"You!" Diana shout with an accusatory tone as she marches towards the trees."Diana? What is going on? Who's there?" I try to ask, but she is seeing red right now."Come out, you asshole! Don't act like you have any shame to show your face!""Spicy as usual, Diana." The laughing from behind a tree comes right before a naked man steps out from the shadows. I take a step back, while looking away, surprised.He takes a step forward, towards Diana, but she steps away from him."Don't even!" She warns him and he puts his arms up."I'll be good, I'll be good. I promise! I happened to be around and hear your voice. I just wanted to see you for a bit." He explains, but that seems to only piss her off more."Oh, give me a break, Romeo. I don’t trust a thing that comes out of your mouth."Romeo? Like in that Romeo? Oh, Goddess... I really don't want to be here right now.I start to slowly walk away, while trying to maintain my eyes on the ground. I get werewolves are comfortable with nudity, bu
There was a time, at the beginning of my relationship with Axel where we'd stay in bed, cuddling naked after sex and just talk. He would ask me how I see myself or how I see us one year from them, two years, five, twenty and so on. Sometimes I would joke, telling him crazy stories about how I'll become an astronaut or go explore Antarctica. It was fun and lighthearted. It made me look forward to those endless amazing opportunities the future would get us. One of those answers, exactly a year ago from today, was that no matter what my future will look like as long as you are in it.What a fool I was.Or maybe not.Because the present really has Axel in it. But instead of a loving mate, I have this version of him that I can not recognize. With crazy eyes and a terrifying smile."Sorry, Mr. Alpha. I came to like her, so I'm gonna keep her." Diana answers. I see her muscles contracting, ready to shift. But Axel acts like he can't see or hear her. His eyes are fixed on me."I know you prob
"The Beta has been compromised. The Luna is Beta's daughter so we can't trust that she won't act with her father. Our only option would be to convince the Alpha." Kat puts in words what we've circling around for hours. The Beta's family holds most of the important positions in the pack and now, with the Alpha in that state, the pack trusts them blindly. We are stuck."Even if we do, he lost his authority, didn't he?" Diana asks everyone, but looks directly at me. I can't help but question if I did truly ruin Axel exactly like everyone feared I’d do."Two months won't erase the years he spent as the pack's golden boy. The pack adored him. If he pulls himself together, Beta won't stand a chance in their eyes." I tell the rest, but more than that I tell myself. I need to believe the mate bond didn't destroy him."With the situation that we have, he won't listen to us. He's gone mad." Damon leans against the wall with his arms crossed."There might be someone he would listen to..." Robert
When we regroup, half an hour later, I relate what my mom told me to the rest. And they seem equally confused."So he went mad." Diana lets out a discouraged laugh. "That pack is doomed. Just like the rest of them. Just like the entire war. We should just leave the country and chill on a beach in Thailand!""Goddess, Diana! You do this every time!" Robert rolls his eyes."And I am right every time. We didn't stop the war, we just bought some time.""We didn't. Before we got involved, there was a pack falling every year. Now, It's been only four since they couldn't manage to pass the Moonwalk pack." Damon ends their bickering. "Knowing my father, the problem now is that he became impatient. That also means he is prone to making mistakes.""I won't wait for him to make one. They may have wronged me, but that pack is my father's pack. He died to protect it and I will not let it fall." I intervene, all eyes turning on me. "Robert is right. Crazy or not Axel is my mate and he won't hurt me
"He stays here?" I ask, hand in hand with Damon as we approach the shady-looking building in the not-so good part of the city."As you said, he apparently really cared about his pack. I think he's the only Alpha that I know that didn't have a hefty private account stashed somewhere. He left the pack with nothing. He invested everything he had back in his people only to be stabbed in the back." Damon explains while looking around to make sure Kat did a good job at distracting the guards that Beta sent to supervise his former friend. I never liked the Alpha, but even I can admit he didn't deserve this."Then how does he pay for this place?""I assume someone sends him money. Axel maybe?" Damon asks and I shrug. I doubt it's him, but that would be better than the Beta playing on both sides.I take a deep breath before we knock on the door. I am so damn nervous that I feel my heartbeat in the tip of my fingers, adrenaline pumping my veins, ready to act if it doesn't go as planned. But bef
"Yeah, but how do I ask him to come without sounding like a trap? Last time, Damon almost killed him before threatening him." Diana smiles at the memory and I hit her arm. "Stop it. It's not a trap! We need to trust each other...""Well, you don't trust each other. That's the problem. We think Axel is insane, Damon would kill him just because, he would kill Damon for..." She looks at me up and down a few times. "... you know. And you and him are in a complicated situation. Have you decided if you are also going to ask him to break the bond?""Depends on how the conversation will go. I think it would be better for both of us, but I don't want to add that into the mix if the situation gets unstable. The priority is saving the pack.""Ha! If! You are so optimistic, Rose."I was optimistic to think this conversation would help me take my mind off things. That's what I was. Damon went to get Brad as we decided communing with Axel would be a bit too dangerous as I don’t know yet how to do i
