JASMINES POVI struggled against the grip around my neck, gasping for air as I was dragged into the cold night. My feet and knees scraped against the rocks, my mind racing to make sense of what was happening. “Let go of me!” I tried to scream, clawing at the arm that was holding me. When we stopped, I was slammed into a tree, a sharp stinging pain coursing through my back as I tried to get myself up. My captor finally stepped into the dim light of the moon and my breath hitched. “Bryan?” I spat his name, massaging my throat as I fought myself up. “You think you could humiliate me before everyone and get away with it?” He sneered, reaching for his pocket. Before I could speak, his hands were on my neck again, pressing me hard against the tree. “What do you want, Bryan?” I asked, forcing my voice to sound braver than I felt. A smirk curled his lips, his hand traveling to my forehead with the knife as he leaned in. “You, Jas. I want you to remember who’s in control here. Who’s alwa
JASMINES POV “Stay close to me,” Caine said, his voice low and urgent. My legs trembled at the sight of the lifeless bodies scattered like broken dolls on the floor. The cold suddenly seeped into my skin, making my blood freeze and almost making me halt. Caine’s hand found mine and squeezed it into his, and I could feel the temperature of his body rising with every step we took further. “What happened here?” I muttered, scanning the bodies by the left. My mind was blurred with questions. Could Bryan have done this? No…one person couldn’t wreak such havoc. So what or who was it then? “This is no wild animal,” Caine said like he was answering my thoughts. Something about the scene was off. I could smell it, and I bet Caine could too given the way he was sniffing the air. “This isn’t just blood or death…it’s something unnatural. Something new, dangerous,” he said. “Which means we should leave and probably report it to your dad,” I suggested, beginning to feel the dread of the m
CAINES POV “Tomorrow, don’t be late,” I almost choked on my pretense the moment I heard my girlfriend's voice. “Lucy,” I called her, shifting my gaze from Jasmine with what I hoped was a neutral expression. She was standing at the end of the corridor, hands colder with a brow corked. “I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?” “Lucy,” Jasmine chirped in before I could give a response. She hurried past me and pulled her into a hug. “You got us worried. Are you feeling good now?” She asked, pulling away and scanning Lucy’s body. The smile that played around Lucy’s lip looked fake, forced. But dge managed to maintain it until she was done talking with Jasmine. “You look exhausted. Has Caine been stressing you,” she glanced at me. “No, Caine and I only had a hectic day. We urm.,,we saw…” “Jasmine,” I had to cut her short. We weren’t supposed to talk about it until we were sure of what we were dealing with. “Head to your room, I’ll like a word with Lucy,” I ordered, forcing the me
JASMINES POV That was one step up. Putting Bryan at the center would certainly bring him out of his hiding, and I’ll get my revenge on him. His act last night still lived fresh in my memory, taunting every part of my body. Caine drove me silently back to town. He went down the lane leading to Mrs. Maria’s diner, where I was supposed to work. “Are you sure nothing happened between you and Bryan last night that i should know about?” Caine snapped me out of thoughts as he parked in front of the diner. “Nothing happened. He just happened not to be at the scene when it happened. So there’s every that he’s behind it,” “And you…what were you doing in the woods that late?” He asked. I sighed, turning to look at him. “You can’t know everything, Caine,” “But I want to know if I can trust you,” he said. I hesitated, staring into his eyes and realizing how genuine he was. That wasn’t enough to make me share the events of the previous night. “Trust is earned, not negotiated,” I re
CAINES POV “What script?” Jasmine asked. My heart sank into my stomach, my mind racing with thoughts of what answer I should give. I have never been in a situation where I had to cook up some lie to save my ass. With Jasmine’s gaze, it only got more difficult. “It’s nothing,” I said after much difficulty, forcing a smile. “They’re just trying to stir a drama. Don’t give them that,” I whispered. But Jasmine wasn’t buying that shit. Her narrowed eyes and crossed arms told me she wasn’t letting it slide any time soon. “Drama?” She blurted. I rolled my eyes and pulled her away from the table after taking their orders. I didn’t stop until we were behind the counter. “What happened to revenge?” “What happened to the script you’re supposed to play?” She fired. I exchanged glances with my friends who were sitting at the table, watching us. “Are they in on something involving us?” “You’re overthinking this. Have you suddenly forgotten the people you are dealing with?” I tried to shift t
JASMINES POV The barrel of the gun aimed at me felt grander than it looked. My heart pounded in my chest, but I forced myself to meet the gaze of the brown-haired lady. “Listen…you’ve got the wrong people,” I started, my voice calm despite the storm brewing in me. “We are just workers at the diner…” “Quit the lies or I’ll blow your eyes off,” she fired, her fingers twitching on the trigger. My hands returned to the air, trembling as my mind raced to figure out what else to say, “Save those lies,” she snapped, taking careful steps forward. “You think it’s my first time dealing with wolves? I know what you are I know what you do! The fake lives. The lies, the masks you wear to blend in,” she paused, her eyes flicking from me to Caine, then back to me. Caine shifted to my front, holding my other hand behind him. “You don’t want to do this,” he said, his voice low but firm. “Killing the wrong people won’t bring those you’ve lost,” “But it will give me peace!” She snapped, and I sa
