She glanced at the window and her blood turned cold as she recognized one of the voices that was shouting the loudest in front of the inn. It was the voice of her adopted sister, Selina. She would recognize that voice anywhere after all, it had been responsible for a large percentage of her torment and bullying.Emilia walked to the window with the covers still wrapped around her and gasped at the sight in front of her. Selina was being held back by King’s driver as she tried to escape him and climb up to get toShe could see her sister’s face contorted in anger as she yelled over the driver’s shoulder while he kept her away from the building. Emilia strained her ears to make out what she was yelling out angrily, but she could not. Instead, all she heard were muffled sounds.A frown set on her face as she continued watching through the window. News had probably gotten around town that she was back. Perhaps the girl at the diner had recognized her after all, or maybe she had been seen
The seven years between them seemed to stretch out as she finally saw him again. He seemed a little more jaded than he had been years ago. He had always been huge, however, and now he appeared even bigger, like he had been spending more time working out.Emilia stood, unable to take her eyes off him. How was it possible that he had become even more gorgeous? She was awestruck by all of the changes that she saw in him and how the changes seemed to tie together to make a perfect exterior.It didn’t occur to her that she had been standing there staring at him for a long time until she saw one of his alpha friends poke his head from beside King to look at her. The spell he had cast on her was suddenly broken and she was brought out of the moment.Why are you drooling over a man who has already rejected you once already? Will you never learn?She chastised herself as her thoughts finally caught up with her. She frowned suddenly as all the resentment she had harbored toward him all along su
Emilia had guessed that it was probably because of how witches had been hunted and killed in times past. They were the most widely hunted and killed of all the supernaturals.Over the centuries, the communities of witches had faded off, as it was easier to kill them all and erase them from existence if they were together as opposed to when they remained a secret that no one knew about and stayed hidden.Helping another witch would make it easier for hunters to track you down.In the supernatural communities, people were aware that there were powerful witches scattered all over, but finding them was difficult, and getting them to care about why it was you were searching for them was an even more difficult task.Of course, she hadn’t expected them to welcome her with open arms. However, she had hoped that she wouldn’t have to deal with the people for a while and could simply get on with her task so she could be off as soon as possible.Emilia supposed that although that had been what sh
King seemed even more taken aback now, but she did not care. Instead, she turned and walked into her room, shutting the door behind her without bothering to spare them or him another glance.KINGOnce again, King had stood silently while Emilia had been accused. Unlike the last time, though, this time he had wanted to stand up for her.She had not really given him a chance to do so, however. Instead, she had mounted her own defense, addressing her adopted sister confidently.King had flinched slightly when Emilia said that there was nothing between them, and that they were only working together. That was not what he’d had in mind, especially not after the kind of night they had shared.Unfortunately, Emilia had made the pronouncement with an air of finality, and there was nothing King could add to counter what she had said. So, he nodded silently as Selina glanced from one person to the other suspiciously.On the one hand, King was happy to see that Emilia had changed. She had become
“Thanks,” King said, lifting his paper cup.Emilia glanced at him and nodded, then turned to look out the window. King wanted to speak with her, but he knew it was a futile attempt. He sipped quietly out of the cup, adding to the awkward silence in the car, before Everett wisely turned up the volume of the radio.The car pulled off the road a quarter of an hour later. Emilia looked around and rubbed her hands together. “This is the place?”“The most recent incident happened not very far from here. There have been multiple incidents scattered through the forest, but there were a few incidents in this area. It’s quite a hike, though. Think you can keep up?”“I’ll be fine. Let’s go.”King grabbed his backpack and led Emilia down a game trail that led into the woods. The terrain was sloped, and he was worried for Emilia. She managed herself expertly, and he remembered belatedly that she had grown up among wolves.“Can we talk about last night?” King asked, glancing over his shoulder.“No,
King felt the same way. He had so many questions. What was this creature they were up against? Why kill if you didn’t plan to feed? What did it or they want? Was there a bigger goal? A bigger picture that he had been failing to see?He was glad that he had Emilia alongside. She had a way of seeing through problems, and it was refreshing to know that he could seek a second opinion.King’s ear twitched and he looked up immediately. He glanced into the distance, making sure. And then he heard it again.“Did you hear that?” Emilia asked, to King’s surprise.“I think so,” Emilia replied. “Come on.” They walked several yards down and the sound grew more distinct to Emilia. It was the croaking of a buck.They found the deer behind a bush, with a deep, red gash on the side of its throat. Blood had soaked into the dirt and grass under the beast, darkening the spot. The buck’s eyes jumped with fear from King to Emilia, and it tried uselessly to move away.Emilia rushed forward and got down on h
