EvaI hadn’t seen Nox in two days. To me, it was an eternity because I was anxious to ask him about communicating with Cyrus. I even sent messages for him through the people who brought me food or water, but it seemed my message was never delivered. And if it was, he was ignoring me entirely. Being stuck in this tiny room wasn’t ideal. I wanted to be back at Silver Crescent. I was desperate to get out of here. I’d complained so much and now all I wanted was to return to the stability. Granted, I’d experienced a few terrifying moments there, particularly when the wall was bombed and I was nearly drowned in that stream. There was also the time when I’d been taken away from the club by that man and commanded to never return by Head Priestess Bathsheba. Also most of his family members hated me and wanted me gone, which made me feel uncomfortable all the time. Even so, I preferred being there to here. I was surrounded by strangers here. They wanted me dead. Here, everything was uncert
CyrusThe Redwood pack was oddly just what I expected it to be. The entire house was painted black, and it was as huge as a hospital. Even the roof had been painted black, adding to the eeriness of the place. I shuddered as I shook the hand of the man who introduced himself as Beta of the pack. “Victor Lure, at your service. Welcome to Redwood.”I said nothing as I followed him into the house. A few people were lingering around, which made me realize that Kolton probably followed the old tradition of the entire pack living under only one roof. I didn’t receive too many looks as I walked through the house, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was a good or bad thing. The office was on the other side of the house, so it was quite a walk. Although I knew that Kolton wouldn’t be stupid to leave Eva wandering around while I was here, I still looked for her, hope blooming in my chest every time I saw a flash of dark hair. I made it to the office without seeing her, though, and upon en
EvaSometime during the day—I believed that it had been three days since I’d last eaten anything—I heard a banging sound that awakened me from my sleep. I didn’t react quickly, as all my movements were slow due to the lack of energy. I cracked an eye open slightly and saw Nox standing at the door. Seeing him made me groan and I turned away from him and closed my eye again. I thought he’d go away, but instead he said, “So, this is how you intend to torture me? You’re going to starve yourself to death right under my roof just to prove to me that I can’t make you do anything?”I didn’t answer him. Why did he think that this had anything to do with him? If I had the energy and the patience, I would have asked him this, but I was exhausted to the bone and all I wanted to do was close my eyes and sleep. In fact, I felt like I could sleep forever and forever. The mattress was now comfortable, and warm. “Eva!” he snapped. Again, I ignored him. I was just drifting off to sleep when I felt
NoxPure frustration coursed through me as I watched Kyra put stitches on Eva's hairline. After she was done, she eyed me apologetically. "I tried to help her. I didn't think she would've passed out as soon as her foot touched the floor."Kyra was competent and that was why I trusted her with this job, but right now, I wanted to bite her head off. She removed her disposable gloves and threw them in the trash can. "She'll feel better when she wakes up.""Sure," I said coldly. "You're the one who put her in this state," she pointed out. "She wasn't eating because of her surroundings and how depressed she felt with everything that was happening. We can both agree that none of this has been easy."I rubbed my face. I had no choice but to agree to this. But sending her back to that fucking idiot was out of the question, especially after what I knew. Cyrus should have never contacted Kolton. Why would he even do such a thing when he knew what that man meant to us?Could he still be so bli
EvaI stared at him for a long time, waiting for him to respond. I wasn’t sure why, but these last few days, I was awake but mentally, it was like I was asleep. Perhaps it was shock; things happened so quickly since the Lunar Festival and I hardly had time to process everything. To make matters worse, I’d been sleeping for most of the time and refusing to entertain my thoughts because of how helpless and desperate they made me feel. Being in the car with him changed that for me, though. I was now gathering all the information I had of him in my mind and how he could have been connected to everything. He had been looking for me. The priestesses told me that someone was asking about me which was why I couldn’t return and that I would need Cyrus to keep me safe. Then suddenly, the Convent burned down and his people showed up to take me. Nox was capable of terrible things. He would have killed me mercilessly if it weren’t for the fact that we were fated mates. So, why wouldn’t he hav
Eva“It was never my intention to leave my family behind,” Nox said. “But they didn’t believe me. They chose to trust Brock over me.”“So, all Brock wanted was power?” I asked though I already knew the question to that. “But then he decided against it?”“I didn’t care for his regret,” he told me. “It didn’t mean anything to me, not when my parents were already dead. And when the time came for him to admit what he’d done, he lied. He told them I invented this matter to kick him out of the pack, afraid of competition. It made no sense, yet they still believed him over me.”I shook my head. I’d seen how close Cyrus was to Brock. Honestly, he didn’t seem like a bad person for me. But Nox mentioned now that Brock regretted what he’d done ultimately. Only, it didn’t matter to him that he did. “This was the only reason behind your feud with Cyrus?”“Yes, it was. I wanted to move against Kolton. He didn’t because he felt there was no reason to. So, I came here, found people who were willing
