Chapter 1 Prologue
The ancient scrolls preserved in the buried vaults of the Silvercrest fortress were not crafted from thread, but from the dried black sinews of ancient Alphas.
They smelled of rot and fossilized bone, and for 3000 years the Cenobites had chanted a single unhinging verse, scouring the Earth’s surface for the meaning behind that which continuously slipped through their fingers;
"When the silver throne implodes to ashes,
A rogue will walk where darkness once stood.
Beneath the surge of the crimson moon,
She soaks the crown in her rage.
A bond twice broken, a crown twice marked.
The blood moon rises in honor of the fair one."
To the Cenobites the prophecy was an otherworldly mystic, an eerie warning lost in time, a paranormal story told during winter to frighten young wolves to keep them from straying past the borders.
They argued about its rhythm and lilt. They debated whether it’s words spoke to refer to unification of territories, or a slaughter of kings.
They even searched for a majestic fabled figure, a legendary champion born under a detailed alignment of the heavens, or maybe a warlord wielding long-forgotten blood magic.
They never thought it’d be a girl.
They never looked at Seraphine Vale.
To her family, to her pack and to her Alpha, Seraphine was just a quiet variable. She was the daughter of the Silvercrest’s Beta, possessing an appearance that was regrettably similar to a ghost’s. She was docile, soft-spoken, reserved and raised on the doctrine of absolute obedience and pack hierarchy.
When her Alpha charges her to become his Luna, the council did not see chaos looming near. They only saw an advantageous union, at least for the alpha. Alpha Cassian saw in her, his lost love, desiring Seraphine not as a soulmate, but as an object, a thing to wear his murdered mate’s memory.
No one believed that the quiet, loyal , edgeless, seemingly gullible girl would refuse. No one calculated the damning fierceness of a heart pushed beyond its threshold.
The elders had imagined the Blood Moon Prophecy would be conjured from archaic magic , celestial alignments or a powerful cosmic force. They didn’t know that the true engine of the prophecy was much more regular, far more terrifying, an 18 year old girl’s desperate unyielding flight into the dark.
The prophecy started that night, because she chose to flee her fate. If only she had known that her fast paced decisions would instigate the destruction of empires, may be her choices would differ. She only saw and felt the grim flash of a stolen future.
Alpha Cassian’s comeback was fast absolute and total. He didn’t just hunt her, he sought to eliminate the very essence that brought her to the world. He ordered the complete erasure of the Vale blood line, so that no legacy could ever rise up against him.
The massacre of her family was supposed to bring about an ending, Cassian believed that by killing her family, he would drown out whatever fire of defiance she still possessed. Instead, he sprung up a monster that would soon devour him.
As her family’s blood seeped into the filth, something dark and guarded, buried deep within her broke, and something ancient awoke.
The dormant birthmark on her right collarbone, a small crescent scar erupted into a frightening blinding silver flame.
It burned through skin and bone, consuming the soft, obedient girl she’d once been. It left behind a vacuum of white hot desire for vengeance.
She didn’t escape because she was strong, no. It was because her hatred gave her feet. She dragged her broken, bleeding, battered body across the borderlands.
Now tagged a rogue and being hunted by the very wolves who had once called her sister, she’s on the run leaving behind a trail of crimson on the forest floors.
Far to the north, beyond the giant peaks and iron gates of Blackthorn pack, Alpha Kael knew nothing about the girl bleeding out in his woods. Nor, was he aware of the archaic words written in the vaults of the Cenobites. He only knew the cold, inflexible structure of his own solitude, having spent 12 years starving his being to make sure he'd never again be enslaved by the agonizing feeling of loss.
Neither the tyrant King, nor the iron Lord, nor the desperate girl crawling on the dark forest floors knew the trap that was closing in on them.
The fate of the northern territories wouldn’t be decided by the armies, or political treaties, or the elite families. It would be decreed by a powerful ruthless quest for revenge, a campaign of retribution that would drag the two rival packs into the mud. It’ll force a tyrannical unyielding Alpha to his knees.
The blood moon was coming, and the rogue was in tune with it.
