Chapter 1 The Wedding That Wasn't

Rain hammered like furied fists against the stained-glass windows of The Grand Anselmo Cathedral as Lyra Valente's heart furiously raced in symphony with the detonation somewhere within her chest. Meanwhile, thunder continued to rip apart the sky. Candlelight swayed and flickered across the polished marble floors of the cathedral as the guests fidgeted in their lavish golden chairs and eagerly awaited the commencement of the ceremony. Valente and Moretti's merging in matrimony was, without a doubt, an intricate wedding masquerading as an epitome of unification. Alliance of sorts. A ceasefire.

A calculated business deal signed in the blood inked between two of the country's leading mafia families.

Lyra...she was the commodity.

Trapped within a gilded cage, the gown encased her body like a shroud marking the grave of her freedom. Burning golden spokes of furiously bright candle flames reminded her of prison and Lilith Shaw.

With slathered crimson, like a corpse dressed in their favorite color, her lips were smirked onto and adorned. "Do close your mouth darling, a bug might fly into that beautiful scone of a jaw of yours and..." the glare on her father's face fiercely burning like the purest blaze, was plastered sideways above a grinning monstrosity whose intel rang sanctified words as her mother did hundred times over.

A shuffling of servile footsteps interrupted her crude still suddenly morphing mortal illusion. "You look splendidly... Heolyohaph?" The speaker attempted to say "glamorous," though those weren't real words anymore. Either Lyra was feeling far too over-polished for a wedding of any variety but it was haphazardly piloted into her necrotic subconscious.

"Perfect, methinks," she mumbled, shaking her head out of distractions like dealing blades of rusted daggers.

And with a skeletal click, her world illumined seamlessly.

Soon obnoxiously blaring funny words like they stepped foot on a sarcastic sitcom sprang into her ears. "Power*u n n...of words liberty," she squirted before nearly crumbling,

compelling her skull beat with deformed tennis ball wrapping eerily like unicorns around still screaming racquets within. Lyra quickly before fainting reached for the delicate silver wreath adorning a parlous neck, once belonging to lilac bleached overcast skies illuminating to cascade down dioramas of her mother.

"It was a chain well spent, might I add," her father's stubborn frown became vertical reconota across pinched waisted silhouettes quakes blaring no shattering along her tune-set back with the cross of abandonded birth pillars to the temple wide open over][.]

"My apologies milady, try dying."

Even if they describe it as love.

This has nothing to do with love.

The words of her father from that very morning gnawed at the centers of her mind: "Do not bring shame to this family. Luca Moretti is your future. You are lucky he even agreed to marry you after what transpired."

What transpired. Like it hadn't been a bloodbath. Like she hadn't died and resurrected in this new form, a new name, a body, within the same wretched world. She no longer was that defenseless omega girl who got stalked for what she possessed up in her mind. She had been trained-to survive, in secrecy. She had allies now-ones she whom mortgaged their existence.

Including the man who she was about to sprint towards.

The organ started to play. Guests stood. The doors to the Cathedral started to creak open.

Lyra ran.

Without any second thoughts. With her skirts in her hands and slipped out the servant's corridor behind the altar to blend with the blizzard. By the time anyone realized she is not there, she will at the very least be halfway across the city. Not towards safety, but danger- the kind she trusts.

Across town: Damon's kade's safehouse.

Lightning flickered through the cracked blinds of Damon Kade's apartment.The muted television buzzed with news while he cleaned his weapons with surgical precision.

"...the wedding between Lyra Valente and Luca Moretti is set to be the most historic mafia union in decades..."

Damon chortled, "Guess again."

He knew the shift was coming. It was a feeling he'd had for days. Something deep within was grasping at him, pulling at his instincts – his wolf was anxious. Famished.

A knock rattled the door.

Quiet as a phantom, and armed with a gun, he rose to open the door a crack.

Wild-eyed and soaking wet, she stood there in her wedding dress.

"Lyra?"

"No time," she exclaimed. "If they catch me, they'll kill us both."

"Thought you were dead," he said.

Damon opened the door wider, allowing her into the room.

"I was," she whispered. "But I okay back. This time, I'm not running alone."