“W-what do you want me to do?” Madison’s voice came out rough with nerves. She’d been put in uncomfortable positions while working at the club before.She’d thought that nothing would top the night she’d been cornered in that room of Wolves on the eighth floor. It had been her first time up there, and she hadn’t even been scheduled to be there. Tired of waiting for her chance to see what all the fuss was about; she’d decided to take fate into her own hands.Much like the girl who’d called to notify her of this assignment, Jared had tasked her with letting another, more seasoned member of the waitstaff of their upcoming appointment. Seeing an opening, Madison had borrowed another person’s phone and posed as a worker at her son’s daycare. One quick call and the woman had been off to pick up her ‘sick’ son, and Madison had been there to volunteer to take her place.The experience had been everything she’d hoped for during the first hour or two of the party. The suite had been packed with
“Wake her up.” Ava was already beginning to rouse when a torrent of cold water came cascading down onto her face. Gasping, she bolted fully upright, only to choke against the ball gag that had been strapped around her head. Ava’s lungs burned and tears streamed down her face as she shook her head viciously, desperately trying to suck in oxygen while water still streamed down her nose. Blinking the water from her eyes, Ava found the sleezy face of the man she’d kicked hovering just out of reach. “Hello, sweetheart.” Each syllable was grotesquely drawn out. Snarling, Ava lunged forward only to come up short when the metal shackles binding her wrists and ankles pulled taught. Panicked, Ava looked down the length of her body where she lay in on the fainting couch in the suite’s bathroom. Her arms were bound behind her back, and her ankles were lashed together, keeping her supine. Thank the goddess, the creeps hadn’t taken her clothes off while she had been uncons
Xavier sped down the highway on his way back to the Green Light Club. He had only just touched down after his private redeye flight had ferried him upstate in record time. It was nearly four in the morning, but the urgency twisting his gut wouldn’t settle for waiting for a proper morning flight. His entire trip to New York, Xavier had been plagued with a low-level feeling of anxiety that refused to go away. He was in the middle of important talks, the kind that held the authority to keep the American Northeast a peaceful region or bring about war between his kind and the humans. The Alliance, unscrupulous as it was, was also the only entity actively working to keep the systematic subjugation that had already festered across so much of the United States, as well as the world at large, out of the Alliance territories.As the reigning Alpha of the Red Moon Pack, his presence wasn’t only mandatory at these conferences, it was essential. He was expected to meet with the president
Ava gasped awake as she was pulled from the brink of consciousness yet again. Her chest heaved as oxygen flooded her lungs. She didn’t know if she should feel relieved or disgusted by how much more effectively her body reacclimated to the influx of air.Somewhere around the fifth or sixth time the men had choked her to the point of oblivion, only to bring her spiraling back, it had all just gotten…easier. Not mentally, of course. This was a completely different type of torture; the likes of which Ava could hardly fathom. It was…unbelievable torment, her every cell crying out for relief, only to feel like razorblades in her blood whenever that relief came. Over and over, the cycle continued. And yet, her body persevered and adapted to this hellish reality, just like it had countless times before. In the dungeon, she became weak in order to make herself appear like less of a threat. And when she had been thrust into a world dominated by the male gaze, she’d reshaped herself in
“Filthy fucking humans,” Dylan grated through elongated teeth. Xavier hummed in approval from where the Alpha Prince stood before the bleeding and bruised excuses for men. He was in his completed half-formed state; seven feet tall, with a large wolven head, hundreds of pounds of muscle hulking over the pathetic sacks of human waste on plate-sized paws. Ava’s captors cowered beneath him from where they sat broken on the bathroom floor. Covered as they were now in their own piss and tears, it was almost shocking to think that, only minutes before, they’d been waterboarding a girl, suffocating her to within an inch of her life.Where was all of that gall now? The wherewithal to stand over someone and play God, taking the reins of life and death in your hands?It was in Xavier’s hands now. And Dylan’s. And he’d already made up his mind on the fate of the men on the floor. When he shared a look with his friend, he knew he had, as well.Eight men were in this room, and only four
