BloodMoon: Captivated by the Forbidden Lycan Alpha
Chapter 236: TREMORS AND CLAWS

Chapter 236: TREMORS AND CLAWS

"The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out."

The water welcomed me like a mouth. Dark. Wet. Choked in rot. The deeper I swam, the colder the water became until even the fire inside me flickered against the pressure. But I pushed on. My claws carved through the current, each pull taking me further into the black.

And then I saw it again. The Fucking Blood stone bug’s nest.

It pulsed against the sea floor like a blister. A bulbous mass of bone and chitin, webbed in strands of blood-thread. Hundreds of bug-infested corpses lined its outer rim, tethered to its skin by slick vines and twitching tendrils. The infected vampires clung to it like larvae in a womb.

It was alive. Breathing and dreaming of war. I floated above it, chest burning. The root fire hummed under my ribs, aching to be set loose. I could feel Mira’s magic rising in my throat, in my blood, in the marrow of my bones. The nest twitched, sensing me. Dozens of eyes blinked open from the mass.

Teeth. Wings. Screeches underwater, and they swarmed. But it was too late. I opened my mouth and let it out. The roar was not mine but was the magic of the Mira. It came from my chest like thunder, like roots cracking stone. The root fire exploded outward in a radiant burst, turning the water gold. A column of living flame and sacred heat shot downward, piercing the pit like a divine spear.

The nest screamed, and the infected vampires caught in the radius ignited, burning under the water, bodies unravelling like ash spun through a storm. The blood-thread lines snapped. The outer shell cracked, and from within came a final pulse of magic, an echo of the hive’s heart as it tried to resist.

But the fire devoured it, and I pressed my hands forward, pushing everything I had into the blast.

More roots. More fire. More will and until nothing remained but smoke. No more twitching limbs. No more hissing mouths. My body trembled with the aftershock. The fire dimmed in my veins, leaving warmth in its place. I hovered there for a moment, alone in the wreckage, chest heaving as the water cleared. The nest was gone, and I had burned it from the world. And whatever darkness it had planned would not reach the mountain. Not while I still had breath in my lungs.

The light had barely faded from my fingertips when the first scream hit me, and it was not from the nest, it was from what survived it. I turned in the water just as three infected vampires streaked toward me, fast and ragged, all claws and cracked fangs. Their eyes were blank with madness, veins black with whatever was left of that parasite magic.

"Of course," I muttered, curling my lip. "You always send in the roaches after the fire."

The sea trembled, and the earth beneath the sea shuddered as if the mountain itself had felt the death of the nest. Silt rose like smoke. Cracks spiderwebbed across the ocean floor. It was not just a magical tremor, it was tectonic. The pit had been anchored to something deeper.

And now it was coming undone, but the infected Vampires did not care. They came anyway. I twisted just in time to avoid the first, its claws slicing through water like razors. The second grabbed my shoulder only for me to ram an elbow backward and crack its jaw clean off. The third latched onto my thigh and bit down hard.

I howled, the sound muffled under the sea, but it vibrated through the water all the same. The Root fire answered. Not as strong now, but enough embers remained. I slammed both palms onto the creature’s face, and a surge of searing gold burned straight through its skull. The vampire spasmed and sank, dead before it knew it.

The one whose jaw I had shattered was already coming back around, twitching, snarling, eyes wide with wild, broken instinct. I grabbed it by the throat and dragged it with me as I swam toward the surface fast, using its weight to block the third attacker behind me.

The earth roared again, and the sea floor split. Bubbles shot upward like geysers. The entire base of Blood Stone Mountain was moving, shaken from within. Whatever was still asleep in that mountain? It felt like a fire. It made me feel it.

And it was waking. "I need to get out," I growled, slicing upward.

The third vampire clipped my back, but I ignored the sting and drove my claws backward, catching it in the gut. The first rays of surface light broke above. The ocean thinned. My lungs ached, and I pushed one more kick. I exploded from the sea with a roar, dragging the burning vampire corpse in my claws, flinging it aside like garbage, and the shore was close. But the land still shook, and I realized that something was changing in the bones of the mountain.

