PROLOGUE

🌕 Prologue 🌕

The Sin Beneath the Moon

“Who do you belong to?”

Ronan’s voice was a low growl, dark silk sliding over steel.

Aveline writhed beneath him, splayed bare across the moonstone altar like an offering luminous, trembling, sacred. Her long, pale hair stuck to the sweat on her temples, her lips parted in breathless abandon, and her thighs quaked on either side of his shoulders.

Moonlight bled across her skin, turning her into something more than mortal and still, he devoured her like a man who didn’t believe in gods.

“I...” she gasped, trying to form the words, her hands tangled in his hair. “I belong to—”

His tongue slid over her slit, slow and claiming, cutting her off with a sharp cry. His mouth worshipped her. Open, wet, relentless. As if he could taste the stars in her. As if he deserved to. As if she wasn’t the High Priestess of the Moon Goddess, untouched by any man’s hand… until now.

Her thighs clenched. Her hips bucked. But he held her down, one hand splayed flat over her stomach, the other gripping her thigh like he owned it. Like he owned her.

“Say it,” he ordered, lifting his mouth just enough to let his breath fan across her slick heat. “Say who you fucking belong to.”

Her breath hitched. Her back arched.

“You,” she gasped. “I belong to you, Ronan.”

The sacred stones hummed beneath them alive with power, or warning. The air was thick with it, pulsing with every gasp, every thrust of his tongue, every blasphemous word that spilled from her lips like prayer turned sin.

He’d known what this was.

He’d known the temple was holy, that her virginity was a vow to the Moon Goddess, that her body was meant for no mortal. And still… he couldn’t stop. Not when she looked at him like that. Not when her voice turned to pleading. Not when she touched him like he was the divine one.

She came with a cry that echoed through the marble columns, head thrown back, arms spread wide, body shuddering beneath his mouth.

And still, he wasn’t done.

Ronan rose over her, eyes glowing with the beast just beneath his skin, cock hard and heavy against her thigh. His hand wrapped around her throat not to harm, but to hold, to ground. Her eyes fluttered open, dazed with lust and moonlight.

“You want more?” he whispered, dragging the head of his cock through her slick folds. “You want to be fucked on your goddess’s altar?”

“Yes,” she moaned, shameless. “I want all of you.”

And she got him.

Ronan drove into her with a groan that shook the air. Possessive. Deep. As if he could bury himself so far inside her he’d never have to leave. As if he could make her his in a place that was never meant to know him.

Their bodies moved together in a rhythm that defied ritual. It was primal. Defiant. Holy in its own blasphemy.

But the goddess was watching.

And as Aveline screamed his name to the stars, the sky split open.

The full moon turned blood-red.

And judgment fell like a blade.

The sky cracked like bone.

One second, Aveline was writhing beneath him, her thighs slick with his come. The next she was gone.

Gone, as if swallowed by moonlight itself. As if she’d never existed. The altar was empty beneath him, cold and echoing with absence.

And then she appeared.

Not from the air. Not from the shadows.

From above.

The Moon Goddess descended in a blaze of silver fire, her feet not touching the ground, her form not bound by flesh. Her body shimmered with celestial glow — equal parts woman, night, and starlight. Her face was ageless, lips dark as wine, her eyes twin moons burning with fury.

Ronan scrambled back on instinct not from fear, but from a bone-deep instinct to kneel. To submit.

Every cell in his body screamed at him to bow his head. And still, he stood.

Naked. Defiant. Trembling.

“You profaned my sanctuary,” she said, her voice a thousand echoes. “You spilled lust on sacred stone. You dared to take what was mine.”

“I didn’t take her,” he growled, chest heaving. “She gave herself.”

The goddess’s laugh was not mortal. It was thunder. Ice. Flame.

“She was my vessel,” she hissed. “My voice in the flesh. Her purity was power, and now you’ve corrupted it. You, Alpha of Thorne-Claw. You who already ruled. You who needed nothing.”

She stepped toward him, her presence pressing him down like gravity.

Ronan gritted his teeth. He should have fought. He wanted to fight but his knees buckled. Not from pain.

From something else.

From the raw, inescapable pull of her dominance.

It coiled around his spine, flooding his bloodstream. Every word she spoke wrapped tighter than a chain, pressing against a part of him he’d never let anyone touch.

And for one terrifying moment, his cock stirred again not in lust, but in surrender.

It horrified him.

It thrilled him.

And then it was gone.

The goddess raised her hand. Power gathered like a storm.

“You will be split,” she declared. “Your soul fractured. Your beast unleashed but never whole. You will hunger for touch, for belonging — and you will never be sated.”

Ronan choked on air, his body convulsing as if his spine were being torn in half.

“You will crave domination, but trust no one enough to surrender. You will kneel only when your soul burns to be owned.”

Lightning seared through him. His skin split. He howled not as man, not as wolf, but as something torn between.

“And when the blood moon rises again…” her voice dropped, cold and intimate, “you will feel the weight of your need. And if no one claims you, it will consume you whole.”

Darkness swallowed him.

And for the first time in his life, Ronan Lucien Thorne wanted to kneel.

Not from weakness.

But from desire.

---

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

OKAY...IM OFFICIALLY GONE MENTALLY😭😭😭

I'VE STARTED THIS STORY AND ALMOST GOTTEN TO A POINT WHERE I'VE THOUGHT, FINALLY WE'RE GETTING SOMEWHERE, BUT NOPE, I'VE HAD THIS ITCHING AT THE BACK OF MY MIND TELLING ME SOMETHING'S NOT RIGHT. SO, AS OF TODAY I'VE DECIDED THIS IS MY FINAL DRAFT TO THIS STORY. SO BUCKLE UP, AND GET READY FOR ALL THE DARK TWISTED THINGS I'VE BEEN REALLY WANTING TO PUT ON PAPER🔥🔥