Hour of the Moon

Chapter 6: Problem

This was going to become a problem.

"Babe, you good?" Nanye-hi's voice broke the quiet—a low murmur wrapped in warmth and worry.

I drew a measured breath through my nose, forcing my jaw to unlock. When she leaned against me, the wolf uncoiled without warning—an ancestral hunger erupting like static under skin, vision flaring to molten gold before subsiding to dusk.

"Fine," I lied. The word hung between us like frost. I brushed my thumb along her cheek, the gesture meant to soothe her more than myself. She yielded to it, soft, trusting, unguarded—the tragedy of her gentleness always striking me hardest when I least deserved it.

"You scared me," she whispered. "Your eyes..."

We are meant to keep our human colors once the shift ends, but emotion blurs the line. Rage or desire—the ancient pulse of either—summons the beast. Some never return clean. The Moon-Marked, the bitten ones, lose definition first; Blood-Marked wolves like me merely fracture slower. Every covenant inked beneath the moon exacts a price. Our ancestors signed theirs in blood and consequence.

Lately, the scales had been tipping. Since Saturday night, to be precise.
Since her.

That scent—black currant crushed with citrus, a bruised lily's sweetness lingering on the palm—still haunted the back of my throat. It was a promise and a threat. My beast gnawed at the barrier between us, begging, bleeding for a taste I had denied it.

Who are you?
Why can no one else smell you the way I do?

Across the table, Ahiga studied me with the austere patience of a man accustomed to violence and revelation. His thought slid into mine, clean as honed steel.

What's wrong, brother?

Hard to explain. Leave it.

He didn't.

Kachine spared me momentary reprieve by devouring a handful of fries with the belligerence of a starving god. "Man, these never get old," he said, mouth full. "Praise the moon for fast metabolisms."

Ahiga's gaze flicked toward him. "Eat like a wolf, not like a grave-robber."

Kachine waved to June—the waitress with the hopeful eyes and the doomed crush. "Another round, sweetheart."

She colored immediately. Ahiga sighed; Nanye-hi smiled with practiced diplomacy.

The Elders had summoned an emergency council—more bodies by the lake, waterlogged and unmarked, wolf prints in the silt, the stench of fear laced through the reeds. Winter was approaching, and winter always collects its tithe.

It did not help that the Elders had begun murmuring about accelerating the wedding. Politics masquerading as prophecy. Nanye-hi deserved vows that weren't coerced by tradition or omen. She'd waited with faith. I'd repaid her with delay.

Her phone vibrated, fracturing the uneasy calm. June arrived with fresh bottles, a nervous smile, and a tray of salted consolation.

"These are on the house," she said.

"You spoil me," Kachine crooned. "I feel adored."

"Try corny," she replied, retreating on a blush.

Nanye-hi's tone sharpened as she read her text. "Aiyana's unwell. I should check on her."

"I'll drive you." I was already half-standing.

She shook her head, kissed my cheek—warmth fading as quickly as it came. "Stay. The Elders expect you prepared. I'll take the truck."

When she left, the air exhaled. Lighter. Harsher. Honest.

Ahiga leaned forward, voice pitched low. "What's gnawing at you?"

Kachine pilfered another fry, chewing with irreverence. "Yeah, big bro, we gonna pretend that human didn't smell like divinity and sin? She was stupid fine."

Ahiga groaned. "Do you ever engage the mind above your waist?"

"It's all the same wolf," Kachine replied. "Don't pretend you didn't notice."

I traced the condensation crawling down my bottle—one droplet, slow as a confession. "Her scent hit me wrong," I said finally. "Hard."

"Human?" Ahiga asked, deliberately even.

"Human," I echoed, though the word sat incomplete, hollow. "But not ordinary."

"Blood-Marked? Moon-Marked?" Ahiga's eyes moved like chess pieces.

Kachine stopped chewing. "Don't say it."

"It isn't possible," I said, sharper than intended. "Blood mates Blood. That law's older than scripture. The lines have thinned, sure—wolves who loved outside the clan, who ran with Fae or men—but she... she didn't feel lupine. And she didn't feel entirely human either."

The wrongness pulsed beneath my skin—a frequency my bones alone could hear.

"Akita," Ahiga said quietly. "We should see him."

I huffed a laugh. "The blind Seer in the pines? We don't trade with the Fair Folk."

"Then keep pretending this is normal," he replied. "Until it kills someone we can't afford to lose."

The name itself crawled like a splinter. Akita—once Blood-Marked, now corrupted by Fae grace. He had bartered his wolf for sight beyond sight and lost both. The Fair Folk never cut clean; they carve you in riddles and leave you loving the knife.

"The Elders will scent this soon enough," Ahiga added. "And when they do, she's prey."

Kachine exhaled. "I hate patience. Akita might at least name what she is."

"We wait," I said, and let Alpha settle in my tone.

Both men answered in unison. "Yes, Alpha."
The word tasted of iron and inevitability.

Kachine lingered to charm June. Ahiga followed me into the night.

The town stretched before us like a bruise—neon bleeding over wet asphalt, air thick with pine and gasoline. He lit a Marlboro, smoke curling silver in the dark.

"I thought you quit," I said.

"I thought so too." His mouth twitched. "Kachine's existence tests my virtue."

The scent of tobacco mingled with rain, copper, old secrets.

"You telling Nanye-hi?" he asked after a pause.

"No." I leaned against the truck; the metal radiated chill. "It's not that."

"It's not infidelity," he said. "But it's something. The scent broke you. You're bound to Nanye-hi—Elders and Fates decreed it long ago. You shouldn't react like this to anyone, least of all a human."

"Don't you think I know that?" My voice came rough, almost feral. I swallowed what followed—that I'd seen her again, at Moody Blues, that I'd walked away but left something of myself in the air she breathed.

Ahiga ground the cigarette under his heel, ember dying in a hiss. "Go to Akita before Council. Better to choose the serpent than wait for it to coil around you."

He climbed into his truck, taillights dissolving into the wet dark.

I stayed. The world hummed—neon flicker from The Howler, a siren far off, wind threading through the pines like prayer. Somewhere a piano murmured behind a thin wall—smoke-soft jazz, the kind that reminds you what tenderness costs.

Fairy magic, my mother used to say, is a gilded deceit. She told us stories, Wohali and I, of wings sharper than razors and beauty that cuts deeper than truth. Every marvel carries its wound.

Could I trust a Seer who traded his soul for sight?
No.

Would I go anyway?

The answer had already settled in my marrow.

The moon was rising. The bodies were multiplying. The Elders were sharpening their smiles.

And the scent of a human woman was unmaking the architecture of my life, breath by dangerous breath.