WTBFB | The Encounter: Beast Beneath the Moon

The night was heavy with silence, draped in the silver glow of a resplendent moon. Within the heart of the forest, the rhythmic thrum of insects harmonized with the wind as it surged through towering trees, coaxing their branches into a spectral dance.

Suddenly, a massive shadow breached the thicket. A gargantuan black wolf emerged, its fur as dark as an abyss, sporting ferocious fangs and eyes that burned like glowing embers. This was the King of the Forest—a creature of nightmare that struck terror into the hearts of beasts and seasoned hunters alike. Legend whispered throughout the nearby town that any soul unfortunate enough to cross paths with the Black Wolf would never see the dawn. Consequently, the deeper reaches of the woods remained untouched, a sanctuary of fear.

Yet, a secret lay hidden beneath the beast’s pelt. Whenever the moon reached its zenith, the monstrous form would dissolve, revealing a man of ethereal beauty. He was a fallen Engkanto, a noble spirit imprisoned within his own dark sorcery. As punishment for dabbling in forbidden magic, he had been cursed to wear a visage that was the antithesis of his true self.

The cure was as simple as it was impossible: he had to find a woman who could love him despite his monstrous form. For centuries, he found only disappointment. Many were drawn to his human beauty, but the moment he revealed his darkness, they fled in terror—and in his beastly rage, he ensured they never escaped. Over time, his heart curdled into a deep hatred for humanity. He viewed them as fickle creatures, incapable of love without judgment. To him, they were viler than any beast. Exhausted by heartbreak, he had finally surrendered to his curse, embracing the role of the monster people believed him to be.

In the safety of the village, a young woman named Sera sat by her window. The sharp, mournful howl of a wolf drifted from the mountainside, causing her needle to pause mid-stitch. To others, the sound was a threat; to Sera, it sounded like a soul splintering under the weight of an unbearable grief.

“Sera,” her mother whispered, peeking into the room. “Close the shutters and lock them tight.”

“Yes, Mother,” Sera replied softly.

“That howl… it chills my very blood,” her mother confessed, rubbing her arms. “Promise me, child, you will stay indoors once the sun dips below the horizon.”

Sera offered a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Mother. The wolf rarely leaves the high ridges.”

Sera was the jewel of her family—an only child protected fiercely by her parents. At eighteen, her beauty had begun to bloom with such radiance that suitors traveled from neighboring towns just for a glimpse of her. Her father, a master hunter, and her mother, a renowned healer, kept her close, training her to inherit their legacy. She was content in their quiet, purposeful life.

The following morning, her father invited her to a “hidden paradise” he had discovered while chasing a wild boar. Deep in the woods, they found a grove overflowing with lush, heavy grapes.

“It’s our secret, Sera,” her father chuckled as they filled their wooden crates. “If your mother finds out, she’ll turn the whole grove into a laboratory experiment.”

Their laughter was cut short by a rustle in the undergrowth. Her father’s instincts flared; he drew his bow, spotting the bristling hide of a boar. The animal bolted, and her father gave chase, leaving Sera to finish the harvest.

As she picked the sweet fruit, Sera began to sing. Her voice was so melodic that the birds fell silent to listen. She swayed in a slow, instinctive dance, unaware that two crimson eyes were watching her from the shadows. The beast was mesmerized. In his lupine mind, a feral hunger began to stir—not for meat, but for the warmth of her light.

The bushes parted. Sera’s song died in her throat. Her blood turned to ice as the massive head of the Black Wolf emerged. She tried to scream, but her voice failed her. As she backed away, her heel caught on a root, and she collapsed into the grass.

The wolf circled her, a mountain of black fur and muscle. She saw the glisten of his fangs and the hunger in his eyes. Closing her eyes, she braced for the end, thinking only of the parents she was about to leave behind. She felt the beast’s hot breath against her skin. Then, a rough tongue licked her neck, a terrifyingly intimate gesture of claim.

“Sera!” Her father’s voice rang out. He charged into the clearing, machete drawn, despite the hopeless odds. The wolf lunged, pinning the hunter to the ground. Sera screamed, but to her shock, the wolf did not bite. It merely inhaled her father’s scent, looked back at Sera with a gaze of profound intelligence, and vanished into the trees.

That night, the wolf could not rest. The scent of the girl—sweet as jasmine and wild honey—was etched into his brain. Driven by an obsessive need, he descended into the village. He found her cottage and watched her through the window. He saw her face, her sorrow, and her grace. For the first time in a century, the desire to be loved—not just to possess—flickered back to life. He would wait for the next full moon.

