GOLD & AZURE

This book is fictional. All names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictional setting. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is coincidental. Copyright © 2026 Violet Crosby All rights reserved. Cover: Violet Crosby English translation: Violet Crosby This book or any part of it may not be reproduced electronically or physically. This includes the storage or retrieval of information without written permission from the author, except in the case of a short excerpt for literary criticism. They called her “Elowen, the cursed wolf.” Seventeen years of suffering for a final night of sacrifice. They wanted to stop her from changing, from becoming what she was meant to be. Abandoned to the briars and the searing silver, the young girl waited only for the end of her ordeal. Suddenly, two spotted silhouettes emerge from the mist. By breaking her chains, they have awakened a forgotten prophecy. Taken to the heart of the frozen mountains, within the royal Blue Glacier clan, Elowen meets the gaze of Alpha Thalys. An azure gaze that seems to read through her scars. Why did the Dark Moon fear a child’s transformation so much? One does not leave a wolf for dead without a dark reason... Between the fire of betrayal and the ice of salvation, the truth tastes of blood and azure. For more information: www.violetcrosbyauteure.com ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ For updates on new releases, giveaways, and other fun stuff, sign up for my newsletter! CHAPTER ONE ELOWEN The cold was no longer an enemy; it had become a fatal lover. It seeped beneath Elowen’s skin, numbing her nerve endings, transforming the screaming pain in her limbs into a dull, distant hum. Chained to the millennial bark of a black oak whose branches seemed to close around her like talons, the young girl no longer fought. The scent was the worst part. It wasn’t just the smell of the decaying forest or the approaching snow; it was the metallic, sickening fragrance of silver. The chain encircling her wrists and neck was not a mere bond; it was poison. The sacred metal seared her shifter flesh, releasing an invisible smoke and a scent of ozone and scorched meat that made her stomach churn with every labored breath. The Dark Moon pack had not wanted a quick execution. They preferred to see her consume herself from within, suffocated by the very metal meant to prevent her wolf from ever being born. As her forehead slumped against the rough wood, her consciousness began to drift, fleeing the unbearable reality to take refuge in the wreckage of her past. She saw again the four-year-old girl she once was. A child with eyes sparkling like pure gold, arriving one misty morning before the pack’s imposing iron gates. She remembered the sensation of her small hand in a guard’s, her naive excitement for what she believed would be a new adventure. She did not know then that the name “Dark Moon” was not a poetic metaphor, but a promise of eternal darkness. Alpha Krane, a man whose very shadow seemed to curdle the blood, had looked at her with a disdain that should have warned her. “One more mouth to feed,” he had spat. “Make sure she learns her place quickly.” Her place had been that of a scapegoat. The bullying had begun in the very first weeks: a knocked-over plate, a shove in the stairs, and then, as the years passed, systematic beatings and exhausting chores. The other children of the pack, encouraged by their parents, had made her their favorite target. The older she grew, the more the fear in their eyes transformed into a fierce hatred. Why? What had she done to deserve this silent banishment in the heart of her own community? In the fog of her agony, a softer image tried to break through. Her life before. An existence bathed in light, in a house that smelled of pine resin and cinnamon bread. She saw her parents again, their faces cruelly fading with time, but whose warmth of memory she guarded closely. And her brothers... her protectors. They were giants in her child’s eyes, their boisterous laughter chasing away nightmares. Everything had been annihilated during a January night, a night without a moon, so cold the trees seemed to crack under the frost. The silence of that night still haunted her dreams. Her parents and brothers had vanished overnight, leaving her alone to face Krane’s pack. The flame of joy had been snuffed out, leaving only a smoldering wick and an abyssal void in her chest. To keep from sinking entirely, Elowen