Ethan’s POV I turned sharply and listened with alert eyes and ears, waiting to hear the sound again but it didn’t come. Again that pain in my chest rocked me violently and I dropped to one knee, clutching my chest and groaning. “Ariah…where the hell are you?” I asked through clenched teeth.The next thing I heard was the sound of heavy footsteps and I got to both feet again and followed the sound. Then a very familiar scent that set my heart racing with fire came to my nostrils, it was Ariah’s scent. I could never mistake it. I followed the scent, past trees and a few bushes and I finally detected the harsh smell of blood. It was getting darker by the minute and that made it more difficult to make out where I was going. Then my eyes caught a body lying at the trunk of the tree, I slowly approached the tree and my eyes widened with both relief and panic. The lower half of what she wore was covered in blood, her beautiful face was pale. Her hands too were covered in dried blood
James’s POV "Wake up, come on, James, what the fuck has gotten into him?" I heard a distant voice ask, the words echoed in my head but I still couldn't understand what was going on. "What? Why are you looking at me? I don't sleep in the same room with him." Another voice replied. "Matter of fact, if we should be asking anyone, it should be the Ariah girl he kidnapped." "Kidnapped? You mean found?" The first voice said firmly. It was now that I realized who the second voice belonged to. Caleb scoffed, "Oh please, that's not how you find a girl and bring her back. He's kept her captive since he kidnapped her and now that he's all stoned out, she's no fucking where to be found." The glare of the morning sun danced upon my heavy eyelids and the scorching run was showering its fervor down on the Blue Moon pack. It was most unusual for me to still be in bed when the sun was already out and even more absurd that my whole body felt so stiff, it was like the worst hangover. T
Ariah’s POV I didn’t know where I was. There was a terrible ache ravaging through my head and it felt like I had a whole musical band, playing thrash up in my head. I groaned slightly as I forced open my heavy eyelids that had been shut for fuck knows how long. What was going on and where the hell was I? I wondered as I looked around the luxurious room. Some scenes flashed in my head, I remembered killing a man, and then I remembered killing another man, this one more vicious. The next scene that flashed saw me running through a thick forest, panting heavily as I rested on a tree. The next flash, I saw blood, my hands were covered with blood and my clothes were soaked in it too. Then, I remembered my vision becoming blurry and the forest getting darker by the second until it was completely a black abyss. I gasped and tried to sit up from the comfortable bed when I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen. I let out a sharp cry as a biting pain shot up my body when I tried to move ag
Ethan’s POV I was relieved that I had Ariah back, but the first two days were miserable for me. Watching her every night after the doctor left with unconvincing news was the worst moment of my life. There was no way I could forgive myself if the fatal injury had cost Ariah’s life. When the doctor said she was getting better and she would be fine, a huge burden was lifted off my heart. I still stayed the night with her, most times dozing off with her hand in mine, I knew a lot of people that habit didn’t sit well with. The most obvious being Layla. “What are you doing, Ethan?” She cornered me outside my bedroom on a hot morning, I was in no mood to speak to her. I sighed and shut my eyes for a while, then looked at her with tired eyes, “What do you want, Layla?” I asked. She scoffed, “What do I want? I’m sitting here while I know we have a fucking ticking time bomb laying in your bedroom and you expect me to be okay with that? You’ve neglected me for days and you feel I will
Layla’s POV It was all a mess now. Everything I’ve worked for, everything I tried to achieve, it was all going down the drain. It had all been in vain, even the people that died and I had to step on their dead bodies just to get here, it had all been in vain! I sighed as I sat in the back of the Rolls Royce heading back to my pack, I was feeling devastated, angry, and betrayed by everyone and everything. Nature had never been on my side, despite all the efforts I had put in. Who cared if those efforts were good or evil? As long as they got me where I wanted to be right? “You fucking idiot!” I berated myself. It was all my fault. I thought everything would fall into place once I became Ethan’s queen, I thought the feelings would just spring up along the way. Even when Ariah was there and he had kept anything concerning feelings out of our union, I still had hope he would fall for me someday. I scoffed. It was all futile now, I had murdered a man that loved me for one that did
Ariah’s POV. I kept thinking about what Leia said, was I going to let Layla get away with what she did to me by keeping quiet? That would still make me a villain in front of everyone in the pack, I was never going to be accepted here if I didn’t let them know who had framed me. But then, would they believe me? If they didn’t believe me the first time, why would they believe me now? “No…” I said to myself. “There’s no use.” “So what would you do then? What’s the way forward?” Leia asked. I hated when she asked questions she knew I didn’t have the answer to, so I didn’t reply. I had been lying on the bed for an hour or so after the maids brought in food and drinks with strict orders from Lowell to make sure I was overfed. I crawled out of bed, groaning slightly as I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen, and walked to the window, it was nighttime already. I looked down at the beautiful pack, I wondered if I would be able to face them again after all they had done to me. It was even
Ethan’s POV I slammed the door as I walked into my study.You didn’t say the right things…You’ve ruined the night already… Ariah’s words reverberated in my head as I sat on my chair with my fists clenched. How didn’t I think of that? Why did the right things to say elude my mind at that point? Fuck! Her words were stuck in my head and there was a particular thing she said that recurred more than once or twice. …to be sure that I didn’t just go through hell to escape for a man… Where the hell had she been all this while and why did she refer to it as hell? Could it be the forest? Or had she been trapped somewhere? I sat upright and my eyes widened, who was the one that inflicted that injury on her? Or rather what? The cut had been too deep and too large to be that of any normal wild animal, it had to be a Lycan or a werewolf. I was so confused and trying to ponder on who could have been after her life, I couldn’t think of anyone that would try to harm her so badly…except Layla. T
Ethan’s POV I couldn’t get Layla off me in time to stop Ariah from walking away.She huffed when our eyes met and for about three seconds, I turned cold. It was the worst possible scene to occur at this time and I felt so dumb and helpless as I just stood there with Layla in my arms. Ariah didn’t even look like someone who was planning to give me a chance to say anything, she turned and walked up the stairs. My fists clenched tightly as I watched her walk away, there was a painful lump in my throat and my heart sank. This was going to be way harder than I thought and I hadn’t even started dealing with the pack itself and the elders. Fuck me. I sighed and carried Layla to one of the couches in the living room. It was awkward for a crying woman to come back so emotionally around this time of the night. I even thought she was drunk at first, but that wasn’t the case. Her eyes were red and partially swollen, she had been crying right from wherever she came from, I had never seen Layl