"Get out..." I moaned, my voice finally stripped of its jagged armor, reduced to the plea of a shattered soul. "We don't even love each other, Alpha. Don't do this. Not to yourself, not to me... and not to the true Luna in your heart. Don't make me an accomplice to this sin."
Varg descended upon me like a living nightmare. His scent was no longer just a warning; it was a wildfire scorching my lungs. He gripped my jaw, tilting my head back until the High Alpha fire in his eyes seared my very spirit.
"I have no Luna, Vespera," he hissed, his voice sounding like a stone grinding against the bottom of a thousand-year-old well. "Because of your glorious, ancient clan, I have no Luna! She ascended to the moon along with five of my unborn pups, murdered by your family's treachery. Or did your 'noble' klan forget to recount their famous slaughter stories to you, little Omega?"
He shook me, stealing the very air from my lungs. "You stole six lives from me. In return, I am stealing you. The light in your eyes, the poison in your veins... I am tearing you away from yourself, piece by piece."
I groaned in agony, my tears flowing like an unstoppable river. "I'm not close to my father!" I screamed, hurling the moldy secrets of my past into his face. "My father is an Alpha, but my mother... she was just a human. Theirs was a forbidden love, a mistake that should never have happened! My father didn't even visit her. He didn't even know she was pregnant... Her weak human womb couldn't carry me. She didn't even know he was a werewolf, and..."
I shook between my sobs. "My mother was a poor waitress who died all alone on an icy road, Varg! She was just a college girl... As she was dying, a vampire turned her. She turned, but I couldn't. I only took the poison. I didn't die, but I'm not immortal either! I'm a wolf, but I'm not a wolf... I don't know what I am! I was raised by nuns in an orphanage. When the pack came for me at age five, my father only took me in so the 'family honor' wouldn't be stained..."
Varg roared with a terrifying fury, a sound so primal it vibrated the priceless paintings on the walls. "I don't give a damn about your pathetic father-issues or your fanged mother!" he bellowed. "My babies are dead! You could have died too—what do you want me to do? Mourn your freakish past?"
He narrowed his eyes, leaning so close his breath scorched my lips. "Your father, Alpha Kraz, wasn't always such a lazy dog, Vespera. Your ancestors were once the most elite, pure-blooded family. Your klan was so powerful they were mad enough to wage war against the whole world. To stay pure, they bred with their own half-siblings—a degenerate army of gods turned deviants! They kidnapped human infants to turn them into wolves. They tore up our treaties with humans while they obsessed over their sacred blood."
He threw me toward the bed, the cold touch of the silver dress biting into my back. "Now, put on that dress. Because tonight, I am going to settle your klan's debt with your soul."
Varg loomed over me not as a shadow, but as an executioner. The darkness in his eyes was deeper than the blackest wells of Alberta.
"We don't have a pack. I don't know what you're talking about. My father renounced his lineage," I said through my pain. "We swore loyalty to Kael's family. Every wolf family has a tragic past."
"Your father renounced his family, did he?" Varg thundered, his voice a war drum echoing off the marble. "Do you still hallucinate that you belong to Kael's IronHeart family? Did you think seeking refuge there would erase your history? You think every family has 'tragic wars'? No, Vespera. Every family has sins, but yours... yours cannot be washed away by any ocean."
He shook me again. "Your father is a coward! In the middle of the war, he abandoned his pack, his sacred duty, and his own Luna just to fall for some pale-faced human whore. My family didn't just take a hit because of your family... they ceased to exist! My babies, five unborn souls, died beneath your 'sacred' soil because of your klan's betrayal! You fled the war. When the Dark Sorcerers came, you locked your pack in the forest. You didn't help your allies. You are traitors."
I shook my head helplessly, my tears staining the silver dress like sins. "I don't know anything... I didn't know..."
"The daughter of a traitor," Varg spat with venom. "There is more! When we stood at your gates, begging for refuge to escape the curse that would turn the world to hell, do you know what they did? They locked their gold-leafed doors! They watched from their windows as their own kind were slaughtered. While sorcerers spilled wolf blood, you just waited for the war to end."
Varg's lips twisted into a savage grin. "What do you think I did when I took over my pack? I turned those 'sacred' forests of yours into my personal latrine! The walls I sharpened my claws on became the graveyard of your childhood dreams. And Vespera... the sound of your entire lineage dying from wolfsbane, bleeding from their eyes as they begged for mercy... that was the sweetest song I've ever heard."
I let out a sob of pure agony. "Your coward father fled to Kael's 'WeakHeart' family for this reason," Varg hissed. "He bowed like a dog to protect himself, his Omega wife, and his other bastards."
"Why?" I asked, my soul crushed under the wreckage. "Why me and not one of his other children?"
Varg's laugh was cold enough to crack the windows. "Because their mothers are all wolves, Vespera! They were born according to the laws of nature. But you... you are the product of that human whore who opened her legs to a rutting Alpha. You are the only one as cursed as she was, carrying the poison of a corpse in your veins! I was looking for the prophecy on the ground, but I found it in the cursed blood I intended to destroy."
He threw the silver dress into my lap. "Get dressed. Tonight, I seal the daughter of that whore, the greatest shame of your coward father, upon the altar of my klan's vengeance. Your 'special' blood will be the only fuel for my hell."
I wiped my tears with the back of my hand and clutched the silver dress to my chest like armor. My voice was no longer a sob; it was a tone as clear and cold as cracking marble.
