Chapter One – The Cathedral

The ruined cathedral crouched at the forest’s heart, its shattered spires reaching into the night like the bones of some long-dead titan. Moonlight spilled through fractured stained-glass windows, painting the cracked marble floor in broken colors — crimson, sapphire, emerald. Dust motes floated lazily in the air, catching the light like tiny stars suspended in the darkness. A hush pressed down inside, as though the stone itself remembered centuries of whispered prayers, blood sacrifices, and the weight of human ambition long since crumbled into ash.

Selene Duskbane moved through the nave with the reverence of someone entering holy ground. Her boots crunched on fallen plaster and ash, and her cloak trailed over the carved symbols etched into the floor. Each step echoed faintly in the vast, empty hall, mingling with the soft hum of the night wind that sneaked through cracks and broken windows. The air was thick with memory — of fire, of whispered invocations, of sorrow and rage left behind by hands long turned to dust.

She had come for the altar — a block of blackened stone still bearing faint grooves where blades had once cut deep, grooves that whispered of pain and devotion alike. Her heart thudded with anticipation, her pulse a drumbeat echoing in rhythm with the cathedral itself. Every instinct hummed through her body: caution, curiosity, hunger for knowledge she could scarcely name.

Her hazel eyes, sharp and restless, traced the runes carved into the surface. The symbols shimmered faintly under her touch, responding as if alive. She whispered the words she had studied, syllables older than human kingdoms, and laid her palm flat against the stone. It thrummed faintly, vibrating with a rhythm that mirrored her heartbeat. A shiver coursed through her, and she wondered briefly if the stone recognized her bloodline, if it remembered her ancestors, if it felt her purpose.

Then the silence changed.

The weight of the air shifted, colder, sharper. Not emptiness. Presence. Selene stiffened, fingers curling tighter around the altar’s edge. Whoever stood behind her moved with impossible silence, yet she could feel him. A shadow that carried its own gravity. Something that made the hairs on her arms rise, made the air itself thrum against her skin.

“You don’t belong here, witch.”

The voice was velvet and smoke, wrapping around her before it even touched her ears. Slowly, Selene turned.

He leaned against a cracked marble column as if it were a throne. Lucien Veyne. His dark coat swept the ground, the fabric shimmering faintly in the fractured light. His skin was pale as polished stone, his face carved with a beauty both terrible and perfect. Silver eyes locked on her, glinting with amusement — and hunger. The air around him seemed colder, charged with something she could neither name nor escape. He radiated danger, power, and allure in equal measure.

“And yet,” Selene murmured, refusing to drop her gaze, “here I am.”

Lucien pushed away from the column with effortless grace, crossing the broken nave in silence. He circled her, not like a man but like a predator — each step measured, each glance a caress and a threat. Her pulse quickened, yet she forced her posture straight, her hand steady on the dagger at her hip.

“Do you know what was done here?” he asked, his voice low, intimate. “How many hearts stopped beneath this roof? How many souls bled out on the altar you touch?”

“I know.” Selene drew her hand back, fingers curling around the dagger. The silver glinted faintly as she angled it against her thigh. “That’s why I came. Knowledge leaves stains, and I mean to see them.”

Lucien’s lips curved, revealing the faintest flash of fang. “And what will you do with such knowledge, little witch? Stitch your herbs tighter? Whisper to the moon more sweetly?”

His gaze flicked down her throat, to the pulse racing just beneath her skin. Selene’s breath quickened despite herself. He moved closer, until the chill of him pressed against her warmth, until she smelled old wine and rain-soaked stone clinging to him.

Her dagger rose. “One more step and I spill your blood.”

Lucien’s laugh was a low purr, vibrating in her chest. “Do it, then. Taste what it means to cut me. See if you survive it.” He leaned closer to the blade, as though daring her. “Do you wonder what it feels like, Selene, when fang pierces skin? When hunger meets heat?”

The words brushed against her like lips at her ear, and against her will her body betrayed her — knees softening, heart hammering.

And then the cathedral doors boomed open.

The sound echoed like thunder. Both Selene and Lucien spun as a figure entered, broad-shouldered and alive with raw energy. Rowan Hale stepped through the threshold, the torchlight of the outer woods burning in his amber eyes. His shirt was gone, his chest streaked with old scars and ritual tattoos that seemed to glow faintly in the moonlight. The wolf in him stood just beneath the surface — tense, coiled, ready.

“Step away from her, leech.” His voice was deep, edged with a growl.

Lucien smiled slowly, not moving. “Ah. The dog arrives. Does she whistle for you, or do you come running whenever you smell her fear?”

Rowan’s hands clenched, but his eyes flicked to Selene first — searching her face, her body, as though to reassure himself she was unharmed. Heat rolled off him in waves, so different from Lucien’s icy stillness. Where Lucien’s nearness froze her blood, Rowan’s set it boiling.

Selene found herself caught between them, the dagger still in her hand, though she no longer knew which man it was meant for.

Lucien’s gaze slid to Rowan, sharp and appraising. He tilted his head slightly, as though surprised by something. “Interesting.”

Rowan snarled, but the sound wavered — not with hatred, but with something more complicated. His amber eyes held Selene’s, then flicked back to Lucien’s silver, and for one strange heartbeat the tension in the cathedral shifted. No longer predator and prey. Not quite enemies. Something else.

Selene felt it in her bones. A pull. A current threading through all three of them, binding them in ways none of their kind would accept. Her breath came too fast, her heart thudding as if her body already knew what her mind refused.

Lucien stepped back at last, smirking. “This will not be our last meeting.” His gaze flicked over both of them, lingering, hungry, before he vanished into the shadows, gone as though he had never been.

Rowan released the breath he had been holding, his fists loosening. He turned to Selene, his eyes softening, though his voice was still rough. “He’ll come back. You know that.”

“Yes.” Her dagger dropped back to her side, though her hand trembled. “And next time… so will you.”

The words hung heavy between them, a promise neither dared to name.

Selene exhaled, the echo of footsteps and tension fading into the cathedral’s shadows. She pressed her palm to the cold stone of the altar again, letting its vibrations calm her racing heart. The forest outside whispered in reply, carrying the scent of rain and pine, of blood and shadow, of promises she could neither keep nor ignore. The cathedral waited. And so did she.