Chapter 1: The Shattered Crown
Chapter 1: The Shattered Crown
The Waste Forest was silent except for the wind. It coiled through the twisted trees, rustling brittle leaves, whispering like ghosts. The air was thick with damp earth and forgotten things, the scent of rot lingering beneath the cold bite of midnight. Here, in this tangled graveyard of twisted roots and towering shadows, Jacques moved with quiet purpose—revenge and nothing else held weight.
It hadn’t always been this way though—he hadn’t always been hollow, untethered, and consumed by rage.
Three years ago, his life had been different—he had been different.
Jacques had once been whole, and like many fools before him, he had wholeheartedly believed in love and all the beauty it brings. Never had he imagined life would teach him such a brutal lesson.
He recalled the first time he met her—his once lover turned destroyer.
Her laughter had been like sunlight, warm and impossible to ignore. Back then, he believed she was the one. It was as if he had been trapped in an endless darkness he hadn’t even realized he was in, and her touch made it recede, replacing the emptiness with something bright, consuming, and pure.
He had barely understood it—how someone like him, heir to a royal bloodline woven into power and expectation, could be loved for nothing more than himself.
It was the kind of love that unraveled logic and made fools of men like him.
And so he gave her everything—his heart, his trust, his future.
He remembered the nights in the palace gardens, beneath skies scattered with stars, when the world seemed to exist only for them. Moonlight fell across her face, soft and pale, and he would wonder how someone so radiant could have chosen him. They sat among trimmed hedges and marble paths, speaking of futures filled with promise. He listened, convinced her words were not fantasy but hope—a balm for everything he had been.
He had told her of his fears and his dreams. And she had listened—eyes bright, lips curved in understanding and love.
In those moments, he believed he had found not just a lover, but someone who saw him beyond the heir, beyond the bloodline. Someone who saw Jacques—the man.
So when she asked to see the pack’s most precious artifact—the bloodline crown, the core of his pack, the essence of their survival, a legacy older than memory itself—he never even questioned it.
He led her to it without hesitation.
He never thought that moment would be the last thing he trusted.
Jacques could still hear it—the crown cracking beneath the cursed object she wielded, the air trembling around them, and the wails of those he loved echoing through both his ears and soul as their lives were torn away.
His boys.
For a moment, he saw them—their small hands reaching for him, their laughter frozen in time. They had been his joy, his future, the one unshakable proof that happiness was real.
He could still recall the weight of them in his arms, the way their small bodies fit perfectly against his chest, as though they had been carved to belong there. Their laughter had been wild and unrestrained, echoing through the palace like music that could banish even the darkest thoughts. He remembered the way their eyes lit up when he returned from long hunts with the warriors, how they would race to him with unsteady steps, demanding stories of the forest and the beasts that lurked within.
They would cling to his cloak when storms rattled the glass windows of the western wing, their small voices insisting he was stronger than thunder itself. On quiet mornings, they would sit cross‑legged beside him, tracing shapes in the dust while he sharpened his blade, asking endless questions about battles against neighboring empires he hoped they would never fight. At night, they demanded lullabies, not from tradition but from him alone, their favorite being the one he had learned as a boy. In those moments, Jacques wasn’t the heir to a great empire or a warrior but simply a father.
Their scent was innocence itself—the faint musk of youth, the salt of sweat from play, and the dust of palace courtyards clinging to them. Jacques had cherished it and memorized it, believing it would linger forever. He had promised them safety, whispered vows that no harm would ever reach them, and that his strength would be their shield.
And yet, in the span of a single heartbeat, they were gone.
Erased, as if they had never existed.
Now, the silence was unbearable. No more footsteps pattered across the floor, no sweet voices calling him “Dad.” The absence was louder than any scream, a hollow ache that gnawed at him with every breath. He would have given his life a thousand times just to hear them once more, to feel their warmth pressed against him. But the world had stolen them, leaving only shadows where light had once lived.
Jacques should have died too. He should have vanished with them. He wanted to.
But fate denied him mercy.
The bloodline crown’s spirit—what remained of it—didn’t fade. It found him while he was on his last leg, wrapped itself around him, and sank into his bones like venom. The shattered remnants of his ancestors, of his people, threaded through his veins, filling him not only with life but also with power.
This transformation should not have been possible. In fact, if it had been any other lycan, they would have perished upon contact. But Jacques, by some miracle—or, as he believed, curse—survived.
Grief hollowed him out slowly. For nearly two years he drowned in sorrow, breaking himself piece by piece — drunken rages, failed attempts to end his life, endless nights consumed by memories until no tears remained. But as the years dragged on, even grief burned itself into something colder.
Revenge.
He would make her suffer. Torture her until she begged for death.
Jacques stopped, exhaling slowly as he forced the memories aside. Once he steadied himself, he stepped forward—then froze, something pressing at the edge of his senses. A presence lingered there, unfamiliar and wrong.
Someone was coming.
Someone who would change everything.
