CHAPTER 120 Ally~ It’s a miracle I got any sleep at all. My mom had of course been very upset about everything. And things might have blown so out of proportion that we’d raised our voices and argued for over two hours. The summary of it all - I have to fulfill my calling and I will always protect my mate and his family, while my mom wants me to stay away from any fighting and stick to visions to help them out. That’s not happening. When Nick arrived early this morning my mom blocked the door and had a stare down with him. He, of course, was not angry at her for anything so it ended up just being my mom blocking him from entering, glaring at him, while Nick just stood there, hands in his pockets, head slightly down. Like a good docile puppy. After a few minutes I’d had enough and walked over, reaching past her to grab Nick’s hand and she let him pass. He had enough good sense to not ask me what that was all about. Kyle, of course, had slept through the whole encounter. He
CHAPTER 121 Rachel~ My mom had looked at me very strangely when I had finally come home late last night. She said she understood that I was getting older, and that it had been my birthday, but she wasn’t all that happy with not having seen me much at all. So when I told her at breakfast that Ally was picking me up to go to the beach, she put on her twisted mouth, contemplative face. “Okay, Mija, but not as long today, okay? You have school tomorrow. I want you home by 7pm so we can have dinner together,” she conceded. “Thanks mom!” I said excitedly. She kept giving me strange looks last night and all this morning. Like she was trying to figure me out. Did she know how much my life had changed? “What?” I finally asked her. “You just seem… so happy,” she concluded. I choked on the water I had taken a sip of. “Is that bad?” She thought for a second and then said, “No. It’s really nice.” I thought about telling her everything. I wanted us to not have this big gaping secret bet
CHAPTER 122 Ally~ I realized when the guards came over that this guy had to have a rank. But it didn’t hit me until the gun came out that this was Nick’s dad. He wasn’t around much for one reason or another. But I guess he was around today. “Why don’t we all take a breath,” I say, my hands up trying to calm everything. The other guard pulls out a gun and aims it at me. “Stop!”I freeze up.There’s a crash somewhere far off and I can’t move my head to see when a roar breaks out. I flinch on instinct, but try to reign it in to not set off this guy with the gun.I’m about to try something risky when their eyes glaze over. The guns drop down. Someone is linking them. I free my head and turn quickly to see a large fiery beast charging this way. A large black wolf accompanied him. My heart lifts at the sight of it.When they reach us Nick stands beside me, and Jake stays in his fire-wolf form. He’s growling at Nick’s dad who has his head lowered and to the side, exposing his neck. The g
CHAPTER 123: Kyle~ A few days go by with a similar routine. Ally and I get dropped off at the bus stop where we meet Rachel. We go to school together and silently plan the day through texts. We meditate before school, and during break. Lunch we focus on expansion. The days bleed together for the most part. Take our first day and today and there’s not much visible difference, but we are staying positive. Hoping that every millimeter of growth will help. We know every bit could mean the difference between our success… and our deaths. It’s a relief not to have to see these two suck faces with their big bad wolves during the weekdays. Not that Nick and Jake stay away. No, after school they’ve been getting picked up by Nick and Jake, and they take a scenic way home. I can only take the very clear separation between them and me for so long. Between the couples and the lonely guy. Between me and Rachel. Yeah, I can only fifth-wheel so much, so I made it a point that I would take the bus
CHAPTER 124: Evan~ It’s been a long few weeks. Every day I woke up and joined my cohort to train, ate breakfast, and spent hours in the cells with Amber. We talked. Well, at first I just asked her more questions and she answered them. Over the last few days, however, she started to ask me questions. A few about the pack, some about what it’s like being a werewolf, and most just about me. How I grew up balancing it all - she’s fascinated about how I went to school with humans who were clueless about werewolves being among them - and about my parents - my relationship with them. She asks about my likes, what it’s like to go eat out at a restaurant and what my favorite one is. And so many more. It’s like once she started she couldn’t stop. And I am compelled to answer her. “So, what do you mean by that?” she asks me, face turned to the side. I had been describing live concerts and some of the metal shows I’ve been to. “I mean that I don’t really think you’d like that style of mus
CHAPTER 125: Rachel~ The weekdays start off the same. Bus, school, and training. “Ugh!” Ally exclaims in frustration. “You alright there?” I ask her, one eye open since I was in the middle of meditating. It’s been getting easier, practicing the expansion of my well of power. Basically I spend a long time going down, down, down into the bottom and then I spend time trying to dig it deeper. It’s where I am trying to store the energy and magic I’ve been collecting from everyone. “You’re starting to sound like me from like a month ago.” “I’m pretty sure you were much whinier than that,” Kyle says wryly without moving at all. He looks like he could be frozen in his seated position with his eyes closed. Ally sucks in a breath, her fingers touching the bridge of her nose. “Goddess Hecate, give me patience with these two.” “Hey!” I swat at her. Her face breaks into a smile and she huffs out a breath. “Sorry, I just- I don’t understand how I keep hitting these walls. Like I was so
