Legend speaks of a monster prowling the northern highlands.
A creature born of royal lineage, but stripped of his soul.
Victoria walked willingly into his den, trading her life for her family’s survival.
Little did she know, the beast waiting in the shadows was the rightful sovereign she was sworn to kill.
Winter struck the Oak Haven settlement with a cruelty that defied natural law, burying their humble timberframed cabins beneath 10 ft of unforgiving snow.
For months the villagers had been trapped, their food stores dwindling to nothing but mouldering grain and stripped bark.
Yet starvation was merely a shadow compared to the terror that lurked beyond the treeine.
Every night a spine chilling howl tore through the biting wind a sound so primal and laden with agony that it made the bravest hunters weep in their sleep.
It was the feral beast of the high reaches.
For a decade the beast had been a ghost story used to frighten unruly pups.
But this winter the ghost had descended from Mount Ethgard.
It had slaughtered their livestock, shredded their perimeter defenses, and left behind claw marks gouged so deeply into the ancient oaks that sap bled from the wood like resonous tears.
The pack was dying not just from the cold, but from an overwhelming suffocating dread.
Elder Rowan called a summit in the great hall, the air thick with the scent of unwashed bodies and palpable fear.
Rowan, a man whose face was mapped with deep, treacherous wrinkles, and whose eyes held the cold calculation of a survivor, stood before the flickering hearth.
Beside him stood Gideon, the brutal captain of the settlement’s guard, his hand resting casually on the hilt of his broadsword.
The beast demands a tithe.
Rowan announced, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings.
The ancient pacts dictate that when the high reaches starve, the valley must offer a sacrifice to appease the sovereign of the peaks.
One life to save a hundred.
Victoria stood in the back of the hall, her arms wrapped protectively around her younger sister is older.
Victoria was a hunter, her hands calloused from the bowring, her eyes the color of bruised thunderclouds.
She possessed a quiet, fierce beauty, but more importantly, an unbreakable spirit.
Is older, however, was fragile, born with a weak lung and a gentle heart.
When Rowan brought forth the wooden bowl containing the slips of parchment, the lots that would decide who would be sent up the mountain to die, Victoria felt a cold knot tighten in her stomach.
She watched Gideon’s eyes dart toward her corner of the room.
A terrible silent realization dawned on her.
The lottery was not a game of chance.
Rowan reached into the bowl, his fingers grasping a single pre-selected slip.
He unrolled it slowly, letting the silence stretch until it was nearly unbearable.
Isold of the lower valley.
Rowan read his voice, devoid of any genuine pity.
A collective gasp rippled through the hall.
Isolder crumpled against Victoria, a soft sob escaping her lips.
Victoria did not cry.
Her vision tunnneled the edges of the room, blurring with a sudden violent rage.
She knew exactly what this was.
Their late father had been the previous captain of the guard.
A man who had publicly opposed Rowan’s harsh taxation and questionable alliances with neighboring rogue factions.
This was Rowan’s revenge delivered perfectly under the guise of divine providence.
“No,” Victoria said, her voice cutting through the murmurss like a sharpened blade.
She stepped forward, gently pushing Isolder behind her.
My sister would not survive the trek to the mountains base, let alone serve as an adequate tithe.
I claim the ancient right of substitution.
I will go in herstead.
Gideon stepped forward, his lip curling into a snear.
The lots have spoken, Victoria.
It is the will of the spirits.
The spirits don’t rig wooden bowls, Gideon.
She spat back her eyes locked on Elder Rowan.
I am stronger.
I am a hunter.
If you want a sacrifice to appease the beast, you send your best, not a sickly child.
Unless, of course, your goal is merely to punish my family.
Rowan’s eyes narrowed, a flash of genuine venom, briefly breaking his pious facade.
Very well.
If you wish to throw your life away to the fangs of the feral beast, Oak Haven will not stop you.
You leave at first light.
The goodbye was a quiet, agonizing affair.
Victoria dressed in her thickest furs, strapping her father’s silver inlaid hunting knife to her thigh.
It was a foolish weapon against a monster the size of a draft horse, but she refused to die defenseless.
She held his shoulder tight, whispering promises of a return she knew she could not keep.
The trek up Mount Ethgard was a descent into a frozen hell.
The wind screamed through the jagged ravines, carrying with it shards of ice that sliced at Victoria’s exposed cheeks.
She climbed for hours her muscles screaming, her breath crystallizing in the frigid air.