NoxWe were all inside Hector’s apartment, and he was cleaning his father up. I glanced at Eva to make sure she was alright. She met my gaze but didn’t react. I hated how I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Her emotions were always out of reach for me. Without meaning to, I wondered if she was the same with Cyrus. Then, I felt myself growing hot and turned away. I didn’t like to think about her and Cyrus. I was too territorial, and no, it didn’t matter that there wasn’t and maybe never would be anything between us. The fact that she was my Fated Mate meant that I wanted to claim her in every possible way. And thinking about her with Cyrus—someone I had an ongoing feud with—made me sick to my stomach. “May I get you anything?” Hector asked, looking at Eva. “Water, perhaps?”“She’s fine,” I stated. Hector put his hands up. “Of course.”“I have to get going,” I said. “I don’t think you’ll expect me to leave your father here with her while we conclude our business in the back.”“O
Eva For the past few hours, all I could think about was Nox and the tale he shared with me. I was overcome with the need to talk to Cyrus about it and ask him why he doubted Nox so much. Why would Nox separate himself from his family and come all the way here for revenge if he wasn’t sure of my father’s involvement in the death of his parents? It was clear that it hurt him, especially when he mentioned it.Why didn’t Cyrus ever look into it? Or did he?I had to say that I believed Nox. I didn’t think he was lying. I understood why he wanted to kill me. He was angry enough to want to cause Kolton pain regardless of who would pay the price. I now imagined that almost everyone here probably endured the same kind of pain as he. Kolton truly was a terrible person, and I hated it when everyone referred to him as my father. This all made me think about my mother—what could she have gone through to run away and abandon me in front of that Convent? It must have been horrible to force her to
EvaThe sound of Jace calling me interrupted my train of thoughts. I looked over my shoulder and saw him running toward me, holding something. It appeared to me like his toy superhero was broken again, and he sounded like he was going to cry. “Mommy, look!”I took the toy from him and offered him a gentle smile. “When Daddy comes home, he’s going to fix it, okay? I don’t know how to.”My son looked at his toes and made a disheartened noise in the back of his throat. I knelt in front of him, grabbed him by the arms, and said, “Hell be back soon. He just went to get something.”He huffed an, “Okay.”“Why don’t you sit down and I’ll bring you something to drink,” I said. “What do you want? Some juice? Soda?”“Juice!”Just like that, he was cheerful again, the broken toy completely forgotten. I lured him some juice and snacks, and then he sat down and amused himself with eating. I watched him from the kitchen, happy beyond reasoning. The last few years weren’t easy for any of us—but the
CyrusI stopped in front of the door to the shitty apartment. I knew somebody had to be inside because the baby was crying. I could hear it. They didn’t leave him alone, though. They never would have. By now, Kolton was dead. When Brock stopped me from making the biggest mistake of my life, I’d backed away but not without giving it much thought. He guaranteed me that he would kill Kolton as he should have years ago—the way he said it was a confirmation of everything. Our whole story. The reason why Nox left. Why things turned out the way they did. Nox had been right. It was all Brock’s fault. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that for a while. Now, I was sure that I didn’t hold it against him. It happened a long time ago, and maybe I was too grateful for everything he did for me to judge him for something he clearly regretted doing. Maybe I always knew that Nox was right. Deep down, I’d suspected it. But Brock had always been a solid figure in my life, even more than my parents we
NoxAll around us, there was chaos. I could positively say that neither of us expected an ambush from Kolton. He’d taken everything from me, so what else did he want? He wasn’t here; only his men were. The one thing that saved us was that we still had a few weapons left or we would’ve been screwed. Also, Vivian’s people joined us right on time. I could tell by the way they were fighting that they had been thirsty for Redwood blood for a long time. Men. Women. Kolton didn’t discriminate. He had every able-bodied person in his pack fighting us. The only person that wasn’t here was him. Coward. What else did I expect? He loved to watch shit burn from afar. He always had other people doing his dirty work. “Where are you Kolton!?” one of the guys who had been with Vivian asked out loud as he slammed someone’s knees in with a baseball bat. “Where are you hiding!? Come and face us, you fucking rat!”Could I say we were winning the fight? I wasn’t sure. Many of the people here were strang
