Ava settled into the piping hot tub of water and let out a prolonged sigh. Finally, she let her body relax for what felt like the first time in days. When she’d first considered taking a bath, she’d momentarily balked at the thought of being submerged in water. Then, she felt every single bone in her body creak, causing her to come to the swift conclusion that this was one fear she couldn’t afford to cultivate. She sank below the fruit scented water, allowing the luxurious bath oils to saturate her hair. It was peaceful down there, and warm. Ava took the opportunity to shut her mind off for the moment and just be.She’d heard somewhere about a thing called exposure therapy – it was pretty much when you face your fears until you replace upsetting memories with more positive ones. The concept felt like an analogy for her life since being released from the dungeon.It seemed like every time she turned around, there was another mountain to climb, another person to forgive. It was me
“I hate coming to these things.” Xavier looked over to where Dylan was sullenly ricocheting a stress ball off of a nearby plated glass window, only to catch it in his lightning quick hands and begin the process over again. “How could you possibly? You almost never show up when you’re supposed to,” Xavier scoffed. Dylan’s lips curled up into a self-serving grin, “I’m no one’s Alpha yet.” “Because you don’t come to the fucking meetings. I’ve been attending these things practically since I was old enough to walk.” This time, Dylan tossed the ball and kept it after he caught it, “And you were crowned one of Red Moon’s youngest Alpha’s and it’s only been three years and you’re so happy.” Xavier frowned, “Fuck you.” Dylan only sent him a sardonic grin in return. He wasn’t kidding, Miller really did hate coming to these conferences. Ever since they’d first set foot in the Alliance’s New York office building, the male had been moody and sarcastic.Normally, he co
“You know, you’ve been doing a whole lot of talking, Rhys.” Dylan sat back in his chair in a faux semblance of indifference, but where Xavier sat beside him, he could see how hard the male clutched the stress ball in his hand. “It’s really a shame that you don’t seem to have anything of important to add.” Rhys’ face twisted with unearned superiority, “That’s where you’re wrong again, princeling. It’s never a waste of breath to remind ourselves of the mistakes of the past. Lest we be doomed to repeat them, an all that.” Xavier clenched his teeth until he could feel them grind against one another, but he managed to keep himself together. He refused to rise to the bait Rhys dangled in front of him. The whelp had barely been out of Pampers during the events three years ago. What smarted was that, in a sense, he was correct. The events surrounding the attack that had ended his sister and his friend’s lives had shaken not just the Red Moon Pack, but the very foundation of th
“Are you excited?!” Bren was practically vibrating with excitement when Ava opened the door. She bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, the large box of stuff she carried in her arms jiggling along with her every movement. Ava wished she had half the enthusiasm as her friend did for her first official date with Noah. His contract had only recently finished being finalized, and she was now his personal escort for the next however long he wanted her. And in a very short order, Ava was going to have more money than she could fathom, much less actually spend. It was all beginning to feel very real to her. She should have been ecstatic, but all she felt at the moment was nauseous. She gave Bren a poor approximation of a smile, “Mostly nervous, really.” Bren sighed and moved into the room, dumping the large box she held onto Ava’s dresser. “I knew you would be,” she reached into the box and picked up a shoebox-sized parcel wrapped in brown craft paper and topped w
Ava accepted the bouquet with trembling fingers. The sizable assortment of bright, fresh flowers was easily the brightest thing in her room, now. She stuck her nose in it and breathed in, an array of scents, ranging from sharp to subtle, filling her nostrils.Ava felt Mia perk up from her internal slumber, as they were both barraged with memories of running through fields at the peak of springtime. The recollection held the bitter bite of melancholy, but they were sweet all the same.“I’ll have to thank him for this. It was a sweet gesture,” she breathed.“You’ll never be able to if you don’t get going,” Bren made a gimme gesture toward the bouquet, placing it in a prime spot on Ava’s dresser before shooing her out the door. “Have fun! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”Ava chuckled as she was led out of the building. She didn’t know what made her more nervous, her newfound commitment to a strange man, or the fact that this would be the first time Ava had left the Green Light Club sin
Ava couldn’t stop giggling as she stared up at the Nordstrom department store Noah had parked them in front of. He reared back in feigned outrage, “I’ll have you know, this is a galleria. And I subscribe to the school of thought, that there’s no better way to get to know someone than to take them shopping.”“Shopping?” She asked cautiously.He shrugged, “I thought it’d be nice to treat you.”Ava was already shaking her head before Noah could get his entire sentence out, “I already told you that you don’t need to do that kind of stuff for me.”“Ava, need has nothing to do with this. I want to treat you to nice things.”“But, why? Our relationship isn’t real.”Noah shook his head slowly, “The romantic one, yes. I already told you that I want us to be friends.”Ava frowned, “Friends don’t treat friends to shopping sprees.”His smirk came back, this time edged with a little disdain, “They do in the circles I tend to run in. And for their significant others, they do a hell of a lot more t
Ava watched the clock on her bathroom vanity tick, tick ever closer to the time that Noah was meant to pick her up. And, still, she stayed rooted in her spot, sunk nose deep in her bathtub as the previously scalding water became increasingly lukewarm. She was undoubtedly stalling, but she didn’t know where the source of her reticence came from. Her first date with Noah had been…amazing from start to finish. Not much had happened after they’d finished their ice cream, but he’d taken her back to the club and, unlike last time, he didn’t ask for a kiss. He’d wanted one, she was pretty sure. Spending as much as she did living in a building that was perpetually filled with horny men, Ava had gotten fairly good at recognizing when someone was interested in her. What she wasn’t used to was no one simply acting on their desires without checking with her first. No, going out with Noah wasn’t the problem. If anything, Ava was a little too eager to see him again. Maybe that was
Noah held her gaze and swallowed hard, visibly affected by Ava’s confession. If he was surprised, then she was reeling. She could hardly believe she’d uttered those words. I trust you. It sounded preposterous, even to her own ears. Ava didn’t know this man. He didn’t know her. And here she was making admissions she didn’t recall ever making to…anyone before, even when she’d felt it. For Ava, admitting to putting her trust into someone felt surreal. Dangerous. She almost wished she’d said that she was in love with him instead. Somehow, the frivolity of a confession of love felt less mortifying. At least she wouldn’t really have meant it. As it was, her ill-advised words had inadvertently created a connection between them. Something like and unwanted expectation. If he told her to piss off, then she couldn’t even blame him. She knew what this was, and he’d always been clear about the parameters of their arrangement. It was her who’d gone and muddied the waters almos
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