His Cursed Mate!

The Beginning

~Preface~

~Hahnnah~

A thousand and some years before,

"Anna, come, come quickly, I must get you out of the Palace safely," Amara pulled me towards the back of the library. A hidden entrance and exit not many have knowledge of.

Fear suffocated me, the hairs on the back of my spine stood on end. My gut compelled me to stop following her, but Thierry trusted her and I trusted him more than anything in the world.

Giving Amara the benefit of the doubt, although something about her was wrong. If there was one thing I was good at was feeling the vibes other people let off and hers sent chills throughout my body.

I no longer had a choice if I wanted to return to my beloved.

I looked behind me as Amara kept tugging me forward, her face concealed in a pitch-black cloak that covered her from head to toe. The world looked as if it was on fire. Amara's voice seemed rather gravelly to her normal gentle voice. There was a hidden undertone to it that I can not describe.

"Amara, what is going on? I don't understand. Where is Thierry? Where is everyone?" She keeps pulling and running through the tunnels. I did not know where she thought she was going. The tunnels lead to our place of worship.

I let go of her hand. "There's no time child, you must keep moving." but there was something eerily different about her. Goosebumps rose through my skin when she touched me.

The feeling in my stomach once again told me to stop following her,

"Child, please, I must get you to safety. It is no longer safe out there," she says.

But what exactly was going on out there? Why was everything on fire? The world was fire and I am angry and I had yet to know the reason why?

"I'll explain everything, do not worry ye pretty self, wars happen. Ye ah young and beautiful and you have a man waiting to marry ye." but it's the way she says marry that makes my stomach twist in knotts.

"Amara please, I need to find Thierry, I need to make sure that he'll be alright." my heart is beating rapidly in my chest. I'm terrified and I do not think I can completely trust Amara. I do not know what it is, but something was off. I always had a way of feeling vibes around me. I tended to trust those feelings, but Thierry trusted Amara and I trusted him implicitly.

It was a losing battle with myself. I was caught between the sword and the wall.

"Keep going, we are almost there." she tries to soften her voice, but I hear the malice behind it and I don't understand why?

After what felt like eons, we finally reached the altar and I sent a silent prayer to whatever god would hear me. I pray for the safety of my family and my people. I pray that wherever Thierry and his guards are that they make it back home safe and sound. Amara didn't mention where my father and mother went and I haven't even heard from my mother nor my twin brother. Last I heard he was going hunting.

I was too absorbed thinking of my loved ones that I paid no mind to the threat that was looming behind me as I prayed. I heard soft words more like a chant in a language I had no knowledge of and I was affluent in quite a few. Studying was important to Mother, so I made great efforts in my schooling to make her proud.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end once more. A feeling I could no longer fight. I could hear echos coming from the tunnels, metal hitting metal, soft voices, but my thoughts were elsewhere. Mother always said there was a power to pray, and pray I did. I prayed for all of whom I loved and then I felt the body heat of Amara.

"Pray all you want Princess, Gods don't exist."

What is she saying? Is she mad? If the Gods hear her she'll damn us both. I did not care what she said. I believed and that's all that mattered. So I continued with my prayers even if they were in vain. I'd pray until my last dying breath,

But her voice gets gravelier as she nears. The words coming out of her mouth didn't sound right, "Amara, what are you-" I turned my body to see where she was and she was so close. I hear whoever is in the tunnels getting closer.

Amara's upper lip curls viciously at me as she pins me to the altar. "Amara, you are hurting me." I breathe.

She pushes harder against me. "It hurts?" she rasps. I give her a gentle nod.

"Good because I'm about to hurt you more."

I gasped in shock at her words. I don't know why she's acting this way. She was always so kind to me. Telling me to study, that intelligent women are hard to come by and my betrothed deserved an intelligent bride. I try my best not to move and agitate Amara more, so I keep as still as possible and concentrate on the voices bouncing off the tunnel walls.

By the timbre of them, I know it's my Knight in shining armour and his best guards. I know his steps everywhere. I've listened for them since I was fourteen years old. The age where young women start recognizing boys, but Thierry was no ordinary boy. He was a man about to join the King's Guard. He is one of the best and my Father assigned him as my protector.

His steps halt painfully slowly, but Amara must know it's him. "Oh Thierry," she taunts manically to the darkness.

I have not seen them yet. The altar is lit by candlelight and not many of them are lit up at this moment. My vision hasn't really adjusted to the small lit space and the darkness in front of me.

