It takes some time for me to find Lyros but I do.I had to walk back to the spot where we met him on the fields and when I didn't find him there, I took myself down to the throne room. He’s also not there so I take myself down to the room we both share.The room he killed a woman for because I was absent from it.The urge to trash the room overcomes me. I always dreamt of doing that when I was back at the pack. My parents would make me arrange half the rooms in the packhouse and it sucked to do that when the wolves who slept in them didn’t show me the barest inkling of kindness. I fantasized about ripping pillows up and turning bed sheets into useless strips of fabric.I want to do that to this room, but fear stops me.Fear of Lyros and what he’ll do to Cain.I find him at the entrance to the flower maze, like he’s been waiting for me and as his eyes turn to meet mine, all the repressed violence I've been keeping under the surface rises in one violent burst.I lunge for him.I know it
She asks the question I've been asking myself for a while now.Adelaide stands at arm’s reach, the distance between us something that can be closed with a few steps but the look in her eyes making me feel there are leagues and leagues of distance between us.Her stance is defiant, her eyes twitch from the pain she must be getting from her skull but she stands there, and waits for an answer,I laugh.It’s an odd sound, a sound that rings sultry and cracked. Anger flows through me like liquid fire and a strange annoyance rises in me.“Who are you to ask me that?”The words come out with an unfamiliar air to them. I feel I am speaking to myself as much as I am speaking to her but my eyes are firmly on her.“What right do you have to ask me if I want you, Adelaide?” I step closer and she doesn’t move away. She doesn’t back down.Good.I stop in front of her smaller frame and peer into her eyes. Soft brown eyes that would consume the icy blue of mine if they could.My magic caresses her m
“How bad is it?” There’s silence in my cell. An almost deafening silence that has remained constant for the past two days. My first day here, I could only hear the sound of my heart and the inhales and exhales I took, but now that silence has been broken, and I don't know if she’s asking me about herself or my current situation. Adelaide smells… provoking. The sort of scent that would send males for miles and miles into heat. There’s a tropicality to the scent that wafts off her, and my mind shouldn’t stray there but it does. I have to look away from her before I can regain some control of my thoughts and I regret the words the moment I say them. “Why are you here?” The temperature in my cold cell seems to drop a thousand degrees lower and the wall behind me feels chill down to the last brick. I hear Adelaide chuckle. I hear the hurt she hides within that chuckle and I feel her presence as she moves closer to grab the bars. There’s a calmness to her voice when she speaks. A
My eyes sting when I close them to blink and it’s not a bad sting.It’s the kind of sting that accompanies the dull ache in my bones. I feel like I've been drained of energy, and it’s not a spectacular feeling.I kick a stray stone my eyes latch onto before a scoff escapes my lips.What the fuck did I think I was doing breaking down like that? I must have looked so silly.And Cain.A liquid feeling surfaces in my body and I feel it as it moves, from my heart to my brain and then a full sweep down to my core.Cain seems to be misunderstanding some things.When I say I want to be free, I mean I want to be free to love him.I still want to have the power to live my life without a Lycan king breathing down my neck, or parents who never loved me humiliating me, and dooming me to a life of insignificance and disgrace.I may have escaped the latter, or not, but my concept of freedom has changed now.An image of Lyros taking me back to my parent’s pack surfaces in my mind and for the first ti
Priam leads me into the forests. A million possibilities fly around in my head. What if he’s lying about Alizadeh and this is just a plan to have me killed? He could kill me right now and bury my body in these woods, but he would never get away with it. As scary as Lyros is, he’s also capable. I saw that in the house of the Lycan King beyond the border. Images from that time flash past my eyes and I see him once again, on the phone, a smile on his face as he speaks to someone. Things were bad at that time but not as bad as they were now. “Watch the snake.” My blood freezes over and my stop is instantaneous. I have a foot raised and beneath it, slithering ever closer, is a creature that makes my breath catch. It almost makes me suffocate at the same time. There are snakes in these woods? “You can keep on walking. She won’t bite.” SHE. Priam knows this reptile on a personal level. I don’t know if I’m to cling closer to him because of that or flee as fast as I can. “How many p
King Alizadeh proves to be useful over the next few days. To begin with, he’s one person Lyros doesn’t look like he can hurt. It strikes me as odd, the fact that these people are actual kings and it seems to have eluded me at some point, but I remember it fully now. They rule kingdoms and have subjects loyal to them. I don’t know how strong the loyalty in Lyros’s kingdom runs, but I believe it’s just enough that he doesn’t flip out when I keep on spending time with Alizadeh. The other king doesn’t seem to mind either. If anything I feel he’s going along with it, as some form of revenge against Lyros. The reason for that should be Cain, and I believe it is, yet I feel there’s an angle to all this I'm not seeing. Cain doesn’t come to train me for the next four days and when I ask Lyros about it, he tells me to my face it’s because of me. According to him, Cain is being punished for seeing me. Cain should have chased me away. He should have plucked his eyeballs out if it meant h
The King and I engage in a stare off and I can see the surprise in his eyes.“Why do you think I would do that?”“It seemed you had a moment ago.” When his frown deepens I decide to stop with the attack and tow a more friendly path “If you have, I’m not calling you out on it because I’m angry about it. This wouldn’t be the first time it’s happening so don’t beat yourself up on my account.”King Alizadeh of Blessed Sight furrows his brows and my heart skips a beat.Four days with him have made me know that is never a good sign.“What’s wrong? Is something happening?”Experience should tell me even if anything was, he would probably just shake his head and tell me all is well while he walks off to deal with whatever it is that’s wrong. But it doesn’t stop my pulse from racing and my heart from hammering into my chest.Has…. Lyros finally snapped?“You’re beginning to act more like him.”I feel my anxiety drop in the most anticlimactic way ever and I cock a confused eyebrow up at the Lyc
I hiss at the red burn I now have on my hand and direct a silent glare at my instructor.Alizadeh looks perfectly at peace with himself. Despite the fact that he may or may not have just used the sun to burn me.His voice is calm when he speaks.“Imagine your mind as an infinite space.” With gritted teeth and a still slightly angry-pissed heart, I do as he says but instead of closing my eyes, I keep them open.My parents were disappointed when they found out I was of the omega rank, and even then I wasn't a pure omega. I haven’t gone into heat once in my life, I don't have a wolf because having one who never shows up doesn’t count. I have no speed or supernatural strength.I have nothing that is an asset to parents who wanted a fierce daughter to carry out their plans of domination by marrying into a stronger pack and killing off her husband so her father could swoop in and take over.The only way my father would think I could accomplish that was by selling my body out to those men,