"I never knew my 'whore' mother," I said, each word a slap to Varg's face. "Even though she had an immortal life, she didn't spare a single mortal hour for me. As for my father... I never saw him as a hero, but I didn't know he was a coward either. I was taken from cold, state-run orphanages like an unclaimed piece of luggage. I grew up as a shadow at the feet of the pack's arrogant elders. I played with wolves, listening to your dark prophecies as if they were bedtime stories."
I stepped closer to him. "I know only one thing, Alpha," I said, my voice gliding like blood on a blade. "If you are trying to force someone whose heart doesn't belong to you, whose soul is fed by your hatred, into this marriage... then you will share that prophecy with me. I am not one of the shiny, soulless silk sheets in your marble palace. If I am to endure a disrespectful Alpha, a man as crude and blood-stained as you, I must have a stake in this prophecy. In this destruction."
Varg fell into an unexpected silence. The scent of gunpowder in the room was replaced by an electric tension. He grabbed my chin—not to hurt me this time, but to inspect this new, sudden defiance.
"A stake?" he hissed. "What does a freak bargain for at a monster's table?"
I stared into his eyes, my own silver light burning. I wouldn't back down. I didn't care about the prophecy or my family's past. I was just Vespera. I only had this one life. Even if I was born from a dead womb... I wasn't here to carry the sins of my ancestors. I just wanted a breath as fresh as spring flowers. I didn't want the world; I just wanted to be safe in mine. I wasn't some ancient wolf spirit. I hadn't sworn to find the same mate in every life. I had no past lives. I was as unique as a drop of blood hitting the snow.
"Fine, little freak. Since you claim to be more than silk sheets, since you're the only defiant legacy of that 'WeakHeart' family... listen. The prophecy isn't just a wedding; it's a key. Your wolf blood, tainted by that vampire venom, is the only key that can awaken the 'Black Sun' my lineage has waited a thousand years for. I'm not just marrying you, Vespera—I'm using your blood to wake the old gods who will set this world on fire."
He leaned in, his lips brushing my ear as he whispered:
"Your stake? If you reach that altar alive tonight and that seal is carved into your soul... you will rise like a queen over the coward father who abandoned you, the pack that traded you like a commodity, and Kael who kept you in a glass vase. You will burn with me, Vespera, but from your ashes, an empire will be born. Now... put on that silver skin and come out. Because soon, you won't just be my wife; you'll be the partner in the most dangerous curse Alberta has ever seen."
When darkness falls and stars weep blood,From a dead womb, a living poison shall be born.
When the toxic hybrid offers her white neck to the seal,The Sun shall darken, and the Black Sun shall rise.
That Alpha, forged from ice and fire,Shall wield the souls of a thousand dead Alphas like a blade.
His throne shall not be marble, but the bones of those who kneel,And all wolves shall drown in his shadow with a single howl.
Two worlds shall collide, a single blood shall flow:The promised darkness shall begin with your scream.
"Who else?" I asked. "Who else knows this cursed prophecy? Kael... did he know?"
Varg raised a crystal glass to his lips, and the predatory laugh that erupted from his throat was cruel enough to silence the Alberta woods. The hatred in his eyes when he heard Kael's name was as dark and burning as the whiskey he drank.
"Kael?" Varg shouted, slamming the glass down and reaching Vespera in a single bound. "Did you really think that porcelain prince was interested in you for your pathetic, pretty face, little freak?"
Varg pulled her close. His large, warm hand wrapped around her hip through the silver fabric—not a touch, but a declaration of ownership. As he leaned into her ear, the scent of whiskey and gunpowder paralyzed her senses.
"Baby..." Varg whispered, his voice as gritty as a snake shedding skin.
"You aren't just a girl. You are a lock. You are the only thing in this world an Alpha can smell from miles away, making them want to sink their teeth into your neck. That sleeping wolf inside you... she protected you by never waking up. That delicious fire in your womb never ignited, never leaked out. Because if I had smelled it for even a second, I would have marked you right there, in the middle of that dusty pack house, in front of everyone."
"His fingers traced my skin with a cold, absolute authority. "Now, you are mine alone." he growled. "No other wolf's breath shall ever graze this freakish skin of yours again."
I fought the urge to moan, but his touch made every nerve in my body recoil. "Kael was my friend... He hid me because I was part of his pack, because he cared for me..."
At this naive confession, Varg buried his face into the crook of my neck, whispering with a poisonous delight. "He didn't keep you because you were a "pack member," Vespera. He kept you because you were his little, precious secret, hidden from the rest of the world and every starving Alpha out there. Kael didn't love you, you little freak; he was merely keeping the key to the world's greatest power in a glass vase so no one else could find it. You weren't his friend—you were his hidden treasure."
Omegas flitted around me like shadows, rubbing oils pressed from Alberta's rarest flowers into my skin. The scents caught in my throat; that heavy amber and musk choked my lungs. Every tooth of the silver crown being placed upon my head felt like a nail driven into my skull.
"You are so fortunate, Luna." one whispered while brushing my hair. "At such a young age, you become the marked mate of the only Alpha who makes the entire world tremble beneath his claws. Varg is the dark sun before whom even kings kneel."
"When the world speaks his name, even the winds change direction."' another added, staining my lips with a blood-red tint. "To possess him is to share in divinity itself."