There was a stout, well-built hut in the middle, and an outhouse behind and to the side. There was a medium-sized animal pen, with the fence connected to the wall of the hut. A small barn completed the buildings in the large space, everything looking very organized.“Here we are,” King announced. His breathing still sounded uncannily even and Juniper ignored how that discovery made her feel inside.“Hullo!” King called loudly.A man, who Juniper assumed was a ranger, opened the front door and peeked outside the hut. He had on a thick fisherman’s jacket over an equally thick checkered shirt. He had on faded jeans, and a pair of sturdy leather boots to complete the look.He still had a spoon in one hand, and Emilia concluded that she and King had probably disturbed the poor man’s lunch. He had an impatient look on his face as he stepped out of the hut fully.He glanced at Emilia with shock written all over his face. His eyes narrowed and she rolled her eyes. Yeah, the town folk still di
“You need to warn everyone,” Emilia said, as soon as she remembered the vision. “They need to be careful out here. Whatever I saw…I didn’t see it clearly but…it was fast and it was strong. And it was dangerous.“In the buck’s memory, the attack happened in a fraction of a second. I have no idea what attacked it, all I saw was a blur. One moment it was jumping over a fallen tree, the next it was bleeding to death.“Whatever you do, you need to keep people out of these woods. The young wolves don’t stand a chance against this thing. I don’t think even full-grown wolves stand a chance against it. Any trip into the forest should be in groups. Please, King, you need to get them to listen to you. You have to convince them to stay out of here.”Emilia remembered how it had felt like she had been the one bleeding to her death, and she shivered. King watched her, his face hard and his expression serious.“Absolutely,” King finally replied. “You’re right. I will be calling for an emergency meet
“I can’t stop thinking about Selina,” Emilia said wistfully.King turned to face her. “Truthfully, I had also not expected her to do that.”“I was moved by the fact that Selina apologized.”“That’s true,” King agreed. “To be honest, she was the last person I expected to apologize to you.”After Emilia had saved Selina’s life, she had come to apologize to her. It was quite a show of humility as she had gone down on her knees and bowed to the ground before Juniper. Juniper had pleaded with her to get up, but she’d refused to get up until she had said her piece.“I’m sorry for how I treated you growing up,” Selina had said, with teary eyes. “You were right. You never killed Dad. I was always so angry at you for that night, but I never thanked you for saving me that night. And that sucks.“So thank you, Selina. Thank you. Twice you saved my life, and all I ever did was hate you and bully you. I wish I could turn back time and do things differently, but I can’t. Do you think you can forgiv
He let out a sigh of relief, then collapsed on the bed again. His thighs burned something furious and he was afraid of moving too suddenly. He couldn’t deal with a cramp right now.Emilia’s breathing started to level out after five minutes. She had the energy of five people in bed, and no matter how tired King thought she was, she was always ready for another tumble.Her intensity and desire scared KIng, but it was still one of the things that he loved the most about her. She matched his energy in so many different ways and their time together always ended up looking like one of them had a point to prove to the other.She turned to look at him, beaming. “That was….”“Amazing?” King finished for her, chuckling.“I was going to say scary, but amazing works as well.” Emilia smiled. “Really, I thought I was going to burst an artery for a moment there.”“Lucky you,” King teased. “I think I heard a few pop.” Emilia laughed as he leaned forward to kiss her forehead, and then her lips.“Poor
With tears in her eyes, she admitted what she had been holding back from admitting for so long. “I love you too, King.”King smiled wider and put his arms around her waist. He pulled her close, gently, and kissed her softly. Juniper melted into his embrace and forgot all about her pain and fear and frustration. She wrapped her arms around King, happy that she could hold him again.She had been so afraid of losing him. She had been so afraid of dying. And yet…here they were. She gripped him tighter, wanting to make sure he was real, not another sliver of her creative mind, a figment of her imagination. Yes, he was real. This was real.She was startled to hear voices and broke the kiss abruptly. The entire pack approached them, whooping and cheering loudly. She blushed slightly with embarrassment. She had completely forgotten all about them, and with good reason.“Wow!” Articus said. “What you did? We have never seen anything like it before. Where did you learn that from?”Emilia blinke
