Chapter 1
Prologue
It is highly recommended to prepare a defibrillator, to buy several boxes of tissues, and made tons of popcorns.
Chapter 1 ~ Hero with fangs and fur
From the very beginning, “Once upon a time” had always transmitted that feeling of fairy tale, of distant dreams, of enchanted lands.
Breath-taking adventures with challenges of other times, love stories as passionate as flames that destroy entire woods in a single night, evil always defeated by the pure-hearted hero, on the white horse.
Then there were other stories.
Dark.
Foggy.
With the heroes who wandered on starless nights, heroes with fangs and fur. Stories that did not to start with the classic “once upon a time” that would certify them as fairy tales.
And this is our story.
A story that made the skies weep, the earth bleeds, and the winds scream in agony. A story with pure, raw love. Love between soulmates, love between friends and, finally, love between a son and a father
…..
“I’ll be back at this exact spot, at 12:00.”
The powerful man with strange violet eyes had informed the boy standing in front of him about his future. Those were eyes that belonged to another world. A world of terrors and creatures.
In three years he would pick him up, exactly at noon.
He had taught the kid how to understand the time from the position of the sun. Only problem was that the place was perpetually hidden by a thick impenetrable curtain of furious clouds.
Everything in that place seemed dreary and ferocious, with a kind of intrinsic anger and hunger. Including its nature and the climate. And its inhabitants…better not to cross path with.
Barely reaching the hips of the amethyst-eyed man, the child was shaking from head to toe, and not just from fear. He was not allowed to wear a single piece of cloth. And the temperature had a minus in front. Sure, the boy had werewolf blood, and a powerful one. However, his wolf had not yet landed in this world, and his maturity had not yet sprouted.
“Ok father.” He simply answered, without meeting his stare.
The child looked at the darkness approaching from behind those trees, hunched over each other as if they were in a constant struggle to get that little sunlight, to absorb the scarce nutrients in that lifeless ground, or simply steal everything they could from the nearby plant. He thought they were monsters ready to devour all his flesh, so hungry that even his bones would disappear into their greedy bellies.
“If I were you, I would seek shelter before the sun sets completely, and—” The big man crouched down, to be at the same height as his son, ready to tell him his last words for the next three years. He studied the kid with neutrality and apparent indifference.
One would expected something like a “be careful,” or “I’m proud of you”, or even an “I love you”, or something similar.
“— always stay downwind”
That said, he didn’t spare another look at the son, shifting into his big black wolf in a mess of broken bones and fur. His men had remained within walking distance, all in their wolf form, all watching the hostile woods and lurking shadows without any particular shape.
A howl of pure domination followed, and before the kid could blink twice, the father left that desolate place and his only son, closely followed by his wolves.
The boy must have been less than 7 years old, all skin and bones. He had no wolf. He had no knife or compass. Nor the slightest idea where to go.
From the moment he was able to store memories, his father had always trained him hard for survival, often leaving him for weeks in the forests around the pack. He had taught him how to climb trees, how to make weapons and other tools with what the forest offered, how to light a fire, how to make fur from an animal. How not to be eaten.
And everything had come to that very moment.
The boy had never played with anyone, he was not allowed to, and the children were afraid of him.
All he had done since he could remember was study with a private tutor, train with his father, who hadn’t let anyone else do it, and witness how the Alpha had destroyed one pack after another.
Taking a deep breath, the air was so cold that hurt his nostrils, he wiped away the few tears that appeared in those dark blue eyes and sneezed once.
And so he took a hesitant step towards what would be his home for the next three years.
“Alpha, he won’t survive a day in there.” The massive man did not get a chance to continue with his views on the matter.
“Beta, don’t forget who you’re talking to,” Tiberious growled, pushing his second-in-command away unceremoniously. The Beta always smelled of rotten souls and acid. Probably the gates of hell were ajar around him, ready to take him as soon as he died for all he did in life. So that explained the smell. The smell of hell.
