Lucifer Vale's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Lucifer Vale had walked the roads of Aurila for three hundred years and never once caught her scent. His fated mate. The one whose smell would thaw the ice in his chest. He was seven feet of muscle, black hair to his waist, red eyes that made lesser men look away. Warriors feared him. Women threw themselves at him. He touched none of them. He was saving himself for the mate the moon had promised. Tonight he stopped on a cold hill and admitted a terrible thing: he did not believe she was real anymore. A black bird landed on the dead branch beside him. It did not fly off when he moved. It watched him with a tilted head, patient, like it knew something. "Go," Lucifer said. His deep voice carried across the empty hill. The bird stayed. He walked on, and the bird followed, hopping from tree to tree. Near a ruined stone wall, he found flowers. Someone had arranged them with care, dark blooms tied in a tight bundle, laid on the cold ground. No footprints led to them. Lucifer knelt. He lifted the flowers to his face out of some feeling he could not name. The scent hit him like a fist. Sweet. Warm. Alive. It poured into his chest and cracked the ice he had carried for three centuries. His heart slammed once, hard, then again. His hands shook. He had never felt his own pulse like this. The scent belonged to a woman. His woman. She had touched these flowers. She was close. A growl rolled out of the dark. The bird shrieked and shot into the sky. A massive white wolf stepped from the trees. It stood as tall as Lucifer's chest, its coat glowing like snow under moonlight. Its eyes burned the same red as his own. It bared its teeth at the flowers, at the scent, as if it guarded them. Lucifer drew his blade. The twin edges caught the moon, dark steel with a purple jewel set in the guard. "Those flowers are hers," he said. "You will not stand between us." The wolf lunged. Lucifer met it. The blade bit deep into its shoulder and the beast howled and twisted away, bleeding into the snow. It fixed him with one long stare, then turned and ran into the dark. It carried the truth with it. His mate was real, and something else hunted her too. Lucifer pressed the flowers to his chest and breathed her in. Then a new scent reached him, faint, moving through the trees toward the sound of the fight. Grey fur. A cat's tread. A man came into the clearing, tall, grey ears flat, tail low, a hunter's look in his blue-grey eyes. "You found her trail," Akito Kazu said. He looked at the flowers in Lucifer's fist. "So did I."