She walked slowly to the side, keeping herself on his blind side as she approached. She tried to levitate off the ground but couldn’t. All her powers had manifested physically into the spear in her hand.The only mana left in her was what powered her to move and function. She had to strike, and quickly, or she would be dead before she realized it.King had seen her get up, had seen the spear form in her hand. By some miracle, he had managed to keep his expression neutral and his eyes on the vampire.The vampire landed softly in front of him and pulled his blood spear out of the air. “So, this is how it ends.” He grinned wildly. “You fought well.”King held his gaze. “Don’t patronize me. Do what you have to do. Do you remember your promise? My life for theirs. No harm comes to my pack or my mate.”“Why the rush to die?” The vampire shook his head in mock sympathy. “Such a naive little boy. I made you no promises, fool. But I will promise you this. When I kill everyone you love and dest
The vampire threw his head back and laughed maniacally. He held the whole town hostage. He was judge, jury, and executioner, and he had all the power. Worst of all, he wasraving mad.He formed another spear in the air and it hovered beside his head. He shoved Emilia casually, ever so absentmindedly, to the ground. She crashed into the ground and bumped her knees as she fell.Pain lanced through her. Her palms felt like she wielded two balls of fire, and she couldn’t feel her legs. She stretched out on the ground, taking stock of her injuries. She never suffered any real damage from injuries, thanks to her powers, but she still felt pain.She watched the vampire as he floated toward King. Her chest squeezed with fear when she looked at the long, thin spear that moved before him. He had a look of pure evil on his face.King, on the other hand, looked resigned to his fate. He looked like someone who was waiting to die. He looked ready for it, like he had been waiting his entire life to d
He saw the vampire hovering high in the sky, watching the people. King had a sinking feeling in his stomach as he watched the still vampire.The vampire spread his arms to the side. At first, nothing happened. And then, the air around him shimmered. Thin, red objects appeared in the sky. Thousands of them, pointed like needles.King let out a wordless cry when he recognized the pointed objects floating in the sky. Blood spears. This was why the vampire had spent his time killing and discarding of so many animals.This was blood magic on an unprecedented scale. Cold realization washed over him. The vampire was going to wipe out the entire pack in one attack, and there was nothing that he could do to stop it.King clambered up to his feet, feeling defeated. How many of those could he block? How many people could he have saved today? He arrived at one inevitable answer. Not enough.As he had feared, the spears were turned toward the pack. His mouth ran dry and he watched wordlessly, awai
His body trembled from pain and he could feel a few broken ribs. He got up shakily and the pain lacerated through him, even as his body started to slowly knit itself back together.Still disoriented, he looked up just in time to see a fist flashing toward his face. The vampire’s bony knuckle connected solidly with King’s jaw and sent his head reeling backward.The force of the blow caused a shock wave to spread out around King and the vampire. He went flying backward, crashing into the ground several times before he came to a stop several yards away.He got up slowly and felt a hot, white pain in his jaw and knew that it had been shattered. He limped, his front legs faltering as his shoulder had not fully healed. The vampire floated toward him slowly as he felt his jaw. The vampire grinned at him and licked his lips with a pale tongue. “My turn.”King had no idea how to escape the blows that rained down on him. He ducked as furiously as he could, but half the strikes connected, and he
Fannar drilled Selina about what she had seen, and asked for details about her fight with the vampire.Selina cackled drily. “Fight? That wasn’t a fight. That was a beating. I barely managed to get my hands up before it ripped into me with the force of a bear and the speed of a fox. I have never seen anything like that in my life before. I think we are in big trouble.”The room fell silent and the alphas exchanged glances with each other. Asher spoke up first. “Did he give any indications why he took your sister?”Selina gave him an incredulous look. “If he did, I didn’t notice. I was too busy picking pieces off my ass off the curb.” She sighed and slumped into her seat. “What do we do?”The question hung over the room like a thick cloud of black smoke. No one had an answer to Selina’s question. No one knew how to find the vampire in the woods with powers like she had just described.Worse, they had no idea if Juniper was still alive. King didn’t want to think about what could have ha
He frowned and narrowed his eyes at her. She shriveled under the scrutiny. He looked down at her stomach and she covered herself reflexively in horror. Knowing how he felt about the wolves, she was afraid of what he would do to her unborn child.A look of realization settled on his face. “You’re carrying a wolf child in your womb…” His voice sounded as soft as the wind rustling through leaves, barely a whisper.He let go of her wrist and took two steps back. He looked hurt and upset. “How could you? How could you allow your womb to be tainted by wolves?” And then, his eyes turned as cold as ice and his voice hardened. “I will wipe them all out. I will start with Moonwood, and then I will wipe every last one from the Starlight Valley and wider.”Emilia started to plead but he just walked backward, with a look of cold resolution on his face. Without another word, he turned around and sped off into the woods, heading toward the town.Without thinking, Emilia started running. From the den