The higher she ascended, the more the landscape changed.
The familiar pines gave way to petrified twisted trunks that looked like reaching agonizing hands.
By nightfall, she reached the plateau.
Looming before her in the moonlight were the ruins of Athalgard Keep.
Once it had been the grand seat of the Alpha Kings, the rulers who united the Shifter clans before a mysterious blight wiped out the royal bloodline 10 years ago.
Now it was a crumbling skeleton of stone and ice.
Victoria stepped through the shattered Port Cullis, her boots crunching loudly on the snow.
I am here,” she shouted, her voice swallowed instantly by the vast emptiness of the courtyard.
“I am the tithe.
Come and claim it.
” Nothing but the whistling wind answered her.
She pressed deeper into the keep, seeking shelter from the biting cold in what used to be the grand throne room.
The roof had partially collapsed, allowing a beam of pale moonlight to illuminate the deis.
There, amidst piles of gnored bones and shredded tapestries, the shadows began to detach themselves from the walls.
A low, vibrating growl rattled the very stones beneath her feet.
Victoria drew her silver knife, her hand trembling as a pair of glowing amber eyes ignited in the darkness.
The feral beast stepped into the moonlight.
He was magnificent and terrifying.
Standing on all fours, he came up to her chest.
His fur was a mottled mix of ash gray and obsidian, mattered with frozen gore and old scars.
Thick, jagged spikes of bone seemed to protrude from his spine, a twisted mockery of nature.
But it was his face that paralyzed her.
His jaw was massive, dripping with saliva.
But his eyes, they were not the vacant, mindless voids of a rabid animal.
They were deep, ancient, and swirling with a torment so profound it stole the breath from her lungs.
Shadows clung to the crumbling arches of Ethgard keep.
As Victoria backed away, her silver blade held out in a desperate trembling defense.
The beast took a slow, deliberate step forward, the sheer mass of his muscles rippling beneath his scarred coat.
Every instinct in her body screamed at her to run to flee into the blizzard, but her legs were rooted to the frozen flagstones.
He did not lunge.
Instead, the monstrous wolf lowered his massive head, inhaling deeply.
A strange, almost confused whimper rumbled in his throat.
He stalked around her in a wide circle.
his amber eyes locked onto her face, analyzing, calculating.
Do it, Victoria whispered, her voice cracking.
“I am the sacrifice.
End this.
” The beast stopped directly in front of her.
He reached out with a massive paw, the claws long enough to eviscerate her with a single swipe and battered the silver knife from her hand.
The weapon clattered uselessly across the stone floor.
Victoria squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the tearing of flesh, the agonizing final moments of her life.
Nothing happened.
When she cautiously opened her eyes, the beast had retreated to the deis, curling his massive body around the ruined base of the ancient stone throne.
He rested his chin on his paws, watching her with an unnerving, intelligent stillness.
He was keeping her captive, but he was not eating her.
For 3 days, this bizarre captivity continued.
The blizzard raged outside, making escape impossible, even if the beast had allowed it.
He brought her halfeaten carcasses of mountain goats, dropping them at her feet before retreating to his corner.
Victoria, driven by the pure, stubborn will to survive, used a flint from her pouch to build a small fire, cooking the meat and preserving her strength.
As the hours stretched into an endless, tense silence, Victoria began to explore the immediate surroundings of the ruined throne room, careful never to make sudden movements, the beast watched her every step, but made no move to stop her.
It was on the fourth day that she made the discovery that would shatter everything she knew about her world.
Hidden behind a collapsed section of a tapestried wall was a heavy ironbound door.
Victoria pried it open with a piece of rubble.
Stepping into what appeared to be a sealed study untouched by the elements.
Dust coated everything thick and gray.
Upon a heavy oaken desk sat a tarnished silver crown, the cirlet of the alpha kings.
But it was the leatherbound ledger resting beside it that drew her attention.
She blew the dust from its cover and opened it, her eyes, scanning the faded ink.
It was a journal, the handwriting, elegant but increasingly frantic.
As the pages turned, the poison takes hold.
Rowan smiles as he pours the wine, masking his treason with pledges of loyalty.
I can feel the wolf inside me splintering, tearing away from my humanity.
It is not a disease.
It is a curse of blood magic.
They do not want to kill me.
They want to make me a monster so the valley will beg for Rowan’s protection.
Victoria’s blood turned to ice.
She flipped the page.
If I stay, I will slaughter my own people.
