Destined Queen, Prophesied Warrior

Prologue - Nightmares of the Past

A bright white flashed throughout the darkness of her tiny room as lightning struck in the night. Endless vibrations shook every foundation caused by the thunder that followed it. Over the brewing and unrelenting storm, 9-year-old Aurelia heard the terrified screams of her pack, Silver Moon, as bloodthirsty and savage Rogues descended upon them. She was in shock, frozen in fear looking out the small opening of her window, watching as the few warrior wolves her pack had were slaughtered. She was wide-eyed and hyperventilating as she witnessed women and children being taken captive and hurled inside incommodious cages. Copper lined her senses from all the blood that had been spilled, the blood of her pack. She started to cry, tears endlessly falling, soaking her nightdress. Those salty, wet formations streaking her face while fearing for her mother and father. That's when she heard him.

"Aurelia! Aurelia!" came her father's worried voice as he entered her room. "Thank the Moon Goddess you're unharmed little one." he explained as he scooped her up into his protecting arms. "We need to ensure your mother's safe as well!"

He smelled of copper also, so much so that she was sure she could taste it. When they reached her parents' room, her father placed Aurelia into her mother's caring arms and was peppered with thankful kisses. Her precious daughter was safe and her husband Cassius, their pack Gamma, could defend them from the Rogues breaching their pack-house doors.

The thunder continued to boom, making Aurelia shake and tremble with fear. Lightning crackled throughout the night providing light for their escape from this ruthless invasion. Aurelia's hair stood on end from the electricity in the air and as the next wave of lightning struck, it illuminated over a dozen Rogues just ahead of their escape route. Each Rogue seemed to attack at once, bearing their large, yellow canines and lunging at her father, mother, and herself. In an instant, she witnessed her father advancing towards them, viciously taking two Rogues by the neck, and tearing out their throats with a terrifying squelch. Aurelia watched them drop lifeless, their dead-weight thunked upon the stone floor; their blank gazes stared into the deep abyss of Hades' Underworld. Her stomach sickened at the sound of it all.

"GO! NOW! Get Aurelia to safety Carissa, my love, my Moon! I will find you both, I prom-" before her father, Cassius, could finish, he was ripped away by a small army of Rogues, and her mother rushed them to a secret passage hidden from view by a large bookcase.

It screeched open and when Aurelia and her mother rounded the corner to enter the secret passage, she watched helpless, as those Rogues ambushed her father. The last vision she had of her father was him fighting for his family's safety, forgetting all thought of his own. Aurelia's mother took a torch light from its cresset and rushed them through the darkness of the passageway and just as they saw the moonlight come into view, her mother wailed and collapsed clutching her hands to her chest as she wept "CASSIUS! NO, NO, NO! YOU CAN'T BE -".