Thorns & Wildflowers

About this story

Synopsis

He wakes beneath a bleeding moon, surrounded by the dead. Again. Another night. Another alley. Another body count he didn't ask for. Cain Greymane has spent ten years as the Greymane Group's discarded curse-a half-wolf bastard branded with a thorn-shaped scar and left to rot. The family curse says he won't see thirty. The bounty on his head says he won't see tomorrow. Then a girl with no last name and no sense of direction shoves half a moldy loaf into his hands. Her stomach growls louder than the rain. When the hit squad comes, she steps in front of him. Lifts her eyes. And the pavement explodes with iron thorns. Thirty men die in three seconds. "I didn't mean to do that," she says. "Can you run away with me? I'm not good with directions." He swallows the bread. Nods. She doesn't know she's the lost daughter of a god. He doesn't know his dead mother left him an empire. All they know is this: everyone wants them dead. So they do the only thing that makes sense. They get married. In an abandoned church. With withered vines for rings. It's not a love story. Not yet. But when the Divine Realm sends its hunters, and the Chaos God whispers through the cracks in reality, and the curse on his chest starts to burn-she doesn't run. She wraps her arms around him from behind and says, "I'm not afraid of you." And for the first time in ten years, Cain's tail wags. Thorns & Flora - a dark urban fantasy where a broken wolf marries a forgetful demigod, and together they burn down heaven to build a home.