“Sloane.” My voice cracked. “It’s time. You gotta do it. Few more seconds.”

I will never forget the next moments. Not for as long as I live. Because this was the moment everything changed — for her, for me, for the life we hadn’t even met yet.

She looked at me. Then at my family. Then at the Moonflower glowing in her palm. Then back at me.

Dad’s voice cut through the night:

“NOW!”

But Sloane didn’t move.

She didn’t drink the potion.

She didn’t even lift it.

She just stared at me — really stared — with something raw and terrified and impossibly brave in her eyes.

“I … can’t.”

Then she opened her hand.

The potion slipped from her fingers and fell into the river. The glass shattered on a rock, the cure dissolving instantly into the current.

She didn’t drop it by accident. She dropped it like a woman choosing her fate.

Before I could breathe, she stepped into me, wrapped her arms around my neck, and kissed me — not desperate, not panicked, but steady. Certain. Final.

The Moonflower dimmed in her hand, as if it understood it would never be used.

Behind us, my mother gasped. Dad lowered the timer app. There was nothing left to count down to.

Sloane pulled back just enough to whisper against my mouth:

“I choose you. I choose this life with you.”

And then the world broke open.

At first it was just a tremor in her breath. A shiver. A tightening of her fingers on my shirt.

Then her knees buckled.

“Vince—” My name tore out of her like a plea, like a warning, like the last human sound she’d ever make.

Her body arched, spine bowing, a raw, strangled cry ripping from her throat. Not pain — transformation.

The Bloodmoon hit its peak.

And Sloane Hartwell began to turn.

Her scream echoed off the riverbank, high and terrified, dissolving into something rougher, deeper, animal. Her fingers curled like claws. Her breath hitched into snarls. Her voice — my name — broke apart mid‑syllable.

“V—Vin—Vinc—” And then nothing human came out at all.

Her bones shifted under her skin. Her muscles seized. Her eyes flashed gold. Her body convulsed in my arms, and I held her, helpless, whispering her name even as she lost the ability to answer.

“Sloane. Sloane, I’m here. I’m right here.”

She collapsed forward, trembling violently, her face buried in my chest as her shape began to change — shoulders widening, jaw lengthening, her breath turning into panting growls.

She was terrified. I could feel it. Smell it. Hear it in every broken sound she made. She fell to her knees, hands now paws.

And she was alone in it. Until she wasn’t.

I didn’t think. Didn’t hesitate. I didn’t know if my family approved or judged — and it didn’t matter.

I shifted.

The pain hit like fire under my skin, but I welcomed it — because she needed me in the only form that could reach her now. My bones cracked, my vision sharpened, the world tilted into scent and sound and instinct.

When I landed crouched on four paws beside her, she was already half‑wolf, half‑girl, shaking, confused, terrified.

I nudged her gently with my muzzle. A soft, low whine — I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.

She turned toward me, eyes wild and glowing, and for a heartbeat I thought she wouldn’t recognize me.

Then she pressed her forehead to mine.

Recognition. Relief. Bond. My Fated Mate. For life.

Behind us, soft footsteps crunched on the gravel of the riverbank.

My mom — quiet, careful Mom — stepped forward, lifted the Moonflower from where it had fallen, and placed it back into the insulated case with a reverence that felt like a funeral rite. An eternally glowing reminder of a choice made tonight. Grandpa made this choice once, supported by Esmee. His flower still glowed in its case in their bedroom; I used to stare at it in fascination as a boy.

A period. A closing chapter. The last mark of Sloane’s normie life.

The Bloodmoon washed over us, red and ancient and merciless.

Sloane’s transformation completed with a final shudder — her human voice gone, her wolf form trembling beside me.

I nudged her again. It meant follow me.

She nudged back — I understand.

And then — together — we ran.

Into the trees. Into the night. Into the wilderness. Into the life she had chosen.

The Bloodmoon above us. The river behind us. The future ahead of us.

Two wolves. One choice. One family. One fate.

To this day I still can’t believe she chose me.

And nothing would ever be the same.