Troy Arthur looked a lot like Magnus before Morella cursed him. He had had the same dark hair and dour expression on his face, but the moment he smiled his eyes lit up and that dark, dreary exterior evaporated. “Prince Troy,” he said and warmly gripped my hand in both of his, “I’ve heard so much about you.” “From whom?” I asked and shook his hand, before gently extracting it. "Nothing good, I hope." He laughed. “My brother, of course. He…betrayed you, well us now, I guess. He told our father everything.” “Yeah, I know. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Magnus is dead.” "You killed him?" "He asked me to do it." Arthur nodded. “I don't blame you. I tried to warn him, but he wouldn't listen. You know...he never came home after he went to that train station.” "Morella cursed him." Arthur's eyes fell on Quinn who stood partially hidden behind me. “Your mate?” "Oh, yes." I stepped aside and pulled Quinn closer before I introduced her to the prince. “Prince Arthur she said. A
Troy I gathered the princes and their mates to tell them about our plan. Next to me, Quinn’s eyes hopped from Lycan to Lycan as she read their auras. Even though she knew I had every talent she had and could read auras just as well as she could, if not better, she needed to reassure herself that she wouldn’t be betrayed by yet another wolf. "Arthur will tell them that I captured all the princes and their mates," I said. "The kings will have no other option but to come to their rescue." I gave Ida a stern look. She wasn't very worldly, and she could easily blow the whole thing "Be careful what you say. Do not betray yourself or our secrets. Ida straightened her back and jutted out her chin while she touched the little stone hidden under her dress. “I will never betray the princess.” I smiled and nodded at her. “I know you won’t, but you made no vows to me.” “If you are harmed, it will also hurt my sister. I won’t disappoint either of you.” Quinn smiled at the young she-wolf. Her
QuinnI made my way through the bustling mansion. It had never been this busy, but the princes brought warriors with them, and we had to find a way to accommodate all of them. Most stayed with the other warriors elsewhere on the estate, and for those that could not find a bed elsewhere, Missus Lowry and Glover turned just about every other room into some kind of dorm.Most of them slept on the floor, and none of the complained about it.The only rooms that remained untouched were our bedrooms upstairs, the library, the cinema, the silver cell in the basement, and Troy’s office.I expected the influx of people to make me nervous and uncomfortable like the Lycan nobles did, but these people were different. They weren’t here to harm us, and I could feel it, see it, even smell it.I pushed the door leading to the East wing open and stepped into the Omegas’ buzzing living quarters. Music played over the loudspeakers, Omegas laughed and squealed as they ran through the corridors. Children I
Troy I woke when the sharp pop of a gunshot shattered my slumber. Everything was quiet. The mansion itself barely breathed. For a moment, I lay completely still, sure that I dreamed or imagined it. Then another shot rang out. Fuck! “Quinn,” I mind linked with my mate as I fell out of bed and ran for the door, not caring that I was dressed in only my underwear. “Are you all right?” “It’s okay. I got him. Don’t worry. I’m pretty sure he’s dead. Casper’s checking now.” “Who? Who did you shoot?” “Xander Shelby.” “Where are you?” “The garden.” I ran down the hall, my feet slapping loudly on the gleaming hardwood. I flew down the stairs, taking them four at a time while I used the bannister to propel me forward. “What garden?” “The one behind the pool house. I've never seen this one before. It's kind of pretty.” What the hell was she doing there? It was hidden from the main house. I posted a few guards there to patrol it, but no one ever used the garden, and it wasn’t as well pro
TroyQuinn found Dexter Maree’s frozen body behind a tree the next morning. She hadn’t said a word about her father or Xander for the rest of the night. After I braided her hair, she curled into a tight little ball and rocked herself to sleep.I wished it were someone else who found Dexter’s corpse. Strong as she was, as easy as she could shake off trauma, even Quinn had her breaking point, and I had the unsettling feeling that she would reach it soon.She kept her barriers up, making sure I couldn’t feel her. I wanted to tell her to stop doing it, that I wouldn’t be able to protect her if I didn’t know she was in danger, but she’d just worry about me becoming too obsessed with her.My mate knelt next to her dead grandfather and closed his eyes. A shiver ran down her body as her skin touched his. “Someone should go check on Jolene,” I said, and looked up at Lucas. “Go see if she died.”“Yes, Prince,” the guard muttered and dashed across the frozen grounds back to the mansion.The cold
QuinnI lay on the bed, hands behind my head, staring up at the ceiling. Troy left early that morning for a meeting. He did ask if I wanted to go with him, but I couldn’t do it. I could barely get myself out of bed to shower these days.The way I felt, he might as well have asked me to climb Mount Everest, let alone go into city. I was exhausted. Everything felt like too much effort.Troy made it blatantly clear that he did not like my sudden silence, but at the same time, he did not force me to talk about it. I had no idea what I’d say anyway. I did not know how to explain to him that my mind was completely empty, that I had gone numb.How could I tell him that it was simply easier not to feel? That shutting down my emotions was a natural thing for me to do. I started doing it when I was very young, and realised my tears had no effect whatsoever on my mother.Thomas Shelby came and went. Troy told him to seek out Eduard for his pack's safety, but my uncle asserted that his pack were
