AVA
I did not want to get up the next morning.
Saturday had come around too quickly, which meant tonight, the five of us would be paraded around in front of all of Eclipse Mountain, the leaders of every pack and since it was our home pack, most of Blood Moon.
I was not looking forward to this, and my nervousness was bleeding through the matelink to my Kings.
For once, I agreed to have someone do my hair and makeup for me. Not for appearances, but more because I have a habit of getting a bit… red faced if I’m angry, and there will be a lot of people that will get on my bad side, especially since the fact I stripped Minister Byron of his position and locked him up pending trial.
Of course, there was also the concern that my Kings
AVA Just about within the two hour deadline, I was ready, courtesy of my makeup artist. She’d even managed to tame my hair into tidy curls and used a lot of hair pins to keep the curls bunched on the back of my head (excluding a couple she let frame my face), and keep the crown in place too. The boys hadn’t seen me getting ready, I’d been in my dressing room the entire time. When I walked out finally, they all stopped to stare at me, mouths open. I’d picked a dark green dress that had a lace bodice and glitter detail in emerald green to match the crown. It was a floor length Princess-style gown so you couldn’t see the stunning black heels I’d chosen, but I knew they were there. My mum was the first to react, running over and pulling me into a hug, tears in her eyes. “You look so beautiful, Ava,” she wept. “You look every bit the future Queen tonight.” I smiled against her hair, before kissing her forehead. By that point, everyone else had reacted, and both Amy and Izzie had joi
CALLUMI was beyond grateful that I didn’t have to give a speech.Ava didn’t even expect us to stand behind her, she knew the four of us were really uncomfortable with the whole thing. As soon as Michael finished his speech and Ava stepped forwards to give hers, the faces of the crowd were… varied. A lot of people were looking forward to hearing what she had to say, but there were definitely a few that still weren’t best impressed that she would be taking the throne.And those faces that already weren’t happy looked like they’d been slapped when she announced some of the laws she was planning to revoke to better protect young girls who were in similar situations to the one she was in, but didn’t have the chance to get out of it.The younger audience
AVAThat moment I kicked off my heels when we got back to our suite was one of pure elation. I hadn’t realised just how uptight I was until I made it back to our happy place.I made a beeline straight for my dressing room, needing, more than anything, to get out of the dress and crown. They both seemed to have gotten really heavy over the last hour.Noah followed me in, standing behind me, my back against his chest whilst he teased what felt like hundreds of hair pins out of my hair, until finally, it tumbled down my back in much more defined curls than I would normally go for.I let my head fall back against his ch
OSCARWhen I woke up the next morning, the five of us tangled together in a pile of sated limbs, I felt content. Yes, things were a bit crazy, and yes, in five weeks time, someone would be putting a crown on my head… but I was happy. The five of us were happy.Even my dad and Alpha Jacob pulling knowing faces at us over breakfast because of the noise last night couldn’t put a dampener on my mood. I didn’t think anything could.Right up until something did.Ava’s eyes glazed over as someone linked her, her expression moving through various degrees of shock before settling on anger. When she met our eyes again, Artemis was staring back at us.“We were right,” she hissed, voice low. Fortunately we were in our priv
AVAThe next week dragged by in a mess of patrols, problems, and absolutely no solutions for anything at all. No one found anything useful that would point us in remotely the right direction, or even just a direction that wasn’t wrong. We had no idea where Matthew was hiding. No idea where Elijah was hiding. We hadn't even found any of Elijah's rogues in a while, and we had absolutely no idea if Matthew was working on his own or if he had an army behind him.We had nothing.We were trying to make an effort to carry on like normal, at least as much as possible. We had to try because today was Callum and Oscar’s eighteenth birthday.Normally, today would be the day that their wolves would identify their mate for the first time. Of course, we’d known for much longer. Desp
AVAWe all needed to unwind with the party, but of course, we were still caught up in the middle of an absolute shitfest, so the happiness and chill-vibes were never going to last forever.I sat at the desk in my office, staring at the map of the Kingdom I had pinned to my whiteboard. My Kings, Jacob, Alex and Jeremiah were all with me, and we had extra guards on both my office and the packhouse door. I refused to get caught short again.Jeremiah and Alex between them were marking all the locations where there had been known rogue attacks and where there had been encounters with either Matthew or Elijah over the last few months so we could try to work out where either of them would be hiding. Was it going well? No.
AVAThe next morning, I made a point of distracting myself from as many problems as I could. I went for a run with Alex, swam in the lake with my Kings, and made cookies with Paula.I needed to clear my mind of nonsense to give myself a chance to solve some of the pressing questions that were floating around my mind. What better way to solve a problem than to not think about the problem?It was shortly after the cookies went in the oven that I realised something. Something… big.Why wasn’t I pregnant?I had been having a lot of sex, unprotected sex, with four men for months. I had my usual monthly cycles, and everything seemed normal. But sure
CALLUM“Paula. Paula let Matthew out,” I growled. “Ava trusts her.”“I know,” dad replied, his voice pained as he winced under the weight of my aura. Realising that… I forced Ares to tone it back, but he was not calm, and he really wanted me to know that.“We need to talk to Ava’s parents.” Noah sounded just as pissed as I felt.I nodded. “You’re right. They’re close to Paula too.” I linked Jeremiah and then Ava’s parents, bringing them all to Jacob’s office as quickly as possible.