Ariah's POVThe bell rang.“Ugh! The bell always rings.” I exclaimed aloud in frustration.Although I had lived almost every day of my life waking up to hear that particular sound or rather being woken up by the sound, I still hated it each time it sounded. I was on the top bunk of one of the dozen bunks in the room, or rather should I call it a large space with a rusty, old iron door that shielded us from the corridor. I haven’t always fancied living in the Pack’s orphanage but what other choice did I have?I never did normal things, we at the orphanage only went to school for five hours and we were immediately called back by the head of the orphanage, who we refer to as the grumpy Miss Sheldon. She didn’t have a liking for me or most of the girls my age and she never bothered to hide it. She was a huge woman in her huge fifties, with giant breasts that never seemed to fit into any of her clothes. She looked like a man, she had a hard, square chin and brown bead like eyes that always
Ariah's POVI couldn’t sleep all night and Nina kept me company, I was so excited for what the next day was going to bring. We chatted all night about this and that, and although I had tried to bring up the topic that had been bothering me all day about the Royal Packhouse and the Alpha of our pack, Nina dismissed it and changed the topic. But that didn’t make me less enthusiastic about finding my mate, I had no other choice, it was the only way I could get out of here and finally say, ‘To hell with you Mrs. Sheldon, you sound like a man!’Miss Sheldon knew everyone’s birthday, but none was ever celebrated. In her words, “Why should I celebrate the day my miseries started?” Nina revealed to me that she never had a mate and all her life, she had been bound to the Pack's orphanage. “That’s probably why she’s this mean and grumpy all the time,” Nina suggested.“True, but common Nina, be frank with me. If the Moon goddess gave you Miss Sheldon as a mate, wouldn’t you rather be mate-les
Ariah's POVThe orphanage was like a prison, with Miss Sheldon as its warden, but it was nothing compared to the dungeon I had been thrown into. Each night, I froze and the cold squeezed into my body relentlessly. The grey walls of the square-shaped cage were cold and smelt of cement, there was no window, hence the light from the sun never penetrated the room. My biggest dream had turned into a nightmare in less than ten minutes, but that was only the beginning of my tragedy.I was fed only once a day, with an iron tray where a small portion of whatever was served was placed. For days I lived like that and I cried bitterly each day, this wasn’t what I had been expecting. Nina had been right about what she said and I had been a fool for not believing her. I had heard conversations of the guards, the dungeon was as silent as a graveyard so every word said within thirty meters traveled clearly.“Will that one get out?” A guard asked on the fourth day of my imprisonment.“Can you ever tel
Ariah's POVThe next couple of days were filled with a series of events that were to shape my future, for better or for worse, I wasn’t sure. I had to plan my escape from the Blue Moons pack to perfection, if I were to be caught, I couldn’t even imagine the doom that would spell for me. At first, I hadn’t taken an interest in the routine of the guards at the dungeon, but as I started plotting my escape, I found some loopholes, it was as though they never thought anyone would even think of escaping. The guards were changed at midnight. For the first two days, I observed their movements and when I was completely sure, I thought of my next move. That was easy enough, Alpha James always had a spare key to all the cells in the dungeon, all I had to do was wait for the day I would be summoned to be raped. Crazy isn’t it? That I would be in anticipation of such a day, well it came and I was anxious and scared, but I gritted my mind. After Alpha James was through with me that night, he fell
Ariah's POVHe struggled to keep his face impassive as he averted his eyes from me and let me go. I could still see a trace of realization on his face, there were deep lines on that handsome face that was in disbelief. I was thrilled, I was thrilled but I didn’t forget what happened the last time I felt this sensation, I could never. What had happened in the previous pack, the last time I claimed to have found my mate. I tried to brush it off my mind, saying it was just another silly sensation and attraction towards a brutal beast in a human body, but this one was too strong. The mate bond was tugging at everything in me, it was intoxicating, choking in fact. He took a few steps back and looked up at the ceiling. I couldn’t help but ask, “Did you feel that?” I didn’t know what to address him as.He wasn’t my king, he wasn’t my alpha either, I wasn’t a member of his pack, I was just a captive. A prisoner that they found wandering around when she was not supposed to. My life was a co
Ethan’s POV I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit, what I felt for the prisoner was just so strange, so weird, and unacceptable. I knew what that feeling was, my parents had told me about it so many times while I was growing up and I still remembered it just like it was yesterday. “Ethan dear, are you sure you do not want to hear the story of how your dad found out that I was his mate?” My mother would always say when I came down for dinner. “Mom!” I groaned, I didn’t want to listen to this again for probably the one-thousandth time. “I’m sixteen, you’ve been telling this same story since I was able to understand what you were saying.” My mom would always frown at this point and a hurt look would come over her eyes, “That means you do not want to hear the story, dear?” My mother always had a manipulative way of getting what she wanted from either me or my father. Seeing how sad she looked, I would always give in with a frustrated look. “Alright Mom, I’m all ears.” I woul
Ethan's POV “ Hey, Ethan.” The man looked at the guards standing, then at the one kneeling. “What’s going on?”“Not too much to worry about, Lowell,” I replied then waved the guards away. “I’ll like to see how you pull this off,” I said to the guard that was going to be imprisoned and he swallowed hard. “What was that all about? Looks like you just pumped the fear of the fucking devil into his body.” Lowell, my beta said. “The guard that was in charge when an escape occurred, a complete numb nut.” I snarled.“Oh yeah! I heard of that stuff, I heard he almost got away too. Which of the men was it? I know a couple have tried to escape a few times, but never really got far. This one got farther than most of them I heard.” He said. “Yes, you heard that part right. But what you didn’t hear completely correctly is that it wasn’t one of the men, it was one of the female prisoners.” I said and Lowell’s hazel eyes widened in disbelief. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Ethan.” He laug
Ariah's POV“Are you going to kill me? Is that what the quiet place is for?” I asked the guard beside me.I had the little confidence to speak now because he wasn’t handling me roughly, his face wasn’t so stoned and he allowed me some breathing space. Despite all this, I still felt like a sheep being led to its slaughter. I thought he wasn’t even going to bother answering, but he did. He shook his head and said, “No, the quiet place isn’t a place of death, it’s just a place.” Just a place? How was that supposed to help me clear my doubts? We were under what seemed like a gigantic tunnel but I didn’t see the light at the end of it yet, if I was going to see it at all, that is. We walked on for another five minutes and out of nowhere, we burst into an opening of fantastic greenery. The grass was so green and well-trimmed, I could lie on it and feel more comfortable than in any place I’d rested my head over the past few days. There was a wooden…house? It looked like a house but also l