Chapter 1 

Thorrin

Something feels wrong.

The thought hits me as we crest the ridge overlooking the valley where Tuskon and Vicky make their home. It's been six days since Lyssa's last visit with the women, and the unease has been building in my chest like pressure before a storm—that particular ache that comes when the world shifts out of alignment in ways too subtle for conscious recognition but too important for the body to ignore.

Beside me, Lyssa shifts restlessly against the cold. Her breath comes in visible puffs that dissipate into air so crisp it seems to ring like crystal when disturbed. She feels it too—that wrongness that sets teeth on edge and makes heart-light flicker in uncertain patterns. After two years bonded to me, she's learned to trust the instincts that have kept me alive through centuries of violence and loss.

"The fire should be burning," she murmurs, scanning the valley below with eyes that catch the dying light like polished amber.

She's right. This time of evening, their shelter should be glowing with warmth, smoke rising from the careful fire ring they've maintained through weeks of domestic routine. Tuskon would be banking the coals for the night. Vicky would be preparing her evening medicines or mending clothes by the light.

Instead, the valley spreads below us in winter silence that seems too complete, too absolute. Their clearing sits dark against the snow like a wound in the white expanse, no light emanating from the shelter they've built against the ancient oak. No movement around the fire ring where they should be sharing their final meal before tomorrow's journey.

Just cold air that carries something else. Something that makes my claws extend involuntarily, scraping against the stone beneath my feet with sounds like breaking bone.

"Thorrin." Lyssa's voice is tight with fear she's trying to keep from blooming into panic.

I smell it now. Metallic. Heavy. Wrong.

Blood. Not the clean scent of Tuskon's evening hunt or the copper tang of Vicky's medicinal work, but something older. Darker. Mixed with violence and fear and the particular stench that comes when death arrives uninvited and lingers too long in places meant for life.

The wrongness in my chest crystallizes into certainty cold as the snow beneath our feet. They should have been preparing for tomorrow's meeting. Should have been excited about formally establishing the permanent alliance we've all dreamed of building.

Instead, something has gone terribly, irrevocably wrong.

We descend into the valley in grim silence, following the path Tuskon carved between the trees with patient labor and stubborn hope. Each step forward feels like walking toward our own execution, but we cannot stop. Cannot turn away. The bonds of friendship and chosen family pull us forward even as every survival instinct screams retreat.

With each footfall, the wrongness grows stronger. My heart-light pulses irregular amber—warning colors that speak of threat and grief in equal measure, ancient signals that once helped our kind coordinate during the great hunts that carved our legends into history.

The clearing tells its story before we reach the shelter.

The fire ring sits cold, its careful stones scattered and disturbed. Cooking pots overturned, their contents frozen into the earth like obscene art. Tools abandoned mid-task—Vicky's mortar and pestle lying beside spilled herbs, Tuskon's hunting knife embedded in a tree trunk where desperate throw went wide of intended target.

But it's the shelter itself that makes my throat tighten with rage that threatens to consume what remains of rational thought.

Built against the great oak with weeks of careful labor, improved and refined into something approaching architectural beauty. Home, in every way that mattered to two people who'd found love in a world that tried to deny them even basic survival.

Now violated. Destroyed. Transformed from sanctuary into tomb.

We approach the entrance with the sick certainty of those who know what awaits but cannot stop themselves from looking. The hide flap that served as door hangs torn and askew, revealing the darkness within like a mouth opened in silent scream.

Lyssa makes a sound—half sob, half growl—and starts forward.

I catch her arm. "Let me."

She nods, tears already freezing on her cheeks, and steps back to let me enter first.

The shelter's interior has been transformed into nightmare.

They lie together in the furs and blankets they'd arranged with such care, positioned in the embrace that must have been their final comfort. Tuskon's arms around Vicky's smaller form, her head against his chest where his heart-light should be pulsing with the steady rhythm that became her lullaby.

But they're not sleeping.

