╭─────── ♱ · 𓆩🤍𓆪 · ♱ ─╮
.·:*¨༺ 𝐅𝗼𝐮𝐫༻¨*:·.
☾⋆｡𖦹 °✩ ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴇsᴄᴜᴇ ᴍɪssɪᴏɴ
( 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘔𝘰𝘰𝘯 )
@LILLYOFTHEVAIIEY
╰─ ♱ · 𓆩🤍𓆪 · ♱ ──────────╯

𝓣he trees groaned as the wind passed through them, bending branches and howling through the ravines. By the time Nova made it back to the cabin, the sun had begun to set-though you wouldn't know it from the light. Clouds pressed low, pregnant with rain, their bellies bruised in the dusk. The cabin sat like a scar against the forest, hunched in the undergrowth, its roof patched with moss and its chimney long dead.

Nova landed silently in the trees and scanned the perimeter. No scent of Victoria. Not recently. Good.

She stepped onto the rotting porch, her boots creaking on the warped planks. The door groaned as she pushed it open.

Inside, the air was still. Still and wrong.

The floorboards whispered beneath her steps as she entered. The scent hit her first: old blood, rust, and rot. Damp pine. Mold climbing the corners of the walls. Smoke that hadn't touched fire in weeks. Victoria was careless when she was bored-more cruel than calculated. And she was bored now.

Her eyes fell on the frail girl in the far corner.

Luna Mae.

Barely conscious.

She was crumpled on a pile of soiled blankets-if they could even be called that. A shredded coat was thrown over her legs. Her skin, once warm and flushed with life, was now a sickly pallor, tinged gray beneath the bruises. Her lips were split. Her curls matted and tangled with blood. The scent of infection was starting to take hold. Nova's nose wrinkled at the smell, but her expression stayed cold.

The girl hadn't moved in hours. Maybe longer. Her chest barely rose.

Nova crossed the room, each step measured. When she stood over her, Luna didn't react. Not even her eyelids fluttered.

Nova crouched.

She was careful not to touch her. Not yet.

There was a bite mark high on the girl's collarbone-swollen, red, angry. Healing slowly, painfully. Nova didn't need to ask. She knew Victoria had done it. Not to change her. Just to watch her squirm.

"She shouldn't be feeding on you," Nova murmured, more to herself than to Luna. "But she's insane my dear."

A faint breath escaped the girl's lips, ragged and thin. Nova looked into her face-past the dried blood and split skin. The girl was young. Too young. She couldn't have been more than seventeen. A teenager, caught in a game played by monsters.

Nova sat down against the wall beside her, folding her legs. She leaned her head back and stared at the rafters, listening to the wind scream through the trees.

"You're dying, you know," she said quietly.

Not cruelly. Not kindly. Just fact.

"You'll be dead in another day, maybe two. Depends if she gets bored and finishes you off. Or forgets you entirely."

Luna didn't answer. Couldn't.

But her heart kept beating. Slow. Faint. Human.

Nova let the silence stretch for a while. She looked around the room-at the cracked window, the broken chair, the rusted stove no one used. And for just a moment, her mind whispered back to another place, another time. The cellar in Paris. The damp. The darkness. Her hands, bound at the wrist with twine. Her captor smiling as he starved her just to see what would break first-her body, or her mind.

It didn't break. Not then.

But something else had.

Nova looked at Luna again. Her head was tipped to the side now, as if she'd tried to shift but didn't have the strength. Her breathing rattled. Her fingers twitched faintly.

"You remind me of myself," Nova whispered.

And that was a horrible fate.

But Nova knew if she felt anything for this girl-pity, kinship, mercy-it would make her soft. It would make her foolish. And she'd spent too long surviving to start making mistakes now.

But still... she reached out, and gently, carefully, adjusted the coat around Luna's legs.

"You're not going to die," she said suddenly, voice low but firm. "Not like this. Not by her hand."

Nova didn't move for a long time.

She sat still beside Luna Mae's fragile body, listening to the girl's heartbeat stutter like a dying drum. It was weaker now. Her lungs strained with each breath, rattling wetly in her chest. Death circled close-closer than Victoria, closer than any threat beyond these walls.

Nova closed her eyes.

She could let her die. Let nature take its course and be done with this moment of softness before it festered into something worse.

But she didn't.

Because Victoria would come back. And if she found Luna's corpse, she'd laugh. Or maybe she'd cry, in her strange, volatile way. And then she'd find someone else. Some other girl to use. To torture. To forget.

