Prologue.

Erianna Ford.

Grenville Hospital. Silvaton Ridge, Colorado. February 14th, 2026.

Night.

I walk through the hospital corridors, dressed as a doctor. My blue scrubs fit perfectly as I pass oblivious nurses and doctors focused on their work counters, their patient charts, screens, anything but me.

The air is stretched thin with silence. That awful sterile silence that always greets people in hospitals. The same silence that greeted me a few months ago, when I woke up in a hospital bed a few miles from here.

The memory finds me now, fast and ugly. A memory I try every day to banish. But the thing about ugly memories is that they never leave us.

I remember watching my brother kill the man I loved. Ephraim, my mate. The father of my unborn child. I remember the wail ripping out of me, raw and feral, as I tried to run after him. I remember Gerald, my brother, holding me back. His arms firm around my body, after he had killed Ephraim and thrown him over the cliff, so mercilessly.

“You killed him! You killed him!” I screamed at my elder brother, my voice loud and broken with pain as I wailed. As I surrendered to the realization that my mate, my love, was gone.

“This is your fault, Iris Herewit!” I hurled the words at Iris, my brother’s wife. His Luna.

She recoiled at my sharp accusation. Her eyes wide and shaken. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. I kept firing at her with all the pain that had consumed me, with all the hatred she had stirred inside me from the first day she took my first mate.

“If you had just stayed with Gerald three years ago, none of this would have happened!” I screamed. “Instead, you stole Patrick from me. And now Ephraim too!”

“Erianna… let it go.” Gerald growled, his voice breaking.

But I didn’t let it go.

I couldn’t let it go. All my venom surged through me, and I let it spill. Then the recollection slammed into me. I had betrayed the pack for my mate. I had stood beside Ephraim and helped carry out a mutiny against my brother, the Alpha. The pack was never going to forgive me. Even if Gerald did, the pack would always judge me.

So I tore myself free from my brother’s hold and bolted for the cliff.

I didn’t listen to them calling after me. I didn’t stop. I spared them only one final look before I fell off the cliff. Before my body crashed onto the rocks below.

I woke up weeks later in a hospital. My head and body were wrapped in bandages and bruises. My eyes were wild, frantic. My hands flew to my womb. There was no movement of my baby.

Nothing.

“How did I get here?” I asked a nurse, my voice frantic, my body ached as my palms pressed against my stomach.

“What happened to my baby? Why can’t I feel him moving?”

She looked at me apologetically.

“Calm down, Ms. Ford.” She reached for me, holding my hands in hers. “You fell over a cliff and hit your head on several rocks. Some men found you in the water and brought you here while you were still breathing.”

She hesitated.

“But… Your baby. I’m sorry. You lost your baby.”

The words tore something open inside me. I wailed. I cried so hard I couldn't breathe. Clutching her hands, trying to hold onto something, anything, before I disappeared completely.

I was discharged a few days later. They returned my personal effects: my ID card, my phone or what was left of it and the gold bracelet Ephraim gave me just before we went to attack my brother and his followers.

The doctors told me I survived the fall because of my werewolf abilities.

But my baby didn’t. Ephraim didn’t.

The news reported for days, while I was in hospital that Ephraim's body was found mangled. Too ugly to behold. The words crushed what little was left of me. I walked out of the hospital lifeless. Broken.

No one knew I survived.

I made sure of it. Not my family. Not my friends. I paid the hospital to keep my identity and my survival a secret. A generous donation sealed their silence. My share of my family’s wealth remained untouched in a secret account. The funds Ephraim set aside for me and our unborn cub still waited for me.

But none of it mattered.

Nothing mattered without Ephraim.

Then something happened. Something that fueled me with life again. Something that gave me purpose.

A week after my discharge, I saw them, my family. My mum, Gerald and his wife, Iris, moving forward while I drowned in sorrow. I saw Luke Denvers and Primrose, my brother’s closest friends. I saw the pack laughing, rebuilding, living.

While I died inside, day by day.

So I forged warriors. My own pack. Werewolves, vampires, witches. Rejects. All of them, creatures of the night cast aside because they didn’t fit into the system.

I shaped them into elite warriors. Ruthless and patient. One day, they were going to destroy my brother, his wife Iris, and the entire pack.

And I didn’t stop there.

I partnered with an unexpected ally. One who also suffered under my brother’s reign. Riley Cordwell, younger brother to Damian Cordwell.

Now I walk through the corridors of the neonatal wing, where I was told Baby Denvers was born hours ago. Luke and Primrose Denvers’ baby.

Excitement coils through me as I step into the newborn nursery.

The sight of infants makes my heart crack. Memory of the unborn cub I lost surges violently inside me. Clawing it's way up my throat.

I clench my fists, banishing the pain. Banishing everything else. My heart slams against my ribs as my eyes search through the rows until I find him.

“There you are, little one.” I murmur, reaching out with my finger.

The baby squirms. A small, quiet gasp escapes his lips as his tiny hands cover his face.

I’m about to lift him in my arms, when a familiar presence slips from the shadows.

“What took you so long, Boss?”

I don’t spare him a look.

I pick up the baby carefully, my maternal instincts flaring as I cradle him against my chest.

“Shh, Rattle.” I hiss sharply. “You’ll wake him.”

Rattle leans closer, watching the baby with open curiosity.

“So this is the one who will be the new Alpha after your brother?” He snarls. “The one the goddess has blessed? The one to mate with your unborn niece someday?”

“Yes,” I answer, my gaze never leaving the baby. “He’s the one Eliora has chosen. The one to mate with my brother's unborn daughter and rule beside her someday.”

I smile darkly. Bitterness curling inside me, hot and violent.

Anger and hatred churn inside me as I remember who he belongs to; Primrose and Luke. My enemies. He is meant to rule the pack someday as Alpha.

A dream Ephraim carried all his life. He always wanted to be Alpha.

A dream stolen from him.

Now I will do the stealing. I will snatch everything from Primrose, from Luke, from the pack, from Eliora herself. From Gerald and Iris. From my unborn niece. I’m taking this baby.

“Bite him, Rattle.”

I hand the baby to him.

He hesitates. “What if he dies like the others? None of them survived the bite.”

I lift my brow. He’s right. They never survived. Three days at most with their hearts rottening from inside.

But this one’s survival doesn’t concern me. The pain of his loved ones does.

“Then so be it,” I say, my voice dark. Cold. Detached. “If he dies, we take another cub. If he lives, he becomes my chosen weapon.”

Rattle’s eyes widen as he watches me.

“He becomes my Ultra Vampire,” I whisper. “An abomination. An ultra hybrid of werewolf and vampire.”

The baby doesn’t cry as Rattle’s fangs finally sink into his skin, as blood wells and flows out.

Why should he cry? He’s being glamoured.