Days later, Sera returned to the forest alone to gather medicinal roots for her mother’s clinic. Deep in the woods, she discovered a strange red root. As she touched it, a potent aroma overwhelmed her senses. Her limbs grew heavy, and the world tilted. She collapsed into a deep, drug-induced sleep.

When she woke, the moon was full and bright. The world felt liquid, a hazy blur of silver and deep indigo. Sera stood in the clearing, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. The red root she had touched—it had to be the cause. Its heavy, cloying scent still clung to her skin, making her mind feel like it was drifting in a dream she couldn’t wake from.

Then, he stepped into the light.

Sera’s breath hitched. A man stood before her, but the word “man” felt insufficient. He was an altar of marble and gold, his physique so perfect it felt like a mockery of human frailty. He was entirely unclothed, his skin luminous under the lunar glow.

Sera gasped, her face flushing a hot, stinging crimson. She instinctively moved to shield her eyes, the ingrained modesty of her village screaming at her to look away. But her hands froze mid-air. The stranger showed no such shame. He stood with a regal, terrifying ease, his nakedness as natural as the bark on the trees or the flow of the stream. He didn’t hide; he simply was.

“Is this the root?” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Am I still asleep?”

The stranger didn’t answer. He moved toward her, not with the gait of a man, but with a fluid, predatory grace that sent a jolt of recognition through her marrow. When he reached the edge of the moonlight, she finally saw his eyes.

They weren’t the eyes of a suitor. They were amber-gold, burning with a terrifying, primal hunger—a gaze that didn’t just see her, but hunted her. Sera’s knees went weak. She knew those eyes. They had haunted her dreams for weeks; they had stared at her from the shadows of the forest while she picked grapes.

The wolf.

“You,” she breathed, her terror warred with an inexplicable, drug-induced pull. “It was you all along.”

He stopped just inches away. His scent was overwhelming—forest floor, ozone, and something ancient. “You shouldn’t have come back, Sera,” he murmured. His voice was a low vibration that seemed to melt the last of her resolve. “A lamb does not seek out the lion in his den.”

“I… I heard your soul,” she countered, her voice small. “I heard the pain in your howl.”

His expression shifted, a flicker of raw, human agony crossing his divine features before the hunger returned. He reached out, his hand cupping her jaw. His touch was electric, searingly hot against her skin. “And now that you have found me, do you have the courage to endure me?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He tilted her head back, his thumb tracing the line of her lower lip. Sera was caught in a storm of inner conflict. Every instinct told her to run, that this was a predator who would consume her, yet the poison in her veins—or perhaps a deeper, soul-deep recognition—made her lean into his touch.

He leaned down, his lips ghosting over hers. “I have tasted your scent on the wind for a thousand years,” he whispered against her mouth. “Tonight, I taste the girl who was brave enough to pity a monster.”

When he finally kissed her, it wasn’t a gentle request; it was a claim.

The slow burn of his touch ignited into a forest fire. He led her down to the moss, his movements deliberate and heavy with a century of restraint finally snapping. Sera felt the rough grass against her back and the weight of him above her—a weight that felt like the mountain itself.

He ravaged her senses, his lips and tongue exploring the hollow of her throat and the curve of her shoulder with a desperation that was almost violent. He was worshipful yet savage, as if he were trying to memorize her soul through her skin. Sera’s mind spun—the dream and the reality blurring until there was only the heat of him.

As he entered her, a sharp cry escaped her lips, half-pain and half-revelation. He paused, his golden eyes searching hers, filled with a dark, possessive love that no human man could ever offer. Then, he moved with the power of the tides, a rhythmic, relentless force that shattered her innocence and rebuilt her as his own.

In that moment of absolute surrender, as the moon watched from its silent throne, Sera didn’t just lose her virtue; she lost her world. She was no longer the healer’s daughter of the village. She was the mate of the King, being claimed by the very halimaw she had once feared, under a sky that whispered of a forever they were only just beginning to write.

Sera awoke the next morning by the side of a stream, fully clothed, her crate of roots neatly beside her. Her body ached with a sweet, lingering heat, and the marks on her skin confirmed that the night had been no dream. Her father and the village men found her soon after, frantic with worry. She lied, claiming she had simply been lost, but her heart remained in the shadows with the golden stranger.

Back within the familiar walls of their cottage, the air felt suffocating. Her father had finally retreated to the porch to recount the “rescue” to the neighbors, leaving Sera alone with her mother in the small kitchen.

