PART 2
I wake up in a cold sweat, my heart hammering in my chest, tears streaming down my face. I dream about him every night. I miss him. I knew Abbadon for less than three weeks, but it feels like we had a lifetime together, and a part of me died when he died. That part isn’t coming back to life, and even though I’m happy to be home with my mate and baby, there’s a constant, nagging emptiness in the pit of my being that’s not going away.
I try my best to hide it from Edric, but he knows. He doesn’t blame me. Doesn’t resent me. Never even brings it up. But he knows, and it’s killing me, because I know he’s hurting too.
I swing my legs off the bed. The nausea hits me out of nowhere, and I make it to the bathroom just in time. Falling on my knees in front of the toilet, I start vomiting. I’ve been throwing up nearly non-stop for three days now. At first, I put it down to the stress of returning to the swamp and the sickening, cloying humid hea
Edric's POV All the fear leaves me at once, and I have to grab the bed to stop myself from collapsing to the floor. “You’re sure?” I ask, still not trusting that I heard Winston, one of our doctors, correctly. “Pretty sure, yeah.” He grins at the look on my face. “She’s three weeks pregnant at least.” It adds up. She conceived the night we left Mountain Fire. The night I chased her in the woods. The night everything clicked back into place and I knew we’d be okay. Although, the last week or so, I started to doubt her. I started to think that the loss of Abbadon was too great and that I’d never get her back. I started to resent her for it, and many times all I could do was walk away because I was afraid of what I’d say to her if I didn’t. I have to keep reminding myself that she chose me, and that’s what matters. “She’s been so irritable lately,” I say, more to myself than the doctor. “I thought she…” I shake my head, cutting myself off before I give away too much. “A lot of she-wo
“Do you need a bottle?” Edric asks. God, he’s a good man. Back when I still lived a human life, I knew girls who dreamed of having a man like him – one that anticipates your needs and just does it for you, because he loves you that much. “No.” I smile up at him. “I’m good.” I stopped throwing up two days ago, and they finally agreed to let me come home this morning. Edric sits up behind us and looks over my shoulder at the nursing baby. “Goddess, he’s growing up fast.” “Didn’t you tell me that’s what babies do?” “Yes, but he’s growing faster than a normal baby.” “Oh.” I cast my mind back, thinking about Natalie and Thomas, trying to remember if they grew this fast as babies, but it’s too long ago and too far away now. “Do you feel up to taking a drive with me today? I want to show you the progress we’re making on the new compound.” What I really want to do is shift and go for a run. The last time I shifted was just over two weeks ago on our first full moon back here. “Is it too
I look around. I only see trees and thick undergrowth, but I can hear machinery, banging and shouting in the distance. The sounds and smells of construction drift towards us on the breeze. I throw my head back and sniff the air. Despite the slight tinge of diesel, sweat, and dust, it smells cleaner here, without the ever-present scent of decay clinging to the place. “I love it,” I say. He nods and shifts to human, a huge smile on his face. “Wait here. I’ll get clothes.” I sit down and look at my surroundings. It’s not like Mountain Fire. The trees and undergrowth are very different here. Tropical is the only word I have to describe it. And there’s a saltiness in the air. I wonder how far away we are from the ocean. Dressed in shorts, Edric comes stumbling back, almost falling over some kind of creeper. Grinning at his own clumsiness, he hands me a dress. I recognise it as the dress I wore on my first day at Mountain Fire. Tears fill my eyes, but I quickly blink them away. I’m sure
Edric’s POV: I stop close to the staff entrance at the back of the palace, not waiting to see if Maya and Kelly follow me. I haven’t been this angry in a while, and I’m ready to tear some heads off. It’s bad enough my own family turned their backs on me, I won’t have my wolves defy my orders. I storm into the kitchen, looking around the vast room. When this place was built, my predecessors clearly had a communal house in mind. We have three kitchens and four dining halls. I opened the biggest kitchen, the one I’m standing in now, two weeks ago so we could start feeding our unemployed, starving wolves. Unlike the wolves I’m used to, these don’t work. They grew up completely cut off from the outside world. The Omegas are uneducated and unable to look after themselves. The only wolves I have any confidence in are our warriors, but they were treated differently. Were allowed to get an education and live a life outside the tribe. Most didn’t bother and have a rudimentary education at bes
