IVANI cradled Mia in my hands, my heart racing as I thought of losing her. Please, moon goddess, not again. My heart can't take any more loss, I prayed inwardly. “We need a plan,” Leo said. I shook my head, “Enough with the plans. I can't stand her and listen to Mia’s screams not knowing what's going on with her inside Rylee’s mind.”Bastien let out a shriek when I attempted to pull Mia from the circle. “No, son, doing that will harm her!” he exclaimed. I frowned, “Isn't that supposed to make the spell destroy and bring Mia out of Rylee’s mind?”Leo shook his head, “Mind spells don't work like that. Taking her out of that circle could spell certain doom for her.”“Alright, what's gonna happen?” I asked.Mia screamed again and writhed in my arms and I held her closely. “What's happening to her?” Javier asked. “Rylee may be tormenting Mia in her mind,” Bastien answered. “How do we get Rylee to sleep so she can let her guard down?” I asked, stressed. I massaged my temples as I s
LEOWe had just put Ivan and Javier to sleep in Mia’s mind and it was just Bastien and I left behind. I shot him a look and his worried gaze was fixed on Javier and Ivan as they lay helplessly in the circle. I looked at Javier too. I didn't like the fact that he was in a situation like this but it was what it was, nothing we could do about it but move forward.“Any ideas yet on how to put Rylee to sleep?” I asked Bastien.“If we could get our hands on a tranquilizer gun, and load it with wolfsbane, we would be able to take a shot at Rylee from a distance, I bet she won’t see that one coming.”“Okay, Bastien, tell me, where do we get a tranquilizer gun? Where do we get Wolfsbane? Your plan might sound like a good idea but it relies on us getting things that are not readily available and while we go searching for these things, Javier remains in danger.” Bastien shot me a look, “Don’t pretend that you care about Javier and also, I don’t see you coming up with any solid ideas of your ow
LEO“Do you know where Sarcana is?” I asked, still trying to hide my surprise and the fact that the mesmerizing plan failed badly.“Yes, and as soon as you lock up this sad sack of a man, we will mobilize and go after her,” Rylee said.“Been a long time coming, glad we will finally be able to finish her off,” I said trying to sound like I was happy about the plan.“Take him to the dungeons and lock him up, we will deal with him when we return,” she said and stood off.I grabbed Bastien by the scruff of his neck and raised him upright.“Move!” I shouted, shoving him for appearance's sake.“So much for a foolproof plan,” Bastien muttered to me as I led him down the stone corridor to the dungeon.“It was, we just weren’t expecting Rylee to be immune to your mesmerizing powers, are you sure you used it correctly?” I asked.Bastien shot me a look, “Do you want me to test that theory out on you?”“No thanks, what’s our next plan going to be? We have to come up with one quickly if we want to
MIAI was so exhausted from all that had happened when the car pulled into the garage and Bastien killed the engine.We all alighted and headed back into the penthouse. In the living room, I flopped down on a sofa, breathing heavily."You okay, Mia?" Ivan asked, a worried look on his face.I smiled weakly, "I'm good, Ivan. Just need to catch my breath for a minute."He nodded, seemingly satisfied by my answer, he went to the mini bar and poured himself a drink and every one of us sat down, the atmosphere in the room was grim.I took a deep breath, "We should start making preparations to go to the Elder forest," I said.I felt like I had rested enough, at least for now. There was no time to waste sitting around, my mom needed saving.Everyone else kept mute, did they not just hear what I said, "Guys... What's the problem, we should start getting ready to storm the elder's forest and free my mom.""Mia..." Ivan called me then shook his head sideways, "It's not as easy as that.""What do
JAVIERIt was always the same pattern, exactly what Ivan had pointed out, we rescue Mia from some mishap risking life and limb and she jumps straight into another one. I loved her to death but she was so annoying and childish.I turned around in time to see her stagger and plunge forward but I was not able to catch her before she fell face down, her body hitting the tiled floor with a dull thud.I was by her side first, "Mia?" I called out, no response.Ivan and Bastien were there next, "what the hell just happened?" Ivan asked no one in particular, the irritated look on his face had vanished and it was replaced with worry and borderline panic."Did she fall into another of her dreams or visions?" I asked Bastien.Before he could answer, I moved to lift her and turn her over when my hand touched something wet, I gasped as I flipped her over.Ivan gasped too and Bastien's eyebrow shot upwards in surprise, Mia's face was a mess, blood was streaming down her nose, out her ears, and out h
MIAI was back to the dream world, I could tell by now, that the mist in the air and the eerie feeling I got were dead giveaways.‘What is it this time around, Lynn?’ I asked.‘You are going to reach out to me and pretend like everything between us is okay? That’s how you want to play this?’ Lynn questioned me.‘What do you mean? Is this about what happened earlier?’‘Of course, it is about what happened earlier. How long are you going to keep ignoring the sound advice of me and your mates and keep making foolish decisions?’Lynn fired back at me.‘Whoa, calm down, Lynn, I won’t go as far as saying it was a foolish decision… more like a spur-of-the-moment decision and I already apologized to Javier and Ivan, it won’t happen again.’‘First of all, it was a foolish decision. Don’t decorate it with any fancy words and secondly, you didn’t apologize to your mates, just as you haven’t apologized to me. You just muttered some weak excuse and broke down crying and then had them apologize to y
