BowdenThe moment I step into the hallway of the guards’ quarters, I know the cat’s out of the bag, and we’re not stuffing that mangy feline back in there. The hall is crawling with curious Lycans while Elias is standing in his room letting out soft little mewls of terror.The empty sarcophagus lies on the floor, Jaeger is missing, and Julius is standing on the bed, rising up like a ghost no one wants to see.“Kaiya,” I mind link with my mate on pure instinct alone. “Are you still awake?”“Kinda. What’s wrong?”“I need you to come down to Elias’s room. We have…a situation.”“What kind of situation?”“Ehhhh.” I stare up at the risen figure. The corpse’s head is still covered with the sheet, but he’s standing on the bed and blindly reaching out with his shrivelled, mottled black-grey arms. “I’m not quite sure how to explain this. Just come down, and…prepare yourself.”“Whu- Whu?” Elias whimpers behind me.I’d tell someone to get him out of here, but everyone’s having a pretty similar re
Kaiya Bowden charges into the apartment, slamming the door shut behind him with such impressive force that dust and bits of plaster rain down on the floor He spares a single glance my way utters a single word, "Fuck," and storms past me to the bedroom.Frowning, I switch off the television and follow him to his room, reaching him just in time to hear him be violently sick. I knock on the door and ask him the same question he asked me last night. "Are you all right?"“Yes. Don't come in here.”“You realise I've cleaned all manner of bodily fluids in my time, right? A little vomit isn't going to bother me.”“Kaiya, for the love of the Goddess, now is not the time.” "Let me help-" "Oh, Goddess," he says and throws up again. "Okay," I say. "If me helping hurts so much you throw up, I'll leave you alone."A moment later, he flushes the toilet, and I hear him brush his teeth. Another minute goes by before he exits the bathroom and just stares at me.His eyes that are usually so calm are
Kaiya I’d been to Junction City only once in my life. I had just escaped from Moon Dance and stumbled upon the city. It bordered on our territory, and looking back now, it wasn't surprising that I found my way to Junction. I didn't know that it was a werewolf city, and the sheer amount of people lulled me into a false sense of security. My wolf senses weren't developed yet, and I didn't even realise that I walked past wolves every minute of the day. Even so, it took me all of two days to realise that the majority of the city’s inhabitants were werewolves. On my second day, I ran into the first werewolf that openly admitted to me what he was. He was just an Omega like most wolves. He lived on the streets, like me, but he was nice, asked me about myself, he even shared his meal with me. That was the day I learned that when you’re a rogue, you never trusted anyone – not even friendly Omegas. As it turned out, that friendly Omega were looking for a quick buck by handing me over to Orio
Bowden “Please!” the Omega begs. “Alpha Orion ordered me to do it. I had no other choice.” “What’s your name?” “Armin.” “All right, Armin. Why did Alpha Orion order you to poison me?” “Not you. The queen. I'm just an Omega, he doesn't tell me shit.” Frowning, I return to the food trolley and lift the other plate’s dome. This food smells clean, uncorrupted. “Why were you so sure the queen would eat the poisoned food?” “I was going to serve it to her myself?” "Okay," I decide to switch gears. It was stupid asking him why Orion wants Kaiya dead anyway - I wouldn't trust the Omega werewolves in my castle with that kind of information either. “Tell me why you burning down the city?” The Omegas wild eyes flit around the room. “He listens,” the Omega whispers. “I know that,” I say and lift up one of several black boxes set up around the suite. “That’s why we use these.” “What are those?” Kaiya asks. “Audio jammers. It interferes with the listening devices.” “Oh,” she looks at th
BowdenTonight, more than any night in so long I can barely remember the last time this happened, I crave intimacy with my mate. The three mates before Kaiya existed purely for Knox’s wellbeing, and it never progressed as far as sex with any of them.Since Nolene died, I only had a few partners. I never humiliated my mates by taking mistresses. In between mates, I’d find myself women if I needed them. They warmed my bed, and in return, they received special treatment. I made sure they understood our arrangment, and they all accepted it.But it was never the same as being with your mate. It was always empty, meaningless, and after a while joyless. Most of the time, it was just easier to masturbate, but without a mate, my nights could become cold and lonely, which was when I’d go in search of a mistress until Knox started to pine for a mate again.“What is it?” Kaiya asks and contorts her body in a strange knot so she can look me in the eyes.Instead of answering her, I smile and grip h
Kaiya Bowden wakes me with a soft kiss. I smile before I open my eyes, remembering with a bang that I fell asleep while naked and that I'm on full display with my legs wide open. I blush and grab for the sheat, trying to cover myself. My mate chuckles and grabs my hand. “You do realise I’ve been looking at you the whole night, right?” he asks. With my face on fire, I fold the sheet around myself regardless. “That doesn't mean you can look now.” "Yes dear," he jokes and turns his back on me. "Go wash and get dressed. We leave in fifteen minutes.” I don’t really feel like it. All I want to do is stay here, in this room, alone with my mate. When everyone left, when it was just the two of us, I felt so safe and protected. It felt as if I finally found my home. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” He looks over his shoulder and smiles at me. “Orion would probably prefer it that way too.” “Am I not an Alpha and his equal?” “No, you are not his equal.” I open my mouth to prot
