Blood Moon

The first installment of a paranormal fantasy series, the novel opens with a prologue set ten years before the main story. Eight-year-old Mirabella "Mira" Owens listens as her mother, Rena, recounts the legend of Timber Plains, a town in Kansas near Kansas City. According to the tale, vampires once terrorized humanity until the heavens sent down a man who transformed into a wolf, spawning werewolves across the world. The vampires fled to a hidden village in the Midwest, where a wolf and a vampire fell in love during a battle, convincing their species to form a pact. Rena stops the story before the ending, promising to share it when Mira is older and hinting that things grow complicated.

Five years before the novel's present, Rena vanished. She packed a suitcase and left without explanation, devastating Mira and her father, Bobby, a chief deputy sheriff. Mira developed destructive coping habits before therapy redirected her anger into running. The wound of abandonment left her deeply afraid of being unlovable, a fear she carries into her freshman year at Lakeland University, a school she never applied to but that offered her a full scholarship. She suspects Bobby submitted the application on her behalf, though the truth proves far more sinister.

At move-in day, Bobby reconnects with Duke, the dean of students and an old friend, who mentions his youngest son, Seven, is also a freshman and the team's second-string quarterback. Mira remembers Seven from a childhood reunion game, where she developed her first crush. She settles into Hester Hall with her roommate, Stevie McClure, a dancer from St. Louis, and quickly bonds with Stevie's friends Abi and Em (Emmeline), as well as Naomi, an anxious, talkative girl from Illinois she meets in English class.

At new student orientation, Mira exchanges warm, flirtatious banter with Seven, whose dimpled smile and heterochromatic eyes, one amber brown and one green, instantly charm her. During the assembly, however, she feels an inexplicable pull drawing her attention to a boy across the hall who glares at her with cold hostility. She later learns his name is Julian Santos. Their first direct encounter is hostile: Julian addresses her by her full name, tells her it is not safe for her at Lakeland, and urges her to leave. Mira refuses, baffled by how he knows her and why he wants her gone.

A letter arrives in Mira's campus mailbox, written in Rena's handwriting. Her mother is alive. The letter expresses love, warns that "the world isn't how it appears," and encloses a gold necklace with an opal pendant, which Rena calls a ward that will protect Mira. It closes with the Latin phrase Amor vincit omnia, "love conquers all," the same phrase inscribed in a folklore book at the campus's Sutton Art Museum. Mira puts on the necklace and resolves to uncover what it means.

Julian's behavior toward Mira oscillates between cruelty and protectiveness. During a class activity, he tells her that her "miserable existence" is his "demise" (98), reducing her to tears. Yet when Mira hikes alone and encounters a figure with glowing red eyes, she falls from a cliff only to land safely in Julian's arms at the bottom. He has jumped 20 feet without injury. He admits he is bound by an oath that prevents him from speaking openly but cannot explain further.

Meanwhile, Mira visits Bobby's home and discovers alarming signs of deterioration: The house is in shambles, and the living room is plastered with an investigation board linked by red string. Bobby has been tracking cycles of the moon alongside photos of Rena's mysteriously fast-healing wounds and animal attack cases dating back years. He believes Rena is connected to the attacks but cannot determine how.

After a charged encounter at a party where Julian apologizes and they share an intense kiss, he begins answering Mira's questions through a loophole: If she guesses correctly, he can confirm. Over several days, he reveals that his bones are harder to break, he can track animals by scent, he hears sounds from across campus, and he exists between two worlds. Mira compiles the evidence and resists the conclusion until Julian leads her into a forest clearing and transforms before her eyes into an enormous gray wolf with gold-green eyes. He is a shapeshifter, not the grotesque Hollywood werewolf, and he has been able to shift fully for two years. He explains that the university grounds are sacred to his pack, the original territory of Aadan, the first werewolf from the legend. He also reveals that Mira's pendant is one of only three blessed stones in the world, created by a powerful ancient witch, and that its last known possessor belonged to a bloodline older than the wolves.

Julian then reveals a darker truth: Mira's blood carries a scent that makes her a target for both werewolves and vampires. This is why Rena fled, to draw the hunters away from her daughter. Vampires are real as well; Julian killed one that was stalking Mira on the hiking trail.

At homecoming, Julian warns Mira not to be alone with Seven. Mira realizes with shock that Seven must also be a werewolf, explaining the hostile feud between their families and Seven's superhuman abilities. Left alone in the parking lot, Mira is charged by one of Seven's werewolf teammates. Julian intervenes, shifting into wolf form to fight the attacker. As they flee in his jeep, Julian reveals a final secret: He is not just a werewolf but also a vampire. He is a Blood Lycan, a hybrid species born from the ancient pact between a wolf and a vampire. The Fullbloods, non-hybrid werewolves descended from a rival faction, have been hunting Blood Lycans for centuries and now target Mira as well.

The Fullbloods ambush them, flipping the jeep. Julian shields Mira with his body. They escape across the state line and take shelter in the woods, where Mira offers Julian her blood to accelerate his healing. His bite induces euphoria, and they confess their feelings for each other. Julian then wakes her in a panic and tells her to run. She is captured by Blood Lycans and brought to a subterranean chamber beneath the university.

There, Abba Ruiz, the museum curator, reveals herself as a Blood Lycan: She is the sister of Julian's murdered mother, Elena, and Julian's guardian. Abba orchestrated Mira's acceptance to Lakeland through a deal with Duke, who is himself a Fullblood werewolf, luring Mira to campus as bait to eventually draw Rena out of hiding. Mira learns the devastating truth: Rena killed Elena to protect young Mira, whom Elena had targeted as revenge for an ancient vampire betrayal. Mira also learns she is a dhampir, a being who is half human and half vampire, descended from the very coven that betrayed Julian's people centuries ago. The ritual demands her death: blood for blood.

Abba forces Mira to drink blood from a chalice and hands Julian a dagger to complete the sacrifice. Julian raises the blade, then throws it aside, declaring, "She will not die by my hand" (354). He invokes treaty law: When he drank Mira's blood, he received a vision confirming Mira is his fated mate, an involuntary soul bond that makes killing her illegal under their own rules. A fight erupts. Mira screams, and the sound shatters every light in the chamber as a new power awakens in her. Sparks crackle from her fingertips. Julian frees her and fights Abba, who warns that war is coming before vanishing.

At dawn, Julian confesses he was falling for Mira before he ever tasted her blood and promises to protect her. Mira, unable to forgive his role in the scheme that nearly killed her, calls him a monster and walks away. Seven, who confirms he is a werewolf but insists he did not know about the plot, drives Mira to Bobby's house.

Inside, Bobby embraces her, weeping. On the couch sits Rena, impossibly young and beautiful, with a red ring around her irises, the vampiric trait Mira now recognizes. Her mother is a vampire. In an epilogue set one week later, Mira awakens with heightened senses, fangs, and dried blood covering her lips and gown, with no memory of how it got there. Bobby enters and recoils in horror. Mira, terrified, looks at her reflection and whispers that she thinks she may have killed someone. Her dhampir nature has fully awakened, and the story continues in subsequent volumes.