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: https://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.