Chapter 1

Lucia’s POV

The cup fell from my hand and shattered on the ground.

At the sound, Reese and Kathy jumped apart, still breathless from their kiss.

“What the hell, Reese?!” I screamed, storming into the room.

“Lucia, hold on,” he said, buckling his trousers. “I can explain–”

“Explain what?! I just saw your dick in another woman’s hands.” I turned to Kathy. “And, you slut–”

A slap stinging my cheek cut me off before I could finish my sentence. I stumbled backwards, my hand lifting to my face.

“Did you…did you just slap me?”

Reese’s amber eyes burned with anger. “How dare you call Katherine a slut?”

“I am your wife, your Luna,” I said, disbelief and raw pain thick in my voice. “And you will slap me because of another woman?”

Reese pinched the bridge of his nose.

Suddenly, he let out a loud laugh that sent cold shivers up my spine.

“Wife? Luna?” he said with a mocking tone. “You don’t seriously believe that, Lucia.”

“Excuse me?”

He started to pace the room like a showmaster. “You used to be a leader yourself. Strategic unions are all the rage. What faster way is there to infiltrate the ranks of the humans than to marry the leader of the rebellion herself?”

Infiltrate the ranks?

My hands trembled as I tried to piece together what he was saying. “Reese, there is no war. Our marriage made sure of that.”

He darted to me in a blink of an eye, his eyes shining maniacally. “Did it ever occur to you that I lied?”

In the distance, I heard a bomb go off, followed by shrill screams filling the air.

It was coming from the south. The south where the humans lived.

“No!” I screamed. “You said…we agreed. I gave myself to you. You said you would not kill them.”

Another slap of his knocked me to the ground, his claws scratching my cheek in the process.

Blood dripped down the side of my face to the floor.

“Agreed? With humans?” he spat in disgust. “Just who do you think we wolves are? I will rather die than co-exist with low-life creatures.”

“Babe,” Katherine said, getting out of bed. “Why don’t we let her say goodbye to her people?”

Reese held her in front of me, looking at her with more love than he had given me in five years. “That is more than she deserves.”

“No, she needs to see the way her people were living while she was here.”

My breath caught in my throat as I looked between the two of them. “What are you two talking about?”

My voice was hoarse, my jaw hurting as I spoke.

Reese sighed and grabbed me by my hair, leading me down a hallway I had never been allowed to go into.

He took me to a room which was behind large metal doors that a human like me would not have been able to open.

“There,” he spat and tossed me in the center of the room.

I looked around. Screens. Cameras covering everywhere in the south.

In the very center was where I used to live. My brother, Daniel, the new leader of the humans, sat in the bunker with my former bodyguards around him.

Another explosion went off on one of the screens. I screamed, clawing my way to the front.

“No! Please, Reese. Stop this.” I knelt in front of him. “They are innocent people. Kill me. Please, spare them.”

A cruel smirk slipped onto his lips. “Aim for sector 1,” he said to his men, not breaking his gaze for me.

Sector 1. Daniel.

I threw myself at the man who was controlling the bombs, sinking my teeth into his arm.

Another one grabbed me and I kicked him, fighting and thrashing with everything I had.

But they were wolves. Biologically superior in every way.

It took seconds for them to overpower me and force me to kneel in front of Reese and Kathy.

“Lucia, if you keep moving like that, you will break your arm. Wolves don’t know their own strength.”

As Kathy said that, he looked at the wolves holding me down. My two arms cracked out of their place.

The pain was near blinding. My vision spun with the sheer effort to stay awake.

Reese’s hand wrapped around my neck and turned my head to face the screen. I watched as a missile soared through the air and bombed sector 1. The bunker shattered with everyone in it.

My body slacked, all the fight gone out of me.

Everyone was gone, killed by the weapon blueprints I gave to Reese three years ago to show my loyalty to our treaty.

All these years, the South had lived in poverty. It had hurt me but I believed Reese whenever he told me that he was trying to establish the werewolf dynasty before helping the humans.

“And I believed you,” I said, mad laughter falling from my lips.

I had thought that we were married after all. We had the rest of our long lives to fulfill both ends of the contract.

“And I believed you!”

My scream echoed in the room. The bombings had stopped, the entire South now reduced to ashes.

“How do you feel? All of this would not have been possible without you, Luce,” Reese said, his voice low, soft even.

I killed my people. It was my foolishness that killed them.

“Are you going to kill me?” I asked quietly, knowing that it was a stupid question.

Even if he did not do it, I had nothing to live for.

No friends. No family.

Daniel. A single tear slipped down my cheek.

Mum entrusted you to me and I failed you.

“For the sake of your contributions, I will allow you to go in a painless way,” Reese said, pulling a bottle out of his pocket.

“Your formula was truly excellent. My men had a wonderful time modifying it to kill other species as well.”

I looked at the bottle. Every pill was twelve years of research on how to kill the wolves and I had handed it over to him.

I was such an idiot.

“Might as well test it on you. Open wide,” Reese said and pried my jaw open as he forced two of those pills down my throat.

The pills took action fast. Blood dripped out of my mouth, nose, eyes and ears, mixing with my tears.

To think my own research would be corrupted like this.

I fell forward, cursing Reese and all his wolves until the world went black.