Lio and I called a truce temporarily so that we could sleep peacefully that night. Once he spooned me, it wasn’t long before I fell asleep. I started dreaming very vividly. I was sitting on a white-wicker chair in a room I’d never seen before. I was by a large bay window, the sun shining on me brightly. My hair was ridiculously long. It touched the floor where the bottom of my very elegant, silk, white dress pooled around my bare feet. I seemed to be looking at myself in a third person view this time. I was looking down at my stomach and rubbing it gently. I looked pregnant, at least seven months along. Suddenly Lio entered the room, smiling with adoration. He was wearing a white, long sleeved shirt with gray dress pants and was barefoot as well. He walked over to me and knelt down in front of me to rub my bulging stomach. The dream was steadily going in a good direction. Then, three small children that looked between the ages of three and five came running into the room but t
It had been at least two weeks since I’d been to Lio’s house or even called him. My house stayed peaceful without any supernatural shenanigans to speak of. Lio and I hadn’t spoken at all since our dispute. He left voicemails, I listened to them but I didn’t return his calls. When I didn’t call back I would get a call from Ba’al or Naremi either scolding me or asking if I was alright. I’d gone to work as usual and hung out with Celeste when I could. She constantly asked, ‘What’s up with you and Lio?’ but I evaded the question in every way possible. The plan was to give myself some space from the ‘issue’, but I could only run away for so long. I was running away from my problems and I didn’t care. That was before Lio popped up over my house in the middle of the night. I woke up out of my sleep, stirred by the sounds of a car in front of the house. I got out of bed and went to peek out of the blinds. I looked up at the night sky and the moon was full, bright, and beautiful. I step
I tried going to sleep but I couldn’t. I looked over at my digital clock on the night stand and it read, ‘twelve forty-five a.m.’. I sighed and turned over on my back, staring up at the ceiling. After a while my eyes began to feel heavy and I slowly fell asleep. Two hours had passed before my sleep was interrupted by the phone ringing. I turned over on my side and picked up the phone from its receiver. “Hello?” I said, still half asleep. “Astraia wake up! Wake up now!” Naremi’s panic stricken voice shouted at me on the other end of the phone. I sat up in my bed and rubbed my eyes with my free hand. “Alright calm down Naremi, what’s wrong?” I asked. “Turn on the news! Hurry up!” She sounded so scared; I’d never heard her like this before. I started to feel around through my blankets for the TV remote and once I found it, I turned to the local news station. ‘BREAKING NEWS: MONSTERS DOWNTOWN?’ The headline read on the bottom of the screen. A video clip of a huge werele
“…Pumping me full of enough tranquilizers to take down a horse. My body’s naturally high metabolism just burns it off every couple of hours. They come in and drug me, over and over like clockwork…I get to use the bathroom but that’s about it, just like a fucking dog…” Lio’s tone was angry, but he sounded so drained with all of the drugs in his system. I wasn’t surprised about the side effects. “They can’t do this. They’ve violated not only your human rights but the rights every living creature has.” Azzo said. He didn’t say animal rights even though that’s what category Lio’s wolf side would fall under. “You can say it Azzo, my animal rights. Don’t censor yourself like I’m a sensitive child.” Lio said. “Fine, but what needs to happen now is getting you free and safe again.” Azzo stood up before going over to the bed to pick up his briefcase. “I need to get to work. I can’t promise anything.” Azzo said. “I know…Just do what you can Azzo.” Lio said. Azzo kno
Things didn’t start off as smooth as I’d hoped they would. Rollards slammed every wrong thing I had done in my face. It took everything in me not to jump across the table and slam his head against it one good time. I glanced over at Azzo from time to time when he spoke and I could tell that he was trying very hard to keep his cool. Rollards kept walking slow circles around the table as he spoke. “You had numerous occasions to be honest with me. Why didn’t you tell the truth? Something that dangerous living around so many innocent people…” He said. His voice held disappointment. “Lio isn’t a ‘something’, he’s ‘someone’ just like us. I didn’t come forward for obvious reasons, officer. The way he’s been treated so far is one of those reasons.” I said. “Do you understand how dangerous he is? A secret like this could have changed the outcome for him had you came forward in the beginning. Be grateful the entire city didn’t march down here to collect his head.” Rollards sa
I sat in the living room of Lio’s house next to Naremi. Baltasar, Kyra, and Githinji sat around me in various positions on the floor. None of them were smiling at me. “We understand why you went to the jail. We even understand why you went behind our backs, but why expose yourself to the media frenzy? What will you do if your face shows up on the news tonight? Have you even thought of what your parents would think if they saw you going into the jail?” Kyra said, sounding impatient with every word. Baltasar patted her on the shoulder. “Easy Kyra. Look, getting in the middle of the ‘monster story’ could cost you your job. Do you understand?” He said looking me square in the eyes. “Yeah, I understand. I have a lot to lose.” I said. Baltasar gave a simple nod. “Though we do appreciate you calling Azzo, we want you to let us handle things from here on out. We’re glad to see you standing by him but we’ll be less than pleased to see you hurt because of this situation.” Git
