Chapter 2 Teeth Beneath the Crown

One Week Later

The Hollow Fang, Velensk Mountains

They burned the bodies at dawn.

Smoke curled skyward in thick, churning spirals, choking the morning sun and blanketing the high valley in the scent of scorched fur and blood. It clung to everything. Our skin, our hair, even our grief. The pyres lined the cliff edge like a line of executioners. Beside each one stood a stone marker, carved with only a claw mark and a name.

Some names were shouted into the wind as the fire took them.

Others were whispered.

A few were left unsaid.

I stood alone at the last pyre, watching a girl's braid burn among the kindling. I never knew her name, only that she'd tried to shield a wounded pup during the attack. She was no more than thirteen. Now ash.

My fingers curled into fists.

Lucien stood nearby, hands clasped behind his back, silent and still as stone. The other pack members were gathered behind him, hundreds of them, wolves in human skin, mourning the fallen the only way they knew how: by vowing vengeance.

The war hadn't begun with the attack on the Hollow Fang.

It had been stirring for decades, whispers of an alliance between the Vampire Courts and the Lycan tribes, a mutual enemy finally bringing ancient rivals together. But no one had believed they'd strike the strongest pack first.

No one expected us to bleed.

After the last flames died, Lucien summoned me.

The war room was deep in the mountain's belly, carved from volcanic rock and sealed with ironwood doors. The walls were covered in ancient tapestries-depictions of the First Hunt, the Binding of the Bloodlines, and the founding of the Hollow Fang. A single table dominated the center, maps spread across its surface like entrails awaiting a divination.

Lucien stood at its head, clad in black leather and grey fur, a blade strapped to his hip.

"You've been avoiding me," he said without turning.

"I've been mourning."

"We all mourn. But we don't get to wallow."

"Is that what this is?" I snapped. "A lecture?"

Lucien looked at me, and something in his expression halted my temper. He wasn't angry. He was exhausted. The circles under his eyes, the tightness in his jaw, it all hinted at a man bearing more weight than he could show.

"I need to know what you are," he said.

I bristled. "I'm a werewolf. You made sure of that."

"You're more than that." He gestured to the map. "No newly turned wolf fights like you did. No untrained whelp kills a vampire in her first shift. I've seen wild-born. They break. You didn't. You adapted. You thrived."

I walked slowly to the table and stared down at the blood-marked territories. Circles surrounded Hollow Fang land. Red wax seals indicated known vampire incursions. Claw marks drawn in charcoal signaled Lycan skirmishes. We were surrounded.

"You think I'm some kind of weapon," I said quietly.

"No," he replied. "I think you're a key."

I looked up. "To what?"

Lucien hesitated. "Something old. Older than the five bloodlines. Older than even the Vampire Courts. There are stories, Elara about a bloodline hidden by the Moon Goddess herself. Wolves that walked between worlds. Ones that could choose their fate."

"You're talking in riddles."

"No. I'm talking in prophecy."

He opened a heavy tome from the shelf behind him, the leather cover marked with claw-shaped sigils. Inside were pages of faded ink and drawings, wolves with silver eyes, standing over bleeding moons, their bodies wreathed in fire and mist.

One illustration stopped me cold.

A woman. Clothed in wolf pelts and crowned in bone. Her hand lifted toward a burning forest, while behind her, thousands knelt, vampires, Lycans, and wolves alike.

"She was called the Moon's Forsaken Bride," Lucien said. "A girl born of two worlds, destined to either bind the broken or bring the end."

"And you think that's me?"

"I don't know yet," he admitted. "But if it is, then every creature in the Nightlands will come for you. Some to kill. Some to control. And some-"

"To worship?" I said, laughing bitterly.

"No." Lucien's gaze sharpened. "To burn the world down with you."

Later that evening, I was summoned before the Inner Council.

Seven of them sat in a semi-circle within the Moonfang Hall, stone throned and cloaked in power. They were the oldest and most powerful wolves in the Hollow Fang bloodline, chosen by tooth, blood, and legacy. I could feel their eyes crawling over me, as if dissecting my every breath.

Lucien stood at my side. A show of dominance. Or protection. Or both.

"She is unclaimed," one of the elders growled. A woman with frost-white hair and a face carved by years of war.

"She is dangerous," muttered another. "The wild-born are always unstable."

"I've seen no instability," Lucien said coldly. "Only strength."

"Then claim her," the white-haired elder hissed.

The room went still.

My blood turned to ice.

"No," I said, voice low but firm. "I won't be anyone's possession."

Lucien said nothing. His silence was a shield. Or a trap. I couldn't tell which.

"She must be marked or banished," said a third elder, tapping his clawed fingers against the stone. "We cannot have a rogue wolf among our ranks."

"I belong to no one," I said again, stepping forward. "But I bled for this pack. I fought for it. I lost everything to become what I am. Isn't that enough?"

The silence was a test.

Finally, Lucien spoke. "I stand for her. She is under my protection. My territory. My command."

A murmur rippled through the chamber.

"Then her blood is yours if she betrays us," the elder said.

"So be it."

The council dismissed us.

That night, I stood outside the Hall, the full moon bleeding silver across the valley. My bones ached not from pain, but from the pressure building beneath my skin. The wolf inside me stirred, restless beneath my ribs.

I heard Lucien before I saw him.

"You shouldn't have defied them," he said.

"I won't be caged."

"They could have ripped you apart."

"But they didn't."

Lucien stepped closer, his silhouette backlit by moonlight.

"There's something about you," he said. "Something wild. It draws danger to you like blood in the water."

"Maybe I am danger," I said, baring my teeth.

He laughed softly. "No. You're something worse. You're unpredictable."

I looked at him, really looked.

Lucien Draegor wasn't just a leader. He was a man drowning in loyalty, rage, and something colder, guilt, perhaps. Every decision carved another scar into his soul.

"You carry the weight of everyone else's fate," I said quietly. "But who carries yours?"

He flinched. Just slightly.

"No one," he admitted. "That's the Alpha's burden."

"Then maybe the old ways are broken."

For the first time, he didn't have an answer.

Three days passed.

The Hollow Fang fortified its defenses. Scouts returned with reports of movement in the east, Lycan warbands gathering near the Dead Forests. Vampires cloaked in obsidian robes holding dark rituals in the high cities.

A storm was coming.

And in the quiet before it hit, Lucien came to me.

"There's a place," he said. "Far north. Older than the Hollow Fang. We call it the Red Vale."

"What's there?"

"Truth."

He handed me a small dagger. Silver-hilted. Inlaid with runes.

"You'll need this."

"For protection?"

"No," he said. "For memory."

We rode north at moonrise.

Not as Alpha and subordinate. Not as packmates. But as two fractured creatures searching for something beneath the blood.

The Red Vale lay in the shadow of the ancient peaks, snow laced and cursed, a land the maps did not mark. They said the moon rose red there. That time forgot its name. That only the wolves chosen by the Goddess herself could survive what slept beneath the ice.

Lucien and I would find what lay hidden.

But I already knew...

The war wouldn't wait for us to return.

And neither would the darkness waking in my blood.