32 parts Complete For generations, the shifting blood had been a secret, a whisper in the shadowed corners of the world. Born under the crimson moon, they were the inheritors of an ancient magic, the ability to shed their human skin and walk in the guise of beasts. They lived among humans, their true nature masked by careful control and the constant fear of discovery. To reveal themselves was to invite persecution, to become a hunted anomaly in a world that prized the ordinary.
Freen had known this truth since her first painful, exhilarating transformation under the age of ten. The world had fractured, bones contorting, senses exploding as she became something other, something wild. Her mother, her only guide, had taught her the delicate balance: how to shift with control, how to conceal the lingering scent of the wild, how to live a life half-hidden.
"Trust no one with this truth," her mother had warned, her voice etched with the bitterness of past betrayals. "The world of humans fears what it does not understand. And fear breeds cruelty."
Freen had heeded those words, building walls of careful neutrality around herself. Connection was a vulnerability she couldn't afford. The wildness within her was a volatile thing, a force that yearned for the open sky and the silent forests, a stark contrast to the constraints of human society.
But the heart, untamed and unpredictable, sometimes defied even the most carefully constructed defenses. And in a bustling marketplace, amidst the mundane rhythm of human life, that carefully guarded heart had recognized a flicker of something... kindred. A spark in the eyes of a woman named Becky, a warmth that promised a light Freen had long denied herself.
Little did Freen know that this spark would ignite a flame that would draw the attention of shadows far more dangerous than mere human prejudice. Shadows that had hunted her kind for centuries, led by a man who saw shape-shifters not as beings of magic, but as aberrations to be extinguished.