Hello, everyone! I'm ba~~~ack! :D

For any of you who have ready my other stories - I can't say how much your comments, IM's and never-ending support means to me! This dedicated to you guys!

***NOTE: This story is originally meant to be a prequel to one of my other stories Morgenstern & Eden, which I am planning revamp soon! (Anyone who knows those stories may be a bit shocked by this new Jada backstory, but it is all part of the fun, I promise.) :)

P.S. If you have not done so, please read the three beginning chapters of Morgenstern Girl before reading this story, so you don't get confused. :) Again, thanks for all your support and have fun reading the story! ***

Disclaimer: I do not own the Mortal Instruments. Sorry. :P

FLASHBACK 1: PROLOGUE

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, helas! I may no more.
The vain travail hath worried me so sore,
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means, my worried mind
Draw from the deer; but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain;
And graven in diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about,
"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild to hold, though I seem tame."

Sir Thomas Wyatt

Argyle careened around the corner, each breath panting from his lips in an icy cloud.

Adrenaline rocketed through his veins like a silver bullet, driving him deeper and deeper into the cavern with painful, reckless speed. He barely had time to take in his surroundings as he sprinted through an endless tunnel of damp stone, stumbling over the joltingly uneven ground.

Occasionally, oily smears of an unidentifiable sticky darkness splattered the walls - and out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the substance glimmer a sickening purple in the intermittent torchlight.

The realization came as a choking relief.

Purple, at very least, was not the color of blood - and it was blood that he was hoping to avoid that night.

Dread seized his body at the thought, making his heart hammer even more painfully in his chest. Fueled by the ravenous panic, his leather boots thundered onward, skidding on the sliminess of the dark stone floor, catching on every nook and cranny.

He wanted to call for her, to scream her name at the top of his lungs, but his throat was sewn shut from the inside. No sound escaped, even as he gasped the damp, foul-smelling air into his burning lungs, begging for enough oxygen to utter the two syllables that meant more to him than his own life.

Instinctively, his eyes found another bend in the infinite dark corridor, and his hand quickly shot out the grip the wall as he swung around it. When his fingers returned to him, they were slicked in the wall's moldy stench, and he gritted his teeth in disgust. The smell may have made his stomach roll – but it had at least helped him to keep his footing. He turned the corner faster than expected and was ready to bolt forward again, his tall, narrow frame tense with feverish resolve –

Then he saw the corridor yawn open into a massive theatre-like chamber, and his heart, along with the rest of his body, stopped dead.

The room fell into a bowl-like shape, like the Coliseum, lined with row upon row of hundreds of bristling half-human figures. Their backs were to him – each of them bent in animal readiness, their muscles wound as tight as corded metal, hungry to lunge. He could see that some of them were almost fully Turned – elongated claws extended from their otherwise human hands, jagged wolf's teeth protruding from their curled, snarling lips…

All of them pointed to the center of the room and Argyle's pine-green eyes immediately shot there as well. A rudimentary stage was in the cavern floor: a jut of rock, several feet higher than the rest. An opening must have been carved into the top of the cave because moonlight was illuminating the stage like a spotlight, casting a ghostly pallor on the scene.

A shudder, as deep and powerful as an earthquake, raced down his spine when he saw the two figures on the stage.

The first one, the young woman, was a face he would have recognized anywhere - and despite himself, his knees buckled in horror.

Argyle knew she would be there. It was the whole reason for him coming to the werewolves' den - why would he put himself in such danger, otherwise?

But still, the sight of her, looking uncharacteristically small and alone in front of the army before her, made a nauseous swirl of protective anxiety split his chest apart.

Not that she looked like she needed protecting.

Despite her size, Jada had always been an impressive warrior, even at the Academy. Now she was clad in the customary fighting gear – the tough, black fabric clinging to the curves of her body more tightly than a shadow. Leather straps were crossed over her chest and hips, wound around her arms like thick, dark vines. The hilts over half a dozen weapons glittered from their scabbards at her hips like silver needles.