JASMINES POV “What do you mean, lied?” I asked, finding it difficult to process the words my dad just said. “Dad,” “Sweetie…I’ve been trying to wrap my head around it all this while. It just doesn’t make any sense to me,” he added. But that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. My mother, not human? How were they expecting me to believe that a woman who raised me and whom I lived with for years wasn’t human? “Alpha?” “Your dad and I are still doing research, Jasmine. However, I have a question for you,” he said, sitting up in his chair. I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat and stole a glance at Caine who was standing outside the door. “Where were you the night of the massacre?” He asked. He interrupted my attempt to speak. “Now before you fill me in on how you were with my son all day, we all know that part of the story. What I want to know now, is where you were in the night of the massacre,” he added. I furrowed my brows, trying to get a hold of my thoughts which were
JASMINES POV “Get off me!” I yelled, struggling with the hands that were trying to hold me down. She was too strong for a lady of her size. I kicked several times, throwing failed jabs at her as she held me to the bed. “Tell me!” She growled, placing the gun on my head. But I guess that wasn’t enough to keep me still. To my surprise, even with the nose of a gun placed on my forehead, I didn’t back down. “Let me go! You’re going to get arrested for this!” I growled, yelling in her palm which covered my mouth. She dragged me by the hair and threw me to the floor. Without giving me a chance to get myself, she kicked my torso and dragged my legs. “One last chance, girl!” She growled, pointing the gun at me. My heart was in a race, my sweat mixed with my tears and they streamed down my face. “I’m…I’m the wrong person. You have the…the wrong person,” I said amid my rugged breath, clutching my stomach which hit the iron frame of my bed. My blood dripped from my nose, sending an alar
CAINES POV“Caine, that’s my wife you’re accusing,” my father pulled me back and whispered into my ear through his teeth. I shrugged him off and took steps further, but my uncle stepped in the way.“Caine, what’s come over you?” He asked with a low voice. “This is your wedding. What do you think you’re doing?” “She’s a traitor.” “Stop it!” My father yelled.The peace they were trying to maintain crumbled, and I had deadly eyes staring into mine. He walked closer to me, his eyes wandering in mine like he was trying to know what gave me the audacity to point an accusatory finger at his wife.“What is this all about, Huh? Because you do not want to get married? Is that why you have chosen to destroy that of your parents?”“If you think I’m lying…” I said before taking my gaze away from him and fixing it on Lilian. “Ask her how long she has known my mother,” “Your mother died years before I met Lilian,”“A year, you mean? And that means you're not denying the fact that she knew Mother
CAINES POVI stood before the grand mirror in my chamber, my reflection staring back at me, hollow-eyed and unrecognizable. The blue ceremonial robes draped over my shoulders felt heavy, suffocating, as if they carried the weight of every choice I hadn’t made for myself. The deep blue fabric was adorned with intricate silver embroidery, the symbol of my family stitched proudly into the chest. A reminder of the duty I could never escape. The servant attached the last piece of gold ring to my finger and took a few steps away from the mirror. “All set,” he bowed. Today, as per tradition of the house of Creeks, my marriage was to be held in the old traditional ways. Given the kind of line we descended from, our marriage process usually involved various types of rites. First, we would go to the river to get bathed under the moonlight. Also, there was the one of getting the head of an antler from the woods.A third was also mentioned to me, which involved the Sheet's reveal. It was con
CAINES POVDistant murmurings filled my ears as I stirred awake. My eyes fluttered as they received the rays from the white light hanging above my head. For the first few seconds, I was blinded by the light. After what felt like minutes of waiting, the light got dim, giving me a chance to take a view of my environment.“He’s waking up,” a voice said. It sounded muffled like he was speaking to me or someone else with water in his mouth. I tried to turn my head towards the direction of the sound, but a sharp pain shot through my head.“Ouch!” I winced, reaching to hold my head. The pain seared through, touching every nerve as it sent cold signals down the rest of my body. “Easy son,” my father's voice said. His footsteps rang in my ear like they were stepping on glass placed beside my ear, and I was forced to close both ears with my palms until I felt his hand on my neck. “You’re fine. You’re with family,” he said. Slowly, I let go of my ears and turned to him. He was still standing