JAVIER“There she goes again,” Ivan said.“She looks so peaceful with her eyes closed,” I replied.“Until she wakes up screaming and the whole cycle of what just played out today repeats itself,” Ivan added.I sighed, he wasn’t wrong, it was clockwork at this point.I took her out of the tub, dried her off, and then wrapped her in a pink robe and carried her downstairs.“Why not go to her room?” Ivan asked.“I want us to be the first thing she sees when she wakes up so she won’t have to be scared all alone,” I replied.“Hmmm,” he nodded and followed me down, “what’s the plan?”I placed her gingerly on the sofa then joined him at the min-bar, “I know Bastien is cooking up something on his end but we also have to think of a plan ourselves, we can’t leave everything up to him.”“When will you start calling him dad again? We have established at this point that our anger towards him was misplaced and it was Harold’s fault,” Ivan questioned.I looked at him, “Honestly Ivan, I don’t know, ev
MIAI looked into this strange man's eyes and it felt like there was nothing there. They usually said that the eyes were the window to the soul, well, if that's the case, whoever this was, he was soulless. I backed away from him and scurried off the sofa, my hands were up in a defensive position and my heart was beating heavily."Who are you and what have you done to Javier and Ivan?" I asked him, my eyes darting from his face to the unconscious bodies of my mates. How did this guy get in here and manage to overpower both Javier and Ivan, that was just not possible, was it?He slid back the hood of his cloak in a dramatic fashion to reveal his face fully, "Hello, Mia, nice to meet you again, I'm Killian."Killian? He said that like it was supposed to mean something to me."I don't know who the hell you are. What are you doing here and what did you do to Javier and Ivan?"He looked at Javier and Ivan who were sprawled on the ground, out cold. He seemed to be admiring his handiwork, t
MIAThe next few days were all dark and gloomy, we had won the war but the cost was heavy and it was felt by everyone of us, most of all was Javier.For the first few days, we just holed up in the isolated house that Leo had found and there we passed days as we all tried to come to terms with what had just happened. But today was the day, the day we said goodbye for good.Ivan and Leo had decided that we would all mourn our dead on the same day. Leo handled all the preparation, that was the least that he could do, he said.The first few days were the worst, Javier blamed himself for everything even though we told him that it was Rylee’s fault that he had that evil put in him in the first place and even though he knew this himself, he still blamed himself.How could he not? I sympathized with him and as he hurt, we hurt too. He killed Olivia and then also went ahead to kill Bastien when trying to kill my mom who was protecting him from killing his own brother.It was a very horrible ex
MIAWhat was going on? I was supposed to be dead was I not? Instead, everywhere seemed bright and happy.Not the dark and cold embrace of death that took hold of me earlier, what was going on? I could feel the sunlight on my face and I could hear birds chirping happily in the distance.My hands went to my chest, to where the blade was plunged into me, I felt around the skin frantic, there was no scar, no depression, no sign that I had sustained any injury of any kind at all.I opened my eyes and looked around, I had to blink to adjust my eyes to the brightness that was all around me.I was lying in a field and I was wearing a short rosy gown as opposed to the dark blouse and the tight jeans I had on when I was stabbed.I sat up, the grasses were about two feet high and they were swaying in the soft breeze that was blowing, it was all I could see for miles, a field covered in green grasses and hills all around.I got up and walked through the grasses bare-foot, there was just something
IVANWith Mia captured, it was different, we were able to track her thanks to her mother, things were happening so fast that it felt like I would not even be able to keep up.Mia had been sent away by her mother and then Javier had attacked us and defeated all of us easily, he was about to end my life, my brother, and that was when Olivia stepped in.Why did she step in? Maybe she felt responsible somehow and was trying to make amends but that didn't work, she just ended up getting killed by the man she called her bestie, it was tragic.Now we were all in Bastien's car heading towards the site of the ritual. Sarcana had been able to track Mia to where she was being held.All that was on my mind at this point was to kick down the front door and rush in to rescue her, but I knew deep down we didn't have the strength to stop our adversaries, we were most likely going for a suicide mission."How are we going to take down all those guys and free Mia?" Leo asked.That was when Sarca
