Chapter 1 Prologue

They say the night it happened, the moon bled fire.

It was the end of an age. An era when Lycans ruled the forests, not as beasts-but as kings. They walked in twilight, between man and moon, cloaked in strength that pulsed with the wild heart of the earth. The packs were many. The bloodlines pure. The power divine. Until the hunger grew stronger than the bond.

And one of their own broke the Oath.

He was called Maelor, firstborn of the Crimson Fang, beloved of the Moonmother, and the most powerful Alpha to walk the shadowed paths. His howl could fracture stone. His gaze could silence storms. But power is a greedy lover-it does not come without cost.

The legend says he sought more.

The Silverborn had warned them. "The old gods do not sleep-they burn. And should one draw too deeply from the root of the world, they will awaken. And they will demand their due."

But Maelor didn't listen.

He devoured forbidden rites. Carved runes into the bones of the ancient. Drew blood beneath a dead moon. And when the Ritual of Ash was complete, he returned-not as wolf, not as man-but as a godbound thing made of teeth and shadow. His howl turned pack against pack. Brother against brother. Mate against mate.

The forests burned. The rivers wept black.

And so the First Binding was born.

Seven Alphas-rivals in blood, bound in war-stood together beneath the Hollow Moon and did what had never been done: They called upon the Moonmother herself. They offered their own shifts, their primal inheritance, their very souls to bind Maelor beneath the earth.

They won. But it wasn't victory. It was sacrifice.

One by one, the Alphas burned their gifts. Their packs lost the shift. The wild in them dimmed. The power passed into ash.

They buried Maelor's body in a sacred grove, his heart separated and cast into the sea. His bones scattered across the lands in secret. His name stricken from every tongue.

But the curse remained.

Every century, the Hollow Moon returns. And with it, the risk of awakening him once more.

That was the price of the First Binding:

The packs were silenced. The shift was sealed.

And the wild was forgotten.

Until now.

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They call her Araya.

She doesn't remember the forest. She doesn't remember the howl.

But the blood in her veins does.