A familiar figure was kneeling in front of her, facing the crowd – a man, as thick and broad as a tree trunk. Argyle had seen Italy's pack leader once or twice before while negotiating with the Clave for this particular group of werewolves – but he looked tired and shredded now, an empty shadow of his normal lounging arrogance. A thick gash ran across his forehead, blood dripping down his bronzed, hard-boned features and into his gritted teeth. Jagged slashes in his white shirt were blossoming a poppy-red color, smeared with the same sickening tar that lined the cavern walls. Argyle was horrified to see that desperation was now flashing in his amber eyes. His fingers were twisted around her forearms, his knuckles white with strain.

A werewolf's grip was strong, but Jada seemed somehow stronger – her stance was calm, collected even, as she locked him in her grasp. One hand was clutching underneath the pack leader's chin, the other knotted savagely in the black hair at the top of his skull…

The warrior in Argyle knew what that stance meant, and the realization was an icicle that stabbed through his heart, slowly spreading to freeze his aching limbs.

So the rumors were true.

She really did intend to kill Italy's pack leader. To snap his neck in front of his own pack, while he knelt before her, at her mercy.

He had to stop her, no matter the cost.

"Jada!" Argyle yelled, his voice cracking.

The act of speaking her name was pain. As if the word was a serrated blade being dragged from his throat.

He felt the word echo in the vast space, rumbling in his chest like the growl of thunder.

In horrifying sync, the crowd came to life, spinning silently to face him. Terror and fascination seized his chest in equal measure, as he took in the endless army of werewolves, scanned each of their blank faces… so different and somehow oddly similar. A certain non-familial resemblance was shared among the vast group, which was strangely unsettling. Their movements were fluid, uniform, as if they were one single unit and not hundreds of individual bodies. Like hundreds of waves, moving together to form the tide of the ocean.

Such was the beauty and deadly power of a werewolf pack, Argyle marveled as a thousand vicious eyes bore down on him. No matter how long Shadowhunters trained, this would always be the ultimate hunting unit, the ultimate killing force…

Jaw tight, Argyle began to shoulder his way through the pack, battling back a new swirl of terror and urgency. He could hear the snarling mutterings of the crowd, his own name being tossed back and forth like frothing waves. He had deliberated with the Clave for this Italian werewolf pack, fought tooth and nail with the Council to ensure they were able to keep their territory and their lands, so he assumed, for the most part, that he was safe.

But he doubted that immunity extended to Jada Buonavento; especially not if she laid a hand against their pack leader.

Before he had time to second guess the logic of his strategy, Argyle slid through the sea of bodies, until he was just a few strides from the stone platform.

It was easier to see Jada here.

Reddish, bruise-like circles had formed under her narrowed eyes, like two disconnected halves of a Hunter's moon. Eerie illumination had stripped her normally bronzed skin of color, making the planes of her cheekbones shockingly harsh and shaded. Red mourning Runes scrolled up the sides of her elegant neck like strokes of blood, disappearing beneath the high collar of her gear. The hip-length waves of her raven hair were white-gold with moonlight, and her pretty mouth, which was usually curled into an arrogant smirk, was now set in a tight frown.

With a shudder, he took in the resolute set of her shoulders, her torn knuckles, the rigid finality of her grip…

Even then, as she teetered on the brink of destruction, she was the loveliest thing he had ever seen – a tableau of perfect feminine beauty and ruthless, bone-shattering force in equal measure. The opulent curves of her body with the rigid gleam of the daggers strapped against her gear. The regality of her posture and the spattering of blood on her hands. The face of an archangel with the blazing gleam of hell in her eyes.

Of course, that had always been her charm: her ability to balance both seemingly opposite forces with a dancer's grace. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, that made him hope to tip the scale, even in some small way, towards the side of the light. Or perhaps he had always known he would fail. But it certainly should not have been a shock to him, that even so, some part of him had accepted that he would kill himself trying to redeem her, regardless of the outcome.

He darted forward from the crowd, his floor-length robes curling around his slender body like a cloud of dark smoke.

"Please, Jada," he begged again. "Please, don't do this."

She did not stir – did not move to face him.

The jaws of a few werewolves snapped ferociously behind him – dripping with hot threads of glistening saliva - and the idealist in him fought down a wave of doubt.

He knew he had to try again.

"I can't begin to imagine how you are suffering, Jada, but this…" He glanced to the man at her feet, remorse making Argyle's irises glitter like emeralds behind his eyelashes. "This won't bring your parents back. You need to know that."

