Prologue

Istare silently at the Rockwell Pack’s witch doctor as he sits across from me at a large wooden desk. We’re in the room he uses for his practices and studies, an eccentric space full of books stacked haphazardly on bookshelves with hundreds of herbs and ingredients bursting from every visible surface.

The room always has a lingering scent of sage, as Claude cleanses his space after every ritual, but today there’s also the fresh scent of jasmine to accompany it. Jasmine, which will be used in a mixture for a ritual to help locate my soulmate.

“You know the dangers that are associated with such a ritual, Camden.” Claude’s tone is harsh, and if it were anyone else who spoke to me that way, they might be jailed before their next breath, but Claude is an exception. He goes on, “Good things come to those who wait, and the fates will punish those who don’t. I don’t want to see you suffer more than you already have…lose more than you already have.”

I know he’s right, as all shifters are taught that trying to tamper with the timeline on which we’ll find our better half will merely tempt the gods to make our lives difficult in turn. Nevertheless, I’m not afforded luxuries such as time. I have not only a kingdom but an empire to run; an empire that’s under mounting threats from enemies.

“Almost every shifter finds their soulmate by the time they’re thirty, before they hit their prime of power and virility,” I point out. “I’m four years past that deadline, and my patience is running thin, old man.”

As Alpha, it’s past time for me to have my Alpha female. And as a man responsible for several continents worth of shifters, sitting on a throne of absolute power that’s currently being threatened, I can wait no longer.

Claude’s deeply tanned face is set in a mask of concern that emphasizes the wrinkles on his forehead as he regards me. “The gods will put your mate in your path when the time is right. Don’t tempt their wrath, Camden. It never goes well.”

“The vampires are assimilating their numbers on Earth.” My tone is mild. “Their nature is as dominant as ours; they will do their best to replace us in this realm’s power structure. I need to be at full strength when they attack.”

I have no option but to be ready for the upcoming battles that grow nearer with each day. Full strength means having fused my half of the soul with the woman who holds the other; without it, I can’t properly protect my kind.

Claude shakes his head, tying his shoulder-length silver hair back with a ribbon, before fixing me with a hard stare. “This is not how shifters behave, especially wolves. We do not cut corners; that is the way humans brought about their own end. They became reliant on technology which turned them passive. You should take caution from the lesson they proved to be.”

“Their reliance on said technology made our invasion from Mythicacia shockingly simple,” I say, referencing our home realm. “It’s almost fortunate that many of their gadgets let off that pesky high-frequency noise that hurt our ears and prompted us to be rid of them. One strong electromagnetic pulse toppled their technology. After that, human societies tumbled with remarkable ease.”

Most humans fell right alongside them. Without the benefit of planes, cars, phones, and other devices, we didn’t even have to go to war with them—they died out on their own.

Humans are different from mythics; for one, they have no magical blood running through their veins, making them highly fallible and easy to kill. For another, the Earth realm is not home to any native magical beings. Nature itself on Earth is alight with magic, but there have been no offspring of said magic here for centuries—the last recorded earthly witch was a monarch in the late 1700s, whose magic died with her bloodline long ago.

Since humans never sensed the magic they were gifted through nature, they tore down much of it—most of their natural resources, in fact—to suit their own selfish needs.

Claude releases a sullen sigh. “Listen to this old man, for I have wisdom imparted by age. I was there when your grandfather invaded this planet nearly two centuries ago; I opened the portal that led to it. I watched the feline and dragon shifters trickle in after us, observed as the sirens, witches, fey, and most recently vampires followed from our native Mythicacia, in search of better lands. I helped your grandfather establish shifters as the most dominant figure through our hierarchy and watched the human population wane as a result of the changes he imposed.”

“Do you have a point?” I cut in.

Claude goes on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Not once did your grandfather attempt to take the easy route. He put in the hard work it took to get us shifters and all mythics where they are today, on a planet lush with resources absent in our homes. If he’d cut corners, he’d have been unable to build the shifter empire of Acuria—an empire that has a grip on this entire planet, with shifter packs scattered across every continent.”

