Chapter 1 - Damian
Present
The pine-framed window is a square sanctuary in which I rest my mind for a moment, drowning out the sounds of the others trying to make sense of our current predicament.
I shouldn’t be trying to escape like this, lost in my thoughts and the fantasy of a safer world for my people, but it’s almost as if this is the only hope I have left.
Escapism.
It seems like that’s all I’ve been doing these past two years.
Running. Hiding. Escaping the things that might bring more harm than good.
Pressing my forehead against my forearm where it’s braced against the cool glass, I stare out the window, beyond the mountain range, at the thin line of blue at the bottom of the valley where the river rages on, fierce and unyielding, bending earth to its will and defying the direction of the wind, forging its own path.
The water shimmers, clear and blue, with a tinge of golden shimmer on the surface from the sun’s rays hitting it at a perfect slant.
The view from up here, in the private cabin that belongs to the Valley Wolf Council, should feel soothing. It often did feel that way growing up, until I received my wolf and all the weight that came with growing up.
For a short, stolen moment two years ago, I’d tasted peace again, but that moment couldn’t last forever. Not for people like me. Not when our kind is being haunted and hunted by a dark force of evil.
“It’s been nearly three years since the first attack,” a depressed voice wallows, and the familiarity snaps me out of my daze, feeling the pain of a fellow alpha as if it were my own.
Another pensive sigh echoes, and this time, I turn to see Alpha Heinrich’s second-in-command, Gregory, offering him a consoling pat on the shoulder.
“We’ve all suffered losses,” Alpha Conan says matter-of-factly, without a flicker of sympathy in his tone or the way his long fingers are sharply steepled in front of his chin.
Heinrich lifts his head and turns to glare at Conan, the hand resting on the ancient oak table curling into a fist, the veins on his forearm pulsing with fury.
There’s a shriek of wood, like a splintering crack, as if a leg holding the tabletop up is giving in to the weight, which is impossible, considering that the table has been standing since the dawn of our wolf packs.
It’s Heinrich, slowly losing his patience and his will to stay composed around Conan.
“You have not lost one of your chief officers, Conan,” Heinrich says the other man’s name with venom on his tongue, scoffing as if there’s a bitter aftertaste. “I don’t appreciate your lack of empathy in a time like this.”
“What do you want? A fucking hug?” Conan asks snidely, and that’s when I snarl and step forward, intercepting this before the splinter of wood becomes a tornado of furniture in the Council’s meeting den.
It’s not like they’ll get far, and the whole scene will look like a joke, a useless show of weakening powers desperately clinging to what we all once were.
“Conan…” I warn, my voice stern and final as I raise a hand. But of course, the arrogant son-of-a-bitch can’t stop.
“Maybe you can ask Damian for one!” Conan chuckles, ignoring my warning even as I make my way back to my seat. “You guys have something in common. Oh, wait! James is still alive, isn’t he?”
I stand behind my chair, looming over the table with my fists curling at my sides, my blood boiling, and no body of water big enough to let off the steam. Conan’s neck is across the table, and if I really wanted to, I could reach it before anyone could stop me and snap his head off.
But the last thing we need is to be at war with each other.
“My beta is still alive, yes,” I respond calmly, measuredly, as I uncurl my fists and reclaim my seat.
“But he’s not here with you, is he?”
I narrow my eyes at the dark-haired man, imagining him gurgling and struggling to take a breath as he drowns. But it’s just another fantasy; I wouldn’t dare to start a war with the Iron Breath Pack.
Not when we’re up against demons—a threat that all our packs face, forcing us to work together despite our differences.
“You know very well that he’s in hospital, Conan. That’s why we’re here,” I remind him, but again, the prick has to have the last word, even when we hear the footsteps of the council members approaching the cabin.
“Yeah, well, if it were Iron Breath, Agnes would have seen that attack coming, and James would have been safe.”
I shake my head slowly, irritated that we’re back to Conan believing that Iron Breath is the superior pack. Even with their own seer, Silver Stone hasn’t been entirely safe from the demon attacks, and they’ve lost wolves over the past two years.
In that time, Conan has only become more insufferable, as if he doesn’t have a shred of humanity left in him.
