1 Prolouge

1774, Imperium, North Carolina Quilleon's POV

The world was falling apart. The castle was holding strong, my people were safe, and yet, the world-my world-was falling apart. She was dying. She wasn't supposed to be capable of dying. But somehow, I found myself in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs of a hospital waiting room, waiting.

I wasn't used to feeling helpless. I was, quite literally, the most powerful being in the universe, and yet, I couldn't save her. I shouldn't have let her fight. God, why did I let her fight? It was such a small battle, and we won it easily, but it was costing me everything.

I raked a hand through my already messy jet-black hair and sunk down lower into my chair. I wasn't going to survive this.

"Leon?" I turned at the familiar voice to face my youngest sister. Her bright blue eyes, so different from my own, were rimmed with red. She had been crying, too. Despite the sadness of the situation, Sybil still looked like an angel, her white-blonde hair cascading down her shoulder in gentle ringlets. She reminded me a lot of Larissa. They had the same hair, the same impossibly pale skin, the same endless, adventurous energy.

Sybil approached me carefully, as though I break tear the entire hospital apart at any moment. Maybe I would. She sat down in the chair next to mine, either of us saying anything. What was there to say? We were sitting in the sterile, all-white waiting room of St. Selene's, waiting for the doctors to tell me that the woman I had been in love with for over a billion years was dead. I could feel her slipping away through our bond, and I hated every agonizing minute of it. God, this wasn't ever going to end, was it?

Sybil leaned her head on my shoulder, her hair falling over my chest and onto my chair. In the 199,750 years Sybil had been alive, she had never cut her hair. She always claimed it was symbolic, but she never said of what. After Remus's death, she had considered it, and briefly, I wondered whether she would cut it after Larrissa's death.

"Quilleon. Oh, I came as soon as I heard." Both Sybil and I looked up at the sparkles that were shimmering in the room. Just as suddenly as they appeared, the golden sparkles dissipated, revealing a very familiar figure. Livia, my twin.

"Sybil, dearest, how are you doing?" Sybil got out of her chair to hug Livia, who welcomed her with open arms. Livia and Sybil looked similar, but I had known both women long enough to tell the difference. Where Sybil's hair was white-blonde, Livia's hair was as white as snow. And Livia's eyes were a much paler shade of blue than Sybil's were, creating a very unnerving effect. Livia was as old as me, and essentially the mother of our small little family. She had been ever since the two of us had popped into existence several billion years ago.

"Liv, she isn't going to make it," Sybil choked out, burrowing her face into Livia's chest. I sighed and tilted my head back against the wall behind me. I already knew that my beloved Larissa was dying, but every time I heard it it was like a punch to the gut.

The biggest problem was that she was supposed to be immune to something as trivial as bitter nightshade. From what the doctors and experts I had called in had been able to tell me, the poison that was working its way through Larissa's system was a supernatural form of the deadly plant, one that I had never hurt of. I would have to ask Castor if my brother would ever get here. He was my beta, for crying out loud. He was supposed to be here for things like this.

Livia and Sybil walked back towards me. I was purposefully avoiding their gazes; I couldn't stand to see the pity that would surely be in them. Sybil sat back down in her chair, but there wasn't anywhere for Livia to sit. But my sister simply snapped her fingers, causing a much nicer chair to appear beside mine. She sat down regally, like the queen she was, but I could tell she was exhausted.

"Where is everyone?"My twin asked, glancing around the small waiting room.

"Castor and Romulus are off doing who-knows-what. Diana is-" Sybil cut off, looking at me. She was the innocent child of the family, and despite living with Diana for all of her life, Sybil was still discomforted by our sister's thirst for blood and violence. It was a good thing Livia was older than Diana, or else the southern hemisphere would be an impossibly bloody place.

"Diana is torturing the bastards that did this," I growled out, though I could barely hear my own voice. I was so, so tired. The pain in my chest was steadily growing as Larissa slipped away more and more, and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to stay awake-or alive-much longer.

"So we won't be seeing our little moon goddess, then?" Livia sighed, using Diana's nickname from when we messed around with the Greeks and Romans. Larissa had loved that era. My eyes prickled, and I knew I was close to tears again.

I tried to think back to just a few hours ago when Larissa and Sybil were lounging around the lake and watching Castor and Romulus fight. Where were those brothers of mine? It had all changed so suddenly. One minute, Larissa and the rest of my family were safe, and the next, Larissa was being rushed into surgery. Not that it would do anything. It was a well-known fact in the lycanthrope community that surgery was useless on werewolves. We healed too quickly for the doctors to have time to fix anything. I knew we were waiting for them to tell us that they had "done all they could". Maybe that was true, but I wasn't going to survive this. Of course, not even this, this agony could kill me.

Blasted immortality.

"Where is she?" Finally. My head snapped to the left where Castor had barged into the room, his white-blonde hair much messier than Sybil's. On the floor behind him, a small puddle of water was moving along the floor. When the puddle reached us-Livia, Sybil, and I-it grew up and up, forming a sort of reverse-waterfall. Then, the water formed into a man, and my youngest brother stood before us. His dark blonde hair wasn't wet at all, in fact, he looked much better off than the rest of us. Maybe that was because he was already broken.

"They took her into surgery," Livia explained.

"Why?" Castor asked, apparently confused. In response to his question, a thin tendril of water reached up, over his head, and fell onto him, soaking him instantly.

"Rom-" Castor was cut off by the doors leading to the private waiting room flying open. Well, they actually flew off their hinges, but close enough.

Diana stood in the doorway, her dark brown skin coated in dried blood. Her normally brown-blackish hair looked almost red under all the blood she had on her, but she didn't look the least bit fazed. In fact, my little sister looked entirely calm. I figured that was because she had taken out her feelings on the one prisoner we had been able to capture during the attack.

"Well?" I asked, standing. A flare of hope sprung up in my stomach, but it died instantly as Diana's face turned grim.

"I'm so sorry, Qay, there's no cure." Livia closed her eyes, her calm mask sliding neatly into place. I had no idea how she did that. Sybil, on the other hand, broke down completely, throwing herself into Livia's arms. Castor punched the wall, while Romulus looked completely at ease. He was probably numb like I was soon going to be.

I had never understood the pain Romulus had gone through when he lost his mate, though I had tried. I guess now, I did.

"He had to have been lying. There's got to be-" Castor was interrupted, yet again, by Diana.

"Trust me, the bastard wasn't lying." Her features remained stoic, but her voice cracked. I was reminded, yet again, of how close my siblings all were with Larissa. Castor saw her as an older sister, while Livia saw her as a friend. Sybil saw her as a guardian, while Diana saw her as a challenging sparring partner and friend. Romulus...he was different from the rest of us. But he loved her too, in his own, quiet way.

And then, it happened.

A doctor rushed into the room, but we already knew. The whole city of Imperium knew, hell, the whole northern hemisphere knew.

She wasn't just dying. She was gone.

I felt it, then. The brokenness and anger and pain that Romulus had been going through. But I felt something else too. I felt undone.

Everything was wrong.

I was wrong.

The world was wrong.

The world-my world-was shattered.