JAVIEREverything was dark all around me, I was wrapped up in a cocoon of darkness and I did not know what was happening in the world around me.Then without any warning, a powerful shockwave hit me and put a crack in my cocoon, a ray of light filtered in and I reached for it immediately and tore at the cocoon until there was a hole big enough for me to climb through.It then felt like I was slowly rising to the surface after being submerged in a deep dark liquid for too long, it took me a while to fully return to my senses and when I did, I was overwhelmed and confused.The first thing I noticed was all the chanting and screaming, there were a lot of people around, wolves, I could tell and then something else, I could smell death in the air, vampires too.I had never been in the company of so many of them before then I locked eyes with Mia and I remembered what I had done to her.Not just to her, to Olivia, to my brother, to her mother, to Bastien, and Leo, oh my goodness, I was such
MIASo the ritual was going to happen in an hour, which meant that was exactly how long I had left to live. I turned my gaze to Javier with pleading and tears in my eyes.He just stood there like a robot or a statue, looking past me and not seeing anything at all.Was I really to take the words of the high priest Antonio? Was Javier lost to me? A part of me still felt that he was my last hope, that somehow he was the solution to solving the problem that was right in front of me.The wolf bane in my system made me suddenly groggy, I was afraid that if I fell asleep now, it would be my last slumber. I had to find a way to fight this feeling, I needed to be awake for my remaining time on the planet.The more that I tried to fight the sleep, the more it attacked me until I had no choice but to close my eyelids and succumb to it.As soon as my eyes closed, I realized that I was indeed in a vision. This one was different in the sense that it forced itself upon me, usually, when I fell aslee
MIA"How can you say such a thing about my mate, Javier? He is not cursed!" I countered the high priest Antonio."I did not mean to offend you, chosen one, I was just saying things as I saw it. Javier Romanov is cursed by the prophesy, he is the harbinger of doom and there is nothing you or anyone else can do to change that.""No, you are wrong, there is always a way and I will find it," I said stubbornly.The high priest shook his head at me, "There are far more precious things for the chosen one to be doing than fixating over a lost cause.""He is not a lost cause, stop calling him that."He got up from his meditative stance, "We have waited for the chosen one for a while now and here you are finally. You have a lot to learn, you need to learn how to use your powers to stop the forces of darkness that are converging. Only you can do it.""I don't care about any of that," I snapped, "I only care about saving Javier."Antonio sighed, "I have told you, it is a lost cause.""Then I have
IVANMy heart felt bad for Mia, having to swap her out in the middle of a serious fight like this but I was totally on board with my dad's reasoning.We could all think better and work better without Mia here, if she was not around for us to worry about, we could focus on the task of getting my brother back."Where did you send her?" I asked her mom."I..." Bastien cut her off."Don't tell him," he commanded."What? What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I said, anger rising in my chest."It's not what you think son, better if only she knew exactly where Mia is, for security reasons.""You think that I would rat out my mate's location if I get tortured or something like that?""You might not have a choice, Rylee is a powerful psychic. The only one among us here that can counter her mental prowess is Sarcana. So it is best if only she knew where Mia was and besides," he looked at Leo, "You might not rat her out but someone else here might.""Great, keep treating me like a criminal wh
MIAMy mother's words filled me with a sense of doom and gloom and made me sick to the stomach. How could she say something like that? Did she not know what Javier meant to me? How could she say that there was nothing we could do about it?We just got him back after he had been on the brink of death for so long, and now we were losing him again to some strange curse that I had never heard of.Was it not possible for us to catch a break? "Mom, c'mon, you can't say that there must be something we can do to help him."She shook her head sadly at me, "I am sorry dear but this situation is out of our hands, all we can do now is take precautions."Leo was not having any of that, "Maybe you might have hit your head a little too hard because I think you said that Javier cannot be helped. Or am I the one who did not hear you right?""I'm sorry, Leo, this is dark magic, there is no way out of it," Sarcana said to him. She was more apologetic than usual."Like hell, there is nothing we can do? W
JAVIERIt was a shock to me that I was standing right there, so close to her. I wanted to reach out and rip out her throat but my body would not let me do that.I cussed inwardly, this was bad, by the looks of things she was the one responsible for what was happening to me, if I could just take her out, the spell or whatever the hell this was would be broken.She was still smiling and had not yet answered the question I asked her earlier, I repeated it with much difficulty, the dark liquid that I was drowning in made talking very difficult.“What the fuck do you want from me?” I said baring my teeth.“There is no point in a puppet asking its master what the goals of the master are. Its job is just to obey wordlessly and move as the master pulls its string.” She said and laughed hoarsely.I took another step forward, “I am not your damn puppet you sick witch, tell me how to break this spell.”She stopped smiling and locked eyes with me, “Why the hell would I do something like that? I c