Wicked lessons by the rogue

Prologue

From the Journal of Landon ‘Lupo’ Tempest

I was born Peta Simons, the son of a murderer, the son of a woman murdered, a heritage that has always haunted me. I do not know how many lives my father may have taken, but I do know that he killed my mother because she sought to give me a better life. Unbeknownst to anyone, I attended his hanging. I was eight at the time.

The crowds jostled me but I managed to make my way to the front. He wept, my father. He soiled himself, he begged for mercy. Words I'd heard my mother utter, words that had done her little good.

Neither did they serve my father well, for they slipped the noose about his neck and released the trapdoor. All that I saw and heard after that I buried in the darkest recesses of my mind, but I could never bury the stain of his blood coursing through my veins. Nor the anger that simmered just below the surface .. his legacy to me, one I feared I was destined to embrace. For it was always there, hovering, wanting to be let loose.

My mother had entrusted me to the care of a Miss Frannie Tempest, who eventually married Sterling Grace, the Alpha of Greywinds. They took me into their home, raised me as one of their own. As Miss Tempest no longer had use of her surname, I took it in an attempt to wash off the sins of my father.

One night the Alpha pointed out the constellation Lupus and in the stars, I saw the fierce dragon that nothing could touch. I became known as Lupo, once more attempting to separate myself from my past and the destiny handed to me by my father. Frannie gave me the name Landon after the hero in her favorite play.

With the Alpha’s pack, I traveled the world, saw amazing creatures and creations, experienced wonders beyond imagining.

But no matter how far I journeyed, I could not escape my sordid beginnings. I could not be anything other than what I was born to be.