Book 1: The Luna’s Curse

Blood and Oaths

The council chamber smelled of smoke and steel.

Twelve Lycans ringed the long table, every gaze fixed on the empty throne at its head. When Kael entered, silence cut through the murmuring like a blade.

Lord Varyn rose first, gray-furred and heavy-voiced. “Your Majesty, the matter of the cursed wolf must be settled before dusk. The guards claim she burned with moonfire. Such things bring ruin.”

Kael’s gloved hands rested on the table. “And yet ruin hasn’t touched this fortress.”

“She is an omen,” Varyn pressed. “Our laws demand—”

“My laws,” Kael interrupted, eyes glinting. “And I’ve changed them.”

Gasps rippled around the circle. Daren shifted uneasily at his king’s right side, but said nothing.

Kael leaned forward. “You will not harm her. Anyone who tries answers to me.”

Another lord slammed his fist down. “You would endanger your crown for a stranger?”

Kael’s voice dropped to something quiet, lethal. “For the Moon’s chosen, I would end a kingdom.”

The words fell like thunder. Even the torches seemed to shrink back from the heat of them.

⸻

Far above, in the high tower, Aria paced the length of her chamber. She could feel the storm gathering below—the mark on her wrist beating faster with each word spoken miles away. A faint tremor quivered through the floor; the goddess’s power always stirred when blood was about to be spilled.

A guard appeared at her door. “The king commands you to stay inside.”

“I wasn’t planning a walk,” she muttered, but the fear in his eyes told her more than his words. Whatever Kael was doing, it was shaking the fortress apart.

She pressed her palm to the wall, whispering, Don’t die for me, Kael.

The mark flared in reply.

⸻

Back in the chamber, Varyn drew his sword halfway from its sheath. “Then by the council’s right, I challenge—”

Kael moved before the blade cleared the steel. In one breath the king was beside him, his hand around Varyn’s throat.

“Challenge accepted,” he growled.

The room erupted—chairs scraping, claws flashing—but Kael’s dominance filled the air, pressing every wolf to its knees. His eyes burned silver-white; his voice came out rough with the edge of his Lycan form. “No one touches her. That is my oath.”

Blood trickled down Varyn’s neck where Kael’s claws grazed skin. “If she proves unworthy,” Kael continued, “I will end her myself. Until then—she is under the protection of the crown.”

He released the lord, letting him crumple to the floor, gasping.

The council did not speak again.

⸻

That night, when Kael returned to the tower, the scent of blood still clung to him. Aria stood waiting, eyes wide.

“What did you do?” she whispered.

“Kept a promise.”

“Someone died.”

“No,” he said, voice softer now. “Someone learned the cost of defying me.”

The mark between them pulsed, faint light spilling from beneath her sleeve. Kael reached out, stopping an inch away from touching her. “They’ll come for you again. But next time, they’ll have to come through me.”

Aria met his gaze, something fierce stirring behind the fear. “Then let them come.”

Outside, thunder rolled across the mountains as the first blood-oath between a king and his cursed mate sealed itself beneath the Moon.