Five long, grueling days had passed. I had been awake into the wee hours of the morning, too stressed out to sleep for the third night in a row. When I finally managed to fall asleep, someone woke me up. My shoulder was being shaken and my name being called over and over. I opened my eyes enough to see Naremi’s fire red hair in my face. “Wake up child, c’mon now!” She said, continuing to shake me. I rubbed my eyes and slowly sat up in the bed. “What? What is it?” I asked in a voice that sounded like I’d been in a desert without water for two days. “Baltasar is on the phone with Azzo right now. Don’t you want to know what’s going on?” She asked before standing up in front of me. “Of course I do.” “Then come on sunshine, let’s go.” Naremi said before heading back upstairs. I pulled the covers off of my lower body and headed upstairs a few minutes after her. Baltasar was sitting on the love seat in the living room still on the phone with Azzo. Enzo, Priam, and G
“When will you marry me, Astraia?” He asked with a lazy smile. “Hm, I don’t know. With the way things have been going, I think that sooner would be better. I had initially hoped that we would have time to enjoy our engagement. You know, plan things carefully.” His smile faded into a serious expression and I began to frown. “Astraia, things are about to get really ugly for my people. I’m not sure you understand how serious the exposure of my kind’s existence is. Our continued existence rests on what the government decides. They could lock all of us up and throw away the key, or even have us killed. We may not have the time that you think we do.” He said. I looked at him carefully for a moment; he had all the right in the world to be afraid of running out of time. I gave myself so many reasons why we had to wait, why I wanted to wait. I never wanted to rush things because we fell for each other so quickly, but it seemed fate had something else planned. What happened with Iericho a
There was a highway coming up along with the fields and farms on either side. We’d been running faster than I realized. The wereleopards were still behind us and catching up fast. Some of the other wolves were ahead of us and only a few were at our sides. Every now and then we had met up with the Shifter Task Forces but they weren’t half as much trouble as the wereleopards were going to be. I raised my head enough to look over Naremi’s head and saw a large number of wereleopards heading towards us. It didn’t look like Naremi or Lio planned on stopping so I put my head back down and braced myself. I heard and felt Naremi growl beneath me as we got closer to the wereleopards. Naremi suddenly stopped, making me jerk forward a little. I raised my head again to see what had happened and found that we were surrounded. The leopards stalked towards us snarling. Lio stood in front of Naremi and I baring his fangs at them but they were unmoved. My heart was beating faster than I thought po
Two weeks later, we were still staying at the cabin and everything had collapsed into chaos. It was a war between man and beast with no end in sight. I’d found some comfort in having Celeste around. She and I were able to have conversations without her taking emotional shots at me now, so I was pretty sure that she was trying to forgive me. I unfortunately couldn’t say the same for my parents. I’d told them the truth last week over the phone and they haven’t answered my calls since. I wasn’t too surprised honestly, that’s exactly how normal people should have reacted. On a lighter note, Byana and her people left a few days ago. We’d rescued everyone from one of the containment facilities, but not without heavy losses. Some of the wolves questioned whether or not we should have left them there or not, which had a lot of them fighting amongst each other. The mood in the house was morbid; I could still feel a lot of tension and anger between everyone. We were tired, mourning our los
After a full report from Githinji, everyone did their best to unwind. There wasn’t much anyone could do at the moment, especially me. Celeste and I were lying on a blanket in the backyard close to the tree line. It was night time now and the stars weren’t out tonight. I had never seen the night sky so clear and blue before. We were on our backs looking over at each other, talking. I had gotten Celeste up to speed on everything, but I could tell that she wouldn’t be cozy around the wolves anytime soon. Baltasar was sporting a pretty red handprint on the right side of his face, compliments of Celeste. “How do you deal with all of this Astraia? All by yourself?” She asked. I sighed before I answered. “To be honest I don’t know if I’m dealing at all. There are a lot of things that I have to accept about their world. Even now, I feel like going back to my parent’s house and forgetting about everything I know. Unfortunately, I can’t.” Celeste turned onto her side, facing me.