My feet hit the shore like stone cracking, and I stumbled, knees buckling into wet sand, blood in my mouth and fire in my chest. The last of the infected vampire’s screams had already faded behind me, lost to the deep. But the ocean was not quiet.

It roared.

I turned, breath sharp in my lungs, expecting to see the usual calming tide, maybe some blood slick from the fight, and instead... I saw hell. The sea behind me had turned black. Not from nightfall, not from shadow but from rot. The surface churned like oil, thick with ash and something darker. Magic. Old. Wrong. Like the blood of a god spilled across the water. And from the centre of it... flames.

Golden. Reddish. Flickering violet.

Burning.

"Spirits," I whispered, staggering back, my claws twitching. "What the fuck did I just do?"

The flames danced across the water in slow spirals, coiling as if drawn by unseen hands. Every flicker whispered something I could not hear. Every wave reached forward, not back. Even the tide was moving wrong, and the waters were not retreating like they should. I swallowed, forced myself to breathe. I had done what needed to be done. I destroyed the nest. I saved the mountain’s edge. The Mira’s fire still hummed inside my chest, faint but steady.

I closed my eyes and exhaled, and then the shift came like a breath rolling backward through my bones. The beast pulled back. The scale, the claw, the fury all melted inward until I stood on two legs again. My shoulders hunched forward as the last of the root fire coiled into my spine. Clothes shimmered over my skin, woven from Mira’s parting magic, warm and dry despite the sea clinging to my hair. Simple. Black. A travel cloak over combat leathers.

I turned from the ruined sea, every step on the sand firmer than the last. My body ached in places I had not noticed until now, jaw tight, ribs bruised, something in my right forearm cracked, but I did not falter. I had no time for wounds as Frery. Tor. Sierra. Dante was waiting.

The last place I had seen them was beyond the ridge, just beneath the eastern slope of Blood Stone Mountain, where the forest thinned into sharp rock and gnarled roots. The Mira house had hidden them for a time. It still did.

I pushed forward, up through the brush, eyes sharp for movement. The mountain groaned beneath the earth, still reacting to the purge I had unleashed but it had not cracked open. Not yet. The storm was still coming, and I needed to get to them fast and offer all the help they needed.

The mouth of the mountain loomed ahead, jagged and dark, like a wound carved into the world.

I had expected silence, and instead I spotted Dante. He was sitting just inside the entrance, one leg bent, arms draped over his knee like he had all the time in the world. The lantern beside him flickered low, casting gold shadows over the stone. His head tilted the moment he sensed me, and he did not even have to look. That eerie, uncanny awareness of his, like he could taste the air for truth.

"You took your sweet time," he said without turning.

I stopped; a breath caught in my throat. "You’re alone."

"I told the others to move ahead. You were... delayed." He stood, slow and precise, brushing off his coat. "The sea burns, Rou. I saw it from the ridge."

I did not answer right away. I stepped forward, into the mouth of the cave, past the line of shadow where the world changed from forest to mountain.

"You felt it?" I asked.

Dante’s eyes found mine, then sharp, obsidian, and knowing. "I felt it scream." He stepped closer, looking me over, gaze pausing on the blood crusted at my jaw, the torn cuff at my sleeve. He did not ask how close I had come to dying. Did not ask what I saw. Instead, he murmured, "You went deeper than any of us were meant to."

I nodded once. "There was a nest. A hive, twisted with bloodstone magic. It is gone now, but I am afraid there is something else deep in the waters that is awakened."

His jaw twitched. "And now the mountain breathes like a living thing."

"Because it is," I said. "And we’re walking into its heart."

For a moment, the cave pulsed with silence. The air was thick. Heavy. Watching. Then Dante smirked faintly. "You always did love the dramatic entrances."

"I aim to impress." I chuckled.

He turned and picked up the lantern, holding it out. "Good. You can impress the shadows. They have been waiting for us." I took it without hesitation, and together, we stepped into the dark.