The first time Elira Voss saw him, the sky smelled like wet stone and wildfire.

She wasn’t supposed to be here. The crime scene had been locked down for hours, yellow tape fluttering like warning flags in the wind. But curiosity had always been her disease — and tonight, it brought her to the edge of something feral.

The alley behind the butcher shop was cold and slick with rain. Elira crouched beside the blood smear trailing from the dumpster to the cracked wall. She clicked her flashlight on, its beam catching a half-burned matchstick and something stranger — claw marks gouged deep into brick.

Not human. Not an animal either.

"Looking for monsters, little crow?"

The voice came from the shadows — velvet and sharp, like moonlight slicing glass.

Elira shot to her feet. Her breath caught in her throat as a figure stepped into the glow of her flashlight.

Tall. Lean. Dressed in black like he’d been born from the night itself.

But it was his eyes that stilled her: pale silver, like the moon reflected in a blade. Beautiful. Inhuman.

“I don’t talk to strangers,” she said, hiding the tremor in her voice.

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Then why follow one into the dark?”

Elira took a slow step back. “You were at the Delacroix crime scene last week. I saw you vanish into the woods. You're connected to this.”

“And yet,” he said smoothly, stepping closer, “you keep following me. Are you hoping I’ll lead you to your story, or to your end?”

She couldn’t breathe.

Something primal crackled between them, like static before a storm.

“I chase the truth,” she whispered. “No matter where it hides.”

For a moment, silence stretched between them, taut and electric. Rain hissed down the alley walls.

Then he smiled. Not cruelly — but like someone who knew too much about loneliness.

“Then stop looking for monsters, little crow. Start asking who taught them to hide.”

He turned, melting back into the shadows. She should’ve let him go. But her feet moved before her mind caught up.

“Wait! What’s your name?”

He paused at the mouth of the alley, half-lit by the storm.

“Riven,” he said. “And you should stay away from me.”

Then he was gone — swallowed by the city, by the night, by whatever secret he carried in those silver eyes.

But Elira knew, deep in her chest, that she’d just stepped into something far bigger than a murder. Something older. Wilder.

And it had teeth.

“Some truths aren't hunted — they're waiting, just beneath the skin.”

🩸 Teaser — Moonlight Lies

In a city where monsters hide in plain sight, one journalist dares to chase a truth that bleeds silver.

Elira Voss has always seen patterns where others see chaos — claw marks in alleyways, shadows that move too fast, secrets no one wants told. But when her investigation leads her to Riven Wolfe — a mysterious man with eyes like the moon and a past soaked in ash — she uncovers a world where laws don’t apply, bloodlines hold power, and the full moon is a curse.

He warns her to stay away. She was never good at listening.

But what begins as a hunt for truth spirals into a bond neither of them understands. Because Riven isn’t human. And Elira? She may not be, either.

In the collision of fangs and fire, of truth and lies, something ancient stirs — and it remembers her name.

Teaser:

She was trained to chase the truth. But no one warned her what it looks like when it stares back.

---chapter begins

The coffee shop on 9th and Verdan was too quiet for a city this loud. That’s what struck Elira first.

The second was him.

He was seated in the farthest corner, back straight, eyes shadowed beneath the hood of a leather jacket that clung to him like a second skin. Every inch of him screamed don’t look — which is why she couldn’t stop.

The barista cleared her throat. “Your order?”

“Black. No sugar.” Elira’s voice was distant, eyes fixed. “Who is that?”

The barista followed her gaze. “Oh, that guy? He comes in at odd hours. Doesn’t talk much. Doesn’t tip either.”

“Elira,” said a voice at her shoulder — Jai, her tech assistant. “That’s him. Same jawline. Look at the surveillance stills.”

He passed her his phone under the table. The frame captured a blurry man half-turned away from a body, motionless in a warehouse lit by red emergency light. A curved tattoo at his throat glowed faintly — like silver fire.

She looked back up. The man at the corner table hadn’t moved.

Elira's hands tightened around her cup. “That mark… I’ve seen it before. On the Accord’s sealed files. ‘Subjects with the lunar brand are to be avoided. Do not engage.’”

“Yet here we are,” Jai muttered. “On a date with death.”

Her heels clicked against the tile as she crossed the room, each step deliberate. Riven Wolfe — if that was even his name — lifted his gaze as she approached.

And the world went still.

His eyes weren’t human.

They were silver and storm — moons held behind irises — and they narrowed on her like she was an inconvenient truth he couldn’t erase.

“You’ve been following me,” he said, voice low and dry.

“Funny,” Elira replied, taking the seat across from him without invitation. “I was about to say the same thing.”

A silence stretched between them, humming with something unspoken. He didn’t blink. She didn’t flinch.

“Whatever story you think you’re writing,” Riven said finally, “burn it. Some truths don’t belong in ink.”

Elira leaned in, her voice a whisper. “And some secrets shouldn’t breathe.”

His jaw tightened. “You have no idea what you’re walking into.”

“Then enlighten me.”

He rose suddenly — graceful in the way only predators are. The chair didn’t even scrape. He stepped past her, leaned in, and said near her ear, “When the moon rises, I don’t choose who bleeds. Stay out of the dark, Miss Voss.”

She turned to reply, but he was already gone — vanished between one blink and the next.

The only proof he’d been there at all was the faint scent of pine smoke… and the sharp chill crawling down her spine.

Ending Line:

“Sometimes, the monster isn’t hiding — it’s just waiting for the right moon to rise.”