Blood Moon: Lunar Eclipse
Ch20 - Unsettling Release

Ariella

“Where is her body?”

My mother and father shared a solemn look before facing me.

“We buried her inside the pack cemetery. We can take you to her if you like?” my mother hesitantly suggested.

“No, I need to do this alone,” I stated.

“I don’t hate you for this,” I motioned towards my parents, “I just wish you would have trusted me enough to tell me sooner.”

I began to leave until my father called out to me just as I opened the front door.

“Ariella, we never knew her real name, so we gave her one...”

“What name?”

“Lunar, after the night you were born,” my father’s voice began to tremble.

“Thank you,” I whispered, then made my way to the cemetery.

It was a 15-minute walk, but in that time, every step I took seemed to weigh heavier than the one before.

I finally reached the silver gates. Walking inside, I wandered until I came upon a grave that seemed different from the others; it looked unloved, stripped of any personal items, and earnestly stood out like a sore thumb.

I slumped to my knees and used my hand to clean the firmly etched dirt and damp patches of moss across the crumbling stone. The name ′Lunar’ was written across the top in cursive handwriting; nothing about a birthday or even a surname was inscribed on her tombstone.

There was no way my parents would know that kind of information, but the lack of endearment hit me more profoundly than I thought it would. Especially after discovering everything she sacrificed for me.

I could no longer control the hot tears that spilt from my red, puffy eyes. My cries were no longer silenced as my chest began heaving uncontrollably.

I never told anyone the part where I wasn’t just a spectator in Freya’s memories. I felt every emotion she felt, every assault on her skin, the satisfaction of inflicting pain on the ones who tried to take me, the warmth of power that surged through her veins, the fear in those moments before her end…

Then she saw my parents, and she had hope. Hope for me. So much so she left this world in peace, knowing I was safe.

I may have never met her, but my love for her is real, as though she never left. Because it’s the same love she felt for me.

My stomach cramped; my head pulsed in pain from the endless crying.

My sadness and grief moulded into something else, something dangerous.

Hate.

Anger.

Betrayal.

Fenrir Valencia was the reason my birth mother died. The reason I was kept from potentially the only blood relative alive. The reason so many people, such as Trinity, have suffered.

Families have been ripped apart, children forced into hard labour, women abused and beaten day after day because of his sick and twisted patriarchal ideologies.

Someone like that shouldn’t deserve to even breathe the same oxygen as an insect, let alone rule a pack of barbarous wolves who only care whether their next kill will be entertaining enough to satisfy their perverse desires.

Yet an innocent soul who fought to survive, to fight for the one she loved, perished all because she was trying to protect her daughter.

The world is a cruel place. Maybe it’s time I cleared this world of all those rotting infections that plague us and prey on the innocent.

Starting with Fenrir Valencia.

My father.

I was so enraged that I failed to notice the red and orange flames encircling me, resembling a second skin.

I stood, unsettled by the powers that swarmed me yet exhilarated at the pulsing heat in my veins. Every inch of my skin was glazed in power, from the bottom of my feet to the irises of my eyes.

I only saw red. The desire to eradicate the very pack that believed they were above all grew with each passing second. It was an uncontrollable rage that both terrified and elevated me simultaneously.

I held out my palm, igniting a flame on my palm. The fire flickered around my wrists, itching for me to release more of my unlocked power. The burning sensation I thought I would feel was absent, only replaced with a nimble, prickling sensation.

I heard a shuffle from behind me. I peered back to see Noah a few feet away from me. The concern in his eyes was enough to make me want to remove the flames. But my rage would not calm; if anything, it only increased the more the blaze danced around me.

“Ariella, you need to calm down,” Noah took a step towards me, his palm held out as though to protect himself from the flames… from me.

I tried to control it. However, the overwhelming hate became impossible to ignore.

My hands flung to the sides of my head, in a firm hold, in an effort to close off my mind.

But I couldn’t do it.

It felt as though the flames were controlling me, as if I was just a vessel for its personal demands.

My knees hit the ground, my hands still firmly pressing against my head in an attempt to suppress my new, uncontainable power.

Noah reached out to touch me, but my fear for his safety made me stumble back and force my powers dormant.

I felt the flames die down; the frenzy was replaced with worry for my best friend.

As I went to stand, an unexpected efflux of pain tore through me, as though my insides were being torn open and my mind being split into two. The pain was nothing like I had ever experienced before.

Then it all became too much…

I released a gut-wrenching scream, one that sounded like a chorus of echoes had resonated all around me.

My body crouched low as waves of golden, sandy whisps and crimson-red flames erupted from inside me. The power I had tried to suppress now flowed freely and uncontrollably like floods of water cascading over a steep cliff. Then, all of that internal power I had manifested released in an abundance of torrents.

Every inch of my being was consumed by the intensity of the moment.

By the time it was all over, I felt a heavy burden lift off my chest.

I looked up, expecting to see Noah standing before me, but instead, what I witnessed shook me to the core…