I must exile myself to the keep.
I leave this record in hopes that someone of the true God, someone with the blood of the righteous, will find it.
I am Leander.
I am the king, and I am losing my mind.
The book slipped from Victoria’s numb fingers, hitting the floor with a heavy thud.
King Leander, the last great sovereign who had supposedly perished from a wasting sickness a decade ago.
He wasn’t dead.
He had been cursed by Elder Rowan, the very man who now ruled Oak Haven with an iron fist.
The pieces fell into place with sickening clarity.
Rowan hadn’t sent her up here merely as a punishment for her father’s defiance.
Victoria’s father had been the captain of Leander’s loyal guard.
Rowan knew her lineage.
He knew she was the last descendant of the king’s sworn protectors.
Rowan hadn’t sent a sacrifice.
He had sent an executioner, hoping the mindless beast would eradicate the final threat to his stolen power, leaving no trace of his treason.
A sudden, agonizing roar shattered the silence of the keep.
Victoria rushed out of the study and back into the throne room.
The beast was thrashing on the deis.
His massive claws tearing chunks of stone from the floor.
Black veins pulsed sickeningly beneath his gray fur, his body contorting in unnatural snapping angles.
“No!” Victoria breathed, dropping to her knees.
She recognized the scent filling the room.
Wolf’s bane and dark magic, a pungent rotting odor.
The curse was fighting him, trying to push him deeper into the feral abyss.
Without thinking, driven by a sudden fierce loyalty to a king she had thought dead, Victoria ran toward the flailing monster.
“Leander!” she screamed over the howling wind.
“Lander, stop!” The beast snapped his jaws, missing her face by mere inches.
He pinned her to the ground with one massive paw.
His amber eyes rolling wildly in his skull, completely consumed by the blood lust of the curse.
He was going to kill her.
“You are the king,” she yelled, ignoring the crushing weight on her chest.
She reached out, pressing her bare palm against his snout right over the pulsing black veins.
“Rowan betrayed you.
He betrayed us all.
I know who you are.
At the sound of Rowan’s name, the beast froze.
A violent shudder racked his massive frame.
The black veins on his snout began to recede, fleeing from the warmth of Victoria’s touch.
The monstrous proportions of his body began to shrink.
The terrifying bone spurs retracting into flesh with sickening pops.
Victoria squeezed her eyes shut as a blinding flash of silver light erupted through the throne room.
When she opened them, the crushing weight was gone.
The beast was no longer a monster.
Lying collapsed on the stone floor, gasping for air was a man.
He was naked, his body crisscrossed with horrifying raised scars.
His hair was long, tangled, and the color of midnight, but his face was striking, possessing a sharp, aristocratic beauty, hardened by years of unimaginable suffering.
He slowly lifted his head.
His eyes were no longer the amber of a feral wolf, but a piercing luminous silver.
“You.
” His voice was a raspy, grally whisper, unused for 10 long years.
He stared at Victoria, his expression a mix of awe and profound exhaustion.
You didn’t run.
Victoria sat up, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
She stripped off her heavy outer fur cloak and draped it over his shivering shoulders.
“I am Victoria,” she said, her voice remarkably steady despite the chaos in her mind.
daughter of the guard, and I think we have a kingdom to take back.
” Leander leaned heavily against the damp stone, pulling Victoria’s fur cloak tightly around his broad, scarred shoulders.
The violent tremors racking his body slowly subsided as the residual dark magic bled from his veins.
For 10 years, he had known nothing but the blinding white hot agony of the feral curse, a savage existence, where his human mind was a prisoner screaming behind the eyes of a monster.
Now looking at the fierce, beautiful hunter who had braved the frozen wastess to face him.
He felt a warmth he had entirely forgotten.
“You possess the spirit of your ancestors.
” Leander rasped his silver eyes, mapping the contours of her face in the pale moonlight.
I remember your father, Captain Gregory.
He was a man of unparalleled honor.
Rowan poisoned me at a banquet using a hex woven from forbidden eastern arts.
When the sickness took hold, I fled to spare my people from my own fangs.
Rowan branded me a coward who abandoned his throne, leaving himself as the sole savior of Oak Haven.
Victoria fed another piece of splintered wood into the small fire, her mind racing.
The man sitting before her was a living myth, the rightful alpha king.
Yet he looked so devastatingly mortal, stripped of his crown and his pride.
Rowan has bled the valley dry, she explained her voice thick with suppressed anger.