Edric's POV: I stand with my hands on my hips, taking in the carnage around me. Some of the wolves were torn limb from limb, while others were seemingly unharmed, but covered in the blood of their neighbours. “How many?” I ask, trying to suppress the rage boiling in my chest. Who did this? “It’s impossible to say. Half of them at least.” “What happened?” “I don’t know. The survivors are too afraid to talk to us. They won’t come out of their huts.” I kneel next to a corpse, inspecting his body. “It makes no sense. They don’t usually attack each other. They look after each other here.” “Uh-huh,” Stephen agreed. “And why did the others die? The ones that have no wounds. What killed them?” I shake my head. “I can’t tell. I see no obvious wounds or injuries.” Swallowing my revulsion, I turn the dirty wolf’s neck to the side, staring at the small circular hole in his neck. “Hunters.” Stephen kneels next to me. “Did they inject them with silver?” “I don’t smell silver. Wolfsbane mayb
Edric pulls away from me, his eyes glazing over. Dammit. We haven’t had sex in four weeks. Mostly because I thought he didn’t want to. Why would he after the way I treated him? It took me a while, but I realise now he was waiting for me to show him I was ready. “Maya,” he says, dropping his forehead on mine. “I’m sorry.” “Don’t tell me…you have to go.” The fact that he has to keep running off to fix one crisis or the other doesn’t help our anaemic sex life at all. “Yeah.” He sighs and gets up. He unbuttons his jeans, pushes his hand inside, and readjusts his penis with a painful expression on his face. “Make sure you eat.” “I do. Why do you have to go? What’s wrong?” He looks at me like he can’t believe I asked the question, then tells me about the unfortunates they rounded up and what they're trying to do for them. “Stephen says they won’t wash and are threatening to break down the palace if we don’t let them go.” “Stephen can’t handle it?” “Not by himself, no…and the others ju
Abbadon’s POV I can’t stay away. I tried, but even knowing I can go back to The Goddess, I couldn’t do it. We don’t share a bond anymore. She severed it when she cast me out. Every so often, I’d slip away and come here to look at Maya. It’s torture. I’m torturing myself. I know it, but I can’t stop myself. A bond formed the first time we touched, and it didn’t die when she killed me. Not even for her. Some nights I stand in their bedroom, resisting the urge to kill Edric and the pup, just staring at her. I hear her call out my name in her sleep. This last week, I’ve been calming her, using my vampire powers to push the memories of me out of her sleeping mind. I can’t bear to see her suffer so much. When I saw her on the balcony, feeling the deep loneliness drift out towards me, I couldn’t help myself. I had to say something to let her know she was not alone. The wolf couldn’t hear me because she has no connection to me, but Maya did. I regret it now. I made it worse. I should not h
Edric's POV: It’s almost sunrise when I sneak into the bedroom. Maya’s lying on her side, little Deimos cradled in her arm. They often sleep together like that, especially since I can’t spend as much time with her as I used to. I try, but I only have so many hours in the day. I undress and slip into bed next to my loves, pulling them both into my arm. I wish I wasn’t so short with her earlier, but she caught me at a bad time. The unfortunates were in open revolt and nearly destroyed the clinic. They didn’t accept that we meant them no harm and were sure we wanted to exterminate them. I had to order my warriors to help us. Much as they appreciate my new way of doing things, they still look down on the unfortunates and regard them as inferior. They made their displeasure known, and while they feel that they deserve special treatment, they do not think the unfortunates deserve to be treated with any kind of humanity. It will take me years to change their mindset. I ended up wrangling
Abbadon's POV For ten years, I managed to stay away from Maya, and then I couldn’t stand it anymore. I left my home in Greece and went back. I watched her from afar, my heart screaming out to her, but knowing I couldn’t interfere. She needed her peace, and she found it. She was happy, living a life of domestic bliss with her mate and their mini-pack of eight pups. Deimos grew into an admirable young Alpha, and I felt her sadness on the day he left to take his place as Silver Springs’ leader. He was loved and respected. He visited his parents every chance he got until he stepped down as Alpha and was never seen again. Warwick took the throne on his twenty-fifth birthday. Edric was happy to retire. He was a good king and dragged his tribe into the twenty-first century whether they liked it or not, but he never wanted the job. He was at his happiest when his children and grandchildren surrounded him. Their third child, a boy named Joshua, returned to Mountain Fire when he was twenty.
