Chapter One
DRAVEN ‘CRAVE’
Millenia Ago
My hunger wakes like a blade sliding between my ribs.
Below us, the village breathes.
Laughs.
Lives.
Every heartbeat is a weakness I can taste from the roofline where my coven waits, bodies coiled, fangs ready. There is no hesitation in me, no restraint, only the knowledge that once I step forward, the night will remember my name.
The moon glistens, bright and full above the thatched roofs, painting everything in shades of silver and incoming death.
The perfect kind of hunting light.
The kind that makes our prey think they can see what’s coming.
But they can’t.
No onesees us coming.
Beside me, Nyx shifts, and the darkness moves with her. My sister’s gift of bending shadows like living things, making mortals see their deepest fears manifest in the corners of their vision, is truly remarkable. She grins at me, her fangs gleaming, her purple eyes as dark as the void between the stars.
“Are you ready, brother?” Her voice is barely a whisper, but my sensitive ears hear her well enough.
I don’t answer. The beast inside answers for me, a low growl vibrates through my chest, causing the leaves around us to tremble. A slight breeze lifts through the air, carrying the sweet scent of our hunt below.
Seventy-three heartbeats.
Seventy-three pulses of hot, sweet blood pumping through fragile human bodies.
The scent of blood is thick and intoxicating, making my mouth salivate. My hunger grows to an uncontrollable and intoxicating thirst, my fingers clenching onto the thatching of the roof, the straw buckling and falling to the ground with my strength.
“Easy, Draven… our time approaches near. Calm yourself,” Moros warns, and seeing as he can see all possible endings and future outcomes, I somehow stem my urges, if only for a moment.
My fangs draw out farther, a hiss escaping me as I hold myself back.
Nyx places her cold hand on my shoulder, her grip tight. A warning to keep myself in control. “Soon, brother… soon.” Her purple eyes meet mine, the only tell that gives her away when her shadow work comes into play, and somehow, they are the only thing that manages to calm me. To ease that insatiable hunger that consumes me.
The six of us have been hunting for centuries.
We were born this way.
Made from pure evil.
The first.
The Originals.
My reflection is gone and has been for as long as I can remember. When you’re born of evil itself, the light eventually stops remembering you.
“Now,” Khoas the First finally growls.
A slow smile crosses my face, and I feel it flow through me. I let my hunger take hold as the six of us leap into the air with all our might above the city. The clouds feel like another version of home, but right now, I don’t want to soar, I want to ravage. And through the mist of the darkened sky, my coven and I begin ourtransformation—bones cracking, our bodies reforming, feathers erupting from our skin as I shift into the form that gave us our name.
