Prologue: Nightmares of Blood
VERA’S POV
Warm blood splatters across my snout as I snarl and rip my claws out of the Argent Moon werewolf.
His corpse crashes down to the grass with a thud. The patch of yellow flowers here in the valley are swallowed up in crimson.
Ahead of me and the rest of my Winterborn pack, we can hear the Argent Moon rushing forward.
Before the murder of the Lycan King, this valley served as a camping grounds and bridge between our two packs.
Though we have always been at odds, loyalty to the King kept our enmity at bay.
Now, this valley is a battlefield.
If the prophecy is to be believed, this is also where I’ll meet my true love.
The Winterborn rally behind me and I arch my head back, roaring at the piercing Blood Moon. I’m loud enough to make the stampeding herd of our enemies pause before continuing their assault.
As the daughter of an esteemed Winterborn Alpha, it is my duty to see us through to our victory.
Deep inside the annals of my mind, I hear a powerful, regal voice announce, “Your mate is close, Vera.”
In my mind-link, I reply, “Not now, Freya, we’ve nearly won this fight.”
Freya is my wolf. We work as one. She lends me the strength in my transformation to cut down my enemy.
But she also offers guidance.
“Perhaps, dear Vera,” she says, “finding your mate is the key to winning this battle.”
Claws clash as the two packs meet in the middle of the valley. Eyes are gouged, necks are slit.
Howls become cries, then become whimpers.
The chaos should scare me, but it doesn’t. I’ve been trained to fight and trained to lead. Tonight, I will make my father proud.
Several feet in front of me, a Winterborn soldier is swept off her feet and tackled to the ground by an Argent Moon aggressor.
Before the enemy werewolf can strike her dead, I head butt him in his snarling teeth, sending his many cracked fangs flying.
Thrusting my claws through his chest, I tear him open and in half at the torso, then help the Winterborn wolf up.
Freya exclaims, “Damn it Vera! Duck!”
I obey, and feel the wind of an enemy’s lethal swipe above my mane. The Winterborn I rescued launches onto this newfound threat.
“That was too close,” Freya says, her voice shaking. “I swear, child. The Goddess Luna watches over you.”
I scoff and reply, “Perhaps. But I have you too, Freya, to watch over me.”
Even through mind-link, I can feel the warmth from Freya’s soft smile, even if it’s something that I cannot see.
More wolves fall on both sides, and I know that I’m needed. On all fours, I charge back into the war.
“Stop!” Freya commands. “Do you smell that?”
I sniff the air twice and take in the metallic scent of spilled blood, earthy cypress, cedar, and a lingering clary sage.
“That smell,” I murmur, “it’s extraordinary.”
Despite the bloodshed and horror, I’m overcome, from my head to my feet, with a nostalgic feeling of joy.
It’s as if that scent has determined my place in the world, and is beckoning to me and only me. Any doubt I felt about losing the war is erased, and any anxiety about my life vanishes.
“It’s him,” Freya insists. “Follow that scent and meet your mate. Go be claimed.”
As much as it pains me to leave the others behind in the battle, Freya has never once led me astray before. Maybe she’s right.
Maybe this Alpha wolf truly is the final piece to Winterborn victory. I smile at the thought of my lover and I fighting side by side, protecting our people and ending this long conflict between the packs.
The scent trails off to a clearing on the edge of the valley, and I’m pulled towards the intoxicating musk.
Several crooked willow trees hang down, hiding my mate behind their thick and drooping leaves.
So badly I wish to shout out, “I am yours, and you are mine. I’ve finally found you, and the prophecy has come true!”
I barge through the brush, only to have my heart stop. The must’ve made a mistake. This is terribly wrong.
A massive, mahogany-furred, Argent Moon werewolf tears through the neck of the Winterborn meant to be my mate. My lover paws helplessly at the mahogany wolf’s big chest.
“Freya…” I mutter. “This can’t be. My mate is being slaughtered by the enemy…”
Just as I had felt Freya smile before, I feel her grit her teeth.
The mahogany wolf, the killer of my lover, raises his head and stares at me. His eyes, also red, are like two flaming blood moons, and his scowl is one of pure hatred.
“No,” the mahogany wolf says through the mind-link, “I’m not killing your mate. I am your mate.”
Impossible.
This can’t be what the prophecy foretold.
And yet, this wolf has a mind-link with me, possible only between someone of my pack, or between my destined mate.
The mahogany wolf yanks his claws out from the corpse he stands over and slowly walks my way.
