DOMENIC PROLOGUE

Old stories describe the first man to become a lycan was alone in the woods, he lay there dying of hunger when he was approached by a wild wolf. The wolf envied the man, he wanted to become a man. The wolf offered the man the chance to live, and promised to help him find food and shelter, the man agreed and the wolf bit him. The bite morphed the man and wolf into one being and bound them forever; giving man life and the wolf a human form.

Lycans are immortal from birth, meaning we never would age. It takes longer for a lycan to grow and mature, we usually reach full physical maturity at around 50 years after birth, whereas humans are mature around 20 years after birth. Being a lycan is a form of heritage, it's genetic and cannot be passed to someone who is not born into it. Some people think we are like wolf shapeshifters and in some aspects we are; we both transform, but my people look drastically different than what a shapeshifter does. Shapeshifters look the part of the animal that are transforming into, but my people we have both wolf and human DNA, it is not separated. When we transform, we stand nearly 8 feet tall on our legs. We can walk on two or four legs, depending on the activity being done and we don't have tails. We still have hands when transformed, but they have hair and long claws. We honestly look terrifying, or so I'm told. We don't really have a purpose, and we're pretty peaceful. The lycan half of who we are helps us catch food, that's about it.

I didn't choose to be lycan. I also didn't chose to be a vampire. Both choices were made for me.

My father was lycan, he was the alpha of our pack, so he's the reason I am part lycan. He fell in love with a human, my mother. Lycans are told to mate within the pack, but my father broke the rules and introduced my mother to his world. The pack has strict rules, and the biggest of them all was to never be discovered, but my father threw caution to the wind and my pack had been furious. They thought she would tell the secret and then we would be hunted and killed. My father diminished their doubts over time and solidified my mother's position in the pack after she gave birth to a son, my brother, Matteo.

When my mother had been pregnant with me she was attacked by a stranger with eyes of red and skin cold and white. My father said the man had done something to her, changed her in a way that couldn't be fixed. She had a new lust for blood that had scared her. I was born in 1584 just outside of Naples and my mother knew right away that I was different from my brother, I had been given the same affliction she had. I also shared her urge to kill.

The pack was scared, they didn't know if I could even become of them. Usually a lycan cub can transform anytime after 5 years old, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't. My father told me I was different not like anyone else in the pack, but I still could do great things. In some ways I had an advantage, I grew faster than most children and I was stronger. But that also caused them to fear me, because there were times I wanted to kill them and drink their life away. My mother never let me taste blood. She always caught me before I could do anything, she taught me that our pack was secret and if I went about killing, people would find out about us. It wasn't until I was about 15 years old that I finally turned into a lycan. My father beamed with pride, I was one of the pack. My mother worried about what this meant, what I was now that I had both of them.

My father feared forever without my mother, despite her change and everything that had happened, he still loved her. None of us knew what her affliction meant, but as I grew up, she never looked a day older.

Life was great, my brother and I played and learned with the pack. My father was strong, successful alpha, and my mother was happy to have her family. It all changed so fast and without warning that I had whiplash, my mother had gone missing. My father tore up the country looking for her but it was like she had disappeared into thin air. My brother and I worried for him, it was tearing him apart. Being the alpha was all he knew but without my mother by his side, he seemed to wither. That was until the first ambush.

We were attacked, ambushed by the villagers. They came from all sides and burned our houses, slaughtered my people. I saved all who I could and took them to our safety point deep in the wilderness. I ran back to find find my brother and his wife, or even the son they had just had, but the air was heavy with smoke and I felt death was close to me. The villagers moved so quickly and I felt a strange realization as I lay there choking, there were like me. This people were not villagers, the were fast and strong and lusted for blood.

I awoke alone in the village, beside me bodies of my pack were stacked and being burned, I got up stealthily and escaped into the wilderness to find my pack. My father had waited at the safety point for me, he embraced me tightly, happy that I was alive. My brother had not came, neither had his wife, but their son had been saved. They never came, it meant they had died. I wanted to wait for them, stay a few more days just to give them time if they were alive, but my father refused. He knew we had to move on before the villagers tracked us and slaughter our already diminished numbers.

I wanted to tell my father they were not villagers, but I couldn't look him in the eyes, the man who lost his wife and his first son, to tell him the people that slaughtered are pack were like me. I felt so guilty, I was stronger and faster, I should have stopped them, I could have stopped them. I could have saved my brother, but I didn't. I weighed heavy on my heart, but not matter how hard it hurt me, I did not tell my father.

That was only the beginning. The purge of my kind had started and everywhere we moved, they seemed to know what we were and tried to end our lives. I slaughtered hundreds of humans who threatened my pack, and that was when I finally tasted blood for the first time. It had been revolutionary. It was the urge inside of me, it was uncontrollable and my mother was no longer here to help me. My father chose to keep us hidden away from civilization for a while and created a whole new community.

My father had seen the darkness rise inside me and took charge, he had learned some things from my mother about what I was, so he tried to help coach me into different habits. After years passed, I saw that holding onto false hope was of no use. My mother was dead. My brother was dead. I would always have an urge to kill. All of family that remained was my father and my nephew, Niccolo.

I had found mate for myself, her name was Isabetta and I loved her deeply. She had wanted to start a family, but I feared for the child, I didn't want it to be like me and constantly have to fight the want to murder innocent humans. Isabetta took to raising Niccolo instead, he was an awfully stubborn child and needed a lot of caring.

It was not until 1756, when I met a girl that I found out what I was. She had spotted me in a village and approached me, from the second I saw her I knew what she was, her red eyes and pale skin were easy identifiers. She said she had not seen many vampires in this area and that was when I had a name to put with the affliction for bloodlust. She said I was different from anything she had ever seen, she saw the vampire in me but also a different side. I knew what she meant, she meant me being a lycan, but I denied whatever she was talking about and left. I did not want any trouble, even though she intrigued me. I wanted to know about being a vampire, if there was a way to stop this insane demon inside me, but the pack came first. The pack is always first. She followed me, persistent, she even tried to seduce me but I wanted nothing to do with her, I had seen what her kind can do.

It was a few nights after that our new community was attacked, and my Isabetta was murdered. It sent me into a rage, I slaughtered the entire nearby village and collapsed into a path of self destruction. I left the pack, letting my anger out on innocent people who had done nothing wrong to me. After many years, I missed my father and my nephew. I went back to try and fine my pack, but there were rumors they had left for the new country.

I got on a boat as soon as I could, and in the new land , I found my father almost instantly. He accepted me back with open arms and no hesitation. That was were we lived, the hardest part was learning English to blend in with the country. We ended up moving west when my father heard the weather there would be nicer and more like home. He got lucky meeting a man and helping him create pants for miners. The industry boomed and after 200 years, my father had unknowingly made us billionaires.

Now the year was 2011 and life had been easy, my father made so much money helping brand those jeans. Now Levi's were a household name and everything was going great, but things got even better after I met Leah.