Prologue
CONTENT WARNING
This book contains mature themes, violence, possessive behavior, and situations that may be disturbing to some readers. It is intended for mature audiences aged 18 and older. 💋♥️💋♥️
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Hi Everyone! Welcome to The Alpha's Rare Obsession! 🐺✨💜
Romantacy821 💋❤️
Prologue: The Scent of Ash
The moon wasn’t full, but it was bright enough to bleed through the canopy, casting dark shadows like claws. I was four years old—nearly five—and I remember the cold most of all. Not the shiver-inducing kind, but the kind that settles in your bones when the world is ending.
I was huddled in the hollow of an ancient oak tree, my mother’s hand pressed tightly over my mouth. Her skin, usually smelling of sweet vanilla and lavender, now smelled of sweat and blood.
“Don’t make a sound, Violatte,” she whispered, her voice a trembling mess. “No matter what you see. No matter what you hear.”
Through the break in the roots, I saw my father, Darius. He stood in the center of the clearing, his tall frame silhouetted against the orange roar of our burning pack house. Facing him was a man who looked like his dark reflection—the same broad shoulders, the same sharp jawline, but with eyes that were hollow voids.
Morpheus. My father’s very own blood, his own brother.
“Where is she, Darius?” Morpheus’s voice was gravel grinding together. “The girl the Moon Goddess prophesied. The same girl the elders fear. The one born with the Mark of the Eclipse.”
“You’ll never find her, brother,” my father growled. “I don’t want to fight you, Morpheus. We are blood. Family. Let us end this now, brother.”
Morpheus laughed. “You are but a weakling, yet you became the Alpha. You got the girl, you got everything that should have been mine, and now I’m here to take it all from you. Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of that beautiful mate of yours and the child... oh, she’s going to make me powerful, so, so powerful.” Morpheus let out an evil laugh.
The air shifted, thickening with a scent I didn’t recognize—something ancient and rotted. With a bone-cracking snap, my father didn’t wait. He shifted mid-air, his human form exploding into a massive, storm-grayish black wolf. He lunged with a roar that shook the very trees, teeth aimed for Morpheus’s throat.
But Morpheus didn’t even flinch. He didn’t shift. He just raised his hand, and with a flick of his fingers, an invisible weight slammed into my father. The Great Alpha was pinned to the earth as if a mountain had fallen on him.
“Look at you, Darius. Just weak,” he sneered. The, crushing weight of Morpheus's magic pinned Darius flat to the ground, right before a heavy boot slammed onto his chest. The air left Darius's lungs in a sharp, ragged gasp. “You’re utterly powerless. One simple flick and you’re pinned. Yet Father chose you.” He spat the last word like a curse, grinding his heel down just a fraction harder.
Darius choked on a gasp, his fingers clawing uselessly at the heavy leather of the boot. He managed a bloody, breathless grin. Unlike his father and brother, Darius was born completely devoid of magic—but he refused to let that make him a victim. He threw himself into brutal, relentless training, pushing his body past its limits until he was a weapon in his own right. What he lacked in magic power, he more than made up for in raw physical strength and lethal combat strategy.
When it came down to a fight, Darius didn't need a powers to win; he defeated his opponents through sheer skill and dominance. Their father saw this unyielding mindset and knew Morpheus would only abuse power if given the throne. Darius didn't need magic to command a pack—his character and earned strength made him the only one truly fit to lead and his father saw that.
“And yet…” Darius wheezed, the sound scraping against his raw throat. “He still… didn’t choose you.”
Morpheus let out a monstrous growl. “Well now I’m taking it all from you. Say hello to father for me,” he said right before he unleashed the full, suffocating force of his magic,
“The girl’s power belongs to the shadows, not a dying bloodline,” Morpheus continued, stepping over my father’s pinned, snarling form. “She is the key to the Veil. I won’t let you hide her in the dirt of this forest.”
I felt a heat ignite in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t a heat of a little she wolf. It was a roar, a wildness, a frantic need to protect. My vision blurred, turning a hazy, vibrant purple. I felt my bones reshape. I felt my skin stretch painfully. I wanted to howl, to bite, to tear into the man who looked like my father but felt like death. I was too small. My shifting shouldn’t have been possible.
“Violatte, no!” my mother hissed, pulling me back.
But the change had started. A tiny, golden-white wolf with eyes like violet lightning stood where a little girl had once been seconds before. The power rolling off me must have alerted him. My father’s eyes grew wide as he screamed, “No, Violatte!” There was so much fear in his eyes when he saw I had shifted. Then he yelled to my mom, “Take her and run now, Alana!”
My mother hesitated, a stray tear falling as he screamed for her to run again.
Morpheus turned sharply toward our hiding spot. For one heartbeat, our eyes locked—mine, terrified and electric purple, and his, those bottomless black pits.
Then, as if reacting to me, his void-black eyes split open, flashing an incandescent, searing crimson. The red light flared, brighter than the fires burning behind him, reflecting the ancient bloodthirst I represented to him. The transformation back to black was instant, but the look he gave me was utterly changed.
He smiled. It was the most horrible thing I had ever seen.
“There you are,” he whispered, his tone shifting from a demand to twisted satisfaction. “The Eclipse will rise.”
Then, the world exploded into chaos. Screams echoed from our pack—the very same pack who had always been terrified of me. Morpheus’s voice cut through the madness, casting a dark promise loud enough for us to hear over the noise: “I’ll find you, Alana, and you will be mine once more. And the girl!”
My mother grabbed me, shifting into her own sleek wolf form with a desperate snarl. She didn’t look back at the clearing where my father lay broken. She didn’t look back at our home. She just ran.
We ran until the scent of the pack was a memory and the sound of the screams faded into the wind.
“We stay hidden,” my mother told me weeks later, once I was in my human form again and we were miles away in a yellow house that smelled like dust. “We don’t shift. We don’t howl. We become ghosts, Latte. It’s the only way to stay alive.”
I didn’t understand then. I just knew that every time I looked in the mirror, those purple eyes reminded me of the monster in the woods. And I knew, deep down, that he was still looking for me.