“You look pale, Sera,” her mother murmured, pouring a basin of warm water infused with ginger and calamansi. “Sit. Let me wash the forest grime from you.”

Sera stiffened, her heart hammering. “I can do it, Mother. I am just tired.”

“Nonsense. You were out all night.” Her mother’s voice was gentle but firm—the voice of a woman who had spent decades reading the language of the human body. She pulled the collar of Sera’s tunic back to check for fever, but her hand froze.

There, just above the curve of Sera’s shoulder, was a deep, purplish mark—the unmistakable ghost of a desperate kiss, far too wide and fierce to be from any man in the village.

A heavy silence fell between them. Her mother’s eyes, sharp and knowing, moved slowly down to Sera’s hands, which were trembling in her lap, and then to the way Sera sat—tense, as if protecting a secret deep within her belly. As a healer, she knew the signs of a body that had been “opened”—the subtle change in a woman’s gait, the lingering flush in the skin, and the hollow, haunted look in the eyes of one who had seen something beyond the veil.

“That is no insect bite,” her mother whispered, her voice trembling with a sudden, icy fear. She leaned closer, her voice barely audible over the noise of the village outside. “Sera… the roots do not leave marks like those. And they do not make a girl look at the forest as if she is waiting for the trees to breathe her name.”

Sera pulled her tunic tight, her knuckles white. “I fell, Mother. I told you, the woods are treacherous.”

Her mother reached out, clutching Sera’s chin, forcing her to look up. “Treacherous, yes. But the Engkanto do not just take a person’s path. They take their soul. They leave a hunger that no bread can satisfy.” She searched Sera’s face, her breath hitching when she saw the truth mirrored in her daughter’s amber-tinted gaze. “You didn’t just get lost, did you? You were found.”

Before Sera could answer, her father’s heavy footsteps thudded on the porch. Her mother pulled away instantly, masking her shock with a practiced healer’s calm, but the air between them had changed. The secret was no longer Sera’s alone; it was a ticking clock, and the healer knew that once a girl had tasted the moonlight, the sun would never be enough again.

In the weeks that followed, the cottage became a silent battlefield. Sera’s mother, once the source of comfort and warmth, now watched her daughter with the predatory stillness of a hawk. She saw the way Sera ignored her meals, how she grew thinner yet seemed to glow with a strange, translucent light. She saw her daughter’s eyes constantly drifting toward the dark canopy of the mountains, as if she were listening to a song no one else could hear.

“She is slipping away,” her mother whispered to the empty jars of her apothecary. “The forest is calling back its own.”

Late one night, while the village slept under a sliver of a waning moon, the healer began her work. She didn’t brew the usual tonics for coughs or fevers. Instead, she pulled a hidden floorboard beneath her workbench, revealing a jar of makabuhay vines, crushed iron-gall, and holy oils blessed by a priest from the distant capital.

She stoked the hearth fire until it roared, the light casting long, dancing shadows against the walls. Into the iron pot went herbs so bitter they made the eyes water—remedies meant to “ground” a soul back to the earth and sever the ties to the spirit realm.

“Mother?”

Sera stood in the doorway, her hair loose, her white nightgown making her look like a ghost in the flickering light. She looked at the boiling pot, the pungent, metallic scent of the brew hitting her like a blow.

“Drink this, child,” her mother commanded, her voice cracking with desperation. She poured the thick, dark liquid into a wooden bowl.

Sera stepped back, her hand instinctively pressing against her navel, where the memory of the Prince still felt like a warm, living coal. “I am not sick, Mother.”

“You are infected!” her mother cried, moving toward her. “I saw the marks, Sera. I see the way your blood hums when the wind blows from the north. You have been tainted by the Engkanto’s shadow. If you do not drink this, your heart will stop beating for human men, and you will wander into those trees and never return. You will become a spirit—a shadow with no memory of your father or me!”

“Maybe I don’t want to forget,” Sera countered, her voice trembling. “Maybe the ‘shadow’ you fear is the only thing that makes me feel alive.”

“It is a glamour!” her mother hissed, thrusting the bowl toward her. “A trick of the dark. They don’t love, Sera. They consume. He didn’t claim you; he marked you as his prey. Drink. Purge the moonlight from your veins before it turns your heart to stone.”