With Warwick resting on my hip, and my other hand in Deimos’s I look around our apartment one last time. It was our home for more than a year, and I’ve grown oddly attached to it. “Where going, mama?” Deimos asks.I look down at my one-year-old who isn’t behaving like other one-year-olds and smile at him. “We’re going home.”“This home.”“No kid,” Edric says from the doorway. “This isn’t our home anymore. I build us a better home.”“Hellooo,” Cedric calls from the living room, his voice echoing in the empty apartment. “One last time for good luck.”I start laughing and let Edric take Deimos before we leave our bedroom for the last time.Cedric and Stephen waits for us in the living room surrounded by their three pups. They took to parenthood like ducks take to water, and soon after the pups arrived, Cedric resigned as Edric’s Gamma. “Are you sure?” Edric asked.“Yes,” Cedric replied, beaming at Edric. “It’s all I want now.”“You don’t just want paternity leave?” Edric joked. “Reconsid
Edric's POV Our date night turned into a bit of a flop. We had to take it in turns to stop each other. When Maya lost control, I’d remind her to stop, and when it was my turn to lose control, she’d remind me to stop, but somehow we made it work. Together, we found new and interesting ways to satisfy each other, rediscovering each other’s bodies. I yawn and flop backward on the bed. The moment we were home, Maya rushed off to find the boys, and I take the time to enjoy the silence. Goddess knows, I love my sons, but I do enjoy these quiet moments. It gives me a chance to think. The one good thing that came out of last night was that Maya finally opened up to me and shared her fears. Now that we’re talking openly and frankly again, I’m hoping that she’ll slow down and spend more time with me. I miss her. My phone starts vibrating and I pull it out of my pocket. With a frown I stare at the caller ID. “Adrian?” I answer. “Hello,” he says. It’s strange to hear his voice. We haven’t sp
Edric's POV Maya’s heat comes on as suddenly as it did the last time, only this time I’m here to experience it, and she’s not locked behind several layers of wood and steel. One moment, everything’s fine, the next I almost drive off the road as her scent fills the car and attacks my senses. I wipe my wet palms on my jeans and try to pay attention to the road so I don’t kill us. “What’s wrong?” she asks. “You don’t know?” I ask in return, hearing my voice rise several octaves. “You’re in heat.” “Is that what it is? I just thought I’m horny for…well, no good reason at all.” She laughs uncomfortably and shifts around in her seat. “Shouldn’t I get some kind of warning or something?” “Normally, yes…but we forget sometimes that you’re not normal.” We are almost to the hotel and the road is clear with no other cars in sight, but I’m not sure I’m going to make it. Blood rushes through me so fast that I can barely hear, let alone see. Just like last time her heat overwhelms me and I can’t
I crash through the misty woods, my wolf pushing our body harder than I thought was possible, oblivious to our surroundings as we keep trying to get away from whatever it is that’s chasing us. I never saw what it was. I just felt it. Danger. It’s right on top of us. ~ Go faster! ~ I scream at my wolf. She increases her pace, but we won’t be able to do this for much longer. We’ve been running for hours, and our legs are about to give out. At first, I’m relieved to see him. Abbadon lands in front of me, and I dash past him, placing myself between him and the thing chasing us. Finally, we can stop. I collapse to the ground, and my exhausted wolf lets go, forcing me to shift back to human. I curl up in a little ball on the cold, wet, forest floor and try to catch my breath, trusting that Abbadon will take care of the dangerous thing I’m trying to escape. I look up at Abbadon. My mate. No matter what he is or what he does, he’ll never harm me. “Is that what you think?” he asks in his