had learned the art of invisibility. She had walled herself in a protective silence, lowering her eyes, erasing her tracks, becoming a shadow among shadows to avoid the Alphas’ claws. Every night, curled up in the frozen corner of the barn that served as her room, she would lift her golden eyes to the Moon Goddess, begging for an end or a miracle. Her only lifeline lay in theft. Not of food, though she was often hungry, but of words. She would slip in secret into Alpha Krane’s vast library, a sanctuary of leather and paper where no one thought to look for her. There, she found her brothers’ voices again. It was they who had taught her to read, sitting by the fire, pointing at the colorful illuminations in their storybooks. In the silence of the library, she escaped. She traversed deserts of fire, sailed on sapphire oceans, and climbed mountains whose peaks touched the stars. These stories were her armor. Her thirst for knowledge was the one thing Krane could not break. She read to remember that another world existed, a world where a she-wolf was not a slave, but a queen. But today, at seventeen, on the eve of her first transformation, the pack had decided that Elowen’s secret was too dangerous. They had dragged her here, to this cursed part of the forest, so that she would die before her wolf could let out its first cry. A flash of pain, like a bolt of white fire, shot through her veins. The silver was making contact with her blood. Her lungs struggled for one last gulp of air. The forest atmosphere seemed to change abruptly. The smell of damp earth and rot was swept away by a gust of pure wind, a scent of eternal snow, wild mint, and raw power. Elowen opened her eyes one last time. She no longer saw the trees, only spots of light dancing before her. In a final effort, an act of defiance against those who had broken her, she opened her mouth. It was not a cry of submission. It was a harrowing plea, a lament that carried within it all the suffering of her thirteen years of hell, a sound so pure and so tragic that it seemed to freeze time itself. Her head fell back. Her vision darkened. Then, the miracle happened. Through the milky veil of the mist, two silhouettes appeared. They did not move like wolves; their gait was more supple, more feline, a deadly elegance that the forest seemed to respect by falling silent. Their thick coats, an off-white dappled with dark rosettes, shined under the faint glow of the moon. Elowen thought she had truly died when she saw their eyes. Four orbs of incandescent azure, of unfathomable depth, fixed upon her. It was not hatred she read there, but a curiosity mingled with shock. One of the silhouettes approached, its warm breath creating steam in the frozen air. Elowen felt a massive, royal presence lean over her. A scent of ice and sovereignty enveloped her, chasing away the excruciating perfume of silver for a moment. “Look at me, little wolf...” a voice seemed to whisper in her mind, a voice that held none of Krane’s brutality. Elowen wanted to answer, but her strength failed her. She slipped into unconsciousness, carried away by the blue of that gaze, with the strange sensation for the first time that the ice, far from being her tomb, might very well be her salvation. CHAPTER 2: ECHOES OF FROST  THALYS The silence of the Quartz Palace was never absolute. It always hummed with a low thrum, the ancestral magic of the Blue Glacier and the rhythmic heartbeats of the hundreds of clan members sleeping beneath these vaults of stone and ice. But tonight, the silence pressed down on my shoulders like a leaden weight. I stared at the maps spread across my massive ironwood desk, my eyes stinging with fatigue. At twenty-five, I should have been in the prime of my life, but wearing the crown of the Snow Leopard King since the age of nineteen had carved lines into my face that time would never erase. I had been forced to grow up in blood and ashes after the savage werewolf attack that decimated our elders, leaving behind a staggering kingdom and a brood of seven siblings for whom I was now the pillar, the father, and the sovereign. My fingers traced the line of our southern borders. Too close to the Black Forest. Too close to the Dark Moon Pack, those scavengers without honor. Suddenly, a mental jolt struck my temples, shattering my concentration. It was the clan link, the one I shared with my elite guards. “ALPHA, MIA AND BÉA ARE NOWHERE TO BE FOUND ON THE TERRITORY. A SOUTH BORDER GUARD SAW THEM