Bowden Kaiya sits at the table, looking out over the city while I talk to Trevor on the phone. My mate is not in a good place. Confronting Orion did not exactly go as planned, and she's beyond devastated. Her emotions are racing like a runaway train, and every so often, she wipes a tear away. “Have the Alphas left?” I ask my assistant. “Yes, King, for the most part.” I am exhausted and not looking forward to the drive back to the castle with our prisoners. I don't want to talk to the Lycans about what happened here and why. I don't want to tell them about our dead but not dead mates in the catacombs. It's too much. All of it. I need a fucking break. “Who is left?” I ask. “Claxton and Nero won’t leave until they’ve spoken to the queen.” “Why not?” “They want to hear from her own mouth that she’s giving up her claim to Moon Dance.” I sigh and sink to the couch. After what happened last night, I'm confident Kaiya would just as soon burn that entire place to the ground and wipe he
Bowden Kaiya curls up on my lap like a cat as Elowen softly starts to purr, calling out to me. Knox surges to the surface, so eager to comfort his mate. Our wolves don’t understand Kaiya’s very big and complicated human emotions - all they know is that she’s upset…and both of them expect me to fix it. After hundreds upon hundreds of years on this planet, I thought I’d seen and experienced every Goddess-awful thing this world had to offer, but I was wrong. Likewise, after seven mates, three of which I loved fiercely, I thought I knew everything about being a good mate. I was wrong. None had ever broken my heart in the way Kaiya breaks my heart. None had ever been as complicated as she is. Of course, none of them were the daughters of Deimos fucking Cole. And, I realise with a shock, I’d never loved any of them more than I love her. I will burn this world to the ground to keep her safe and happy. I will skin Orion alive and feed his remains to the dogs if that’s what she asked of me
Dear Readers, Here we are at the end of Kaiya and Bowden's story. This one flew by didn't it? I loved working on it, and I'm genuinely sad that it has come to an end. Kaiya is perhaps one of my favourite characters, and I loved exploring her story. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I was once again blown away by your amazing support. I want you to know that I do read your comments, and they do always encourage me to work harder and write better. I love hearing from you. Writers always love hearing from their readers, so please never stop! You have no idea how much it means to us as writers. Thank you, as always, from the very bottom of my heart for your support, comments, gems and ratings. It means everything to me. I hope to see you for our next adventure. Much love,Celice
KaiyaThe returning Lycans didn’t care where Deborah and I came from, especially not after Bowden told them that going forward, none of them have to give up their mates unless they want to do so by choice.None of them wanted to break their bonds. None of them wanted to suffer through the heartache again. Centuries of living in fear came to an abrupt end, and they embraced it with open arms and hearts.A week later, Neil mated with one of my father’s ex harem girls. A sweet young woman named Kaylee, a week after that, Deacon mated with Sparrow. A new light shone in the castle, one of hope and happiness.Three weeks after I came back, Vanessa returned, but she wasn’t the same. Jaeger told her what happened, and it scared her. She couldn’t get her mind wrapped around it – the magic, the deaths, the mayhem, all the things things that humans find unimaginable. We were the living embodiment of her nightmares.She gave Jaeger an ultimatum – leave his home and live with her in the human world
Kaiya I wake to the sound of the song I sang to the mates the day they exited the catacombs. Deborah stands next to me, a confused frown on her face. “They’re all dead,” she says. “They’re supposed to be,” I say without thinking. I have no idea where that little nugget of knowledge came from, but I know it to be true. I groan softly and sit up, looking around me. There's no light coming in from outside, but I can feel the full moon. A white sheet of snow cuts the outside world off from view. The only light comes from the flickering torches against the walls. Bowden isn’t here like he was the last time, and I feel completely and utterly abandoned, cold, and lonely. “Why aren’t they waking?” Deborah asks, her face pulled into a frown of confusion. “You could never wake them,” Lauren says from the darkness. I swivel my head in all directions, looking for her. “Not by yourselves. They were dead and you forced them from their afterlife, pulling their souls into the void.” “We didn’t