Not only did my grandfather build this empire but he brought with it the hierarchal structure from our home realm—a pyramid structure, where stronger packs sit higher in rank, and weaker packs sit at the bottom. The strong protect the weak, and the Rockwell Pack, of which I’m Alpha, rules over all of them. So, when the time comes for war, I will be the commanding Alpha—the monarch all shifters will look to for guidance, advice, and protection. For that, I need to be prepared.

“I’m not cutting corners, I’m using the tools at my disposal to do what needs to be done, just like my grandfatherdid,” I growl.

I’ve been raised on stories of the great conquests of my grandfather, and at this point, I’ve grown tired of hearing about his superiority. He never faced a war with a species as powerful as vampires; his job was one of cleansing and rebuilding this world, not protecting it from forces that threaten to bring about our end.

“I swore to your mother, gods rest her soul, that I’d guide and protect you on the day of your birth,” Claude tells me. “Your father’s deterioration in recent years from the severing of their mate bond, combined with your obstinance, have indeed made it difficult for me to stand by my vow. Still, it is my duty to tell you that I cannot condone this ritual. You are my king, so if you order me to, I will perform it, but I advise strongly against it.”

Claude is the royal family’s official witch doctor, one of few wolves in existence who’s able to wield magic. He’s walked the realms for a long time—longer than any other living shifter, to my knowledge—an added benefit of his dualistic nature as a hybrid, a cross between a witch and shifter wolf. While I usually hold his advice in high regard, the simple fact of the matter is I need my mate.

“I don’t have another choice,” I say, growing irritated with his protests. “I might be capable of ruling alone, but I cannot lead our people into battle alone. I need my mate, whoever she may be. Even if she is human, she will complete me in a way the packs around the globe require from their leader.”

Beyond the resources, shifters draw to Earth was that many had found their soulmates in humans upon entry to this realm. It’s exceedingly rare for soulmates to be members of other mythic species, but for some reason, people of Earth have indeed made many soulmates for various mythic species. Regardless of whether a shifter’s mate is human or another shifter, a fully fused soul often doubles and sometimes triples the power that mythics have before being bound.

After a long moment of watching me, gauging my sincerity, Claude gives me a single resigned nod. “Very well. Let’s begin.”

He’s already ruled out my mate being from my home realm via an earlier ritual, which indicates that whoever my Alpha female may be, she lives on Earth, and is quite possibly a human.

My eyes wander around the extensive map laid on the surface of the table between me and Claude, taking in all the many pack territories as well as human villages. When shifters first invaded, we were horrified at the monstrous structures humans had built and the technology they’d developed. Now, there are villages and towns for humans, and territories for packs—where far more eco-friendly cities reside.

Claude grinds various herbs in his mortar with a sturdy pestle, quietly chanting words under his breath. I’ve witnessed him perform many rituals—most for healing—but the magic he wields never fails to intrigue me. Primarily because shifter witch doctors are in very short supply, especially ones as powerful as him.

He sets the mortar on the wooden desk, hovers his hands over it, closes his eyes, and continues chanting. After a moment, the herbs float from the mortar, forming a cloud of sorts, and begin traveling over the map. A niggling sense of anticipation and excitement unfurls within me.

The cloud of herb debris stops its travel over the map, and after hovering for a moment, drops. I stand from my seat and lean over the table to see where the mixture indicates I’ll find my mate.

“Aesara,” I murmur. A small, rural human village in the mid-west of the former North American continent, renamed Acuria upon the mythic invasion. It’s merely a day’s ride from Kinrith, the Rockwell Pack’s capital, where my family’s seat of power resides.

If I recall correctly, the village of Aesara is known for its bursting trade market that caters to other human villages within a hundred-mile radius despite being rather small and sparsely populated.

The complication of having a human mate mainly lies in the delicacy of their composition. I don’t care on a personal level that she’s human; if she was gifted to me by the gods then that’s good enough for me, but the fact that humans are so breakable by nature is cause for concern. Fortunately, once the bond is formed and strong enough—with the aid of a mark and consummation—she’ll gain some of my speed, power, and accelerated healing. That, mixed with my watchful eye, will ensure her safety for as long as we live.

A small smile curls my lips—a rare occurrence really. “There you are.”