Chapter 1 The Scentless Prince

The scent of blood and wet fur always filled the Obsidian Keep during a birth, but tonight, the air tasted like ash.

King Vaelor slammed his massive, scarred fist against the stone windowsill. Outside, the three moons of the Lycan Empire bled a deep crimson across the snow-capped peaks. The celestial alignment was perfect. The prophecy of the Blood-Claw Throne demanded a male heir tonight, or the pack factions would tear the kingdom apart by morning.

"Push, Marra!" Vaelor roared, his voice rattling the heavy iron chandeliers overhead.

On the velvet-draped bed, Queen Marra screamed, her silver hair plastered to her skull by sweat. Her fingernails, elongated into sharp, black talons, tore deep gashes into the silk pillows.

Behind Vaelor, six pairs of amber eyes glowed in the shadows. His daughters. The youngest, seven-year-old Vanya, let out a low, involuntary growl from her throat, her chest heaving with the restless, predatory energy of a true alpha. They were fierce. They were lethal.

But they were female. Under the ancient laws of Moon-Crag, a female alpha’s blood could not bind the fragmented sub-packs. They needed a king.

"The head is crowning!" the high shaman shouted, his hands trembling as he held a basin of steaming water. "Your Grace, I see the silver hair!"

Vaelor strode across the chamber, his heavy boots thudding like war drums. He ignored his weeping queen, his eyes locking onto the squirming, blood-slick infant the shaman lifted into the dim candlelight.

The room fell into a suffocating, absolute silence.

Vaelor closed his eyes and leaned over the bundle. His nostrils flared, drawing the air deep into his lungs. He waited for the familiar, intoxicating spark—the scent of winter ozone, hot copper, and the wild, suffocating dominance of a royal wolf spirit.

He inhaled again. Deeper.

Nothing.

The child didn't smell like the pack. He didn't even smell like a weak omega. He smelled like rain. Wet earth. Plain clay.

"Where is his beast?" Vaelor whispered, his voice dropping to a dangerous, gravelly rasp.

The shaman stepped back, his face draining of all color. He pressed his nose against the infant's chest, sniffing frantically. "He... he has no scent, Your Grace. There is no wolf inside him. He is a mundane. A dud."

"A pup with no teeth," Vanya sneered from the dark corner of the room, her lips curling over her fangs.

A hot, violent rage erupted in Vaelor’s chest. Thirty years. A hundred women. And his true queen had birthed a sheep. If the rival packs found out the male heir were a scentless cripple, they would tear the Obsidian Keep to pieces by sunrise.

Vaelor snatched the crying baby from the shaman’s grip by his ankles, lifting him upside down like a slaughtered pig.

"Vaelor, no!" Marra shrieked, dragging her broken body across the bloody sheets. She lunged forward, her hands clawing at Vaelor’s fur cloak. With a desperate, dying gasp, she looped a heavy gold chain around the infant's neck—a royal crest, half of a shattered moon pendant. "He is your son! Do not kill him!"

Vaelor backhanded her. The crack of his fist against her jaw echoed through the stone chamber, sending her crashing to the floor, spitting dark blood.

"The Blood-Claw Throne does not harbor parasites," Vaelor growled. He turned on his heel, the baby dangling silent and frozen in his grip, and kicked open the heavy oak doors.

The mountain air bit into Vaelor’s bare chest as he strode past the outer gates, ignoring the guards who bowed in terrifying silence. He marched three miles down the jagged cliffs, deep into the border where the royal territory ends and the forbidden Deadwood Forest begins.

The blizzard howled, stinging his eyes. The infant in his hand had stopped crying, its skin turning a sickly blue against the white velvet wrap.

With a grunt of disgust, Vaelor hurled the child into a massive, frozen briar patch. The sharp thorns tore through the velvet cloth, pinning the baby against the icy dirt.

Vaelor did not look back. He turned his back on the woods, shifting his bones into a massive, nine-foot gray wolf, and bounded back toward his castle, leaving the scentless thing to die in the frost.

The wind screamed through the briar patch, burying the white bundle beneath a layer of heavy snow. The golden pendant around the baby's neck grew bitterly cold, ice crystallizing over the royal engraving. The child’s chest rose and fell in shallow, final twitches.

Then, the wind stopped.

The howling of the distant wolves cut off instantly, replaced by a heavy, unnatural silence that suffocated the forest.

Deep within the child’s chest, the empty void where a wolf spirit should have been began to pulse. Nature hated a space. The raw, ambient magical energy of the ancient Deadwood—energy that had been sealed away for thousands of years since the great witch wars—felt the vacuum inside the royal child. It didn't just trickle in; it violently crashed into his soul, like a dam collapsing.

The snow around the briar patch didn't melt from the heat. It shattered, vibrating violently until the flakes disintegrated into a fine, glowing violet dust.

Crunch.

A heavy boot stepped onto a frozen branch.

Malkin stumbled into the clearing, a half-empty silver flask swinging from her grime-stained rope belt. She reeked of sour ale and burnt hemlock. Her gray hair hung in tangled ropes over her hunched shoulders. She had followed the wolf king’s scent to watch his shame die, but the moment she entered the clearing, the alcohol completely died in her veins.

The ground beneath her feet was shaking.

The baby’s eyes snapped open. They weren't the amber color of the lycans. They were a piercing, luminescent silver-blue that glowed in the dark. A thick, violet aura rippled off the infant’s skin, cracking the ice around the briars.

"Well, well," Malkin whispered, her voice dropping its drunken slurry. She knelt in the violet snow, her mismatched eyes widening in absolute awe. "The dog king thought he threw away a broken pebble. He didn't realize he dropped the core of the mountain."

She reached out a black-nailed hand to grab the child. The moment her skin brushed the velvet wrap, a concussive shockwave of invisible force blew outward.

The heavy silver flask at her hip hummed a high, vibrating note. Before her eyes, the solid metal softened like warm wax, its edges smoothing out until it hardened into a dull, featureless chunk of gray stone.

Malkin fell back onto her hands, staring at the stone flask, then at the glowing infant who was now breathing steadily, absorbing the very air around him. She let out a low, raspy laugh that turned into a wild, cackling shriek against the moonlit sky.

"No wolf," she muttered, scooping the baby into her heavy, patchwork robes. She pulled the thick fabric over his glowing eyes, shielding him from the crimson moonlight. "They think you are empty because their stupid noses can only smell dogs. They forgot the old tongue, little monster. You aren't a wolf. You are the deep dark they've been running from."

She turned back into the deep shadows of the forbidden woods, her boots leaving glowing purple footprints in the snow.

"Let them keep their throne for now," Malkin whispered into the dark. "Fourteen years, little prince. Fourteen years of my medicine, and we will see if your father can smell you coming."