Anastasia If you were to have asked me to pinpoint the moment my life fell apart and the world that I knew came crashing down in an explosion of shattered hopes, wishes, and dreams, I would’ve said it started the day my father called me into his office. As the Alpha of our large pack, located alon
Anastasia Three Years Later “Butterfly, you’re up!” Neeve, tonight’s manager, called from within the club. I stood from my dressing table and leaned across the sea of eyeshadow pallets, lip glosses, stage paint, and body sprays, to check my make-up in the mirror. A shimmery azure powder coated m
Anastasia The car’s engine was a low hum, a purr that skated along my skin and left me tingling as I cruised down the highway. Or maybe it was the adrenaline. I hadn’t started my career as a dancer by lifting cars and robbing my customers. It was something I sort of fell into. A hobby, if you wi
Anastasia I froze time for a fraction of a second, long enough for me to skirt around them and get a head start. The warmth of blood trickled from my nostril as time resumed. “What the f—” One of them grunted. I didn’t bother looking back to see who it had been. Something agonizingly cold wrapped
Anastasia Goddess, he was beautiful. “Focus, woman!” Ziva snarled. Right! Not beautiful. He was ugly. Disgustingly hideous with his tousled hair and rippling muscles, tanned to utter perfection. And he was towering over me, pressing me into the dirt with that large body of his nestled between my
On that note, the brute grabbed me by my arm and began to drag me to the door, which is exactly how I ended up back in that dingy interrogation room. I took one look at the metal cuffs bolted to the chair and cringed, “Can we maybe skip the bondage part? It gives me the worst rash.” “That’s becaus
Anastasia If there were three things I was good at it was stealing, stripping, and lying my ass off. Jasmine, my old roommate, liked to say that I was a professional bullshitter. Other than Evangeline, she was the only one who truly knew me. We’d met a year ago on the busy streets of San Francisc
“Enough. That is enough.” Alpha Caius bellowed. He turned to Ghost, every one of his muscles deliciously taut. “She’s clearly lying.” “Yes and no.” I tried to flick my hair over my shoulder, but such a feat wasn’t possible when I was bound to a chair. “See, I told you I was a good liar.” Ghost ex
The healer arrived then, knocking softly on the door. I didn’t pay them any mind as they entered, or as they touched around my forehead with cold fingers. My mind was lost, replaying Caius’s words.Once the healer left, taking with them my throbbing headache, I took a slow, steady breath and looked
AnastasiaCaius’s jaw clenched, his eyes flashing dangerously. A crack of thunder sounded from outside. “I should have torn them apart,” he growled, his voice low and menacing.I shrugged, trying to maintain my nonchalant facade. Caius’s rage was like being swept away in a storm. “You didn’t know. B
I watched in utter bewilderment as his face slowly transformed into a grin.“You steal my shirt, interrupt my hangover, and now you’re making jokes?”At some point we must’ve made it to his office, because he nudged open the door and stepped inside all without jostling my coffee. The retort died in
AnastasiaI had done an excellent job of avoiding Caius all morning. Or so I thought.Once Evangeline went home, I froze time long enough to make a mad dash downstairs. The throbbing in my head was relentless. Every werewolf knew magic and alcohol did not mix, but most of us were too stubborn to lis
“I’m doing this because I’m a good person,” I announced, purely because I was becoming more and more intoxicated, and I needed to remind myself why I shouldn’t go through with Evangeline’s revenge plot. This felt like the simplest reason. “Hype me up before I do something I’ll regret, and we both kn
AnastasiaEvangeline’s eyes shimmered with mischief. “I have a fun fact for you. The Windsor family spent upwards of 1.4 million dollars in PR firms, cybersecurity experts, and legal teams. They staged a scrub that spanned the globe, Ana. That takes money and power. It’s like CIA level shit. I’m tal
“Blackwell adventures.” As we descended into laughter, neither of us commented on the undertone of sadness in our voices, or how it fell upon the room like a dark shroud.I leaned back against the headboard and searched through the snippets of my memory. “There was something else. At one point the h
Anastasia“I’m a coward, aren’t I?” I brought my knees up to my chest with a huff. The bruises peppered along my body had healed long ago, but still I felt the phantom ache, the incessant reminder, of what had happened between Caius and I in that forest.I swore it was the mark playing tricks on me,
“This entire thing is incredibly barbaric,” I whisper-hissed. “They didn’t let me clean myself, as I’m sure you and everyone else know.”Radiating an air of pure smugness, Caius leaned down and murmured in my ear. “Because I ordered them not to.”As if on cue, an upbeat melody drifted through the ai