"Don't address me like a criminal, Silverspear," she snapped savagely. An icy unfamiliarity chilled her tone and he yearned to look her in the eye - to try and guess how she was feeling…. but her face was angled away from him, shrouded in shadow. "This creature broke your Accords; if the Clave had any shred of decency, they would have put him down in a heartbeat. I am only doing what they were too afraid to do themselves."

"This isn't about the Accords!" Argyle screamed, lunging forward. The jutting damp stone of the platform dug into his chest, painfully. Despite his outburst, she did not acknowledge him – as if he had never spoken. He shook his head, grasping – praying, even – for the right words to say, some way to convince her… but, as always, she was unrelenting.

"If you do this," he whispered brokenly, as if there were not a thousand ears listening to their conversation. "you will be destroying everything your parents ever stood for. Their lives – their deaths – they would mean nothing. This man should be brought to the Council and tried for what he did to your parents, not murdered. That is what they would have wanted… Werewolf or not, the Law –"

Jada had finally turned to face him, and his voice cut off.

Even as an infinite number of yellow eyes bore into him, murder glittering like stars in their depths, the tormented flash in hers was somehow worse. He could feel her grief as if it was his own: a gaping chasm of endless darkness, yawning open, teeth bared, ready to swallow her whole.

"You do not need to convince me of the corruption of The Law," she told him, suddenly grave. "The Clave is no friend of mine, and I have no desire to live under their antiquated regime." The corners of her mouth trembled, ever so slightly. "I have only ever stood by one law: The Law of Family. This creature has destroyed mine, and he will pay accordingly."

"Stop it," he snapped. "You don't mean that."

But even as he spoke the words, he was suddenly unsure.

This did not feel like the Jada he knew - the Jada that had fought with her parents to ensure the safety of all Downworlders.

If he was a bolder man, he would have hauled her off the dais by physical force – crushed her to his chest, dragged her from the werewolves' den, kicking and screaming, until this insane whim of hers subsided. Maybe that was the man she wanted him to be – who she needed him to be…

But he had never been that man – and he doubted he ever could be.

Part of the reason, he supposed, why nothing had romantically ever happened between them.

"You are in pain, Jada," Argyle pleaded instead, his voice shaking. "You are not thinking clearly. But I know you, like I knew your parents. You are a good person. You don't want to do this."

Remorse clouded her expression as she slowly turned her face away. Faintly, he watched her fingers loosen their grip on the pack leader's skull - and it gave him a wild rush of hope.

"You have only ever seen what you wanted to see, Argyle," she whispered thoughtfully - the words of a prayer. "Like my father, you find good even in places where it does not exist. I envy you that."

Her stance relaxed even further - and his pulse raced.

Just a second more and she would move her hands away from the pack leaders body. Far enough away that she couldn't do any harm.

"Jada –" he choked in relief. "Thank goodness." At the sound of his voice, her muscles seemed to relax further, unwinding from her deadly pose. "Come down," he urged. "We can leave this place - forget any of this ever happened. We can go home…"

Up on the dias, he heard her suck in a quick breath.

"My home is dead," she growled, her mouth savagely twisting.

Suddenly, the muscles under her gear rippled like black water and in less than a second, the hands gripping the pack leader's skull had jerked savagely to the side in a violent, rotating motion – like the spinning of a ship's wheel.

Argyle's heart dropped nauseously to his toes, but he was too late to react.

The echoing crack that followed – well, the snapping of bones was a sound unlike any other.

In spite of his Shadowhunter training, Argyle had first heard the sound only twelve short months ago, when he had seen Jada's father breaking a lycanthrope child's leg, resetting it to ensure the once-warped bone healed straight and true.

He would never forget that initial feeling of overwhelming awe, that a Nephilim doctor would ever take such care to heal a Downworlder. It had been what inspired him to give up his dream of being a Silent Brother – to instead fight for a day when Downworlder and Shadowhunters worked in harmony, rather than adversity.

Seeing the body of the werewolf pack leader slump lifelessly out of Jada's hands to the stone floor, his head bent at an unnatural angle, was a blow to his stomach.

Visually bizarre.

Incomprehensible.