Ava awoke to find herself in a strange room. The shiny black lacquered ceiling panels assured her that she was still in the club, but the absence of a diaphanous bed canopy told her that she was not, in fact, in her own room. Ava blinked into the morning light streaming in through the bedroom window and made to sit up. She sighed and seized up, a hand going to her throat. *Goddess*, that hurt.Actually, *everything* hurt. Every muscle in Ava’s body seemed to be screaming at her to *give it up already and go back to sleep!* She paused, taking stock of her various – *numerous *– aches and pains. Her shoulder blades were sore from where she’d laid pressed against the tub’s porcelain floor for too long. She grimaced – so was her back. Her wrists were on fire, and she’d bet her breakfast that she was sporting some gnarly bruises around her wrists, and – she moved a foot – *yep!*, around her ankles, too.Her jaw felt tight and stiff from how it had sat ajar for so long around the ga
I fucking hate you, Xavier Michaels. Xavier’s gut clenched at the finality of the words. Ava had said them to him before, but this time was different, and he felt it as sharply as if she’d taken a knife to his chest. Before he’d made a conscious decision to do so, Xavier was out of his chair and standing before Ava’s rigid form. When he reached his hand out to her, this time she didn’t flinch. There was too much fire in her, a fire that he recognized because it matched his own. It was the same inferno that had lit his darker moments for more than a decade. It was also the same inferno that made it impossible to discount the fact that she might be a killer. “Don’t say that to me.” He lifted a hand and brushed a lock of Ava’s auburn hair behind her ear, “Say whatever else you want, but don’t you say those words to me. Not you.” “Who else has earned the right to be over your bullshit then me, Xavier?” She snarled, “What do you care how I feel about you? Or is it
“Are you the one who sent her in there?” Bella’s face went ashen at the dangerous undercurrent in Xavier’s tone. The man they’d kept for questioning hadn’t been as helpful as Xavier had hoped. The terrified human hadn’t bothered to get the name of the girl who’d sent Ava – apparently, she was blonde and liked to play hard-to-get. Which described about a solid third of the club’s employees. With yet another avenue closed to him, Xavier was on a warpath. “Wh– “ It wasn’t often that Xavier found the mistress scrambling for words – the impeccably curated air of aloof control he’d spent his life trying to perfect his entire life seemed to come naturally to the businesswoman.“I had nothing to do with this abhorrent incident, Mr. Michaels. Frankly, I can’t believe that anyone would have the nerve to flagrantly disregard the hard rules of this establishment.” “Then where were your safeguards, Sutton? Your job is to keep the people who work for you safe, is it not?”Xavier
The helicopters hovered above the arena as long dark ropes unfurled from the gaping voids of their cockpits, and soldiers in white began to descend into the Trial grounds. The largest chopper in the group tilted downward, and Xavier watched in horror as gun turrets descended from the vehicle’s hull.Just as he shouted a warning, it was drowned out by the spray of rapid machine-gun fire that bathed the stands where his people, his allies, his mate stood watching on in bewildered shock. It was a stroke of luck and good fortune that Emmaline and Marnie Adair had insisted on attending the Trial along with several other representatives from their coven.The witches were quick to respond, throwing up glimmering shields that did an excellent job of deflecting the rain of bullets, sending them careening off to join the hundreds of other projectiles currently reducing the two-hundred-year-old structure to little more than kindling.Xavier roared his fury and shifted, sna
The weeks leading up to the next month’s Blue Moon and the Trial by Combat scheduled for that night went by surprisingly quickly and quietly. The calm before the storm.Ava, for her part, spent most of that time talking, getting to know as much as she could about her newfound allies. There was a host of information that the spellcasters and the shapeshifters had to bring to the table; doors that she had never known were there to open. Her analytical tactician's mind was thoroughly stimulated at the influx of new information.She had to be thankful that Marnie and Emmaline’s coven had deemed their cause worth investing their time and resources into. And the Selkies? Ava was under no naïve misconception that their involvement was due to anything less than desperation. It just so happened that desperation was as good a motivator as any.Slowly, ever so carefully, Ava worked with Emmaline, Marnie, and the Selkie diplomats to covertly spread the word of th
“The nerve of you is astounding, Adair. What, pray tell, did you think you would accomplish by bringing them here?”The hostile vibe Ava had picked up even from a dozen yards away and through several inches of bulletproof glass somehow didn’t manage to improve by coming into close proximity to the…finfolk? The Selkies, Marnie had called them. People who could turn into seals.It seemed ridiculous, given her own circumstances, that…well, anything really, could surprise her at this point. And, to be fair, it wasn’t the existence of seal people that was currently throwing her for a loop; it was being hit, once again, with the staggering realization of just how little she actually knew about the world around her, her own wider community.And it wasn’t just Ava, either. Through their bond, she could feel Xavier’s mind whirring, struggling to quickly process the new influx of information. Even now, after all this time,