“He is my son. He will own the damn forest.” On the surface, the Alpha looked like a piece of stone like those Gothic statues atop cathedrals staring down at the worlds below and mortals with calculating indifference and coldness. Inside, there was a storm of emotions raging.
For a little, he had spied on his son, from far away, without being noticed.
He saw how the kid had avoided a dark cave, a clever move considering a family of grizzly bears resided inside it, and begun climbing a tree. One tall and too thin for other predators to follow.
‘Come on, son. You can do it.’ He narrowed his wolf’s eyes into two slits.
‘Show all these rotten wolves who you really are. Show them the Black Alpha.’
A small sacrifice for a life of happiness. That was the price Mirko had to pay. The price to get rid of the Black Alpha’s curse.
The one that Alpha Tiberious will take to the grave. Like a terminal illness whose only escape was death.
Because death was his only freedom.
Present time ~ Black Devil
The current Alpha of Black Devil was staring at the horizon, his mind lost in the dark maze of the past time.
It was drawn. A time of the day that reminded him to run away because of the predators were always starting to appear. He hadn’t been a prey for a long time and never will again, but still, the feeling of survival was there. In his veins. In his unconscious mind.
How to forget about the memories. The hidings. The starving. The cold.
It was all there.
Worst of all, there was something without a name that called him back to those far away lands. The mountains were claiming their Alpha back.
Mirko had been absent since exactly six months, busy with his soulmate and the pack.
At least one of his packs.
Sitting on the roof of the pack house, he looked like a statue of a fantastic beast.
Immobile, scary, and half shifted into his wolf.
Mirko had pondered day and night about when was the right time to go back to the mountains.
To return to the first real place he had called home.
To Craken’s birthplace.
But he had realized that there was no a real suitable time, the more he doubted the more he would postpone the irremediable.
‘Alpha, are you done catching birds up there?’ Rolando’s voice came through their mind-link.
Crucifero’s chuckle followed soon after. ’People think we build a statue on the roof as much as you stand still,’ he added.
‘A scary and ugly one’ Rolando teased.
Mirko smiled to himself. Those two were out of the definition of ‘friend’. They were much more. Brothers gifted by a fate not always innocent.
For a moment, they made him forget ’that something’ that will always be inside him. Something that was him.
With a nimble leap, Mirko landed in front of the entrance to the pack house, startling some folks passing by. He nodded at them when they saluted him with the typical ‘Alpha’ uttered solemnly.
‘Is everything ready?’ He asked then, cracking his neck as he headed towards the forest. ‘Yes, Alpha’ They both replied in a neutral voice.
‘What about the bedroom?’ He grimaced at the idea. As much as he hated the idea of living in the quarters created for the Alphas, on the top floor where he hadn’t slept in it since his father was alive, he also knew Elena couldn’t reside and sleep in the forest with him or in his bare little cabin that only contained a bed and a refrigerator to store his raw meat. No bathroom, no mirror, or any kind of comfort she surely needed.
’Marica said the cleaning team removed every inch of dust and kicked out the spiders and rats living there. Although I don’t think ghosts will ever leave that haunted place′ Rolando winced. None of them had ever liked the top floor of Black Devil’s pack house. No one had set foot there for years for fear of the spirits of the slaughtered wolves or, worst, the previous Alphas.
Mirko’s office was located right next to Beta’s and Gamma’s, on the third floor, just below the Alphas floor so Mirko had had no need or urge to venture there over the years. He doubted that anyone had ever explored that floor before, other than the prostitutes, the cleaners, and, of course, the Alphas.
‘Did she, uh, get everything a woman needs?’
‘Yes, clean sheets, plants, soap, sanitary staff, pads and all,’ he grinned. It would never get old to tease the Alpha about his mate.
With a sigh, Mirko rubbed his face. At least that had been done.
And he was trying, for his mate. He was really trying hard.
But even before he started, before they started their life together, Mirko wasn’t sure he had the strength for that kind of domestic life.
As if Rolando had read his thoughts, the mocking voice came with the veil of truth clinging to it.
‘Never, ever would I have seen you so tame, Black Alpha’