Edric's POV The weeks slip by without anyone taking much notice. New Year’s day comes and goes without much fanfare, but a week into the new year, Maya insists on speaking to Alpha Neil about Deimos, and after days of pestering me about it, I give in. The Alpha doesn’t tell us anything I haven’t already told her. “I don’t know what else I can say, Queen,” Neil says. “We grow up fast, and we shift young--” he shrugs --“but that’s just how it is with our kind. We are big, we’re strong, and we’re violent.” Maya shudders lightly and looks over at Deimos who is trying to pull himself upright against a couch. “He’s not even five months old yet,” she whispers. “Yes,” Neil replied. “And by the time he’s twelve, he’ll look like a fully grown man. But you have to remember, he’s still just a child.” The Alpha bites into his nails, his face pensive, then he sighs and goes on. “This is important. The first shift is the worst. It lasts for hours, and it is brutal. Make sure you lock him up.” “W
I haven’t seen Edric in such a good mood since the day he introduced me to the pack back at Mountain Fire. At first, the higher-ranking wolves wouldn’t join us, refusing to eat with the ‘lower filth’ as one of the warriors called the True Omega that walked past him. Just when I thought my grand plan would come apart at the seams, Stephen and Cedric jumped in and arranged everyone according to their rank, which placated some of the grumpier wolves. Less than an hour later, everyone is happily chatting and enjoying the day. Even Maxwell and Alexander’s widow, Esther, came out of their hiding place to join us, but they are sitting by themselves, away from the rest of the tribe. “He looks much better,” I say while staring at Edric’s uncle. Edric looks up and follows my gaze. “Yes, now that he’s not getting poisoned every day. He’s actually improving, but he’s still not speaking. Winston says the damage to his brain is catastrophic. He’ll heal some, but he’ll never be quite…right.” I’ve
Edric's POV I lie on my side, watching Maya sleep, trying to get rid of the unnecessary guilt that’s trying to eat me alive. She kept trying to reassure me that it’s okay, but I’ve been so conditioned by my time with Mountain Fire, that I can’t let go and believe it. I lost control. "Alphas don't lose control," I can practically hear my father's voice. It's as if he's standing right next to me. "It's a thin line between losing control and going feral." Sighing, I pull on a pair of loose boxers and go back to the balcony for a glass of wine. I won't be able to sleep while I feel like this anyway. “Evening,” Stephen says from their balcony. “Hey,” I answer and pour some wine into my glass before I walk over to the low wall separating the two balconies. “Where’s Cedric?” “Inside, feeding Warwick. How’s your date going?” “Well, it’s not…I think it’s over. Maya’s asleep.” Stephen laughs softly. “Yeah, I’m sure she’s tuckered out. You two were a bit…loud.” I blush, grateful for the d
It’s like I’m standing outside myself. Watching, hearing, feeling and seeing everything my wolf does. I have no control over myself and my body anymore. It was already too late when Edric brought me inside -- by then she had taken control because she sensed my hesitation. Edric tries to pull away from me, but she growls a low warning and grips his hair, roughly pulling him back to her, folding her lips around his mouth. The kiss steals the breath from my body and drives me insane with dark, needy lust. I want to stop fighting it, want to stop overthinking every little thing, I want to stop fighting my wolf and just let it happen. I want to find my mate again and be with him like we used to be when we found each other. Edric picks me up, and I wrap my legs around him. He carries me across the room, slamming me against the wall so hard that my head connects to it with a jarring thud. It doesn’t even slow my wolf down. Her claws surface and she rips his shirt to ribbons. I’m terrified