CHAPTER 126: Kyle~ “Are you ready?” Ally asks me. Am I? The last time I did a deep dive like this successfully we were a few steps away from the subject. And we nearly got caught. So, not really no. But I need to be. “Let’s just do it,” I say forcefully. For all I know it won’t even work. “Okay, I’ll start and lead us into some meditative state, then Rach will push some magic into Kyle - slowly - and see if he can take the lead on the rate…” Ally says one more time, recapping what we decided. “Alright let’s do this,” I say steadily. “Third time’s the charm.” The other two attempts seemed to get stuck somewhere. “Breathe in. One, two, three, four, five… And breathe out. One, two, three, four, five… Picture the ocean. Breathe in. One, two, three, four, five…And breathe out. One, two, three, four, five… We’re sinking further down, wrapped in a warm current. It gets darker and cozier as we go deeper down…” Ally leads. I start to zone out. I’m vaguely aware of a few things. My
CHAPTER 127: Rachel~ I could feel how worried Ally was in my bones. Having been friends for so long, and with her talent for wearing her heart on her face, it was clear to see that while she was playing down her worries out loud, she wasn’t believing the words she was saying. “We have the location, Nick knew something was off, so he sent the location. He’s going to be okay. He’s smart. He’s got this,” she chanted in the car. I noticed Kyle looking at her with worry, and Jake must have felt something from me from the look on his face. I reached over and squeezed his hand firmly. To let him know I’m with him, that I feel how he’s feeling. His actions took over and he appeared calm outside, but I knew him. Nick and Evan are his brothers - they always stick together. I can guess what he’s feeling while we rush past cars on the freeway - worry for Nick’s safety, guilt that he isn’t with him, anger that Nick did this without telling anyone, and probably a million other things. We rush
CHAPTER 147 - Rachel~ I dreamed about the moon. Like I have a hundred times now. But this time it was full, and lit up everything around the forest. I recognized the area, it was our packlands. But parts were slightly different. We didn’t have a lake. I ran over in wolf form to see a lovely lady by the lake. I recognized her right away. Selene. “Rachel! Angeline!” She greeted us. “It’s been a while!” We padded over and sat next to her. “We’re all so proud of you and the pack. And I’m especially excited for your little one, she’s going to be a strong, strong wolf,” she said gleefully. I let out a surprised sound. “Yes! Sorry to spoil the surprise, I know it’s very early. But yes, it’s a girl. And you both are going to raise her to be tough and caring like her mom,” she said with pride. I rested my head on her arm. She got quiet for a while and I looked up at her after a few minutes, seeing an odd look on her face. “I’m sorry - I wish I was just meeting you with som
CHAPTER 146: Rachel~ My skin was itching to get back to Jake. Knowing they were likely out of their cells and making adjustments to our plan gave me some hope, but every touch from this disgusting being made me want to scream. Alright, on my mark, I heard Jake say. Wait. What? I looked around and confirmed Jake wasn’t around. And his voice sounded like it was coming from… in my head? Paul drags me along further and starts unlocking a door. We’ve got to be getting closer to wherever they’re keeping Meg and my mom. Could I- could I be getting some connection to him? Like how the others link? Jake?, I ask the ethos. There’s nothing for a minute. Rachel?, Jake asks back. Woah. How are you doing that?, he asks. I don’t know, I just heard you, I explained. Paul hauled the heavy door open and I gasped. My mom and sister were on the ground in a heap like forgotten laundry. I fell forward and reached into the cell they were in, trying to grab my mom’s hand. “Dove, g
CHAPTER 145: Jake~ As much as I think this could work, Aamon is absolutely livid that Rachel is about to be out of sight. Things have been working as she planned so far. Simon screaming down here brought Rosalind down as thought. I have to give it to the guy - he played ‘seizure guy’ very well. Then in the middle of things there was some shouting up top. Likely from the fire Elise set. Which meant that Kyle was pretending to surrender himself and if Rachel was right, Paul wouldn’t be able to fight the urge to have groveling at his feet. Which left Sophie. She was right outside my cell, watching Rosalind move Paul around in this cell, trying spells to stop him from freaking out, not realizing Ally had thrown him something he now had in his cheek like a squirrel that would ward off unwanted magic. “They’re kind of a mess, aren’t they?” I say beside her. “I would have expected more from a Luna in training…” She turned to face me with a look of defiance. “Desperate times…” I t
