---
The letter slipped from Virella's fingers.
It fluttered to the dusty floor like a dying leaf as her mind raced. My grandmother… loved a vampire? It wasn't the betrayal that stunned her—it was the timing.
Selene had vanished over a hundred years ago. If she bore a vampire's child, that meant…
Virella stumbled back and leaned against a moss-covered wall. The old archives suddenly felt like a tomb. The lantern in her hand flickered.
She wasn't just turned.
She had been born for this.
---
Upstairs, Varen stood in her room, watching the wind twist the curtains. He could feel something shifting beneath the surface of their lives, like an earthquake deep underground.
He picked up a photograph from her nightstand—the two of them as kids, arms slung around each other. Smiling. Before Alaric. Before the blood. Before the war.
He still remembered the day his best friend became something else.
It had been snowing.
---
Deep in the undercroft of the estate, Virella knelt before a sealed door she had never seen before. It pulsed faintly with ancient magic. She placed her hand on the stone and whispered:
"Selene."
The door shuddered and split open.
Inside was a small chamber, walls covered in carvings, runes older than any known vampire dialect. In the center stood a pedestal, and on it—a blade. Long, silver-edged, wrapped in dried vines and red cloth.
She stepped forward. Something inside her stirred.
The carvings whispered her name.
Daughter of both night and moon… bearer of the cursed flame… breaker of blood…
She grasped the hilt.
---
Outside, Alaric froze mid-stride.
"She found it," he whispered.
Rian, following behind him, raised a brow. "The sword?"
"The truth."
---
Virella pulled the blade free. Power rippled through her like wildfire. Visions flooded her mind: Selene in battle, her fangs bared and eyes glowing. A man beside her—a vampire with jet-black hair and blood-red eyes. And then, the birth of a child.
Two hearts. One vessel.
Born of dark and light. The balance incarnate.
Virella gasped. The visions twisted.
She saw Selene standing against the Night Council, the vampire aristocracy, demanding her child be protected. She saw the moment they struck her down. And then she saw her father—a man she'd never known—taking the child and hiding it.
Her.
Virella.
"I wasn't just turned into a hybrid," she breathed. "I was always one."
---
Later, she confronted Alaric in the great hall. The sword still hung at her hip, humming with silent warning.
"You knew," she said.
Alaric nodded.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you needed to choose this path," he said. "Not be forced onto it by history."
"You say that like you didn't lead me here."
"I guided you," he said. "Because your blood is the key to everything. The Night Council fears you. The werewolf clans would kill to control you. Even my father doesn't fully understand what you are."
"And what am I?"
He stepped closer. "The last of the line born from love instead of war. The only one who can unite both bloods."
"Or destroy them," she whispered.
---
Varen entered the hall at that moment, eyes blazing. "You used her."
Virella raised a hand. "Don't."
"He made you a weapon, Virella!"
"No," Alaric said. "She is the weapon."
Varen lunged at him, but the sword was already drawn. Virella moved like lightning, stepping between them. The blade glowed red and silver.
"Enough," she snapped.
Both men froze.
"I make my own choices now. And if either of you forget that, I won't need this sword to remind you."
They backed away.
---
That night, Virella sat in her room reading Selene's journal. Page after page detailed the impossible—how Selene had fallen for a vampire general, how they had tried to hide their child from the councils, how Selene's own father had betrayed her.
There was a passage, circled in black ink:
Beware the Mark of the Triad. They will come when the bloodlines converge again. When the blade awakens, and the hybrid queen rises.
Queen?
Virella stared into the mirror.
She didn't feel like a queen.
She felt like a girl caught in a war that started before she was born.
But when she looked into her eyes, she saw the wolf. The vampire. And something else.
She wasn't just the end of one story.
She was the beginning of a new one.
---
In a castle across the sea, the Night Council gathered.
They sat on thrones carved from bone and obsidian. Cloaked, ageless, with eyes like dying stars.
"She's awakened the blade," one said.
"She has Selene's blood," said another. "It was only a matter of time."
"She will unite the hybrids," said the eldest, "or she will be the death of us all."
"We must send the Triad," the third whispered.
From the shadows, three hooded figures stepped forward—silent, merciless, and ancient.
"The girl dies," said the Council.
The Triad bowed once.
Then vanished.
---
In her dreams, Virella stood on a battlefield of ash and fire. At her side were wolves. Vampires. Hybrids.
And across from her, Lucien.
His eyes burned with hate—and sorrow.
"You could have ruled beside me," he said.
"I'm not here to rule," she said. "I'm here to break everything."
She raised the sword.
And the dream shattered.
---
Morning broke in a cold whisper.
Virella opened her eyes and turned toward the window. Somewhere in the forest, wolves howled. In the sky above, black birds circled.
War was coming.
But now, she finally knew who she was.
Virella Selene Nyx.
Daughter of dusk and moon.
And she was done running.
---