Prologue: The Shadows Grip
The Shadows Grip
My mother’s hand pressed tightly over my mouth, so tightly I could almost taste the dirt and sweat on her skin. She usually smelled of sweet vanilla and lavender, but now she smelled only of fear.
“Don’t make a sound, Violatte,” she whispered, her voice trembling with each word. We were squeezed together tightly inside the hollow of an ancient oak tree a few feet from the clearing. “No matter what you see. No matter what you hear she said looking at me with so much fear in her eyes.”
Through the break in the roots, the orange roar of our burning pack house lit up the night. In the center of the clearing stood my father, Darius. Facing him was a man who looked like a darker reflection of him, possessing the same broad shoulders and sharp jawline, but with eyes that were hollow and emotionless.
Morpheus. He was my father’s own blood.
“Where is she, Darius?” Morpheus’s voice was like gravel grinding together. “The girl the Moon Goddess prophesied. The same girl the elders all fear. The one born with the Mark of the Eclipse.”
“You’ll never find her,” my father growled. “I don’t want to fight you, Morpheus. We are blood. Let’s end this now, brother.”
Morpheus laughed. “You got the girl I wanted, you got the pack I deserved. You got everything that should have been mine and tonight... I’m taking it all back, Darius. I’ll take good care of that beautiful mate of yours, and the child... she’s going to make me so powerful. I'd say wait and see but I doubt you'll be getting that chance.”
The air shifted around us, thickening with a dangerous power. I heard the sound of bones cracking and rearranging as my father shifted mid-air, his human form exploding into a massive, storm-gray wolf. He lunged with a roar, his teeth aiming straight for Morpheus’s throat.
Morpheus didn’t even flinch. He raised his hand, and with a flick of his fingers, an invisible wall of magic slammed into my father. The Great legendary Alpha was pinned flat to the earth as if a mountain had fallen on him.
Unlike Morpheus, my father was born completely devoid of magic, relying on brute force alone, and against Morpheus’s dark magic, raw strength wasn’t enough.
“Look at you, Darius. Just weak,” Morpheus sneered, stepping forward to slam a heavy boot onto my father’s chest. The air left Darius’s lungs in a sharp, ragged gasp. “UTTERLY POWERLESS. You have no magic. Yet Father chose you.”
Darius choked on a gasp, his fingers clawing uselessly at the heavy leather of the boot. He managed a bloody, breathless grin. “And yet… he still didn’t choose you.”
Morpheus let out a monstrous growl, grinding his heel down harder. “Well, now I’m taking it all back. The girl’s power belongs to the shadows, not this filthy dying bloodline. She is the key to the Veil, and 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 the faint heat of a four-year-old pup, it was a wild, frantic roar to protect my family. My vision blurred, turning a hazy, vibrant purple. My bones reshaped, and my skin stretched painfully. My shifting shouldn’t have even been possible at my age, but the magic forced its way out.
“Violatte, no!” my mother hissed, pulling back.
It was too late. A tiny, golden-white wolf with eyes like violet lightning stood where a little girl had once been seconds before.
The surge of power rolled off of my little body alerting my father to my presence. My father’s wide and terrified eyes snapped to our hiding spot. “No, Violatte!” he screamed, before turning to my mother. “Take her and run now, Alana!”
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 brighter than the fires burning behind him. The transformation back to black was instant, but the look he gave me was utterly changed. He smiled and 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.”
My father screamed for her to run again. My mother hesitated, a stray tear falling as she looked at him one last time. Then, with a desperate snarl, she shifted into her own sleek wolf form, grabbed me, and plunged straight into the pitch-black treeline.
Behind us, the world exploded into chaos. Screams echoed from our burning pack, and Morpheus’s enraged voice cut through the madness, carrying through the trees after us: “Run, Alana! Run as fast as you can... I’ll find you! And the girl!”
Alana 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 reached out to grab her hand and to respond, but my fingers closed around empty air instead of her warm solid fingers. Her face blurred, her warning stretching into a distant, hollow echo.
Before I could respond, the ground dropped out from beneath me. Dark shadows dragged me by my feet all the way down into a heavy, pitch-dark tide. I screamed for my mother as the world dissolved into black dust. I reached for her desperately. I screaming for her as loud as my little voice cold but she was slipping away too fast, shrinking into a tiny speck of light. I called her name one last time, just as the darkness completely closed in over my head.
