The new Alpha King, Derek, began his reign not with bloodshed, but with truth.
He ordered a full investigation into the history of Dark Heaven City. What he uncovered shook him more deeply than any blade ever could. Records revealed that humans had been mistreated for years beaten, exploited, silenced. They had pleaded for justice and brought their complaints before his father, King Allen. Yet no reforms were made. No laws were passed to protect them.
Derek learned of the massacre. Of the countless human lives lost. Of families erased, blood spilled without mercy.
Though grief consumed him over the death of his father, Derek refused to let hatred blind him completely. The dead demanded justice. The living deserved protection.
So he made a decision that reshaped Dark Heaven City forever.
He separated wolves and humans.
They would live within the same city, under the same sky and the same moon—but as worlds apart. Wolves and humans were assigned distinct territories. Separate quarters were built. Separate markets. Separate schools. Even human children of noble blood were forbidden from attending the same academies as wolf heirs.
Trade was regulated and divided. Borders were enforced with iron law.
No human was permitted to cross into wolf territory.
No wolf was permitted to cross into human lands.
To honor the countless human lives lost in the massacre, Derek ordered the construction of a massive grave tomb at the heart of the city a silent monument of stone and sorrow. It stood as a reminder that blood once spilled could never be undone.
Yet peace, once broken, never truly returns the same.
A new law was declared absolute and unforgiving.
Wolves and humans were forbidden to fall in love.
Any union between them was considered treason. Any bond formed across bloodlines would be punished by death. This law was enacted not only to prevent future conflict, but as retaliation for the destruction caused by the rival pack.
But hatred had not ended with the massacre.
The rival Alpha King Cassius of the opposing clan had not gone quietly into death. Before his final assault on Dark Heaven, he commissioned a cursed weapon. A coarse sword, forged through ancient witchcraft and dark sorcery, summoned by the most powerful spellcasters of forbidden realms.
The curse was precise.
The blade would condemn the king it struck to agony—unceasing pain that would grow worse with each passing year, until death claimed him at the age of thirty.
When the rival Alpha King attacked Dark Heaven City, Derek met him in battle. The fight was brutal. Merciless. Derek killed him without hesitation.
But not without cost.
The cursed blade struck true.
Though Derek survived, the curse took root in his body.
By the age of nineteen, the pain became unbearable.
In desperation, Derek summoned the Council of Elders. Divine healers arrived from distant and powerful realms. Sorcerers examined the wound. Priests prayed. Seers divined.
None could save him.
Until whispers reached his ears of a legend long forgotten.
A mixed-breed healer.
Half wolf. Half human.
A being thought to have vanished generations ago.
When the healer was finally found and brought before Derek, he examined the scar left by the cursed blade. His expression darkened with certainty.
"The king has been cursed," the healer said. "A death-bound curse. One I cannot undo."
Despair settled over the court.
But the healer was not finished.
"There is only one path to relief," he continued. "Not a cure—but salvation from pain."
He spoke of a woman.
A woman whose blood glowed blue upon contact with water. A woman born of impossible lineage. A woman bound by fate itself.
"She must mate with the Alpha King," the healer said. "Seven times. Across seven nights. Under seven full moons."
Only then would the curse weaken.
Only then would Derek survive beyond his thirtieth year.
Though the prophecy sounded absurd impossible even Derek had no other choice.
Before leaving, the healer prepared small bottles of potion and handed them to the Alpha King.
"This will not cure you," he warned. "But it will dull the pain when the curse awakens. After the mating is complete, the agony will lessen."But there was another side to the prophecy ,one that the mixed-breed healer revealed only after a long silence.
He warned that the curse would not simply vanish.
If Derek were to have sex with the woman whose blood glowed in water, if the ritual were completed as foretold, the curse would be transferred from the Alpha King to the woman herself. The agony that had been bound to Derek's body would pass into hers, consuming her life in exchange for his survival.
One life for another.
The court understood immediately what that meant.
An Alpha King… and a common woman.
There was never truly a choice.
Dark Heaven City would always choose its king.
And so Derek Alpha King of Dark Heaven began the search.
The mixed-breed healer had given only fragments of guidance. The woman might not be a wolf. She might be human. Or she might be a rare mixed breed, hidden among the shadows of the city, unaware of her fate. Bloodline, rank, and loyalty did not matter only her blood.
To find her, the divide between wolves and humans had to be breached.
The barriers were loosened. The bans softened, if only slightly. Humans still kept to themselves, nursing centuries of fear and betrayal, believing wolves could never be trusted. Wolves, in turn, still moved through Dark Heaven as though they owned every stone and street, their dominance unquestioned.
Yet desperation changes even kings.
Women were summoned to the palace dozens, then hundreds. They came in fear and confusion, escorted from both territories. Some were wolves of noble blood. Some were humans dragged from their homes. Others were mixed breeds who lived quietly on the edges of society.
Different tones. Different colors. Different scents of blood.
Each woman was given the same test.
A blade.
A cup of clear water.
They were instructed to cut their palms and let their blood drip into the water. If the prophecy was true, the water would glow blue proof of the woman who could save the Alpha King.
But year after year, nothing happened.
Blood darkened the water. Red spread and sank. The cups were emptied and discarded. Hope faded with every failed test.
And with every passing year, Derek's suffering grew worse.
The curse clawed through his veins without mercy. Pain struck him without warning crippling, relentless, inescapable. Some nights he could not shift. Some days he could not stand. The potions the healer had left dulled the agony, but they did not stop it. They were only a delay.
The city waited.
Women were summoned. Women were dismissed. Some left the palace shaken. Some left broken. None carried the glow of destiny in their blood.
And the Alpha King continued to suffer.
Dark Heaven City began to whisper again.
About fate.
About sacrifice.
About whether a kingdom built on one woman's death deserved to survive at all.
But still, the search did not end.
Because when the choice stands between the life of an Alpha King and the life of a common woman, history has already shown who is expected to bleed.
And so the fate of Dark Heaven City of wolves and humans alike became bound to a woman whose blood glowed like moonlight in water.