CHAPTER 144: Rachel~ “Sophie,” I say the name with charged disgust I can’t hide. “You couldn’t just leave and go find something else to do, huh? You had to stick around and try to take what’s mine.” “Yours?!” She screeches. “You mean what you stole from me! I’m supposed to be Luna. Me! I lost my mom and then my dad, and what? You just waltz along and get what’s mine? NEVER.” “So what? Trying to hurt me before by hiring Max wasn’t enough? Now you have to get some more help to do what you can’t handle? Typical Sophie. Can’t do a da*n thing by yourself. You have to wave daddy’s money around to get anything done. Pathetic,” I sneer. She sputters unintelligible words. I’m getting under her skin. “Enough,” Vance’s mom says, her voice cutting through everything. “You can play around when we’re done with our deal.” Sophie bares her teeth at me then turns. At the same time the door down to the dungeon opens again. Who could possibly be joining in on this nonsense? There’s two sets of s
CHAPTER 143: Jake~ It’s the Luna ceremony today. Rachel started getting into the spirit yesterday. She glows around here. And the pack members love her. Even those who were vocally against cross-species interactions. They know what she did out there that day and what she gave up without expecting anything in return. While a few left, including Tiffany’s family - which was expected anyway since Evan’s rejection - things were very different than I had thought they’d ever be. After she came back we all had made plans to leave and start our own little pack, but everyone surprised me. Now here we were. A pack pioneering acceptance of all kinds of love. We even had two newly mated couples join us from up north. A witch and a wolf, and a wolf and a vampire. The last one was nuts to me, but Jeanette had a totally clean background and a highly trusted wolf for a mate. If we ever grow to the point of needing a Delta, I have my eye on her mate, Juniper. A knock comes to the door and
CHAPTER 142: Rachel~ One Month Later It’s moving day. The thought hits me right when I open my eyes. It makes me smile right away in the early morning light. I guess I was too excited to wait for my alarm to go off. I look over and see Meg asleep in her bed, her head to the side, mouth open, and a soft snore coming out when she exhales. It’s all going to be different now. My phone lights up to my side and I don’t even need to read it before I know it’s from Jake. He likely feels that I’m awake. We’ve been getting more in tune lately. I think the bond is on hyperdrive for us. I’m not even a werewolf but I seem to know things too. I know when something’s upsetting him even if I am outside with the pack pups and he’s in his office, and I know when he’s anxiously pacing in his room even if I’m in the kitchen entertaining a visiting pack. We’re still learning about our bond. And he hasn’t even marked me yet, so who knows how much could change. When I came back to life after Th
CHAPTER 141: Rachel~ It felt like nothing. No. Warmth. Dark but warm. Cozy like being wrapped up in my favorite fuzzy blanket at home. Like I’m huddled in warmth on a stormy cold day. “Rachel,” I hear a lovely voice saying my name slowly, like the lyrics of a song I know. I stir. It’s just so cozy here. Can’t I rest just a little longer? “Rachel,” the voice says again. This time there’s a hand on my arm. The feeling has me trying to wake before I can make the decision to do it. “Rachel,” it says once more. It’s dark but warm. But I have to go. I start to stir, to look for the source of the voice. Who is it? Light surrounds me and it feels just as cozy and warm as before but its so bright. My eyes try to open but it’s just too bright. Then a shadow appears, making it darker. I open my eyes and they adjust to see- Oh, it’s not a shadow. It’s a person. I know this person. My mind is groggy like I’ve woken up from a deep stage of sleep. I’m slow. My synapses
CHAPTER 140: Evan~ I kept expecting her to wake up in Jake’s arms. That somehow, his tears would bring her back. But she just lay there, like a ragdoll, in his arms. If it weren’t for how strikingly pale she looked, I would have told anyone she was sleeping. But she didn’t wake up. It’s hours later and Nick was barely able to get Jake inside. We cleared the field as best we could, bringing in the injured and putting the dead together. Amber had removed all traces of The Collective while we had sat there with Jake. I don’t like how shell shocked she was. She didn’t seem to be actually experiencing all of this and I worry for when those feelings will surface. I know she didn’t like those people. But they still raised her. She told me about jokes and kindnesses that she received in little bursts along the years. She’s basically just lost her family. But she doesn’t want to talk about it. She hasn’t even cried about it. And I can’t say I don’t understand that. I can’t even im
CHAPTER 139: Kyle~ I woke up next to the red wolf. Everyone was screaming or howling. It was chaotic and loud, which made everything that much more disorienting. What I saw next killed me. Rachel out on the field alone, with all the shadow Dementor things charging at her. “Rachel!” I’m screaming but no one can hear me. I look to see Jake crawling towards her from too far away. He won’t get there in time. How did it get this bad? How long was I out for? I flail about, my arms and legs pushing to move but I’m not coordinated or strong enough to get anywhere. “Why is no one helping her?!” I scream again, my voice cracking, my throat raw. The red wolf just tugs on my shirt again, trying to bring me inside the packhouse. I have barely any magic left but I send it to the wolf trying to drag me away. “Let go!” I scream. “We have to help her!” I look around frantically for anyone I recognize. Where is Ally? Evan? Nick? There’s so many wolves and people rushing back, I can’t