He enforces starvation rations and demands impossible tithes.
He sent me here to die, expecting the feral beast to erase the last heir of his old rival.
But we are going to return to Oak Haven Leander.
We are going to rip him from his stolen seat.
A bitter, humorless laugh escaped Leander’s lips.
Look at me, Victoria.
The curse is only dormant, suppressed by the shock of your defiance, and the purity of your lineage.
If I descend that mountain, the dark magic tethered to Rowan’s life force will drag me back into the abyss.
I will become the beast again, and I will slaughter the very people I swore to protect.
” Victoria moved closer, the heat of the small fire casting dancing shadows across her determined features.
She reached out her calloused fingers gently brushing a stray lock of matted black hair from his forehead.
The moment her skin made contact with his, a profound electric jolt sparked between them, a sudden tethering of two souls that stole the breath from both their lungs.
Leander’s silver eyes flared with a sudden overwhelming intensity.
The bond.
He whispered a mixture of reverence and disbelief softening his harsh features.
The ancient law spoke of it, but I thought it was mere poetry.
A sovereign’s true mate can anchor his humanity, serving as a shield against the darkest of corruptions.
Then I will be your shield,” Victoria declared without hesitation.
Her gaze dropped to his lips for a fraction of a second before meeting his eyes again, a silent promise hanging heavy in the frigid air.
“But we cannot fight Rowan with bare hands and a hunting knife.
Ethgard keep was the seat of kings.
There must be something left.
” Leander nodded slowly, drawing strength from her unwavering resolve.
He pushed himself upright, his muscles protesting after a decade of unnatural contortion.
He led her deeper into the ruined fortress, navigating a collapsed stairwell that descended into the cavernous depths of the royal armory.
The chamber had been sealed off by fallen masonry, preserving its contents from the ravages of winter and lutters alike.
Dust moes danced in the beam of Victoria’s improvised torch as they walked past racks of rusted chain mail and rotted wooden shields.
Leander bypassed them all, moving toward a heavy stone plinth at the far end of the room.
Resting upon it, wrapped in oiled leather that had miraculously survived the damp, was a magnificent broadsword.
This was forged centuries ago by Andrea Ferrara,” Leander said, his voice, echoing in the silent vault as he unwrapped the weapon.
The name of the legendary Italian bladesmith was renowned even in these isolated northern reaches synonymous with steel that could slice through solid iron without losing its edge.
The blade caught the torch light gleaming with a deadly pristine perfection.
The hilt was wrapped in silver wire pummeled with a heavy unadorned sphere of solid tungsten.
It is a weapon meant for a king.
And it seems I finally have a reason to wield it again.
He turned to Victoria, extending his free hand.
The descent will test us both.
Rowan is not merely a tyrant.
He is a practitioner of the dark arts.
He will sense my return.
Victoria took his hand, intertwining her fingers with his.
Let him sense it.
Let him feel the fear he has inflicted upon us for 10 long winters.
The storm broke on the morning of their descent, leaving behind a sky of fractured, bruised clouds and a biting chill that cut straight to the bone.
Victoria and Leander moved swiftly through the treacherous mountain passes.
With every league they covered, Leander’s strength returned his stride, growing more confident, his posture radiating the innate authority of a sovereign.
Yet the black veins beneath his skin pulsed angrily whenever they neared the valley, a constant reminder of the curse straining against the anchor of Victoria’s presence.
Oakhaven was eerily quiet when they breached the treeine.
The timber cabins were shuttered, tight, thin trails of smoke, the only sign of life.
They moved silently toward the great hall, the center of Rowan’s oppressive regime.
As they approached the heavy oak doors, a piercing scream shattered the silence.
Victoria’s blood ran cold.
Isolder.
She kicked the double doors open with bonejarring force, her bow instantly drawn, and an arrow knocked.
The scene inside the great hall made her vision swim with rage.
Elder Rowan stood by the central hearth, chanting in a guttural foul language that made the air feel thick and greasy.
Beside him, Gideon had his older pinned to the floor, a jagged ceremonial dagger pressed against the young girl’s throat.
Rowan had realized Victoria’s death had not yielded the magical feedback he required.
He was attempting a secondary ritual, using a soldier’s innocent life to fortify his waning power.
“Let her go!” Victoria roared, her arrow pointed directly between Rowan’s eyes.
The chanting stopped.
Rowan turned his arrogant sneer, faltering for a fraction of a second before twisting into a mask of pure malice.