“Alright, alright, shock aside, this is good for us, right?”“That we’re so out of touch that we didn’t even know that there’s an ancient order of witches ruling the world?” “I’m having a hard time tracking your logic, sweets.”“First, to be clear, the institution is ancient, not the witches,” “Well, save for a few that I can think of, but none that we know personally.”“All that aside,” Ava reiterated through gritted teeth. “We all want the same thing! We came here looking for allies to start a new society, and here you all already have irrefutable proof that our plan has legs.”“In theory,” Emmaline emphasized. “Once again, I feel the need to impress upon you the fact that we have no real insight on the inner workings of these pan-supernatural communities outside of the fact that they exist. Much less whether something of the like would
Ava and the Alphas gaped as the two embraced. One female, one woman. One Wolf, the other a human witch. And yet, somehow, they claimed to be sisters. It wasn’t just a turn of phrase or empty words, either. Now that the idea had been spoken, Ava saw the glimmers of recognition solidify into irrefutable shared features between the two.The piercing emerald green of their eyes, the deeply rich, almost black of their hair, even the shapes of their noses and their general bearings were the same.“You’re sisters?” Ava asked.“You’re Alpha?” Liam asked even louder.Emmaline cocked her head to the side in the same bold challenge that Marnie was good for adopting pretty much anytime she found herself speaking with any Wolven male. Ava was beginning to realize that the habit was probably born of more than simply dealing with male bravado.“Why wouldn’t I be?” Emmaline asked, her supple voice thick with saccha
“No.”The line went silent as Ava blinked rapidly, her neurons firing at all cylinders struggling to process the fact that her brother had just blatantly shut down such a simple request for information and why on earth that would be.“Excuse me?” She finally asked. “What do you mean no?”“I mean that I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go meddling in Grave Crown affairs,” he said, his voice stern and giving no quarter. That was all well and good that he felt so strongly, but as long as he was also giving her no answers, ‘no’ wasn’t going to cut it for her.“Grave Crown affairs are Alliance affairs, Aiden. You know that,” she replied.Her brother huffed on the other end of the phone – a frustrated sound. “Even if the Alliance still existed, you, I, and everyone else knows that hasn’t been the case in a long time.”“Bullshit,&rdquo
Ava blinked in and out of consciousness as searing pain ripped through her abdomen. Whenever she surfaced, the renewed shock of pain would cause her to take a quick breath inward that would send yet another, even more, intense wave rocketing through her, sending her back into oblivion.It took a couple of tries and several hours for Ava to wake and stay awake; the pain finally dulled to a thrumming ache. When she could finally open her eyes without her eyelids feeling as if they were made of lead, the first thing she saw was Jack’s pensive face hovering over hers.And the second thing she registered, along with an intense sense of déjà vu, was Xavier’s equally pensive face a little ways off, slumped in a nearby chair.“This feels awfully familiar,” she quipped, her dry throat making her joke sound more like a croak.“Really? And to think that I was just beginning to forget what it was like trying to glue you back togeth
First came the rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns. Then came the screams.All around her, bodies flew into motion as she stood with her phone gripped numbly in her fist.“Ava,” she heard Noah’s desperate voice faintly through the other end of the line as if through a fog. “Ava, what’s happening? Talk to me! Has it already started, damn it?!”Without a word in response, Ava ended the call with a flick of her thumb, far too thrown by just how quickly the tide had shifted today. Neia hadn’t just crossed a line – she’d obliterated it and re-drawn a new one in her image.Ava sprung into action, doing the first thing that came to mind as she ran to the nearest emergency call button and smashed it. The system was relatively shiny and new, having only been installed after her run-in with those sadistic bastards in room 701.Now, flashing warning lights lit up every hallway in the building. The blaring alarm made it im
Eight months ago, if someone had told Ava that just the sight of the Green Light Club’s garish neon sign would be enough to make her smile, she would have laughed in their face. Alright, well, she probably wouldn’t have, but she certainly wouldn’t have believed them either.And yet, here she was, grinning from ear to ear, at the prospect of feeling something familiar, even if the majority of her memories of the place were of the variety that was best left forgotten. She was fairly sure that there was probably some sort of clinical diagnosis with a long name used to describe the contextually perverse sense of relief she felt at her first glance of shiny black lacquer and crushed green velvet. Goddess, this place was awful, and she was so glad to be back.Then again, the journey getting back to the club had been fraught enough to make her eager to climb under the first black silk duvet she saw, regardless of the fact that it could never, under any cir