TroyI weighed the consequences of my decisions very carefully before I asked Quinn what she thought about them. I knew she wouldn’t give me a straight answer about my desire to give up the throne – Dexter’s unnecessary warning about a she-wolf's power over her fated mate terrified her so much she basically turned into an ice sculpture.She was doing her best to push me away, carefully constructing a wall around her heart, and hoping I’d fall out of love with her in the process.I glanced at the painting one last time before I put it away. The vision stubbornly refused to change. Maybe Sebastian and I weren’t the reason Quinn set upon the path that would lead to my father. Perhaps it was Dexter and his careless words.I watched as Quinn started to select clothes to bring with her to the woods. “Do you mind packing a bag for me?” I asked.She looked up. “I don’t mind, but…what if I forget something?”I shrugged. “Just make sure I have a toothbrush and some shorts. We’re going to the wo
TroyI came back from training just as the almost full moon started to rise. The night was icy-cold and the wind snapped at my heated body, trying to freeze the sweat on my skin. Around me, the other princes and warriors rushed to their tents, running on their tiptoes in an attempt to spare the soles of their feet, and I heard their uneven breathing as they tried to regulate their body heat. We’d been in the woods for almost a week now. When we arrived, we discovered traces of my father’s Lycans in the woods. They left animal carcasses, still smouldering coals, and even torn tents behind, but we couldn’t find the nobles. No matter how much we searched, they kept evading us.Eleanor was protecting them. Here and there, I felt a shimmer of magic - not enough so I could track her, but enough to annoy me.God, I hated that witch. I kind of hoped Quinn would kill her for me when the time came.We finally set up camp where the cabin used to be and established a proper boundary. Sebastian
Hello my dearest readers! Phew. Another one done and dusted. Finally! This is the time where I thank all of you for sticking around to read this epic tale. I did not intend for it to be this long, but Troy and Quinn had quite the story to tell. Thank you, as always, for the comments, the reviews, the gems, the encouragement and love you've shown me along the way. I truly appreciate you so much, and your support is why I keep on writing even when I sometimes feel like saying, "fuck it all," before I go back to bed. I could not do this without you, I truly mean that. There will be more stories soon. So if you feel like it, stick around for the next one. I'd love to take you along for the ride. Much love, Celice
TroyI lifted Quinn into the warm tub, soaped up a flannel, and gently started to wash her. She was frozen down to the bone, and for the first time since it all started, she complained about being cold. “I killed the witch?” she asked for the hundredth time.“Yes.”“And Sebastian is okay?”“Yes.” I checked on him before I came to bed.My brother was exhausted, mentally, emotionally, and physically he was shattered, but he was alive. That was the only thing that mattered to me now.“I reached out to your aunt’s witch, Gretchen,” I said. “Do you know her?”“No.”“Well, she’ll be here in a few days. She’ll teach you how to develop and control your powers.”Quinn pulled her legs up and rested her chin on her knees. She looked small, vulnerable, like the little rabbit I brought home with me almost six months ago. “Now it’s over,” she said.“I think so.”“We can live our lives?”God I hoped so.I groaned and dropped the flannel in the water. I leaned over to kiss my mate. Her lips were like
Troy As I expected, the winter was exceptionally cold, and towards the end of the year, the whole city came to a grinding halt. Businesses couldn’t open, school doors remained shut, water pipes froze over and burst all over the country, reports came in thick and fast about the poor and homeless dying by the dozen.It was absolute mayhem.On the day of Quinn’s birthday, we had the worst snowstorm in recorded history. Doom prophets talked about the end of the world, and newscasters predicted our catastrophic end if we didn’t stop carbon emissions right away.They didn’t know what we knew. They didn’t know that it was a half-Goddess woman’s powers manifesting. Quinn didn’t know she was doing it, but I felt her magic. She called on nature, begged it to help her so she wouldn’t have to kill Sebastian, and the snow was their answer.I did not want to burden her with the knowledge that she caused the severe weather. It was pointless and wouldn't change a damn thing. My brother was already h
