Prologue
POV: Roderic ~15 years ago, Royal Lycan Kingdom
The kingdom smelled like rot long before the first corpse hit the floor.
Most people didn’t notice it—wolves are supposed to be creatures of earth and storm and iron, not mildew and decay—but I did. I smelled it on the wind, beneath the polished marble floors, in the cracks of the great stone pillars that held up our so-called “everlasting dynasty.”
Rot starts quietly. Soft. Silent. Just like madness.
And my brother… My brother was mad long before the rest of the kingdom dared whisper the word.
I stood in the doorway of his throne room—our father’s throne room—and watched him tear the place apart with his bare hands, eyes bloodshot, hair tangled, lips pulled back in a snarl that wasn’t quite lycan but wasn’t human anymore either.
“Where is she?” he roared, flipping over a solid oak table as though it weighed nothing. Papers scattered like frightened birds. “Where—WHERE—did they take her?!”
His voice cracked on the last word.
Pathetic.
“Brother,” I said, stepping over the wreckage without rushing. Rushing would imply urgency, or worse… concern. “You need to stop this. She’s gone.”
He whirled, those deranged green eyes locking onto mine. He used to be handsome—commanding, powerful, the kind of king Lycans and wolves kneeled for without being told. Now his face looked too sharp, cheeks hollow, skin pale beneath the gold tint of his Lycan blood.
“Don’t,” he growled. “Don’t you fucking say that!”
I folded my hands behind my back, schooling my expression into calm detachment. “She’s five years old, Seeley. A pup. The rogues likely killed her minutes after the escape—”
“NO!” His voice cracked again, a broken howl in the shape of a word. “She’s alive. I feel her. I know she’s still—”
“Your bond is damaged,” I interrupted. “You’re imagining signs that aren’t there.”
He stared at me like he wanted to rip my throat out. Wouldn’t be the first time. Wouldn’t be the last.
“She’s alive,” he said again, softer now. “She has to be. She’s all I had left.”
All I had left. There it was. The sickness eating him alive. The desperation. The weakness.
I allowed myself a small sigh. Not annoyed—no, I had perfected the art of controlled exasperation long ago. More… disappointed. Disappointment was sharper. Easier to sharpen into something useful.
“Seeley.” I approached him slowly, like one approaches an injured animal. “If you keep spiraling like this, the council will force a decision you won’t like. Step down for now. Make me Regent until you regain your footing.”
His Lycan snarled through him, visible in the violent twitch of his neck.
“You?” His lips curled back fully now. “You would take my throne… while my daughter is still missing?”
“I would protect your throne,” I corrected smoothly. “Before the kingdom sees what you’ve become.”
He lunged.
His hand wrapped around my throat, claws puncturing skin. Warm blood trickled down my collar.
He was fast—but I’d always been faster. I didn’t fight back, didn’t resist. That would have given him an excuse to finish what his instincts clearly wanted.
Instead, I held his gaze, unblinking.
“Do it,” I murmured. “Prove the council right. Prove you’re unfit to rule.”
His grip faltered.
Coward.
The moment he let go, I stepped back and smoothed my torn shirt as though he were nothing more than a misbehaving pup.
“You’re losing yourself,” I said quietly. “Cut your losses before the kingdom sees the truth.”
His chest rose and fell, ragged and uneven. “I will never stop looking for her.”
“You already lost her.”
“She’s my BLOOD!”
“And so am I,” I reminded him. “The kingdom needs a stable King Alpha. Present one.”
For a moment—just a moment—I saw the shadow of the brother I once admired. The proud king. The fierce warrior. The male who led armies without flinching.
But grief hollowed him. Madness replaced reason.
And obsession… gods, obsession consumed him.
He sank to his knees in the rubble of his own destruction, hands shaking.
“She’s my little girl,” he whispered.
Something cold twisted in my stomach.
Not sympathy. Not even close.
But the certainty—deep and absolute—that if he didn’t step aside soon, the kingdom would fall. And I would not fall with it.
Two weeks later, he banished half the council for “conspiring to hide information.”
Another week after, he executed an entire guard unit for “failing to scout the western countries thoroughly.”
A month later, he was barely sleeping, barely eating, barely shifting back into human form between frenzied hunts.
While I… I bided my time. Watched. Waited.
“You must declare her dead,” I told him again the next time he collapsed into the throne, trembling from exhaustion. “Finish mourning and name an heir.”
His haunted eyes lifted to mine.
“I have one,” he whispered. “She will return.”
Hope. Such a useless, pathetic emotion.
It clings to dying men like mold clings to stone.
“You’re destroying yourself,” I said. “And the kingdom. Crown me Regent.”
“No.”
Just that one word. Firm. Absolute.
The last flash of strength in a man collapsing under his own delusions.
My jaw tightened. “Then I can’t help you.”
He looked through me, not at me. “Leave if you must. I will find her with or without your support.”
So I left.
