LOGINAviva
Warmth. I feel warm to the bone and heavy as I roll to the side and snuggle deeper against the body beside me. My hands drift up his stomach to his chest, tracing taut muscles until I reach the half moon shaped scar on his shoulder. He stirs, rolling over and running his calloused hand over the slope of my naked hip, over my thigh.
When he kisses me, it’s unhurried, his tongue sweeping over mine and exploring any place he hasn’t yet discover
ZaynTali purses his lips while leaning against the old well in the center of Eurye’s market district. With his eyes, he follows the progress of a woman in a black cloak and two preteen shifter girls squealing in delight as the witch bounces on her heels, straddling a wiry old broom, with the two girls seated behind her. In a flash, the broom is airborne, and the girls screech in delight, the trio zooming through the crowd, people jumping to get out of their way. I eye the Alpha of this territory, who looks as pale and unsure as every other shifter visiting the market today. Black cloaks dot the crowd, broomsticks strapped to their backs and baskets hanging from their elbows. The shifters selling wares begrudgingly drop into conversation with the witches, accepting coins and the occasional potion in exchange for vegetables and loaves of bread. Some sellers are more enthusiastic about the witches than others, but most are unsure how to act. The children at the market, however? They’r
FallonI don’t like feeling this way. My chest feels heavy and tight. My throat hurts every time I swallow. Grief and jealousy mingle into a tangled net that creates another kind of feeling–a twisting of the two that makes me want to cry more than anything, which is ridiculous. I am ridiculous. I’m being insane. Stella is beautiful, though, which makes this worse. Her sculpted bone structure and thick, red hair catch shadows painted by master artists as she slowly unbuttons Eniana’s nightgown, exposing her bare, pale chest. Her green eyes remind me vividly of Posey, my uncle Aris’s mate, which brings me a single, fleeting shred of comfort. Everyone loves Posey, even if she’s extraordinarily antisocial and awkward. Stella is neither of those things. “Did I make you uncomfortable, Luna?” she asks with a brief, almost shy smile that betrays the sharpness of her eyes. I stare at her coolly before going back to grinding herbs with a mortar and pestle. She is making me uncomfortable. No
FallonZayn is a cuddler, which I find hilarious, given that he’s spent months growling, grumping around, and being overall ridiculously standoffish. At least, he likes me touching him. He likes spreading out on the bed like I’m not in it, his arm flat over my body, his leg pinning mine to the mattress. His cheek is pressed against the top of my head, and every breath he takes fluffs my hair. I don’t mind this. Not a bit. I’m used to sleeping with a dozen pillows around my body and a weighted blanket, and his weight is more than enough to send me into a stupor. I should be sleeping now. It’s raining softly–a naturally occurring rain. I’ve learned to tell the difference between the scent and electric current of his magic and the soft, breezy kind of storms that swirl over the islands. I’m not sure what woke me up. I don’t think it was the rain. It’s not morning and won’t be for another few hours. No maids are awake yet. The house is utterly silent, save for the trickling pearls of r
Fallon“Louisa.” I sigh, shivering with delight. “You beauty. I’m going to make Zayn give you a fat stack of cash just because you’re a miracle worker.” Louisa is, at this moment in time, a figment of my imagination, but I’m dripping in her delicate handiwork while admiring my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Naomi would be in tears, rolling around on the floor laughing, if she could see me right now, but also, fuck her. She has no taste, and I have more than enough for the two of us. I stretch my arms out to the side to admire the bubble gum pink fabric of my new robe, which drapes heavily before tapering at my wrists, lined with pearl beads. The fabric is silken and impossibly light, but the length is what really gets me going. When I mentioned I longed for something to wear around the house that wafted over the tiles and made me look like I was some kind of apparition floating this way and that, Louisa delivered without a second thought. The robe has feathers along the hem. It’s
ZaynTali won’t leave me the fuck alone. He’s been staring all morning. Every time I glance at him, he’s there, looking at me intently while I field conversations in every direction. If any other wolf, any other Alpha, was going to sense the shift in my relationship with my still unmarked mate, it would be him. “Fuck off,” I mouth silently, throwing him a vicious glare. He chuckles, looks away, then meets my gaze again and laughs so hard that several of the Alphas I’ve been talking to for the last half hour about trade, pack relations, and war–mostly war–turn to frown at him. This is the shit I hate that Fallon is unfortunately very good at. Talking. Delegating. Trying to get multiple people to heed my command at once. I’ve lost her to the crowd, which is infuriating. She waltzed into the packhouse in Eurye on my arm like a dutiful little wife and promptly herded all the Lunas in attendance into a group using her charm and grace, and now she’s gone, lost to the glare of the sun be
IanDad doesn’t like coming to Moonrise. I’ve never outwardly questioned him about it. Mom picks up the slack when it comes to his sometimes strange moments of silence and entirely skeptical behavior. It’s easy to forget what he is and where he’s from. He wasn’t born in the rolling, emerald green hills and valleys of New Glade. He wasn’t born in the sawdust and wheat fields of Silverhide. The gnarled trees of the still- recovering plains of the Deadlands pale in comparison to the land of his ancestors on both sides–Pantharas. I’ve never been, but I’ve also never had the itch to travel long distances by boat, especially to a place my dad swore he’d never return to. Moonrise, however, is a fine trip. My parents are old school, all things considered. A week spent in wolf form traversing the northern, unpopulated territory of the Deadlands was the highlight, at least for me. There’s plenty of hunting. The summer weather is fair and dry compared to the depths of the Roguelands, where we
RyattI slide my sword back into its scabbard down my spine and look around the crystalline main wing of the archives in Veiled Valley. My body thrums from the enormous use of power it took to get here. Getting back to Ella is going to be painful, for sure, but if I’m right in my assumptions, Arthur
IsaacI gently lift Sydney out of Maddy’s arms. He blinks, then a fleeting smile stretches over his face before he falls back asleep with milk dribbling down his cheek. Ryan is already sleeping in the double-wide crib tucked beneath the window in our bedroom, his chubby arms and legs splayed out like
EllaSilver manacles burn into my wrists. The hot, slippery metal slides over my bones as I curl into myself, trying to shelter myself from the pain. Water drips onto my filthy hair. It’s ice cold, which is a welcome relief from the sweltering heat radiating through the room made of sweating pale sto
EllaI wake to bright sunshine streaming through the window next to our bed in the cottage. I squeeze my eyes shut against the onslaught of light and reach over the sun-warmed sheets for Ryatt, but the other side of the bed is still as empty as it was when I fell asleep. For the first time in weeks,