Eva I cracked an eye open and saw that the sun had risen. I didn’t move for a very long time. I was so tired. Tired of feeling pain. Tired of having to wake up with horrible memories of the night before. It was then that I prayed to the goddess for strength. I couldn’t do this anymore. There was only so much one could take and I’d reached my limit. For a moment, I lied on the hard rocks of the mountain and wished for death. I’d never done it before because all my life, I was raised to believe life was a gift, but my body was tired of fighting. I wasn’t sure how much time passed. I was fully conscious of everything going on around and within me. The sun was high in the sky but it was a bitterly cold day. I knew that my only solution would be to shift and I had to do it quickly or I’d die of hypothermia. However, I couldn’t find the strength to even roll to my side. Then, something incredible happened. I thought about the baby that had been inside of me—the baby I’d been carrying f
Nox Time was going very slowly in this house of horrors. Someone must have injected me with poison and left me sitting on this bench to die because how else could this burning be explained? No, I remembered now why I felt this way. It was when Vic told me that Eva had been taken that I became paralyzed with shock and fear. Despite all our attempts to make sure she wasn’t recognized and found by Kolton, we lost. The baby hadn’t been taken, and Vic was organizing to have him taken home. He was a healthy boy, so why not? The doctor didn’t have any protests. What it sounded to me was that Kolton wasn’t interested in the baby. If he were, he would’ve been gone too. As for the doctor, I could’ve crushed his skull in with my cane and wasted time interrogating him, but there was just no guarantee that he was the one who even placed the call. Maybe it wasn’t him. In fact, there was a very high likelihood that it wasn’t him but someone else on his team. Maybe one of the nurses. He knew wha
CyrusI couldn’t believe my fucking eyes. Did…did this man just push Eva off a cliff?I looked at him slowly, shock rooting me to the spot. I felt like I was losing my fucking mind here. There was no way that I just witnessed this. I looked back at Leonora and saw that she was walking toward us. I watched her stride past me and peer over the edge of the cliff. She looked around and then nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Good. Now, we can get going.”Something about the way she said those words—maybe it was how casually she said them—made me break away from my trance and race toward her. The man noticed this and immediately rushed to intercede me. Leonora peered back at me with unbothered eyes. Once the man touched me, I made a fist and punched him directly on the face. He staggered backward, getting closer to the edge. It was then that the malignant thought to push him crossed my mind, and I felt every muscle in my body force me to do it. I lunged at him and shoved him as hard as I cou
EvaOpening my eyes was a painfully slow process. I had such a hard time figuring out where I was. Every time my eyelids parted just a little I was being blinded by bright lights. I tried to put a hand over my face but found that I couldn’t move. Why was this so familiar to me?I also had this feeling like I was moving even though my feet weren’t touching the ground. It was so strange that I felt a sense of urgency that helped me insist on opening my eyes despite the brightness. I looked to my left and saw someone grabbing the side of the bed I was on while looking straight ahead. This person was wearing a dark denim jacket and a beanie. I didn’t recognize this person. Then, I looked to my right and saw shoulder-length hair and a familiar build. Cyrus?The fear I felt was enough to make me open my eyes wide and realize that I had to get away from him. I tried to turn on my side and felt a lot pins and needles all over my body. I felt no pain, so that was the good thing. However,
Nox Fear was a living, breathing thing inside of me. I couldn’t focus on anything else other than getting Eva to the hospital safely. At first, it hadn’t been an option. We all knew how Kolton was well connected to the hospitals in this city. It was the one place where he had the chance to catch his enemies in a vulnerable state. However, Eva hadn’t regained her consciousness and she was still bleeding. It was enough blood to stain her clothes but at least it wasn’t like she was hemorrhaging. Even so, we didn’t know what was wrong with her and Kyra didn’t know how to help us. I wasn’t going to risk her life. When it came to keeping her safe and healthy, I was ready to face anything. Besides, there was a chance that Kolton wouldn’t know about this. “Hurry up, Vic!” I said, agitated. He was in the wheel and I was behind with Eva. Ursula was in the front seat. Only one car filled with our people was following us. It was crazy how our numbers had been reduced so drastically. Sweat w
EvaA few hours earlier...Nox had been getting better and better with time. In the first week, he could only stand, now, three weeks later, he'd been taking several steps without falling. He claimed that he was now feeling sensations in his legs, which meant that he was finally healing. This was a miracle. I was so busy helping him that I barely noticed the time flying. Every day was an accomplishment and I was so proud of him. My heart swelled with pride. Nox wasn't a quitter; every time he fell, he'd get back up. It was so inspiring, watching him achieve this. It brought tears to my eyes every time I thought about it. Everyone was happy for him and supported him in any way they could. It was great to see everyone working as a team. It was clear that they respected him very much. All his fears concerning people looking down on him because of his condition disappeared and I hoped he understood that he was wrong. We never talked about it, though. It was better to leave those fears