"You should get some sleep. We don't know how long the discussion is going to be." Damon says for the fifth time as I roll around the sheets. I sneaked into his bed earlier because I couldn't sleep alone, and I just ended up keeping him awake too."There are a million things that could go wrong." I complain."If something goes wrong, it will be one of the million. That means you wasted your energy thinking about the rest.""Did you commune with the Moon Goddess? Diana said you kept trying today too." I ask and he gets a bit tense. She ghosted us two weeks ago and no matter how much any of us try, she seems to want to stay away. For Damon, that's the longest he has been without her guidance in the last few years and I know it stresses him out."I can feel her. So she didn't just vanish. But... There's something weird. There's a feeling of guilt that lingers every time I commune and I can't tell if it's mine or hers." He explains and a cold shiver runs down my spine. I cuddle closer to
"You told Caroline about this meeting..." I whisper more to myself than anything. The one thing I pleaded with him not to do. The one thing he knows would have hurted me, but he did it. He did it because he trusts her more than he ever cared about me. And I...I feel ok with that. It hurt for a second. The idea of it, but when I reached to that pain to grasp it, it was no longer there. Now it’s just the fear that I feel."For fuck's sake, Axel? Would you stop the theatrical half information and just say what you have to say?" the Alpha snaps, but Axel continues to look at me like it's just us in the world."Please... What happened since the ceremony?" I ask, forcing myself to sound like I used to when I cared about him. And that seems to be enough, because Axel starts explaining."After my father attacked you, I really wanted to kill him. If I didn't check the mate bond to make sure you're fine before jumping at him, I would have turned him to pieces. I was also pissed at Caroline bec
"Damon! We really need to hurry!" I try to sound assertive, but it sounds more like a moan. His hand is roaming under my shirt , leaving a burning sensation of pure desire on every inch of skin he touches. I get drunk with his smell, his presence, his love. So much so, that it worries me what I will do when the mate bond finally snaps into place. Will we ever leave this room?But to find that out we really need to leave. Like five minutes ago.I manage to peel Damon off of me with the promise of tonight being our first time as mates and with that we are out the door to Caroline's Alpha ceremony.We drive by the southern packs that managed to rebuild most of what was destroyed in the war. By how things are going, they will become fully independent again in less than a year."The road helped a lot of them connect to resources." I say, proud that we could make it real. My grandma started it by telling me how nice it would be to be able to just drive to her cousin's pack in the north. Wit
Werewolves don't fight in daylight. I think it's one of the first things I remember my teacher saying, way before I could truly comprehend the meaning of it. It was fine until a century or two ago when, if any unlucky human saw anything they would have been considered mad, but now, with phones and cameras in everyone's pocket?We are wolves in the shadow, humans in the light.We were. Until this war. Until the rogues broke every rule we have ever been taught and we had to push ourselves out of everything that felt right in order to defeat them.Once the sun starts to rise, and the piles of bodies gather around the open field, every instinct screams at me to run. To hide. I see everyone around me feeling the same, everyone remembering what we've been taught. Except our enemy, who teached their children that victory must come at any price.I see people so tired, they can't maintain their wolf form. They fall on their knees, so tired they don't raise their heads when the enemy bites off
"This time, everything will work perfectly." Damon seemed confident, even though that never happened before. And I really, really wanted to believe him, mostly because I needed to, but also because he made it seem so real. Like we had a chance.But that chance slips a little bit through my fingers with every look the council throws at each other. Or even worse, with every look they sneak in Thomas' direction. Waiting for him to take a decision, to take the lead. And unfortunately, Thomas is not desperate, he is young and has all the time to be cautious and smart about his decisions.After a bit of bickering, the king explains his reasoning in an avalanche of ill-fitted sentences."It would be unwise to march, while we lose the base." Someone comments."This is absurd!" Thomas finally bursts and shouts at his father. "Damon doesn't have enough men to take over the pack. We left enough warriors there to make sure of that. We can't march back, wasting everything because you got informati
