Luca DeLuca POV
12 years ago – Northern Italy, Age 22
Prologue: A Funeral for the Living
The rain hadn't stopped for three days.
The village of Montelupo wept alongside him as they lowered his father's body into the family crypt. Luca stood alone, shoulders squared, face carved from stone. His suit was black. So was the ribbon tied around his mother's wrist. The elders did not speak. They only watched.
Because a new Alpha had been made.
And Luca—unmarked, unproven, too young and too angry—was now the head of the DeLuca bloodline.
He didn't feel like a leader.
He felt like a weapon no one wanted to admit they needed.
That first year was brutal.
Wolves challenged him monthly. Older ones. Stronger ones. Some were even family—uncles who believed they were better suited to lead, cousins whose fathers whispered poison into their ears.
Luca didn't hesitate.
He beat every one of them—sometimes with fang, sometimes with wit, and once, in front of the full pack, with nothing but his hands.
He had trained in secret since he was twelve. His father had known he'd be marked early.
But no one had trained him for the loneliness.
His mother wouldn't look at him for weeks after he took the Alpha ring from his father's cold hand.
"You wear it like a shackle," she whispered once. "Not a crown."
Maybe she was right.
---
It was Anya who first warned him: someone was leaking DeLuca intel to an outside force.
Darius hadn't yet made himself known, but rumors of genetic harvesting, dark relics, and traitor-blooded wolves had begun to surface.
Luca's first major operation as Alpha was a sting—he and his best friend Raffaele led a group of warriors to intercept a meeting at an abandoned crypt in Venice.
They walked into an ambush.
Three of his best men died.
Raffaele was captured.
And Luca?
He transformed in rage—not into a wolf, but into something half-shifted, glowing with silver veins and feral wrath. The transformation nearly killed him.
But it made the pack fall silent in awe.
They whispered the name he hated:
"The Silver Alpha."
---
There was a woman.
Her name was Chiara. She was a healer from one of the oldest Roman lines, a diplomat between packs, and the first person who made Luca laugh after his father died.
She used to tease him—call him un cavallo selvaggio (a wild horse), all unbridled energy and clenched fists. She taught him how to read old Latin prophecy, how to tend wounds without leaving scars.
They were never mated. But they were in love.
When the cursed relic surfaced in Sardinia, Luca sent her with a guard to investigate.
She never came back.
They said her death was painless.
But he found her—eyes open, surrounded by wolves with their hearts torn out and symbols carved into her palms.
It was the first time Luca screamed in wolf form.
He howled until his throat bled.
And when the elders tried to offer him comfort, he didn't speak for three days.
From that moment on, he decided:
No love. No fated bonds. Not for him.
Because if he loved again, and lost again, the world would not survive what he became.
---
Present Day – On the Plane to Arizona
Luca watched Adunni sleeping beside him, her head tilted against the seat, dark curls framing her face like shadows.
She smelled like earth and fire and lavender.
So unlike Chiara.
And yet something about her reached deeper.
He'd tried to push her away, tried to wall his heart behind cold logic and blood-oath duty. But she kept cracking it open—piece by piece.
And now?
He was afraid.
Because if he lost her, it wouldn't just destroy him.
It would unmake the prophecy.
The plane jolted.
Adunni stirred and curled unconsciously into his side.
He let her stay there.
But his thoughts wandered back to his first days as Alpha, to blood and betrayal and love lost.
And he whispered silently:
"Let this one live. Let this one be the difference."
Adunni felt it before the wheels touched the tarmac—a thrum beneath her skin, like ancient drums pounding through the earth. Not pain. Not quite. But something primal, like her bones were remembering a rhythm older than her blood.
Arizona greeted her like a breath held too long.
Dry, hot, vast.
The kind of land where secrets didn't die—they fossilized.
Luca didn't say much during the descent. He hadn't said much at all since Camilla's message.
But she watched him.
The way his knuckles tensed on the armrest when the plane jolted.
The flick of his eyes across the desert skyline, like he was memorizing every red bluff and jagged rock.
He was bracing for something.
So was she.
---
Outside the Airstrip – The Waiting Ground
The air hit her like a heated wall the moment they stepped off the private jet. Not just temperature—energy. Pulsing. Throbbing.
She closed her eyes.
In her mind's eye:
A woman in white bark beads. Her grandmother.
"This land sleeps on its belly, Adunni. But it remembers who stepped on its back."
Luca's hand brushed her lower back, a protective, silent gesture. He scanned the horizon.
"Camilla said the site is about two hours northwest," he said. "She's already there, waiting."
Adunni's brow furrowed. "Do you feel that?"
He paused. Then nodded once.
"It's humming."
---
They drove in silence at first. The Jeep kicked up long tails of dust behind them, the sun blinding and low. Adunni stared out the window, letting the landscape soak into her skin.
Then she spoke. Quiet. Intimate.
"Do you ever wonder what it means? To be chosen?"
Luca didn't take his eyes off the road. "Every damn day."
She looked at him. "What if we weren't meant to survive this?"
He smirked without humor. "Then prophecy is a bastard."