Somehow, maybe because we are destined to be united and to mate, I can see through the wolf. I can see his human form, an incredibly handsome man with a charming smile, whose true eyes are an icy blue mired by a past as troubling as my own.
Easily, I envision the two of us wrapped up as one, his fingers trailing their tips down my back, and his strong arms reeling me in for a kiss foretold by destiny itself.
It takes every fiber of my being to not submit to him, my lover, my Alpha.
He marches a circle around me, sizing me up and snarling.
“You will be mine,” he says, his cold gaze making me freeze.
“No, I will not!” I cry.
Freya is silent when I need her the most.
The warm nose of the mahogany wolf is an inch from my face when he howls and his hot breath knocks me over. I swipe at his feet, knocking him to my level, and jump on top of him.
He’s big, but I’m small and far more nimble, so I wrestle him down and we spin in the dirt. We’re entangled, but not as we were meant to be.
Finally, an opening, and I strike the piercing red eye on the right side of his face. He falls back to cover a paw over the wound.
“You bitch!” he screams. “You will face my wrath and wish that you had never laid a hand upon me.”
I know that he is my enemy, yet a deep shame fills me for bringing harm to my mate. A part of me wishes I could go to his side and comfort him, but for whatever Goddess-forsaken reason, we have been united by destiny, but to battle, not to love.
My mate slashes his hand through the air, and with the motion, I can feel him sever our mate-bond.
My heart hangs loosely in my chest, as if he’s also cut the very strings lifting up my heart. I collapse off my hind legs, brought down to the ground by my hollow, empty chest.
Each breath tasks my aching lungs, and I can’t fathom a world where I have no mate.
What’s even the point of going on?
There is no fate worse than a wolf who has had her mate-bond broken. Each of my limbs feel like they are crumbling.
It makes no sense. I don’t love this brute. I share no feelings for this killer.
And yet, with my mate-bond broken, I’m falling to pieces. I wobble and whimper, and my blood runs cold.
All that I can do to stay upright is run. Turning my back to the war, and like a coward, I run. With an unbearable sinking in my chest, and with shaking legs, I run.
I run until the valley is far behind me, and I am standing in a moonlit clearing. The Blood Moon casts pale-red rays down on the forest, making the trees all look like the shadows of figures here to haunt me.
Freya, where are you? Why are you silent now?
The smell of cinder and charred meat fills my nostrils. I turn my head to find a pile of corpses being burned. Through the smoke, I see the twisted faces of my mother and father.
No.
Please no.
Who could have done something so wicked?
A decade of training with my parents flashes before my eyes. I see the time father knocked me to my back during our combat lessons, and told me to get up no matter how many times I fell.
I see myself as a child standing by my mother’s side as she addresses the Lycan Court, and prepares me to be a queen.
Now, I watch the flesh from my parents’ faces sizzle and burn away. I shut my eyes and still see only the remains of my mother and father.
Wailing out to the starry sky, I wish I could have had more time with them, and I wish I could have made them proud.
I am a Starling, I am their daughter, and I must stay strong for the sake of my pack, and the sake of Freya.
Freya, I beg you, tell me what’s happening. Why?
Instead of Freya, a stranger’s voice calls out.
“This is the fate of traitors!” he exclaims, his voice echoey and ethereal.
Chills run down my spine.
Wait, that’s no stranger. I recognize that voice, but it’s distorted and unnatural.
That must be one of the Elders from the Lycan Court, though I can’t put my finger on which. He sounds haunted, or possibly even possessed.
Shadows from the forest spring to life. They were figures, the figures of wolves with a treacherous glow to their eye that I’ve never seen before.
It is hostility, hatred, and havoc all mixed into one amber glow.
I’ve fought hundreds of wolves before, but this group is something else. Their veins bulge and their muscles are abnormally inflated. I’m too weak to take on this many foreign enemies at once.
What can I do but run?
Mateless, motherless, fatherless, I run.
I dash back into the forest, ignoring the echoes of branches snapping behind me. I leap over brush and bramble, trying to put as much distance as I can between myself and all that has transpired.
The wolves are right behind me.
One of them lunges razor-sharp claws out towards me and swipes at my leg, though he is only able to scratch the surface of my fur.
Only a few strands of silver fur flow behind me. Maybe the Goddess is watching over me after all, if only in the slightest.
Then, the snarls of the wolves become snickering. The wolves’ snarls turn to snickers. They are no longer running behind me, and by the time I realize why, it’s far too late.
The forest ends. My heart feels like it’s jumping into my throat, and in the light of the pale-red Blood Moon, I tumble down a cliff and into an abyss.