On the second night of the funeral march, once we reach the fourth pack that abandoned their territory, I see Thomas starting to put things together. His father calmed down a lot and is now advancing slower, making sure the sentinels spread in between the bases and the army can maintain the pack link and keep the communication open. No shadow of the Strychnos plant.That's not good."This doesn't feel right." I say to Thomas as we find ourselves walking next to each other."Why are you scared? Even if it's a trap, your mate will protect you. No one will jump to punish a Moon Priestess.""Yeah... But..." I let the silence speak as I look at the ground. I know Thomas looks at me so I brush my hair off my face so he can see my teary eyes."But you're not sure." Thomas tries to sound sympathetic, but I would be a fool not to feel the satisfaction in his voice."He is my mate, he would... protect me.""You know, every time you say the story of your past life, there is one detail that doesn
Caroline is standing so close to me, I can feel her breath on the back of my head. The king wanted her to be on the other side of the little funeral march as Damon called it, but Caroline looked ready to snap a few necks before she would be separated from me."As long as my pack stands, she is my Luna! It is my duty to protect her or die trying!" None of the men in the office questioned her determination, so she was allowed to act as my bodyguard if it came down to it."Wish you'd have been as determined in the last life too." I can't help but clap at her as we make our way to the MoonWalk pack's borders."Yeah... me too." She answers, to my surprise. Usually, when I make remarks like this she counters with the fact that I wasn't powerful or useful enough to be accepted, let alone respected as Luna. She must sense my surprise because she's quick to explain. "I know. That's what I thought all my life, but... I know Omegas who wouldn't have betrayed the pack for all the power in the wor
"Your friend was put in another room." Thomas is by my side when I wake up, gently pressing an ice bag on the left side of my head. But even with that, I can feel every second of Caroline's training throbbing in my head. I bite my lip as i get up and make sense of my surroundings, mostly of the little silver bracelet that stands as proof of the fact that I am not a good liar. If I would have, the king would have trusted me by now."It's fine... I deserved it." I tell him as I grab the hand he offers to help me stand up. He holds it for a second longer than he should and I realize I was staring at him. Well, not at him, at every feature that reminds me of Damon."I'm sorry about earlier. I just... A lot of things happened at once and...""It's ok." No it was not and he is a piece of crap, but if I can't fool the father maybe I can the son? "I was surprised since you said you have a girlfriend and you know... I have a mate.""Yeah... She really doesn't want to be involved with this so s
"I haven't seen you freeze like that since you got a wolf." Caroline snarls at me as she closes the door after us."I wanted to test something.""And?""And it confirmed that the off feeling I had about Thomas was because he was… interested not because of something more sinister." I answer while trying to use the pack link to tell her that she can't, in fact, trust Thomas. But despite everything, I am still blocked."Remind me to complain about this logistics flaw to the Goddess. She can't lock me out forever." I say to Nala, but the ancient she-wolf is not in the mood for joking."She has enough on her plate. You need to find a way to return to the meeting and warn them!""She can't see what is going on?""To make your mate's prison stronger, she locked herself in too. They have no connection to the outside. The only reason you were able to wake up was because I pulled you out by force." Nala explains and my last hope of a plan finally working, as Damon promised, gets tossed down the
I am shaken awake by Caroline, who has a terrified expression on her face. I almost jump out of bed when I see her, but as soon as I open my eyes, she sighs in relief."You sleep like you're on fucking drugs!" She snaps after I ask her what the hell happened. One second I was sitting with Damon in front of a very angry gathering of Alphas, the next, I am pulled back by Nala in a panick.I hear a loud bang on the door before Thomas' voice comes through, full of annoyance and urgency."Listen here, you little pack girl, you have one minute to wake her or I'll..." He doesn't get the chance to finish that pseuodo-threat because I open the door."What the hell happened?""So you're not in a coma.""Oh, come on! I am a good sleeper, but this is ridiculous. And it's not even morning yet!" I point at the pitch black sky outside, wondering how on earth did they figure everything out so fast."Apparently, some Alphas, if not all of them are in some type of coma. Our spies reported that they wou
The Alphas who agreed to help from the start moved closer, pushing the rest to the side so we can discuss a thing or two. I can see Axel with the corner of my eye, but I don't have the courage to face him yet. In the explaining that I did earlier, I had to mention a few things that involved him in the past life and I know he is hurt, but... this requires a longer and more private conversation.Fortunately, everyone is so caught with the entire war thing that no one thinks to ask why Damon stands next to me instead of my mate.Everyone but Luna Karina. When everyone spreads out for a small break, she approaches me with a stormy expression. Damon takes the hint and walks away, all the eyes following him like he's a jailer. With a straight posture and a half-smile, I can see he's enjoying it more than he should, though."I tried to break through this dream a few times. Just like the other Alphas surely did too. I tried to connect with anyone from my pack to try and wake me, but that was