Horror threatened to rock him off his feet as Jada straightened to her full height with feline grace – as if in slow motion – pulling a glowing seraph blade from the scabbard at her side. It cut the thick air with its heavenly light as she pointed the tip of the sword at the crowd of astonished lycanthropes. None of them made a sound – even at the sight of their leader crumpled like a paper doll at her feet, his brown eyes wide in a last look of incredulous horror.

A horrified nausea twisted his stomach, and despite his years of medical training, Argyle had to look away from the scene.

"I was raised with this pack like this one, werewolves," he heard Jada say, her voice reverberating against the dripping rock walls. Her tone was cool and smooth with a deadly undercurrent, like lightning striking the placid surface of Lake Lyn. "I know your ways," she continued. "I have killed your leader. Bare your necks to me."

No, Argyle wanted to yell, his emerald eyes darting to her - but the words never made it past his lips.

He stared as the crowd hesitated in a single moment of silence, and then, all at once, shuddered and sank to their knees. A ripple effect that continued until every werewolf in the cavern had bent in surrender.

Argyle was the only one left standing, and he spun to survey the hundreds of kneeling lycanthropes around him in stunned wonder.

Why, he wondered silently, his gaze darting feverishly across the crowd. Why aren't they fighting back?

He had expected the pack to lunge at her as soon as she had laid a hand of harm against their leader, but here they were, kneeling to her like their queen… How was it possible?

It was an smooth, bassy voice in the front row that finally broke the silence, his dark head bent in quiet submission.

"If you know our ways, then you know we are at your mercy," explained the man. With a start, Argyle recognized him as the pack leader's second in command - a kinder, older gentleman with a fraction of his superior's fiery temper. "Our leader hunted and killed your parents, despite the benevolence they showed our kind," he added. "You have slayed our leader, and as his pack, our lives are forfeit. Whether we live or die… that is your choice to make."

For a single, terrifying moment, Jada hesitated – and some part of Argyle feared that she would step off the platform and start slitting the werewolves' throats one-by-one, until the floors of the cavern ran red.

But to his relief, Jada slowly returned the sword to its sheath at her hip and relaxed her posture, ever so slightly.

And this time, he noticed, it seemed like she might have really meant it.

"I have no use for your lives," Jada answered measuredly. "and I see no need for your deaths." Setting her jaw, she turned from the crowd, as if to leave. "Appoint a new leader and carry on as you were," she replied. "My fight is not against your kind – only against those of you who oppose me."

"Shadowhunter scum!" came a shriek that curdled Argyle's blood. A small, familiar figure jerked forward from her kneeling brethren, like a puppet being tugged by its strings. "You kill our leader before our eyes and presume to offer us mercy?!"

Argyle's terror returned to him, like an injection of adrenaline, when he recognized the pale, aggressive features and the wild tawny-blonde hair of the dead pack leader's mate. Her sky-blue eyes were gleaming wetly, fury and agony streaming in the tears from her eyes.

"Your parents may have licked our wounds, but we will never submit to one of the Nephilim," she seethed, dropping to a deadly crouch. "Join them in Hell!"

Before Argyle could blink, the blonde woman was no longer human. She launched herself at Jada as a bristling, steel-gray wolf, jaws bared. Instinctively, Argyle darted forward to the dias - but he was too late.

He could only watch as Jada half-spun to the woman, her hand flashing to the hilt of her seraph blade, faster than light – but her sword was never unsheathed.

Although Jada was likely the better warrior, the leader's mate had the element of surprise.

An instant later, the wolf's jaws tore through the tough gear, sinking into the flesh of Jada's waist, drawing blood.

The force knocked Jada off-balance and he only caught a momentary glimpse of her face: her teeth gritted in a soundless snarl, her eyes flashing amber with insatiable rage, her hair streaming around her like tongues of black flame… a picture of a dark angel falling from heaven - as the force of the werewolf plunged her to the stone below.

Argyle heard, as if from a distance, his own voice screaming her name –

But, unarmed, Jada went down.

So... what did you think? :D I know it is a really intense first chapter, so hopefully you enjoyed that!

If you liked it, feel free to leave a comment or head on over to Chapter 1 next! (I posted them at the same time so I don't kill you with that cliff-hanger, lol.)

I hope to post a new chapter every week, so I will see you all next time!

Love, Fishie.