“Victoria, you are surprisingly difficult to kill.
And who is this beggar you have dragged from the snow? Leander stepped out from behind Victoria, the heavy fur cloak falling from his shoulders.
He held the Andrea Ferrara broadsword casually at his side, his silver eyes locking onto the usurper.
I am no beggar, Rowan.
Leander’s voice boomed through the hall, resonating with a power that shook the dust from the rafters.
I am the sovereign of the high reaches.
I have returned to collect my kingdom.
A horrified murmur swept through the few guards stationed in the room.
They recognized the face of the king they had been told was dead.
Gideon, desperate to maintain control, pressed the dagger harder against Isolder’s neck.
“Kill him!” he barked at the guards.
It’s a trick.
Before a single guard could move, Leander closed the distance.
He didn’t run.
He blurred.
The speed of the wolf was still within him, harnessed now by a human will.
He slammed the flat of his legendary blade against the side of Gideon’s head, sending the massive captain, crashing into the stone wall with a sickening crunch.
Isolder scrambled away, coughing and terrified, but unharmed.
Victoria was instantly at her side, her bow still trained on the remaining guards who wisely dropped their weapons and backed away.
Rowan, realizing his mundane defenses had failed, resorted to his darkest arsenal.
He threw his hands forward, unleashing a torrent of black crackling energy toward Leander.
The dark magic struck the king square in the chest.
Leander dropped to one knee, a roar of pure agony tearing from his throat.
The black veins on his skin surged, spreading rapidly up his neck and across his face.
His bones began to crack and pop, his jaw extending, his teeth sharpening into deadly fangs.
The curse was taking over, fueled by Rowan’s direct magical assault.
You see, Rowan cackled Spittle flying from his lips.
He is no king.
He is the monster.
He will devour you all.
Victoria shoved his old behind a heavy oak table.
She knew she couldn’t shoot Rowan without risking hitting Leander in the chaotic crossfire.
She dropped her bow and sprinted across the room, sliding across the stone floor to slide beneath Leander’s thrashing arm.
“Leander, look at me!” she shouted, grabbing his face with both hands, ignoring the terrifying half-shifted fangs that snapped inches from her nose.
“You are not a beast.
You are my mate.
You are the king.
” The warmth of her touch, combined with the absolute unshakable certainty in her voice, acted like a physical blow against the dark magic.
Leander’s silver eyes completely consumed by feral amber, a second prior snapped back to clarity.
He didn’t shrink back into his purely human form.
Instead, fueled by the bond and the desperate need to protect Victoria, Leander achieved a metamorphosis unseen in centuries.
He shifted, but not into the twisted, agonizing abomination of the curse.
He exploded into a magnificent towering dire wolf.
His fur a pristine shimmering silver.
His eyes radiating a fierce intelligent light.
This was the true alpha form, the divine right of the ancient bloodline.
Rowan screamed in terror, scrambling backward toward the hearth.
The silver wolf lunged.
He didn’t tear Rowan to pieces.
He simply pinned the usurper to the ground with one massive paw, his jaws closing around the amulet, hanging from Rowan’s neck, the conduit of his dark magic.
With a sharp twist of his head, Leander shattered the amulet.
A shockwave of foul green energy blasted through the room, dissipating into harmless smoke as it hit the cold winter air.
Rowan collapsed, stripped of his stolen magic, rendering him nothing more than a frail, terrified old man.
The silence that followed was deafening.
The guards fell to their knees, bowing their heads in deep, genuine reverence.
The massive silver wolf turned toward Victoria.
Slowly, the silver fur melted away, the massive form shrinking until Leander stood before her, human once more, though completely exhausted.
Victoria rushed forward, catching him before he hit the stone floor.
She wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight.
Leander buried his face in her neck, breathing in the scent of pine and crisp winter air that was uniquely hers.
“The curse,” he whispered, his voice, trembling with relief.
“It is gone.
You broke it.
” We broke it,” she corrected softly, pressing a fierce, lingering kiss to his temple.
Outside, the brutal winter storm finally began to break.
The dark clouds parted, allowing a brilliant shaft of golden sunlight to pierce the gloom, illuminating the great hall of Oak Haven.
The reign of terror was over.
The Alpha King had returned, and beside him stood the hunter, who had braved the frozen hell to find him, the fierce queen who had saved his soul.
Thank you so much for diving into this dark and thrilling fantasy romance.
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