She laughed—just once. But it softened something between them. He glanced at her, and for a moment, the Alpha and the hybrid weren't leaders of a supernatural war.
They were two souls trying to find a place to land.
---
Arrival – The Sacred Site
Camilla met them at the edge of a sandstone basin. The rocks spiraled down like a natural amphitheater, ancient symbols etched into the walls—some glowing faintly, like moonlight trapped in stone.
She looked pale, sweat streaking her brow.
"This is the place," she said, voice hushed. "This is where it calls."
Adunni stepped forward instinctively, her boots crunching over sacred dust.
At the center of the basin stood a dark stone pillar, humming with that same pulse from her dreams.
Luca's hand caught hers.
"You don't have to—"
"I do," she said. "She brought me here."
He frowned. "Who?"
Adunni looked back, her eyes glowing faintly.
"My grandmother."
---
That night, Adunni stayed near the monolith. Luca kept watch, seated just far enough to give her space—but not too far to intervene if something went wrong.
And as moonlight painted the red rocks silver, she dreamed.
---
She stood on black soil.
Under her feet, silver roots spread like veins. In the distance, a lone acacia tree burned—its leaves flame, its trunk obsidian.
And her grandmother stepped out of it.
"Adunni," she said, voice ancient and kind. "The world wants to use you. But the earth wants to free you."
"What am I?"
Her grandmother's eyes glowed wolf-white. "You are both wound and salve. Hybrid means not half of two—but whole of both. The first of your kind born on two bloodlines. Africa. Rome. Moon and root."
"I'm afraid," Adunni whispered.
"Then you're ready," the old woman replied.
She pressed a hand to Adunni's chest.
And the flame of the acacia tree bloomed inside her heart.
---
She woke in a cold sweat.
Luca caught her instantly, strong arms wrapping around her shoulders. "Adunni?"
She clutched his shirt, chest heaving.
"I saw her. I saw her—and she told me…"
Luca pressed his forehead to hers.
"You're not alone," he said softly. "You're never alone in this."
The monolith pulsed once behind them.
Not just stone.
A key. A warning. A doorway.
And from the farthest canyon edge,
something began to howl.
Not a wolf.
Not yet.
Something older.
_ _ _
Darius Velan
Location: Underground Facility, Unknown Coordinates (Codename: Nadirum)
The room smelled of iron, ozone, and anticipation.
Inside the central chamber of Nadirum, Darius stood before a wall of floating holographic runes. Ancient sigils interlaced with bleeding-edge surveillance data. A woman's voice echoed through the space—a synthetic modulation of dozens of accents, speaking in perfect calm.
"Satellite recon confirms arrival at Arizona site. Subject Alpha DeLuca and Hybrid-Subject Brooks have entered the sacred perimeter."
Darius smiled.
Not a warm smile.
The kind of expression that meant fire was coming.
He lifted a crystal vial from his console. It pulsed with a faint violet glow—extracted hybrid essence, taken during one of the early encounters Adunni didn't even know happened.
"Proceed," he murmured. "Initiate code O-S-S—Observe, Suppress, Seize."
---
Surveillance Team Room – Chamber 6
Two spies sat in dark glass pods, eyes filmed over with scry-linked lenses. Their minds tethered to the ethereal net, seeing what drones and shadow marks could not. One trembled slightly as she whispered:
"They touched the Arizona monolith. The energy spike was… massive. Unrecorded levels."
Another figure emerged from the shadows: Anya.
Disgraced, yes—but not out of Darius's pocket yet.
"Do they suspect?" she asked, glancing to the trembling scryer.
"No," the girl said, voice brittle. "But… something else woke with them. Something not in our records."
Anya stiffened. Darius's voice came from the comms:
"Divert energy scans to deep sonar. I want movement tracking in the surrounding caves. If an old one is stirring, I want its name before the moon is full."
Darius's Private Laboratory
Darius returned to his sanctum—a space where moonstone, bloodwork, and ancient codices converged.
He moved to the stasis chamber in the far wall. Inside, a figure floated—pale, near-featureless, suspended in liquid silver. His failed hybrid prototype. His obsession.
She was patterned on Adunni's DNA. A mimic. A test subject.
But the real thing?
The living key?
She was out there.
Growing stronger.
Guided by dreams, love, and prophecy.
Darius's fingers curled around the edge of the control panel.
"She's almost ready," he said, not to anyone alive. "And I will be the one to break her. Not Luca. Not prophecy. Me."
A hologram flickered beside him. One of his lieutenants, face hidden behind a horned jackal mask, bowed.
"Sir. Your agents in Rome report the Moon Pillar there has begun to crack. Something is… waking."
Darius's eyes gleamed.
"Let it wake. She'll have no choice but to come to me."
---The Spy Closest to Adunni
A figure stepped out of the Arizona shadows, dressed like a local ranger, their face obscured.
They watched Luca and Adunni move down into the basin. The monolith pulsed once.
And the spy turned, pressing a whisperstone to their lips.
"She's more than we thought. Send word to Darius. But keep watching. If she begins the awakening ritual… we'll be ready."