CROSS INTO THE BLACK FOREST FIVE MINUTES AGO.” I let out a sigh that sounded like a muffled roar. My fists clenched over the parchment, crumpling it heedlessly. Mia and Béa. My two younger sisters, eighteen years of pure insolence and chaos. Since their first transformation a week ago, they had been unmanageable, intoxicated by the power of their felines and the adrenaline of the hunt. I immediately tried to force the link with them. “Mia! Béa! Get back here this instant, or I swear you’ll spend the next month mucking out the reindeer stables!” Silence. A mental wall of ice. They were deliberately blocking the link. Those little brats knew perfectly well I couldn’t physically harm them, and they played on that with a cruelty only younger sisters can master. I then connected with Karl and Anton, my Beta and my Gamma, my brothers-in-arms since we were old enough to stalk snow rabbits. “Karl, Anton, the girls are at it again. Bring them back to me immediately. They’ve crossed the southern border.” Karl’s response was instantaneous, laced with a weary exasperation: “Copy that, Alpha. We’re on it. Again. We should probably invest in GPS collars or titanium cages.” “Just do your job, Karl.” I growled before cutting the connection. THE HUNGER OF THE BEAST My anger wasn’t just mental; it was visceral. Every time frustration mounted, my leopard, Ivan, stirred beneath my skin, clawing at the walls of my consciousness, demanding action. And when Ivan was hungry, Thalys had to eat. I left my office with a heavy tread, my iron-shod leather boots clacking against the white marble floor. The palace was bathed in a bluish gloom, lit only by the moon’s reflection off the ice walls. I descended toward the royal kitchens. The scent of cold stone was soon replaced by the more comforting aromas of dried herbs, chimney soot, and, above all, fresh meat. The kitchen was deserted at that hour. I headed straight for the cold room. My hands shook slightly with annoyance. I pulled out a large cut of beef, still bloody, and set it on the quartz center island. I didn’t use a knife. My senses were too raw. The creak of the service door made me pivot. Xander, my twenty-year-old brother, poked his head through the opening, his blonde hair a mess of a bedhead. — “What’s wrong, big bro?” he asked in a sleepy voice. I didn’t answer right away, too busy biting into the iron-rich flesh to cool the fire burning in my veins. I simply raised two fingers in the air while chewing. — “Oh! The twin plagues, Mia and Béa, are at it again,” he said, snickering behind his hand as he leaned against the doorframe. I let out a low growl, a primal warning. — “It’s not funny, Xander. The southern border is unstable. If the wolves catch them...” He raised his hands in a peace offering, stepping closer with that smirk that reminded me so much of our father. — “It’s not my fault you’re too soft on them. You’re the King of the Glacier, the Alpha of Alphas, but put a pair of doe eyes and a pout in front of you, and you melt faster than an ice cube in the sun.” He tried to peck a piece of meat from my plate. My arm shot out like a spring, my hand slamming onto the table with a sharp crack, a millimeter from his fingers. A deep rumble rose from my chest. — “Thal, you poor hungry kitten, you’re ridiculous,” he teased, still managing to snatch a morsel with disconcerting agility. I finished my meal in a tense silence, the energy of the red meat finally stabilizing my emotions. But as I wiped my hands, a surge of panic flashed through the mental link. It wasn’t anger; it was pure shock. “ALPHA, WE FOUND THEM. WE ARE BRINGING THEM BACK, BUT THEY WEREN’T ALONE.” It was Anton. His mental voice was trembling. “What do you mean, not alone? Who was there, Anton?” The silence that followed was the most agonizing of my life. “Anton? Answer me!” Nothing. Just a wall of confusion and a dull sense of urgency. THE ENCOUNTER — “Xander, move!” I yelled. We bolted out of the kitchen, charging through the main hall like cannonballs. We had barely cleared the great oak doors of the castle before we were stripping off our clothes in the biting night cold. It was a precision routine. Clothes flew into the snow. I felt the familiar crack of my bones breaking and reforming. My spine lengthened, my skin erupted in thick white fur spotted with ebony rosettes. My senses exploded: the scent of snow miles away, the rustle of an owl in the distance, and the smell of a strange scent wafting in the southern wind. Ivan