LOGINSkyeI’m dead. I must be because I open my eyes to grainy sunlight highlighting a room I’d be able to see fully in the dark. I know this shallow, cream-colored carpet. I know there’s a bright purple nail polish stain in the corner of the walk-in closet on the far side of the room, hidden beneath a stack of boxes. I doubt my parents know it’s there. There’re three windows along the wall–circular and wide. My grandma Leona fussed so much over the fact that Dad designed windows no one could make curtains for, and by some miracle, she managed it herself. But the curtains in my childhood bedroom aren’t… familiar. They’re different. Thick and black, they block out the majority of the light, only letting fractals of what I believe is the sunset through. Am I in hell? Is this what it looks like? Being thrust back into my awkward teenage years? I fist the comforter–velvet corduroy–my favorite. I turn my head away from the strip of light flickering over the room and watch speckles play acros
AlexBlake looks at me for a long, long time. His stare is exactly like Skye’s–unyielding, expectant, and unnaturally violet. She wasn’t wrong about that. I’m the one who breaks from his gaze to look down at my filthy hands. They’re caked in Kai’s and Skye’s blood. It doesn’t feel like enough. Ripping him into sections before tearing his head clean off his shoulders doesn’t feel like enough. I curl my hands into fists. The woman, the queen, which is the only person she can be, cautiously moves around the desk in my direction. “Skye’s pregnant?” She’s just as beautiful as Skye described, with thick, dark brown hair and sea-green eyes that swirl with power I can taste. The other man, the one who kindly shut the curtains to shield me from the spray of sunlight ghosting through the clouds, does not move to stop the woman who is, obviously, based on their mingled scents, his mate. She is in charge. But she’s not nearly as powerful as Skye’s father. That’s really, really fucking clear.
BlakeThe man falls to the ground in a flurry of goose down, black nylon, and a shower of glass at the very second royal warriors burst through my office door. I can’t breathe. My lungs strain against the torrent of panic driving every move I make as I whirl to the warriors storming the room and shout for them to subdue the stranger, but I can’t hear my own voice over the rapid thunder of my heartbeat in my ears. My daughter is lying lifeless on the carpet of my office. The same office she grew up in, spent entire days rolling my crystal spheres across the carpet and racing around on Soren’s shoulders. I see her like that now–a child. Rage storms my senses. My roar of fury threatens to splinter the windows as my knees hit the ground by her head. I reach down, trying to gather what’s left of her in my arms. Kenna bursts into the room, breathless, her silver eyes wide and frantic as she reaches my side. “HELP!” I shout, clutching Skye to my chest. “Kenna!”“Lay her down!” Kenna is
AlexThere is nothing in my head but red violence as I sprint out onto the ice. Students out for a stroll in their wolf forms dart away, but I’m a blur of motion. I’ll pay dearly for this. I can’t return to campus, that’s for sure. The ever-present darkness is my only cover. I have no idea where I’m going, but forward is my only option. Forward, forward, running miles in minutes I’m not sure I have. I’m a fucking idiot. I underestimated her. I think I underestimated her love for me, if I’m being totally, brutally honest with myself. Skye protected my secrets with her entire soul. I should have seen it in her eyes when she began to notice something was gravely wrong when I asked her to marry me. I should have seen it in her eyes when I left her this morning. She knew Kai tried making a deal with me. She’s so powerful. She might have had a shot at fixing this for both of us if Kai wasn’t like me–but worse. Wind rips over the ice, nearly knocking me on my side, but I keep going, ignori
SkyeAlex takes my trembling hands. “Everything is going to be okay.”“How?” My heart races. Guilt and uncertainty tangle into a ball of yarn in my brain that I’ll never be able to unwind. “You don’t–you can’t possibly want this. Especially not now.”“I do, and we’re going to figure it out. I’m more concerned about the fact that you’re about to go through a hybrid pregnancy.” He sits beside me on the bed, smoothing his hand down my back. “My great aunt Emory,” he explains, taking a deep breath. “She was a shifter, similar to you. Full shifter, though, and her pregnancy with my uncle Michael was… terrible.”“How so?”“I don’t have all the details given that this story was told to me as a teenager–something meant to keep me from pursuing shifters for their own safety, I suppose.” He grits his teeth, but I feel oddly light. “Were you a major flirt or something?”“No.” He laughs, winding his arm around my back and tugging me close. “I was not. If anything, I was awkward and terrified of
AlexThe Beta of Aurorium levels me with a look from one end of a long, wooden table. The packhouse in the city is one of the only buildings that isn’t drenched in artificial neon light. A massive stone fireplace heats a wide, open room decorated rustically with animal hides and leather galore. It would be comforting in a shifter-like way if not for my current situation. The Beta flings a file toward me and folds his hands on the table surface. “I’m sure you’re aware of the situation at the university,” I say, opening the file. “My lab is completely demolished. I can’t run–” I stop my voice in its tracks. The pictures on the top of the stack of paperwork in the file are of Laney and Dean Kanten. Laney in shambles. Dean Kanten in one piece, but pale, his body sunken in and distorted but in a way I find grossly familiar despite the wreckage of the ice tunnel he was found in after an extensive search.“I’ve spoken to the university about you, Dr. Scarlett. I was told you had a tumultu
PoseyLuckily for Aris, I’m too busy trying desperately to keep my mind and heart away from the thought of him in general to disobey his direct orders. Unluckily for him, after a night of tossing and turning, with very little sleep, I wake up the next morning alone in the castle for the first time,
PoseyThe sun sets over the mountains when Aris returns. His shadows pierce the bright pink light of the alpine glow, his boots moving across the floor, disrupting the stillness that’s been enveloping me for hours. I've been sitting in the same position since he left, dressed in the same thin nigh
PoseyI lean on the door and take several aching breaths as Aris’s muffled voice replies to Morgan’s incessant questions. “I wanted you, and you didn’t want me.” I close my eyes against the memory of his omission, but the words bounce through my skull, funneling deep into my gray matter, where hu
PoseyAris moves like a wolf even in his human form. Every step is calculated and sure-footed. I follow him down a wolf trail just above the rocky beach. He keeps his eyes trained on the forest, turning his head ever so slightly to every sound, but he hasn’t said a word to me in over two miles. I