Sera looked at the bitter medicine, then at her mother’s tear-streaked face. For a moment, she felt the crushing weight of her duty as a daughter. She reached out and took the bowl, the heat of it seeping into her palms. But as the steam rose, she didn’t smell the herbs. She smelled the forest after a rain. She felt a phantom tingle in her lower belly, a deep, possessive thrum that whispered Stay mine.

With a sudden, defiant motion, Sera poured the liquid into the ash of the hearth. The fire hissed and died, plunging the kitchen into a suffocating gray smoke.

“The moonlight is already in my bones, Mother,” Sera said, her voice sounding older, more ancient than it had ever been. “No medicine can wash away what has already become a part of my soul.”

Her mother collapsed into a chair, the empty bowl clattering to the floor. She knew then that she hadn’t just lost the battle—she had lost her daughter. Sera was no longer a girl to be healed; she was a bridge to a world that did not know the meaning of “mercy.”

The moon rose like a heavy, silver coin, bloated and brilliant. It was the night the healer’s mother feared most—the night the veil between worlds grew thin enough to tear.

Inside the cottage, the air was thick with the scent of dried herbs and iron. Sera’s father stood by the heavy oak door, his knuckles white as he gripped his master-crafted bow. He didn’t know the truth about the Engkanto, but he knew the forest. He knew the way the wind had gone silent, and the way the village dogs had ceased their barking to huddle, whimpering, beneath the porches.

“Stay back from the window, Sera,” he commanded, his voice a low, jagged rasp.

Sera stood in the center of the room, her heart a frantic drum. She felt the change before she heard it. The familiar, deep-seated tingling in her lower belly began to thrum, a magnetic pull that made her knees weak. Her body remembered him; her skin, still marked by the ghost of his touch, seemed to glow in the dark.

Then came the sound.

A heavy, deliberate thud against the earth outside. The house groaned. A low, vibrating growl seeped through the cracks in the walls, so deep it rattled the teeth in Sera’s head.

“He is here,” she whispered, a mixture of terror and an agonizing, soul-deep relief.

“Over my dead body,” her father hissed. He kicked the door open, stepping out into the silver frost of the yard.

Sera rushed to the threshold. In the center of the garden, standing amongst the crushed flowers, was the Black Wolf. He was gargantuan—a mountain of shadow that seemed to swallow the moonlight. His eyes weren’t red tonight; they were the color of molten gold, fixed unblinkingly on Sera.

“Monster!” her father roared, drawing the string of his bow to his ear. “I spared you once! I will not make that mistake again!”

“No! Itay, wait!” Sera screamed, leaping from the porch.

The wolf didn’t flinch. He didn’t snarl. He simply watched her, his massive tail sweeping the ground, his presence an ultimatum. Choose.

The arrow flew.

It was a perfect shot, aimed straight for the beast’s chest. But as the cedar shaft pierced the moonlight, the wolf didn’t move—he transformed. In a flash of blinding celestial light that sent her father reeling back, the beast dissolved.

The Prince stood there, the arrow caught inches from his throat by a hand that shimmered with golden scales. He was more beautiful than Sera remembered, and more terrifying. His nakedness was now draped in a cloak of woven starlight, and his hair flowed like ink in water.

Her father fell to his knees, the bow clattering to the dirt. “An Engkanto…” he breathed, the hunter’s pride replaced by a mortal’s primal dread.

The Prince ignored the man. He looked only at Sera, extending a hand that was half-human, half-divine. “The path is open, Sera,” he said, his voice echoing like thunder in a canyon. “But if you take my hand, the girl of this village dies tonight. Only the Queen of the White Paradise remains. There is no turning back.”

Sera looked at her father, huddled in the dirt, and her mother, who stood in the doorway with a face full of grief. She felt the ache, the lingering “poison” of his love that had claimed her soul long before her body. The village felt like a cage; the forest felt like a throne.

“I died the night you found me in the glade,” Sera said, her voice steady and clear.

She ran to him, her bare feet hitting the cold grass, and threw herself into his arms. The Prince let out a low, triumphant sound—half-growl, half-sob—as he pulled her against his massive, burning chest.

He didn’t walk away. He leapt. With Sera clutched to him, they blurred into a streak of gold and shadow, heading straight for the heart of the Black Forest. Behind them, the trees began to shift and grow, weaving a wall of thorns and glowing white flowers that sealed the path forever.

The village of San Rafael would tell the story for generations—of the girl who sang to the shadows and the wolf who stole the sun. But in the White Paradise, where the moon never sets, Sera sat upon a throne of moss and starlight, finally whole, finally claimed by the only monster she had ever loved.

THE END.