The Aspired Perfection

The Beginning

Caspian Blackthorn’s POV

The morning of the wedding felt wrong.

Not dramatically wrong—just the kind of wrong you feel in your chest before your mind catches up. The weather was perfect but the air was too still.

The staff moved around quickly, whispering instead of talking, adjusting chairs.

Everything still felt surreal. Emotions were running high, but not because of the wedding. It was just because I was nervous about what would be the outcome of the strange atmosphere.

The East Coast forests had always held a voice—one that was older than the first howl my ancestors ever cast toward the moon. But lately, the voice had become strange, quieter in some places, louder in others, as though something vast and unseen had begun shifting beneath the surface of the world we had always known it to be.

Wolves of the East Coast clans prided themselves on the sanctity of rituals—especially wedding rituals. Our weddings were always held on the cliffside. Tradition said the crashing waves “washed away the old life.”

Our families—Blackthorn and Silverwood—were the two most powerful werewolf bloodlines from Maine down to the Carolinas. Together, we controlled nearly everything.

Human society saw us as old money philanthropists, real-estate moguls, tech innovators, and political benefactors. They had no idea that beneath our tailored suits lay claws, fangs, and centuries of rule and living amongst humans.

The alliance between our families had been arranged before I was born, whispered about since I was twelve, formalized when I was twenty-three, and now—today—solidified through marriage.

Caspian Blackthorn and Aurora Silverwood.

A perfect match.

A flawless union.

At least, that was the picture everyone saw.

So I did what traditions forbade me from doing.

I was not supposed to see Aurora before the wedding. But the morning felt off from the moment I woke up, like the air had shifted sideways in the night.

Every rule, every tradition, every ancestor’s whisper said the same thing: the bride and groom are to stay apart until the ceremony. My mother said I was simply nervous. My father, a man whose emotions ranged from stern to extreme levels and most times non-existent, told me to “focus.”

But neither of them had walked into the forest weeks earlier and felt the earth vibrate with an energy that did not belong to our world. That strange, almost-electric feeling which had been happening more often than before.

I had.

The disappearances always started in the forest.

Animals at first. Then hunting grounds. Then people.

No tracks. No scent. Nothing but… absence.

Some witches in my family whispered about a mirror world. A parallel version of ours. It sounded ridiculous.

Except the forest felt stranger every week.

Maybe that is why I broke tradition. Maybe I needed to ground myself, to see Aurora and remind myself that today was simple. A wedding. A powerful alliance. A predictable future.

But the moment I turned the corner toward the bridal garden, everything that I would label predictable ended.

The first thing I smelled was lilies of the valley.

My throat tightened instantly. My eyes started stinging almost immediately.

I muttered, “Who the hell brought lilies?”

I was allergic to them. It was not deadly, but the reaction was instant and annoying. And lilies were not supposed to be anywhere near this wedding. The planners had triple-checked.

A small oversight, sure. But oversights did not happen at events hosted by the East Coast's two most powerful werewolf families—Blackthorn and Silverwood.

I pushed through the garden anyway, eyes already prickling, and found Aurora standing alone under the trellis.

Silver dress. Moon-pearl clips. Hair braided and pinned like something out of an old royal painting. She really did look perfect.

“Aurora,” I said.

She turned so fast her veil swayed. Her face flashed with something—shock? Worry?—before smoothing into a calm smile.

“You are not allowed to see me yet.”

“I needed to.”

“Are you nervous?” she teased gently.

“No,” I said. “Someone put lilies here.”

She frowned. “Lilies?”

“Yes.” Another sneeze hit me. “Right behind you.”

She turned, saw them, and her entire expression stiffened. Oddly stiff.

“I did not approve those,” she said.

“Neither did I.”

So who did?

But I did not push.

Instead, I said, “Imperfections happen.”

She looked back at me, an unreadable glint in her eyes. “Not usually.”

The words were simple. But the tone?

Heavy. Raw.

Almost… warning.

For a moment she just stared at the flowers, the same way someone might stare at a warning sign. Then she blinked hard and forced herself back into a smile, putting on her usually composed self.

“Let us pretend you did not come here,” she said softly. “We should go before the guests see you here.”

But she did not move toward the exit like she said. She stayed staring at the lilies like they meant something more.

Something she was not telling me.

Six Months Earlier

The first time I met Aurora Silverwood, she was trespassing on my private hunting grounds. She was dressed in all black. She had stepped out from behind a tree so quietly I had not even heard her move. No wolf should be capable of moving that silently on my land. It made the hair on my arms rise in awe.

“Caspian Blackthorn,” she had said, her voice as clear as the evening sky. “It’s about time we met.”

Her confidence was immediate, bordering on boldness, an unusual trait for a woman raised in a family as strict as the Silverwoods.

“What are you doing on my land?” I asked.

“Hunting,” came her sarcastic response.

“This is Blackthorn territory.”

“Then consider this my introduction.”

“You track too loudly,” she said.

I raised an eyebrow. “Do I?”