As I had this inner battle with myself, my consciousness started to shift from where I was now to some unknown location. Whatever I was seeing was sort of blurry so I couldn’t make out the surroundings very clearly. I could see people walking through a wooded area and some were being carried by the others. It looked like some of them were severely injured too. The way I saw them was as if I were walking behind them, so I couldn’t see any faces. The faint sounds of their voices were whispers all jumbled together and nothing made much sense. I was able to look around so I tried to find anything that could give me a hint as to where I was. On the ground there was nothing too distinctive except some orange flowers that seemed to only grow at the bases of the trees. My vision started to clear up a bit more and I could see more clearly, I could even hear the voices better. I looked up at the people walking ahead of me and they began to slow down. There was a red headed woman support
I awakened the next morning feeling fully rested for once. Lio was lying on his stomach next to me sleeping soundly. His jet black curls were half way covering his face, the rest were fanned out on the pillow. I propped myself up on one elbow, my chin resting in the palm of my hand. With my other hand I started softly gliding my fingertips along his spine. The memories of last night started playing back in my head. The ritual was complete; I was his mate for life now. A lazy smile was fixed upon my lips as my fingers slid back up towards his shoulder blades and into his thick mass of black curls. There were many times I would lay in bed admiring him like this; if I were the first to wake up. This time was different, my thoughts and feelings were different. The current situation we were in didn’t fill me with as much anxiety as it did before. For once my uncertainty, worry, and doubts were not present to ruin my happiness. While I continued to watch Lio sleep peacefully, he began
Some might look at me and think, ‘that poor woman’. I thought that I was the luckiest woman alive to have found a man who loves me as much as Lio does. As we entered the cabin, Lio kept one hand on my waist while he held my other hand in his. I was a little unstable on my feet still but at least I could stand now. Githinji opened the door for us before stepping aside and letting us pass. He came in behind us and closed the door. We walked down a dimly lit hallway that led into the kitchen. There were a couple of people eating at a booth style table but I didn’t recognize them. “Where is everyone?” Lio asked no one in particular. A woman with long, dark blue curly locks, deep dimples, blue eyes, and caramel skin answered him. “Some are in the den, others in the basement. Lady Byana requests your presence upon arrival…” She spoke with her head lowered, not meeting his eyes. I took the behavior as fear at first, but I realized that it was something more; respect. Lio simply
I was lying in bed in the spare room of Adel’s house. There were two windows open halfway to let the gentle summer breeze inside. Adel had given me a cool bath to keep my body temperature from rising too high, which helped me relax a bit more. There was a thirty-four inch LG TV on a wall mount ahead of me. The soap opera channel was on but I wasn’t really paying attention to it. I looked over to the right side of the room to see Adel and Githinji sitting on chairs that appear to have been brought up from the dining room table. They were conversing quietly amongst themselves but I noticed them glancing over at me every now and then. I had not even an ounce of energy left in me, I felt so drained and tired. My eyes started to slowly close as I lay there. Before I could let myself slip into a dream state, Adel came to me and shook me. I opened my eyes startled. “Adel? Why would you do that!? You scared me…” I asked, sounding agitated and frightened at the same time. “I’m sorry
This room was different from what the throne room had looked like. Cotton, peach colored drapes covered the bland stone walls and lanterns burned brightly throughout the room. There was only a king sized, onyx platform bed. It was covered with peach, white, gold, and tan throw pillows of all shapes and sizes. A door was open to the right which looked like a huge master bathroom. This kind of custom living must’ve cost a fortune. Teris tossed me onto the bed like a person would a coat before sitting on the edge of the bed. I managed to sit up using one of my hands to keep me steady. I wasn’t sure how I was slowly regaining my strength but I was happy nonetheless. “Oh this is one of the best days of my existence, Astraia. Do you know why?” He asked, looking straight at me. I just shrugged my shoulders. “Today I will finally have my revenge and tear my enemy down to nothing. I will have the wolves as my slaves and their territory will be mine. Your pathetic brother is mer
I was lying on Petros’s lap in the back seat; against my will of course. Petros had been ready to fight anyone who offered to ride in the back with me unless it was my brother. One of the women at Iericho’s place had lent me a dress and a pair of underwear. I respectfully declined the underwear offer. There was no way I was going to wear another woman’s underwear, even in an emergency. Iericho was driving while one other man from his sloth sat in the passenger side. We were on our way to Teris’s mountain chateau. Most of Iericho’s people were there and the rest were following us in their own cars. I knew the wolves would come to my rescue, but I was still worried about what kind of state Lio was in. If I felt this weak and drained, he must feel the same if not worse. For once I wanted Lio and I to live a peaceful life together. Going into this relationship I knew the risks very well. Regardless, Lio had made me happier than I had ever been in my life. “Why are we going to T