“This isn’t a competition, Conan,” I tell him flatly, just as the cabin door opens.
“It’s always been a competition, Damian. Survival of the fittest, remember?’
Heinrich leans over and snarls, grating out through gritted teeth, “You’re a fucking child, Conan. Grow up.”
“Silence!” comes Elder Bernard’s booming voice from the door, and he pauses there, throwing us each a disdainful glance.
Conan is the first to bow his head when his grandfather—Elder Bernard—turns dark eyes of warning on him.
He enters the meeting den with a huff of irritation, followed by Heinrich’s father, Mortimer, and my uncle, Joel.
The Valley Wolf Council Research Team enters next: a group of keen-eyed historians who preserve the archives and configure ways to remain hidden from the human world in the Bitterroot Valley, using ancient rituals to keep our packs protected.
But keeping us protected from humans is one thing. The research team hasn’t figured out a way to stop the demons or keep us safe from them.
The malevolent creatures have been slowly chipping away at our resolve, exhausting our energy supply with every attack we’ve faced over the last two years.
The first attack came while my soldiers and I had been out hunting in the forest across the river.
We didn’t know what we were facing back then, and it knocked the wind out of us, leaving us for dead.
My right leg had been fractured in the fight, and our group had been discovered by the local authorities in Hamilton.
That’s how we’d ended up in the Hamilton Health-Daly Hospital, and how I met—
“We may have a lead,” Amos, the head of the research team, announces as he takes his seat, pushing his spectacles up as he scans the table.
He scans the room not because he’s nervous in a room full of alphas and elders, but because he’s always been that way, keen-eyed and observant.
It’s a personal trait, and one that has always allowed me to trust his judgment.
But lately, that trust has been waning, because it’s been almost three years since that first demon attack—back when we didn’t even know what was attacking us in Hamilton—and still, the research team hasn’t uncovered much about the demons, or why they’re hunting us.
Or why we’re getting weaker.
It’s no wonder Conan clings to his false sense of supremacy. For nearly three years, the strength of our packs has been declining, and it’s almost as if we’re losing touch with our Goddess-given powers. Apart from shapeshifting, the packs in the Bitterroot Valley are different.
We have the ability to wield elemental magic—a gift bestowed upon our packs by the Moon Goddess, and passed down from our ancestors.
Silver Stone—Heinrich’s pack—can wield earth. Conan is the alpha of Iron Breath, and they can bend air.
Red Moon—my pack—can wield the power of water.
And apart from feeling slightly out of touch with our magic, we’ve been losing wolves on all three corners of the valley where our packs reside.
The demons have been relentless, and we’ve been losing hope that there’s anything we can do except just accept our fate, that the most powerful wolf packs in the States will just… go extinct.
“Finally!” Heinrich exclaims with a sigh of relief that we’re all feeling. “Have you tracked the origin of the demons? Is there a way to take them down?”
Amos purses his lips and nervously shakes his head. “This isn’t so much about the demons that’ve been attacking us over the years as it is about you guys.”
“Us?” I frown, and Amos nods.
“Well, you all have something in common. None of you has a mate,” he reminds us, and there’s a hushed silence that falls over the room.
Even Conan turns to me with a surprised expression, his brows furrowed when he says, “That’s the last thing that anyone cares about.”
“I hate to say this, but I agree with Conan,” Heinrich laments with a scoff as he pushes himself back in his seat.
I purse my lips in contemplation, because honestly, I don’t even know what to say to this. But the silence is unnerving, so I say, “Mates? Is reproduction really the answer?”
“No,” Amos says, turning to his assistant and nodding at her. She opens up a file and passes it to him, and he pushes it over toward my uncle. “The purpose of a mate is not just to reproduce. A mate would strengthen the magic you’ve been losing.”
“Is this really going to help the pack?” I ask skeptically, since the magic the rest of the pack wields is closely tied to my own abilities. If I’m weaker, so is the pack. The same goes for the other alphas. “How sure are you that this will work?”
Amos turns to me, giving me his undivided attention.
“It’s the only way we can come up with, Alpha Damian.
The only thing we have found with a remote chance of saving the packs.
We’ve pulled up all the archives we could find, and this came up in some of the scrolls that were previously found from the south. ”