Prologue:
I have started editing the book ... There are both many grammatical and spelling mistakes in the book as it was written first. This does not change the story, but hopefully makes it easier to understand.
Let me hear what you think of the book in the comments.
Love Lili
Before I start this tale of war and love, I will just set the scene.
I want to tell you about a time long forgotten by man, but still very clear in the memory of all vampires, witches and wolves! We have our differences, but one thing we have in common is our fear of man. Or, rather, the fear that man will rediscover our existence.
A few centuries ago, in the 1800s, there was a war! Not between humans, but against us. Man had become aware of us again. For a millennium we had belonged in fairy tales, just a figure of imagination, something to scare the kids with.
But for unknown reasons, man discovered that we were not only fantasies, but very real ... and they feared us! Instead of hiding from us, they got up and went hunting, hunting for us! They wanted to kill us all, to exterminate us!
They did not listen to us when we tried to tell them that wolves were not a threat to humans and that some witches were actually good, and well let's be honest, no one wanted to defend the vampires.
By the time this story takes place, the Hunt was almost over.
Man had almost won. Vampires hid deep underground, entire clans dormant, awaiting the day they would be forgotten again.
Witchcorvens were dissolved, many men and women had suffered torture and horrific ways of death, at the hands of man, feared to be witches. The vast majority was innocent, but many witches suffered the same fate.
Many wolf packs were gone after attacks that cost countless wolves their lives. Many wolves lived a lonely life, without family and pack, without an Alpha and/or a Luna to take care of them. But worst of all, very few wolves had a mate, with the wolves scattered, few found a mate, and even fewer found their fated mate, their other half, the mate promised to them by the Moon Goddess herself!
The end was approaching, wolves could no longer hide between humans, the hunters had a new weapon that always found the wolves! Specially trained dogs that could smell the wolf inside, trained to kill. With this weapon man became aware of the fact that wolves lived in packs, had a leader, just as nature wolves. With this knowledge, humans could exterminate entire packs, burn off their territory, and thus kill escaped wolves.
It was no longer just a kind of rogue wolfs, that was the dangerous kind, those who had been expelled from a pack, the criminals. Then there were the harmless kind, those who were lone wolves, wolves whose Alpha and Luna had been killed and no longer had a pack.
The lone wolves were without the stench of rot, but also without the smell of an Alpha. It made them just as often unwanted company, as several Alphas feared they could have been used as a way to find more wolves.
Man was becoming convinced of having exterminated wolves, there became longer and longer between pack territories, they found fewer and fewer wolves. And for that we can thank my father.
My father was a wolf without a pack, a witch without a corven. He was the result of love and mating, between a witch and a male wolf. His father died when my father was just ten. In his twelfth year his wolf appeared and he was shown away by the witches. Without a father to claim, he was all alone. For years he was a wolf without a pack, but he learned to live like a human, became quite rich by doing business and making friends with the nobles.
He found his fated mate, another lone wolf and I was born, into the early years of the Hunt. My mother died in childbirth and my father now stood alone with an infant and the fear of being found and killed.
But my father found a way to hide us from our enemies, a potion that could hide our smell of wolves from the dogs.
It allowed wolves to hide in the open, but made it impossible for wolves to find their fated mate.
The scent is and will always be the way wolves find their fated mate. We can smell other wolves from a long distance, we recognize family and friends on our common traits, we recognize rogue on the stench of rot. Even the smell of another pack, both their territory and wolves. A wise man once said that even a blind hen can find grain ... but a wolf without a sense of smell is a wolf without hope. So the fact that most everyone used the vital potion meant that no one met the one wolf they dreamed of. Wolves survived, but can a wolf ever really live, without its mate?
The years passed, my father sold his potion and became a rich man. Then came the time when I turned sixteen, it became time to think about my future. Time for me to find my mate.