LUCY'S POVBryan was serious about leaving Jasmine in the trunk till the following morning. He acted like we didn’t come with anyone else, all his attention focused on Liz. Her body had gone cold, and he was massaging it with a warm towel. I sat across the sitting room, watching him while Adrian got himself engaged in a discussion with some adults outside, sitting around a fire and passing bottles of drinks. “Is it always this quiet?” I asked, taking the first step to speak since I realized he was bent on saying nothing until Liz woke up. “Not always,” he replied. “Liz bore some type of light. Her absence must have dimmed that light. The reason why most of the women have refused to settle until they see her,” he said. A few hours after Adrian compelled the crowd that gathered in front of the house, some women stopped by again to see Liz. I was the one who spoke to them, giving an excuse that she would be back from her evening walk. Two more hours passed since I did that, and they
BRYANS POV“Liz, please.” I followed her behind, keeping up with her quick strides as she made her way back to the house. “It’s just going to be for a few days,”“A few days?” she turned to me. “Those…few days…as you call it, is enough to bring this little home down. You and I know how much effort we put into securing this place, into the protection of this land. Yet you want to sweep it under the bus all because of what?” She snapped.I sighed, seeing that this was already a lost argument. In our territory, we had no alpha or king. But we had people recognized for their strength and influence. My father was one of them, and that made him one of the most respected people in the rogue lands. Marrying Elizabeth, and her neutral ability to fight a warrior that she is, bestowed that same respect on her. Her say was final, and if she refused to grant me my request, no one else would. I glanced at Lucy who was watching from a distance, then back at Liz. “This one time, Liz. I promise to
BRYANS POVI parked the car at the front of the house, leaning back into the chair as I pulled the keys out. “This is my home,” I answered Lucy. She’d been curious ever since we headed out, probably because I chose not to handle this her way.Funny enough, this was her first being here despite how many years of dating. I kept this part of my family away from the world due to the amount of love I had for them. We were, however, seen as rogues. Perhaps that’s who we are. Lucy has always known that I belong to a rogue pack. She just didn’t know what pack it was. Seeing the shock on her face only made me more excited.“I thought you said your home was taken away from you? she asked, leaning forward to get a proper view of the people moving from place to place ahead of us.“I did say that. But you should have understood what home I was talking about,” I told her. My first home, which I referred to as the home I never met, was the Creeks mansion.I grew up in the outskirts of the city,
LUCY’S POVI walked out from where I hurled myself into for shelter, bridging the sweat off my hair. The place was in a mess—smoke gassed the entire room, its toxic smell making my stomach twist. The machine was fried, leaving most of its wires dancing by its sides.The smell choked me, forcing me to cough. With my elbow, I shielded my nose, while my eyes scanned the room for her.I spotted Bryan lying in the middle of the mess. Several things collapsed on him, and I thought I saw blood streaming from underneath one of them. My instincts kicked into Ron to his aid, which I did immediately.“Bryan,” I called, taking the things that obstructed my path off. They were a lot—from the woods from a frame, to some parts of the machine that exploded, and a part of the wall that crumbled in him. He groaned as he struggled to get himself free from the mess.“Don’t move. You’ll only make things worse,” I said. I searched around for an easier way through the mess, and that was when I spotted my
JASMINES POVI took a deep breath in, lifting my face from the position it had dropped to after the energy surged through me. I expected it to have been strong enough to burst me out of the straps, but I guess it did what it could do—throwing her across the room. “What have you done!” Bryan yelled, taking quick strides across the room. His fingers wrapped around my neck, squeezing it with every strength he had in him. “What did you do to her?” “You should… probably step away,” I struggled to speak. He glanced at Lucy—she was regaining herself from the pieces of wood that shattered on her body, burying her in the pile. “You ingrate!” He cursed. His grip loosened around my neck with force, giving me the chance to take in as much air as I’d been deprived. “Get me out of here!” He coughed, choking on my words. Bryan left to attend to Lucy. He assisted her to her feet, and I could still see the rage in her eyes. It was there, lurking behind the pain that came from shock. She grasped
JASMINES POVA sharp ache shot through my head, stirring me awake. I groaned as I forced my eyes open. They felt heavy, protesting against my will to open them. My entire body was cold, and I could feel my skin resting on cold metal that sent a shiver coursing through me. I blinked against the bright white light, forcing my eyes open finally. The first thing that hit my nose was the strong metallic scent of blood, mixed with something else—chemical perhaps. I could hear the echoes of distant voices before they dropped. Then, everything rushed back in a blur. The memories of what happened—was it a few minutes ago? There was no way to know what time it was as everywhere was dark except the white light flickering at the center of the room. My body stilled for a moment, then I made a move. A sting pierced through my legs, sending a jolt of pain running up my spine. I winced and lowered my head to see what it was. My legs were chained. Likewise my hands—were strapped to the metallic