She knelt beside Luna Mae, brushing a filthy strand of hair from the girl's cheek. Her skin was clammy. Her pulse faltered.

Nova leaned close.

"This is going to hurt," she whispered.

Then she sank her teeth into the girl's neck.

Not with cruelty. Not with hunger.

With purpose.

Luna didn't scream-she didn't have the strength. But her body arched slightly, as if it recognized the invasion. Nova drank only for a moment, just enough to weaken the heart, to begin the shift. Then she pulled away, blood on her lips.

Her wrist was already at Luna's mouth before the girl could slump again.

"Drink," Nova whispered.

No response.

Her fingers closed gently over Luna's jaw, coaxing it open. She pressed the wound to the girl's mouth. The blood welled and ran, a single drop slipping over her lips.

Then Luna shuddered-and drank.

It was instinct more than will. But it was enough. The venom took hold. Nova felt it move beneath her skin, felt the change beginning-like fire threading through veins, devouring from the inside out.

She held Luna as the girl began to convulse, her body rejecting the human world even as it clung to it. The transformation had begun.

Nova exhaled once-sharply-and stood.

There was no time to waste.

Victoria could return any minute.

Nova moved quickly, gathering the few things she needed: a thick wool cloak, a pair of boots, and some spare clothes for cover. She wrapped Luna in one of the blankets, lifting her carefully.

The girl was small in her arms. Weightless.

Nova stepped outside. The wind had shifted. Rain was coming.

Good. Rain was good.

She moved like a ghost through the forest, carrying Luna through brambles and across streams, her feet silent, her path invisible. She didn't follow the trails-she cut through the wildest parts, the ones no one touched.

She ran for hours. Miles.

Over ridges and through rain-soaked gullies. Past sleeping deer and the bones of trees struck down by storms. The forest changed around them-colder, darker, older.

And still, Luna writhed in her arms. Her heart thumped. Her body burned.

The transformation would take days. Three, if she was strong.

Nova didn't stop until they reached the cliffs near the coast. The sea roared below, black and endless, throwing salt into the air like curses.

There was a cave here, high in the rock wall. Hidden. Shielded from scent and sound.

Nova entered and laid Luna down gently. Then quickly prepared a bed of moss and dry grass, moving the near dead human girl to the moss pile.

She crouched beside her, brushing a fevered strand of hair from her brow.

"You're safe now," she murmured, even though Luna couldn't hear her. "She'll never touch you again."

Outside, thunder growled low across the sea.

Nova leaned back against the stone wall and closed her eyes. She would watch. She would wait.

────୨ৎ────

The days that followed were a blur of fire and silence for Luna Mae.

Luna Mae burned. Not with flames, but with venom - a furnace under her skin that never went out. She thrashed in fits, muscles spasming against the transformation ripping through her body. Her eyes fluttered open at times, wild and unseeing, lips parted in soundless cries. But never once did she scream. Her body was too far gone for that, too consumed by the process.

Nova watched it all from the shadows of the cave.

She kept watch - not just over Luna, but over the world beyond the cliff. She paced the mouth of the cave at night, her senses straining for any trace of Victoria or the wolves or anything else that might threaten what she'd just done. But nothing came. The rain helped. It masked their trail, scrubbed their scent from the forest. The wind kept the wolves at bay.

On the second day, Luna's heartbeat slowed. Not enough to stop, not yet - but enough to mark that she was crossing the final threshold. Her human scent had already faded, replaced by something fainter, colder. The sharp, distinct tang of change. Her skin, once flushed and bruised, now gleamed pale as alabaster. Her lips no longer trembled. Her body began to still, drawing tighter into itself, conserving what strength remained for the final breaking.

Nova sat beside her then, knees drawn to her chest, watching every shift with cool detachment. But sometimes, her eyes softened. She remembered lying like that herself - arms bound, bloodied, burning alone in a cellar beneath Paris. No one had stayed with her. No one had whispered anything kind.

So now, Nova whispered. Not often. But enough. Bits of nothing. Humming old songs. Telling stories Luna couldn't hear.

By the third day, the transformation neared its end. The final storm before the silence.

Luna's body arched once, twice - then collapsed, utterly still.

Her heart gave one final, echoing beat.

Then stopped.

And in the stillness that followed, Nova waited. Breathless. Poised.

Until at last, Luna Mae's eyes opened - and they were red.