Prologue

I still remember the smell of smoke, thick and chocking, curling into my lungs, and the sound of my mother’s screams echoing through the house as she was slaughtered along with my father for trusting the wrong people.

Though it has been a long time since that night, it is burned into me as if it happened yesterday.

I was only ten years old when betrayal tore through my life like a predator, ripping me away from the normalcy I had grown up in. My father’s friend, the so-called Alpha of the Dark Moon Pack, had smiled in his presence while plotting our ruin behind closed doors.

I was too young to understand the weight of deceit and the taste of betrayal back then but I felt it in every shiver that ran down my spine.

I remember hiding beneath the staircase that night, my small hands clamped over my mouth to keep from screaming. Through the cracks in the wood, I saw the warriors of the Dark Moon Pack moving through our home as if they owned it, their laughter mixing with the crackling fire.

One of them dragged my father’s body across the floor, leaving a dark trail of blood behind him, and another kicked over the table where we used to share dinner every night. I wanted to run to him. I wanted to scream at them, to claw at their faces the way a wolf should. But I was just a frightened boy, shaking in the shadows while the world I knew burned to the ground.

That was the moment I understood something cruel about this world: Mercy was weakness, and weakness was death.

They took everything from me, my family, my home, my innocence. That night stole my childhood, and in its place, it left a fire that would never die. It burned quietly at first, hidden behind a child’s tears, but it grew with every memory of their smug faces, every echo of my mother’s voice fading into silence.

I swore, then and there, that I would rise. I would claw my way out of the ashes of humiliation, and I would make every soul who had wronged me pay.

The world would learn that the boy they broke had not disappeared. He had been forging himself into something far deadlier.

Years passed, and I became what I had promised myself I would be. I fought, I deceived, I smiled while scheming and I destroyed anything that dared to stand in my path. Each victory was a stone laid on the road toward the throne I was born to claim, not for glory, not for loyalty, but for the sweet, intoxicating taste of revenge.

Now, I sit at the heart of an empire built from pain, shadows, and whispers of fear. My influence stretches across countless packs, including the Dark Moon Pack, the very pack that had humiliated my bloodline.

They do not know what is coming.

My soldiers are merciless, carrying out my commands without hesitation. Tonight, they will deliver a gift, one I will savor like the finest wine.

That pack, once untouchable in its arrogance, will learn the true meaning of fear. Every betrayal, every whisper of treachery, every scar I carry from that night will gather in this moment.

When the dust settles, when the screams echo no more, I will stand above it all as Alpha Kael Vorthrane, unbroken, untouchable and unstoppable.

Revenge is my life, it is my purpose, and tonight, it begins.