Evangeline's Shadow

Prologue

Willa Riley sighed as she slumped down into a chair in the sitting room across from her brother, Tyrus. He chuckled quietly, trying to hide his amusement behind his pipe, but Willa's deep blue eyes centered on him with a glare instantly.

His brows raised in further amusement. "Don't complain to me, sister," he murmured, keeping his gaze down on the book he was reading.

She threw her head back. "Pssh. I'm not complaining. I'm just trying to relax after a long, exhausting day."

Tyrus frowned. "Van's still having trouble?"

"Of course she is," Willa replied, her voice quiet. "I mean, I can help with her wolf side - speaking of, she and Renita are getting along famously." The young mother finally quirked a smile.

Her older brother mirrored her expression, putting his book down to focus on her. "Well that isn't unusual for our kind. Renita is her other half."

"But you have no idea how worried I was when I saw her wings." Willa visibly tensed, scrunched her eyes closed. Tyrus frowned, unsure what to say to calm his sister.

It had been two weeks since his precious niece's 6th birthday. Evangeline was a sweet, beautiful, loving child. She had their family's bright blue eyes, but everything else seemed to stem from her father's blood: silky white hair, porcelain skin, the gentle disposition of one blessed with divinity. She was half shifter, half seraphim.

It had been quite some time since all the races had decided to create a place where they could all coexist. The first king of Trevellia had a vision, and he had worked hard to make it happen. There were several shifter colonies around the main capital, and Tyrus and Willa's family, the Rileys, ran the Riley Barony to the south. They were simple shifters, werewolves specifically, but they were good, honest people who ran their territory with dignity and care.

When Willa had confided in her brother that she had been secretly seeing a nobleman she met at the capital's Great Hunt, Tyrus didn't think too much of it. Whatever made her happy, he would support it.

But the day came when she found out she was expecting, and when she told her lover, he promised her marriage.

However, they discovered quickly that it was a promise he couldn't deliver. Sylvester von Tessen was the fourth son of Marquis Tessen, to the east of the Riley Barony, and his request to marry a baron's daughter was promptly ignored. Sylvester was a cowardly man, and at his father's command he immediately stopped seeing Willa, ignoring all correspondence and renouncing the child in her belly.

Tyrus and his father fought their decision, but it was no use. The couple had never entered into an official courtship, and the Marquis held too much power for a lowly Baron to fight. The Tessens were the only remaining seraphim family in the kingdom, the only healers and divine power users available to the court. The Rileys, however, were just average shifters, with nothing extra to offer. Their argument fell on deaf ears, and Willa resigned herself to becoming a single mother.

But the daughter born from all that struggle was a bright light that filled the Baron's house. Shortly after Evangeline was born, the Baron turned his position over to Tyrus, his firstborn, eager to retire and spend as much of his time as he could with his grandchild.

She may have had a delicate appearance, as all the Tessen's did, but Evangeline had the physical strength and senses of a shifter. They were all sure that she would be a shifter.

Children of parents from different races very rarely had powers from both races. Usually it was one or the other.

But on Evangeline's 6th birthday, she received both her wolf Renita - and a set of white wings that signified her divinity. The wings disappeared shortly afterward, but they had appeared all the same.

The family knew of the doctrine held by the Tessen family. They hoarded their own like water in a drought.

Ever since the child's wings showed up, the entire household had been seized by a subtle tension. Even the servants could feel that something terrible was about to begin.

With a sigh, Tyrus stood up from his chair, kissed his sister's forehead, and bid her goodnight.

The next morning, everything spiraled out of control.

A servant frantically burst into Tyrus's room at dawn, gasping out that the Marquis Tessen had shown up with his eldest son and heir, Niall, and Evangeline's father Sylvester. The young Baron threw himself, barely clothed, down the hall and through the manor, gripping the banister of the main staircase tightly as his younger sister's screaming reached his ears.

"No! You can't! You can't take her, you can't do this!"

Finally Tyrus entered the main hall, coming down the steps two at a time. Not only was Willa screaming at the soldiers the noblemen had brought, her hand clutching at the hem of her daughter's nightgown, but Evangeline herself was sobbing heavy tears.

It was the girl's terrified wailing that spurred Tyrus in that moment, and he threw himself into the group, shouting "Stop! What are you- What are you doing?"

After several minutes, things calmed down more or less, but it was more that the Tessen's soldiers had subdued the Marquis family, effectively separating Willa and Tyrus from Evangeline.

Finally, the former Baron strode in, his blue eyes flashing an intense gold as his wolf threatened to come forward. "What is the meaning of this, Marquis?" the older man demanded.

Marquis Tessen turned to the old retired Baron, sneering at him in disdain and tightening his grip on his obsidian cane.

"We've come for the child - and only the child." He sent a meaningful glare to Willa, who was sobbing quietly in the corner, held down by three soldiers.

The Baron's jaw clenched, and it took everything in him not to jump the Marquis right then and there. He was warring with his own wolf, trying to convince him that matters now needed to be solved in court, not through battle.

They would find a way. Evangeline would not be forsaken by the Rileys.

Never.

He swallowed hard and nodded. "Fine. You may take her today, but we will get her back."

The Marquis's sneer grew colder. "We shall see about that." He straightened and gathered the bottom of his cloak, spinning on his heel and walking straight out the door with the soldier carrying Evangeline's small, crying form. Niall was right on his heels, but Sylvester lingered a moment, his silvery eyes on Willa with a sorrowful expression.

"I'm so sorry," they all heard him whisper, and Willa only moaned in despair, her voice hollow at that loss of her child.

Tyrus, however, growled at his niece's father. "Not yet, you're not," he spat at the other man, barely held back by the two soldiers on either side of him, his eyes flashing dangerously. "Now get out before I show you what sorry really is!"

At that, Sylvester grimaced, then turned and hurried out the door after his father, brother, and daughter. Once they were gone, the soldiers released the Rileys and departed as well.

The mansion fell silent aside from Willa's quiet sobs. The maids helped her to her bedroom, where she never really left after that day.

The Rileys filed countless appeals to the court, even to the king himself, but the Tessens proved that Evangeline had her wings, and their family law that stated all seraphim belong to the Tessen family was upheld.

All contact between Evangeline and her mother, uncle, and maternal grandfather was forbidden by the Marquis.

Years went by. Willa's cries for her child slowly quieted, and then, one day, unable to stand the loss of both her mate and child, her life came to an end, still quiet.