“Yes. I could hear you from the ridge.”

Annoying, but true.

That was Aurora—sharp, composed, intentional. She was not intimidated. She walked around me that day, the way a hunter circled prey—curious, evaluating, measuring.

Everything she did over the next several months felt perfectly curated. She learned my preferred tea before I ever told her. She adjusted her schedule to mirror mine. She adopted my hobbies. She remembered every small detail, every preference, every habit.

She was exactly what every Alpha heir wanted: graceful, elegant, intelligent, beautiful and instinctively powerful.

Too perfect.

Almost engineered.

But I ignored the feeling, because this marriage meant more than romance. It meant stabilizing control across the clans at a time we needed it most.

This was because the disappearances had started again.

Each disappearance was described the same way: no scent trail, no tracks, no blood. Just nothing. Gone.

Vanishing.

Once every few decades, it would happen. And then the journals fell silent for a long time.

Until twenty years ago.

Then five years ago.

Then two months ago…

Blackthorn witches—my aunts and my grandmother—often talked about something they called the “mirror world.”

They described it as a world that copied ours, but not perfectly—like a reflection with tiny mistakes that most people wouldn’t notice unless they stared too long.

The witches also believed some people carried what they called “dual faces.” Not literally two faces, but two versions of themselves—one rooted in this world, the other somehow linked to that mirror one.

According to the old stories, when someone with a dual face went missing, it wasn’t random. It was the other side pulling them in.

They believed the two worlds occasionally brushed against each other, and when that happened, people who were connected to both could slip through without warning.

That was the explanation they held onto, even when nobody else wanted to hear it.

I didn’t believe in such things.

Until the forest started humming beneath my feet.

Until trees began bending toward unseen pulls.

Until shadows sometimes moved independently of light.

And until the day I met Aurora Silverwood, whose aura sometimes flickered ever so slightly—as though something inside her shifted between two layers of reality.

I chose not to think about that.

I chose her instead.

Chose to turn a blind eye.

Present Day.

Aurora stepped closer again, studying my reddening eyes.

“You really are reacting,” she murmured.

“The lilies,” I insisted.

“Yes,” she whispered, but her attention was not on me—it was on the flowers.

Another sneeze shook me.

“We should go,” she said quickly. “Before the guests begin to question our absence.”

But she did not move.

She stared at the lilies as though they were a threat.

Then—too abruptly—she reached for my hand. “Come. Let’s not ruin the ceremony.”

Ruin it how? I almost asked.

But her expression had returned to its flawless, unmarred calm.

Perhaps I imagined the tension.

-

The ceremony grounds buzzed with chatter by the time I returned. Rows of dignified humans—politicians, CEOs, social elites—sat beside wolves in human form, their senses sharper than any mortal could understand.

My father stood at the altar, an expression carved from stone. Unwelcoming. My mother, on the other hand, already used to him, adjusted the gold cuffs on his wrists—the ceremonial cuffs passed down since the first Blackthorn Alpha merged human nobility with wolf sovereignty.

Aurora’s family arrived moments later, their presence equally commanding. Her father, Elias Silverwood, walked with the stride of a man who knew his authority. Her mother, Seraphine, radiated elegance sharpened by calculation.

Everything was perfect.

Too perfect. I took my place at the altar. The music began. The audience rose.

Aurora stepped into view.

She was stunning—almost celestial. Her gown shimmered like moonlit water. Her composure never wavered. Every step was precise, befitting the daughter of a lineage known for their flawless presentation.

But it wasn’t just her beauty that drew attention. Aurora had this calm confidence that made people pause. Her eyes were steady, sharp enough to read a room in seconds, yet warm enough to put anyone at ease. Even the way she stood made it clear she had been raised to lead, not follow.

It was easy to fall into the illusion of a perfect union.

But illusions were unpredictable.

And mine shattered the moment an out-of-breath woman rushed into the back row—late, frazzled, eyes wide the instant she saw my face.

Ember.

Aurora’s closest and only friend.

Her dress was slightly crooked. She looked like she had run here—literally. But that wasn’t what caught my attention.

It was her expression. Pure, unfiltered shock.

Not the “Oh no I am late to the wedding” type.

But the “I just witnessed something impossible” type.

Her lips parted. She locked eyes with me.

And unmistakably mouthed:

WHAT THE f**k IS GOING ON?

The music did not stop. The guests did not notice.

Aurora kept walking toward me, radiant and composed.

But Ember looked at me like she had seen my face, with my exact feature somewhere she should not have.

Cold prickles raced down my spine.

Dual faces. Mirror worlds. Disappearances.

And Aurora’s too-perfect timing, too-perfect mannerisms, too-perfect everything.

As Aurora reached the altar, she smiled up at me.

Perfectly.

Something inside me shifted—instinct, warning, prophecy, I did not know.

But the one truth was clear:

This wedding was not just the beginning of a political alliance or a powerful rule.

It was the beginning of something else entirely.

Something the journals had failed to warn us about.