Not out of hurt. Not out of loyalty broken.
But because the kingdom needed to see him fall without my hands anywhere near the wreckage.
When a king topples, the wolves look for someone steady to replace him.
I would be steady.
I always was.
Years passed.
I built my alliances quietly. Carefully. Strategically.
Purebloods—wolves who believed in strength, tradition, hierarchy—gravitated toward me.
Hybrids were becoming more common. Too common. An infection that threatened the purity of our bloodlines.
The kingdom needed correction. Direction. A stronger king.
Me.
Always me.
I left the kingdom at dawn.
Not in disgrace — though my brother’s council whispered the word behind their sleeves — but in cold, calculated resentment. I saddled my horse, packed nothing beyond weapons and a few changes of clothes, and rode through the mountains without looking back. If my brother wanted to rot in his grief-soaked throne room, so be it. If he wanted to tear apart the forest searching for a daughter who was clearly dead, then let the fool run himself mad.
He’d refused every offer I made. Every logical solution. Every chance to let the kingdom heal.
“Cut your losses.” “Make me Regent.” “Our people need a king who can actually rule.”
He rejected it all.
Fine. Let him drown.
But the thing about rot is… it spreads. I knew, even as I crossed the border, that one day I’d return to pick apart what remained. Like scavengers do when the forest beasts finally fall.
What I didn’t expect was that he would take so long to die.
Years passed. The world spun on. He withered, and I thrived.
Freedom suited me. I traveled rogue territories, watched the rise and fall of packs, gauged who could be bent, broken, bought. The vision took shape slowly — an idea first, then a doctrine, then a whisper spreading through the angry, the fearful, the bitter.
Pureblood supremacy.
A simple thesis: Hybrids weaken us. Dilute us. Endanger us.
That message slithered easily into the hearts of those already resentful of change. And as the world shifted — witches forming alliances, vampires becoming bolder, dragons awakening — fear bloomed like disease.
Fear is a powerful teacher.
Fear, I learned, is how you reshape a kingdom.
I recruited quietly at first. Discreet gatherings. Long, late-night talks in worn taverns and half-lit barns. Men and women who believed the world was losing its spine. Lycans who thought the old ways were slipping from their fingers. Wolves who hated watching their bloodlines “tainted.”
I spoke with the warmth of a brother, the authority of royalty, and the venom of a prophet.
They listened. They followed. They worshipped.
And while my supporters multiplied, my brother decayed.
Rumor after rumor drifted to me — the King Alpha screaming into the night, tearing through villages for leads, interrogating his own warriors, stalking witches for visions, threatening dragons for information no one had.
A king reduced to a feral beast.
By the time Alida — his precious little ghost — returned to him at eighteen, I had already returned to the kingdom’s borders. Quiet. Unseen. Watching from the treeline like a wolf stalking a crippled elk.
I watched them reunite from afar. I saw the way he dropped to his knees like she was a goddess descended. Pathetic. Disgusting. Weak.
He had lost himself chasing her.
And then she killed him.
Not cleanly. Not mercifully. Not the way a daughter should lay a father to rest.
She tore him apart on the forest floor, her wolf ripping into the man who once would’ve burned the world down for her.
I watched from the cliffs above, hidden in shadows as blood soaked the ground, as his own warriors stood in silence.
My brother’s eyes glassed over, still staring at the daughter he’d ruined himself for. His last breath was a broken whisper I couldn’t hear — but the intention was obvious.
Forgiveness. Even in death.
Pathetic fool.
In the moment, I felt nothing.
No grief. No rage.
Just… confirmation.
The throne should have been mine.
By birthright. By strength. By sanity.
And yet the kingdom would fall into her lap — this half-blood girl who had done nothing but survive long enough to become a weapon sharpened by other hands.
A girl who should’ve been drowned the moment she drew her first breath.
Her victory was my theft.
Her existence was my insult.
And in the cliffs’ shadow, as her wolf snarled over what was left of the only man I’d ever come close to respecting, something inside me snapped.
The hatred that had grown slow and quiet for years ignited — violent, searing, volcanic.
It wasn’t enough to take the throne. It wasn’t enough to reclaim what was mine.
No… She needed to break.
Her bloodline needed to be erased. Her legacy salted. Her body and spirit shattered until she understood true suffering.
I slipped out before anyone sensed me — a ghost in the night, a shadow carrying a new purpose sharper than any blade.
I returned to my followers. I knelt before the fire they kept burning in my absence. I let the flames lick up my forearms, embracing the pain like an oath drawn in blood.
My voice dropped to a growl.
“If pain is what she gave me…” The fire snapped and spit sparks into the air. “…then pain is what she’ll get back tenfold.”
The Purebloods bowed.
The night bowed.
Even the shadows seemed to hold their breath.
The war didn’t start that night — but that’s when it was born.
In fire. In fury. In the promise of retribution.
And gods help every creature who stands between me and the girl who stole my crown.