Amara keeps pushing the front of my body against the altar. Again, all I can do is pray. I wasn't the only beautiful maiden in the Palace. Amara had a lot of male attention if you know what I mean, although I always suspected the attention she only ever really desired was that of Thierry.

The steps continue lightly, whatever is taking Thierry longer than necessary to come and find me is that he tends to think things through calmly and rationally. Although I do not see anything rational regarding Amara's manic behavior- she sounded almost possessed. I need him now.

She continues to chant the words 'ira nes tu ret,' over and over again. Sending chills throughout my already shivering body. Thierry's steps, coming from the tunnels, break into an all-out run and then, from the corner of my eye, I see the love of my life. "Ah, theirs the Knight in shining armour."

Amara pulls me by my long blonde locks. I saw the relief in Thierry's eyes, but that relief was short-lived. He outstretches his arm, his thumb twitching for my touch. "Love," he murmurs.

I smile at him and mouth love back. "Good, your all here." Amara cackles.

Thierry, Dante and Kade look confused, if only I could voice how confused I was as well, but Amara does not give me any time to speak and she doesn't spare an explanation.

"Ira nes tu ret," she yells into the altar room, the piercing words bouncing off the walls and then she plunges the dagger into my back. Blood begins to pool out of my mouth, my body goes limb, but always my hero, he dives for me, saving me from the fall. Thierry and I both fell onto the ground. His sad blue eyes were pooling with tears.

I knew there was no saving me.

A set of steps retreat.

His soft warm hands cradled my face as he tried to wipe the blood that pooled from my mouth, but time was no longer on my side. I could feel my life's essence leaving my body. So I try to breathe through the pain and the blood that is already choking me. "Eu te am,"

"Sshhh my love, do not speak. Kade is going for help." he wipes away the tears and smooths the hair from my face and pulls me close to his chest, craddling my dying body to his warm one.

He radiates heat and warmth and while I lay dying in his arms I know that this is my safe place. I will always be safe in his arms. Death could have me, while my love held me. I was no longer scared because my love held me when I needed him most. "Ne...nes..nesta...vida" but I just could no longer bare the words.

They are just too painful now.

But Thierry finishes for me. "E na proxima, sempre."

I love you, in this life and the next, always. Even if I didn’t yet know that those very words would ring true the next time I was reborn.

It took everything I had to wipe a tear from his face and with the heavyness in my heart I gasped my last breath, and the world that I knew and the man that loved, went dark.

~Prologue~

~Celeste~

The Goddess of the Moon looked down upon her daughter and knew it was finally time to meddle in this sticky situation. She wasn’t going to let her child suffer any longer because of the actions of someone so selfish and cruel.

Someone who lost her way.

She looked at the baby craddled in her arms. Careful not to wake the sleeping parents. “I’m blessing you with a gift of my own. My sweet little girl.” She looked down at the sleeping baby. It was time to let her wolf be free of the realm of the Gods.

“You will have the gift of my wolf.” She simply said, kissing the baby on her forehead and made it so. The baby began to cry so she gently placed her back into her bassinet as her Alpha father came to pick her up. Celeste made certain to disappear before anyone could see her.

She pulled out a little mirror from her dress pocket and looked at the pool of souls and saw her wolf and then she turned her attention back to the pool of life. No longer seeing the soul of this beautiful little girl.

With a sad sigh and cleaning the tears from her eyes, she was determined to turn the cycle of death around. “From this day forward you shall not suffer. With life, pain you will feel, but with life comes love and strength and happiness. And it is time to be happy, my darling daughter.” at least she hoped she would be, knowing very well that there was a small possibility that she would hate herself along the way, but she couldn't stand there and let this go on for eternity.

It wasn't fair to the two beautiful souls that found and fell in love with each other as humans. The two mates were destined to be. It was how it was supposed to be. Life and love always finds a way.

Although they both had to change along the way, now they were destined to find one another. The words in this life and next rang true.

And truth be told, the goddess loved all her children, they used to think of their wolves as a curse and maybe at some point in time that was true. It was Celeste's tribe's curse, but that was why she gifted them with a bond and a fated mate and some even had second-chance mates. While others never found theirs, that wasn’t her fault. That was someone else’s undoing and she was not going to let it happen to her children again.

This time had to be different. She had to do things right. Shift the balance and the power back to good, evil must never prevail. She could no longer bare to see her daughter die once again. She howled with all the sorrow and pain in her heart, looked at the very blue moon that saved her life and with conviction promised that things would be different. Suffering was part of life, but this was beyond suffering, this was pure evil.

