Almost there.

Luna didn’t look back.

Not even a swift glance behind her.

The ground was wet and muddy from the misty forest rain that beat down on her.

Luna ran with all her might.

Her silver hair clung to her body, and her exhalations were smoky puffs in the air.

She couldn’t stay in the forest anymore.

Hunting birds and rabbits for food wasn’t enough.

She ran through the thickets while the werewolves chased after her, the distance between them a mere couple of feet.

Three weeks had come and gone, and they were still after her.

‘My goddess that Alpha hasn’t forgotten!’

What the hell did he want from her?

They already occupied her home and seduced her fellow warriors.

She didn’t mind the blisters on her feet nor the thin ribbons of blood that flowed like silk down her pale skin from a werewolf scratch, which she received when one of them almost caught her.

Squinting through the fog, she felt in her bones that she was almost to the border.

As she ran, she noticed how the evergreen leaves had morphed to an autumn-orange in her peripheral vision.

Then, minutes later, Luna was surrounded by dead trunks.

Brittle branches fell.

No leaves.

Snow starts to fall.

She shivered.

Her hands were cold and clammy.

The change of weather was a sign in itself.

Winter fell on the Vampire Kingdom.

She reached the deadly border and crossed a river of boiling yellowish acid mixed with magma by lifting herself off the ground with quite a bit of her remaining magic.

Luna finally reached the clearing. She ran through the meadow and tried to feel where the invisible barrier was.

Her face found the glass dome first.

She touched the glass boundary with her hands.

She was foolish enough to look over her shoulder.

Luna cursed when she saw the werewolves jump over the wide, deadly river with ease.

One huge werewolf, with a thick grey coat of fur, was the first one to cross. He looked her dead in the eye and snarled.

Revenge and violence glinted in his golden eyes.

She didn’t hesitate.

Luna drew the secret symbol of the royal vampires.

The magical dust that she could barely manage to activate glowed faintly. She pushed it as high as she could as it hovered in the air.

With the last remnants of her magic, Luna projected the symbol onto the barrier and whispered, “Aperta.”

At first, the barrier resisted, but she pushed her body against the glass dome until her elbows felt like they were submerged in water. The three werewolves were now advancing towards her.

Angered by this new development, they grabbed her shoulders, waist, and legs in an attempt to pull her back, but they immediately released their holds as if her skin had burned them.

Indeed, Luna could smell their burned flesh.

She closed her eyes and prayed.

The next thing she knew, the sensation of water around her body ceased, and she fell to the ground.

She got up from the snow-covered ground and righted her clothes.

A little confused by the werewolves lack of movement, she lifted her hand to feel for the barrier.

Hope lifted her heart when she felt it.

She was inside!

Childishly, Luna raised an eyebrow at the three mad werewolves on the other side and smirked, “I won.”

Then she raised her hands as she exulted in their angry growls and howls, but then, they turned back into their human forms to her absolute shock.

Blinking at their suddenly naked forms, she drank them all in like she was a thirsty desert traveller who was lucky enough to have stumbled on an oasis paradise.

She unabashedly skimmed her gaze from their heads to their toes.

The fact that they were three men with pounds of muscle that they weren’t afraid to use to kill, Luna feared that, if it weren’t for the little bit of magic that she had learned, she would be dead.

The two werewolves on the sides, who had brown fur, watched her in unreadable expressions, yet their stone-cold gazes gave them away.

Scary.

The two appeared to be related in their human form based on their similar facial features.

The one on the left had dark brown eyes and was taller than the other one, while the man on the right’s eyes was a lighter brown shade, and he had a buff physique.

The werewolf with the grey fur coat and golden-yellow eyes was another story.

His dangerous golden-ochre eyes were narrowed into slits.

Well, dangerous seemed far too tame a word to describe him.

Midnight hair skirted around the nape of his neck and covered his forehead.

There was a nine-tailed fox tattoo on his chest extending to his thick biceps.

Those perfectly moulded six-pack abs made her swallow hard.

Nothing hid the bulge of his…

She cleared her throat.

After she had her fill of the male anatomy she rarely examined–except when they accompanied dead bodies–she looked away, deciding it best to give their sex tools some privacy.

If Luna had seen these werewolves in their human forms when they had pillaged the Sacred Valley, she might very well have been one of the maidens swooned by these living temptations.

Still, after being appointed to be a caretaker of a holy place by a goddess, the only choice was to flee or die at the first sign of destruction.

These handsome men may look like gods, but any creature who tried to exploit the Sacred Mountains was blinded by greed and violence.

They were viewed as a threat.

Especially when they killed for magic, power, and immortality.

***

edited by RedPandaChick