QuinnBlack blood oozed out of the kings’ necks and flowed over their sons’ hands, down their chests, and into the earth. The ground bubbled and boiled like a tar pit and stinking steam rose up in the air. The kings were so corrupted, that nature itself tried to reject their blood.Sparks exploded behind my eyes and a sharp pain shot through my own neck. I gasped and gagged, trying to breath past the unknown thing stuck in my throat, and instinctively reached up to feel for a wound, but Ida and Nell, dear sweet Nell that was always so gentle and shy, held my arms down. “Don’t,” Nell hissed. “It is not real.”The woods started to float in and out of existence, and a loud drone like millions of buzzing flies filled every space in my head. Something tore my soul from my chest, and the real world simply ceased to exist.I looked out over a vast wasteland. There was nothing here but parched, cracked earth as far as the eye could see. In the distance, the skeleton of a lone tree tried to ca
QuinnI looked around the place that used to be our campground. The sigh was one straight out of a horror movie. Corpses and torn tents lay scattered across the clearing, giving it a desolate, post-apocalyptic feel.At some point, Salome took control and I shifted. I blacked out and when I came back, Troy was standing over me, commanding me to shift.His commands didn’t work on me, but they worked on Salome. She couldn’t resist an order from Troy. “What happened?” I asked, completely confused.“Look,” Troy said and held out his hand to help me up.A body lay next to me on the ground. A she-wolf with her throat torn out. “Did I do that?”“Yes,” he said. “She was a fully-trained warrior, and you…you fought bravely and you won, but she did almost kill you.”I looked down at my blood-soaked. I was a little achy, but I didn't feel injured or near death. “I'm okay.”“I healed you as much as I could, and the shift fixed the rest.”“I don’t remember any of it.”“I know.”I was suddenly very a
TroyQuinn and I ran for the campgrounds. We had to tie up the other princes and their mates to make it appear as if I held them prisoner. As we rushed up the path, I mind liked with Casper to tell him what was going on. “Find the princes. Get the chains ready.”The chains we prepared for them wasn’t pure silver. They contained just enough of the precious metal to fool the Lycans for a moment, but not so much that it would weaken the princes to such a degree that they couldn’t break free when the time came.“Gag my father,” I reminded the guard.Morella did not give us much time to prepare. Thirty minutes. That was how long it would take her to break Eleanor’s spell, and that was all the time she gave us.We broke through the treeline just in time to see my warriors wrap the chains around the princes wrists and ankles. Casper grinned maniacally as he shoved a ball gag into my father’s mouth and wrapped a cloth dipped in liquid silver over it to keep it in place.“You like this a littl
Troy“Does this change anything?” Joel asked.After the Lycans submitted, I summoned the princes to the lake so we could talk about what had happened. I did not expect them bend the knee to me – it was too much to ask, yet they did it, the least I could do in return was stay true to them.“Not as far as I can see,” Gadrial said and lazily plucked a dead leaf hanging right in front of his face.God, he could be an insufferable blowhole sometimes, but he was not wrong. “Gadrial is right. It changes nothing.”Joel did not look convinced. “If she is attracting wolves who naturally want to submit to both of you...I don’t....Why must we have to kill our fathers?”“Because if we don’t, they’ll kill her,” Eduard said. “Eventually, they’ll find a way, and we’ll be right back where we started.”“I don’t expect you to kill for my mate,” I said.“That’s just it, isn’t it?” Gadrial replied, his voice bitter with resentment. “We are all bound to her, as we are to her fucking mother.”“She’s your mo
QuinnUnlike the last few weeks, the warriors didn’t head off into the woods to train. For the first time since we arrived, everyone gathered around the fires to enjoy the day together before the full moon forced us into the woods to shift.I looked up at the muted moon hanging in the clear blue sky. With each passing month, I could feel the moon’s effects more intensely. The closer I came to my twenty-first birthday, the stronger it became. It was like the ocean's tide rose inside me, and I was terrified of what would happen when the wave broke upon the shore.The moon was almost like a living being to me. I could feel her pulsating heart, and hear her sigh as she moved along her way.I cocked my head at the blue-white globe, fully expecting her to start speaking at any moment, and was completely unaware that the group sharing our fire stopped eating to watch me.It wasn’t until I tore my eyes from the moon that I noticed all of them had put their plates down and folded their hands i
Quinn It was so cold that my tears froze on my face. Troy shuddered as gusts of wind whipped through the trees, but he did not let me go. He had to be uncomfortable, sitting naked on the icy rock, but he simply held on to me while I tried my best to stop crying. If Fionn was no longer in the painting, it had to mean that the princes would win. They would kill their fathers and these wolves that I loved so much would finally know peace. Perhaps, Sebastian would change his mind too, and then Troy could live the life he wanted. I didn’t know if the life as a gang leader was any more peaceful than life as a Lycan king, but it had to be if that was what my mate dreamed of these days. The war did not affect me, not yet, but I could see what it did to those around me. They talked about the end of the war non-stop, about their dreams for a peaceful future, and what they’d do when it was all over. Nell was especially vulnerable, and she often cried about lost brothers and sisters, or worri