The Dread Heir
1155 Words
Varek’s POV
They used to tell stories about us.
Not the cute kind with lessons at the end.
The kind whispered over bonfires when the woods got too dark and the air got too cold.
Warnings, not bedtime stories.
They said we were wolves born wrong.
Soulless. Twisted.
Cursed by the moon.
Driven by blood and rage alone.
They called us monsters.
They were right.
But monsters don’t hide under beds.
They live under the world.
And I was born of one.
The Dread Alpha.
The chamber always smelled like blood.
Didn’t matter how much you scrubbed the stone. Iron soaked into the walls, seeped into the cracks, stuck to your skin if you stood there long enough. The fire in the hearth didn’t make it better. It just lit up the carvings on the walls—old symbols of our kind.
The real kind.
The firstborn.
I stood still, hands behind my back, watching the man who called himself my father pace the room like he owned every drop of blood ever spilled in it.
His boots clicked in slow, perfect rhythm.
Sharp. Measured. Like he was daring me to flinch.
I didn’t.
“You’ve delayed,” he said finally, his voice cold enough to frost the stone.
“I’ve waited,” I said back. “Not the same thing.”
He turned toward me slowly.
Eyes pale and rimmed in crimson, skin too smooth to be human.
Not immortal.
Just… wrong.
“There’s weakness in you,” he said, closing the space between us. “Rot. Infection.”
He moved faster than thought.
His hand wrapped around my throat and lifted me off the ground like I weighed nothing. My boots dangled inches above the bloodstained floor.
I didn’t fight him.
He didn’t want pain. He wanted fear.
And he wasn’t getting it.
“You got it from her,” he snarled. “She wept when you cried. She sang to drown out your screams. She made you soft.”
“She made me human.”
Wrong thing to say.
His backhand cracked across my jaw so hard my head snapped sideways.
Pain flared, sharp and quick.
Then gone.
“You are not human,” he hissed. “You are heir to the blood that broke the moon. And you would throw it away for... dreams?”
He dropped me.
I hit the ground in a crouch, blood in my mouth, staring up at him.
“I don’t dream,” I said.
But that was a lie.
Because I did.
And all my dreams were about her.
When I was small—before the training, before the real darkness set in—my mother used to sneak me out to the old tree beyond the Veil.
She smelled like crushed lavender and smoke.
She called me her light.
My father called her weak.
When she tried to run with me—tried to save the last scraps of my soul—he locked her in the lower realm where no light touched, no magic healed.
I visited her when I could.
When the shadows inside me hadn’t swallowed what she loved most.
She whispered about a prophecy.
About a union between our kind and the wolves.
A bond that could end the war between bloodlines.
A bond that could save me.
My father called it blasphemy.
So he trained me to destroy it.
Now?
Now I was crossing the Veil under a full moon, and everything he taught me screamed that I should turn back.
I didn’t.
The forest beyond Crescent Ridge was too quiet.
No alarms. No guards.
Overconfident wolves fat on tradition and arrogance.
They didn’t even know what real monsters looked like anymore.
I moved through the trees without a sound.
The shadows wrapped around me like a second skin.
Up ahead, the packhouse rose—modern stone, polished steel, a fake warmth to hide the rot underneath.
Windows glowed.
Music thudded through the walls.
Laughter rose, sharp and careless.
Pathetic.
I tuned it out.
Because I heard something else.
A heartbeat.
Slow. Heavy. Steady.
And hers.
The scent hit me like a fist in the gut.
Wild rose. Rain-drenched earth. The sharpness of a storm waiting to break.
I braced one hand against an old oak tree, grinding my teeth against the bond that roared awake inside me.
Mate.
Her window was third floor, south wing.
I knew.
I’d watched.
Not for long. Just enough to know she was real beyond the visions that haunted me.
Elizabeth Gray.
She moved inside, unaware.
Unaware she carried the prophecy inside her veins.
Unaware that fate had already chosen her.
She wore a storm-gray silk robe that slid from her shoulders, baring smooth, pale skin the moonlight couldn't help but touch.
She reached for the zipper of a black dress.
I turned away.
But not before I saw.
Breasts full and high, soft enough to tempt violence, hips curved for holding, thighs built to ride the world into submission. Fertile. Made for war and worship.
My fists clenched until my knuckles cracked.
Leave, I ordered myself.
I stayed.
She zipped the dress, smoothing it over her body, fingers ghosting over her hips.
Long brown hair spilled down her back like something a king would pay in blood to touch.
She wore no armor. No walls.
Only the faint weight of loneliness she didn’t even know she carried.
She touched the locket at her throat.
Smiled—small, secret, broken.
Like she was reminding herself she still existed.
Something inside me cracked.
The bond pulsed again, a vicious demand.
She didn’t know it yet.
She didn’t know her father was upstairs right now, plotting to force her into a mate bond that reeked of desperation and politics.
She didn’t know that the only real choice she'd ever have was standing out here, breathing her in like salvation and damnation mixed.
If Marcus Gray knew what I was—
If he knew what she was—
He’d burn this entire forest before letting me near her.
I reached for the bond.
Not to pull it.
Not yet.
Just to touch it.
Just to feel her there.
She froze.
Glanced toward the window.
Didn’t see me.
Didn’t have to.
Her soul did.
Nyra—the wolf she barely knew she had—stirred, sensing me before her human mind could catch up.
Ours.
A ripple passed through the Veil.
The choice was already made.
It was her pack. Her father. Her old life.
Or me.
A weapon.
A prophecy.
A monster.
Her mate.
I stayed too long.
Watched her put on her earrings. Watched her hesitate in front of the mirror, fingers brushing the spot where my mark would one day burn under her skin.
She looked like royalty denied a crown.
That would change.
The prophecy was already breathing.
And Elizabeth Gray?
She was already mine.
Whether her world lived through it or not.
- Writer