A thousand deaths were one too many. She howled and cried that she had let it go on for so long. But she, too, once made a promise. A promise she vowed to never break the Goddess that gave her another life. A new meaning to life.

A promise to gift her children with their freedom of free-will. They choose their path, they can choose a mate, but it was up to them to lead their life as they so wished, without her meddling at all. Free-will was a kick in the a.s.s.

But the goddess wished she hadn’t made that vow. Because if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have to keep seeing her child die time and time again. She wouldn’t have to feel her death every single time it had been taken and, more importantly, she hadn't had to witness the mate she leaves behind losing so much of himself.

Taken not of her own violation, but by the hands of someone that didn’t deserve love, didn’t deserve a mate, didn’t deserve life and the eternity that came with it, but there was nothing she could do about that now. Immortals exist outside of life. She had no control over immortals. Her children are werewolf shifters that walk the Earth. It all started with her, but she could not be there for her tribe to help them through their first shift. She was given life, but a life that existed outside of Earth. Life as a Goddess is difficult sometimes.

She scoffed if you could really call it life. She made a mistake once and she wasn’t about to let it happen again. She was going to make sure of it.

With a renowned sense of purpose, she wiped her tears once more and kept her wolf at bay. She looked down at the beautiful baby girl sleeping and whispered, "It will be okay, I promise," she couldn't help touching the little baby's soft cool cheek.

“I’m giving you your lives back. Live them wisely, my darling,” she whispered as the baby opened her eyes that glowed like pools of gold. Smiling in triumph and placing one last gentle kiss on her forehead and disappearing into thin air.

~Goddess of Night~

NYX

Nyx heard the howls and cries of the Goddess Celeste and she felt her sorrow and her pain. After all, she was a Goddess because of her. It had been several millennia since she gifted Celeste with the essence of a wolf and a new life.

A wolf that saved her life. A life that had almost been taken away because of a choice of another. So she granted her a new life with a new purpose. A different destiny. To gift her children a wolf, free-will, a fated mate, and a choice.

Nyx had watched Celeste's children and most had lived up to what she had bestowed upon them and it made her happy. Seeing the children of the moon Goddess living and thriving. Wars were far and few, rogues were a nuisance, but heartbreak and loss turned them into withering beasts.

And most have been granted wonderful forevers not without consequences, but Celeste didn't have control over that, none of the Gods did. Nyx sighed, reflecting upon the time before human kind and the Gods lived on Earth. Their powers became destructive, the Gods fighting one another for control and Zeus sending them all back to their world, but each leaves a piece of themselves.

Nyx left a few drops of her blood behind to a beautiful green-eyed maiden that later turned out to be a Fae and the reason for Vampire kind.

Celeste's lineage turned to werewolves,

Orion left part of his soul and therefore Lycan's existed.

And Hecate left behind two amulets that brought forth magic into the world and created both the Fae and Witch factions.

So, you see, many Gods have regrets, but they didn't have the opportunity to procreate, so they left pieces of themselves behind to be found by those lucky enough to find them, the Chosen ones she liked to call them.

Their choices lead them. The Goddesses had no control over that, all they could do was sit and watch and pray they made the right ones. Sometimes, they gave them a little push, but not much to shift the balance of nature.

Free-will and choice are tricky. She had to admit it. Some wanted more. And while more was always possible, it was the choices that they made along the way that defined their life’s purpose. Good or evil.

But the Goddess of night was heartbroken for Celeste, Goddess of the moon. Heartbroken because for a thousand years her child has had to feel a thousand deaths. It was unnaturally unfair.

She heard her cries and howls, but she too made a promise…

It’s one she hoped she could keep….

Death was easy… life was hard.

It was hard for her to see Celeste's children suffer, but again, it wasn't up to Nyx. Her hands were tied and all she could do was watch everything play out, but that didn't mean she couldn't meddle just a little bit, she just had to think how she would even help. If help was possible.

Life was a balance, and Nyx knew she couldn't get involved.

Some gifts indeed felt like a curse, they served as a lesson of a sort she knew she could not meddle with, possibly shifting the balance of nature, but a little push in the right direction never hurt anyone. Life and its balance had already shifted for far too long, it was unnatural. It was time to right the wrong that had been done, because she, too, indeed felt like it was time for the special ones to find each other!

So Nyx, the goddess of Night, sent her own special gift. She just hoped the special ones would finally be able to meet…