took control. He was massive, a predator of over three hundred kilos of muscle and fangs. Beside me, Xander had shifted into Vlad, a leaner but equally agile leopard. We leaped over the fortifications, our paws barely sinking into the powder. In the distance, four silhouettes were approaching at a gallop. Mia and Béa, in their smaller feline forms, were pacing nervously around Karl and Anton. But it was what Anton carried on his back that made my blood freeze. A human body. Clumsily tied with leather straps. As we reached them, Ivan skidded to a halt, claws digging into the frozen earth. His neck snapped upright, ears swiveling forward. A scent hit me full force. It wasn’t just the smell of burnt silver and blood emanating from the body; it was something deeper, more ancient. A note of the forest after the rain, wild honey, and the moon. A sound rose from my chest, a sound I had never made in my life as a predator. It wasn’t a roar; it was a thunderous purr, a vibration that made my own ribs shudder. “MATE! MATE! MATE!” Ivan screamed in my mind, his voice drowning out any shred of rational thought. I stood petrified. A human? My mate? It was impossible. Snow leopards only mated with their own kind, or very rarely with other felines. But Ivan’s instinct was irrefutable. He wanted to throw himself upon her, not to devour her, but to shield her from the entire world. My sisters and Xander stopped, staring at me with wide eyes, stunned by my sudden, uncontrollable purring. THE WEIGHT OF FATE We entered the palace courtyard in a cathedral-like silence. The night guards rushed over, their faces falling as they saw the state of the girl. Anton was delicately lowering onto a bed of furs on the ground. I shifted back to human form in a flash, not even caring about my nakedness as a guard hurried to cover me with a fur cloak. I stepped closer, my eyes locked on the stranger. She was tiny. Frail. Her clothes were nothing but bloody rags. But what made my teeth grind was the metallic stench surrounding her. — “Silver...” I whispered, my voice choked with black fury. “They chained her with silver.” Her wrists were black, scorched by the sacred metal. She was deathly pale, her fine features marked by years of deprivation. Yet, even in this state of ruin, she exuded a wild beauty that took my breath away. — “Thal, we found her in the Black Forest,” Mia began, her voice trembling, having also shifted back. “She was chained to a tree. They were going to let her die, Thal. We couldn’t just...” — “We heard her cry,” Béa cut in, her eyes swimming with tears. “It wasn’t a human cry, big brother. It was... it was the cry of a wolf being murdered.” I was only half-listening. My gaze was fixed on the clan nurse, Sacha, Anton’s mate, who was already kneeling beside the girl. Sacha placed her hands on the stranger’s forehead and winced. — “Her heart is barely beating, Alpha. The silver poison has reached her bloodstream. And she is... she is on the eve of her first transformation. If she shifts in this weakened state, she won’t survive the mutation.” Ivan howled in pain inside me. I felt a tear of rage roll down my cheek. — “Save her, Sacha. Whatever it takes. Bring her to my private quarters. It is the safest and warmest place in the palace.” — “Your quarters?” Karl asked, stunned. “But Thal, she’s a Dark Moon wolf. She’s the enemy.” I turned to him, my eyes glowing with an electric blue light, my pupils slitting like a feline’s. — “She is no longer an enemy, Karl. She is my mate and your future Queen. And anyone who dares to contest her presence here will have to answer to my leopard.” Silence fell again, heavier than ever. My sisters huddled together, realizing the magnitude of what they had unleashed. Xander placed a hand on my shoulder, but I shook it off. I approached the unconscious body and, ignoring Sacha’s protests, I lifted the girl gently into my arms. She weighed almost nothing. Her head fell back against my chest, and for a split second, her eyes flickered open. Pure gold. A dusting of golden stars lost in an ocean of suffering. She didn’t see me; she drifted back into the darkness. But my heart had just chained itself to her for eternity. I carried her toward the heights of the palace, leaving behind the whispers and the questions. Why did the Dark Moon Pack want to break such a creature? The prophecy of ice and blood had just awakened, and I knew, in the depths of my soul, that nothing would ever be the same again at the Blue Glacier.