Vicky's throat has been opened with surgical precision, the cut so clean it speaks of razor-sharp blade wielded by expert hand. Blood has soaked into the carefully maintained bedding, turning their sanctuary into altar of violence. Her eyes stare sightless at the shelter's ceiling, fixed on something beyond this world.

Tuskon's chest bears a wound that goes straight to the heart—single thrust delivered with anatomical knowledge that ensured instant death. His empty sockets seem somehow deeper in death, darker, as if the violence that took his life also drained something essential from his very bones.

They died together. In their sleep. In the safety they'd built with their own hands.

The intimate cruelty of it makes my vision blur with rage.

I force myself to examine the scene with centuries of survival training, though every instinct demands I give in to the fury building in my chest like molten iron.

The positioning tells the story. Vicky died first—quietly, efficiently, her throat cut while she slept peacefully against her mate's chest. The killer moved with surgical precision, ensuring no sound escaped to wake Tuskon before delivering the second strike.

Professional work. Experienced killers who understood exactly how to neutralize both Waira strength and human alertness before either could react.

But it's the details that transform murder into message.

Vicky's nightgown has been arranged with deliberate care, preserving her dignity even in death. Her hair braided with ribbons that weren't there when she went to sleep—blue for sorrow, white for purity, red for love. Someone tended her after killing her, showed reverence for what they'd destroyed.

The contradiction makes my chest constrict with confused grief. Who shows such care for victims they've murdered? Who takes time to honor dignity while destroying it?

Around the shelter's perimeter, symbols have been carved into the oak's bark with claws heated by heart-light until metal-hard bone became branding iron. Ancient Waira script that speaks of purification and cleansing, of strength through solitude and power through dominance.

The Curse, marked where it cannot be ignored.

But there's something else. Something that makes the hair on my arms stand on end despite the cold.

Two sets of footprints in the disturbed earth around the shelter. One Waira, based on size and claw marks. One human, judging by boot impressions.

They worked together. Coordinated. United in purpose even as they destroyed the very thing they claimed was impossible—successful partnership between their kinds.

The hypocrisy would be amusing if it weren't written in the blood of our family.

Ancient fury awakens in my chest like molten iron poured into cavities hollowed by loss.

This wasn't random violence or territorial dispute. This was the curse made manifest, philosophy carved in flesh and arranged in the sanctuary they'd built with love and hope and stubborn determination to prove the world wrong about what was possible.

They died for believing love could survive in a world that seems determined to destroy it.

They died for building something beautiful.

They died for proving that monsters and humans could choose partnership over predation, cooperation over conquest, trust over the endless vigilance that defines most of our existence.

My heart-light flares brilliant white—not with grief, though grief threads through every pulse, but with promise. Vow. Commitment written in light and sealed in bone.

I kneel beside their joined forms, placing my hand over Tuskon's stilled chest. In the old way, I speak words of vengeance that echo through bone and blood, binding me to purpose until justice is served or death takes me to whatever waits beyond the final hunt.

"Brother," I whisper in the ancient tongue. "Sister. Your deaths will be answered. Your blood will be repaid. By tooth and claw, by heart and bone, by the love they sought to destroy, I swear this thing unto the ending of all things."

The wind carries my words through the violated shelter and out into the forest where they settle like seeds in winter soil. Waiting. Growing. Preparing to bloom into violence when spring comes.

Behind me, Lyssa's breathing hitches with barely controlled sobs. When I turn, she's standing in the shelter's entrance, one hand pressed to her mouth, eyes blazing with their own cold fire.

"They were sleeping," she whispers. "They were safe. They were home."

"They were murdered by cowards," I growl, rising to my feet. "We make them pay," Lyssa says, voice steady despite the tears freezing on her cheeks.

"We will indeed."

But even as I speak the words, something cold settles in my chest. The kind of certainty that comes when you recognize a moment that will define everything that follows.

This is where it begins. The transformation we'll all undergo in pursuit of justice. The prices we'll pay for the right to call ourselves survivors.