Bowden “Bowden?” Griffin asks from the entrance of the catacombs. “This is not healthy. You have to get out of here. Time is running out.” Every day, just before sunset, I come to the catacombs and stare at Kaiya’s face, willing her to open her eyes. I shake my head, unable to move. Three days after Kaiya died the first time, the bond started to come back to life. It helped to keep some of the darkness at bay, and I did all right until the day after the full moon, when it happened all over again. The pain of it woke me from my sleep, tearing through my like a blunt knife. I was still trying to take a breath when Griffin stormed into my apartment, a look of pure agony on his face. "Is it breaking?" he asked. "Are they proper dead?" "I don't know." I gasped through the pain. The first time it happened was still too raw, too fresh, and it all blended together into a stewing pot of abject suffering We rushed to the catacombs to see all the mates back in their sarcophagi and Kaiya
Kaiya I didn’t expect to go back to sleep when I entered the catacombs. I didn't give it much thought before now, but what the hell are we supposed to do down here, day in day out, unable to sleep, unable to live, unable to die? No wonder everyone is so fucking angry. I've not even been in the catacombs that long, and I'm already pissed off at the world and the dark witches that cursed me to live this waking nightmare. Lauren leads us into a vast, open temple. It's bigger than the one in Junction City, but unlike the one under that pack house, this temple glows brightly. It is warm and inviting, and I feel no trepidation when I step inside. There are twenty witches in the temple, including the old woman that did the purity test on me, standing around the altar, chanting some ancient spell in an ancient tongue. A spell at least as old as the catacombs. On our way here, I tried to talk to Elowen. I could still sense her, she didn’t die, but just like I couldn’t talk to Bowden anymor
Kaiya I open my eyes, but it’s as if I’m trying to see through a deep mist. I can’t make anything out around me. My arms and legs are trapped against my body. Someone tied me up. I let out a high-pitched scream and try to struggle out of my bindings, grunting and crying as panic wells up in my chest. “Sh-sh-sh,” Bowden’s voice flushes over me. “Stop fighting. I’ve got you.” At the sound of his voice, I relax and allow him to lift me up off the hard surface I’m lying on. He unwraps whatever it is that kept me trapped like a swaddled baby, and the more he works to undo me, the more of the world comes into view. What happened? I remember falling asleep in Bowden’s arms, and then nothing. Not even dreams. Did I make it? Were we wrong? My heart sinks when I sit up and take in my surroundings. We’re in the catacombs. The thing that bound me now lies at my feet, and looks like some kind of funeral shroud. The full moon is casting it’s glow in through the opening. Two weeks went by, but t
Bowden When we return to the castle, we find two more dead werewolves. Mindy, the one who always did Kaiya’s hair, and a male that worked in the kitchens. “Fuck!” I growl. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” “Bowden,” Griffin says gently. “I’ll take care of this. Go upstairs and get started on your whiskey.” “No. I’m taking care of these fuckers once and for all.” “What are you going to do?” I give Jaeger a cold stare. “We have a dungeon full of witches.” “No,” my Gamma says. “No, you can’t tie them to you. You already battle with your own darkness. Tying that many to you…it will swallow you whole.” When I mated with Kaiya, my darkness faded in the brightness of her light, but it’s back now with a vengeance. I want to kill something, preferably hunters. “Leave me alone,” I say and stomp through the castle to my apartment. I get the ritual box from the safe, locking the office behind me again, and go to the dungeons. Griffin waits for me at the bottom of the stairs. “Are you going to try to sto
Bowden The Lycans formed an honour guard on either side of the path that leads to the catacombs. They’re dressed in their mourning clothes, the same as everyone else, hands clasped in front of them, heads bowed. A few of them are openly crying, including Neil. He never did take a real liking to Kaiya, but he loved her. When you live as long as we have, you start to learn that the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. It's the only time I feel comfortable showing them all my emotions, open and raw, bleeding for all to see. They've all been here more than once, and they all know the enormity of it. The exquisite and unending pain. Jaeger and Griffin walks ahead of me to show me the place they had prepared for her. It’s a little deeper into the catacombs, but not so far that the warm sun streaming in from outside won’t catch her. Oswald came to light all the torches that had gone out while the mates were roaming around outside, and they flicker in the breeze, casting their soft,
Bowden “That’s it.” I slam the last of the hunters’ diaries shut. Out of sheer desperation, we turned to them but found nothing important. “There’s nothing. No answers.” We have spent the last two and a half days frantically reading, searching for answers to the mate problem, while also trying to figure out how to break the death curse. I went into the dungeons and questioned the witches I brought back from Junction City to hear if any of them could break the death curse, or at least knew who cast it, but they were as clueless as Samantha was. I stare at Kaiya, who is sitting next to Oswald on the couch, reading a book about nymphs. We know a lot more about them now, but very little about wild children. No one bothered to write about them because they’re so rare. A knot pushes up in my throat as I realise that we’re not going to be able to save her. Up until a few minutes ago, I kept expecting a miracle, kept thinking we’d find something somewhere, but I was arrogant...and so, so