There was a lot of shit happening in his territory.But there he was, getting ready to go jogging with a half-blood.Jackson opened up his senses and scanned as far as he could reach. He’d sensed the Circle in the area when they’d been having breakfast, but they’d left as he had ordered. They wouldn’t have gone too far, though. They'd probably only gone back to the city. Those three were the most arrogant people he had ever met, so they wouldn’t take kindly to being reminded that he was more powerful than them, and they still meant nothing to him. They would try to find a way to bring him down a peg or two, despite having come to ask for forgiveness.He would need to find Diedre to find out how they had done the wards. He was relying on the fact that they wanted him to provide heirs, but he didn't know who was behind the attacks. Letting them anywhere near his protective magic was a significant risk. Black magic wasn’t Diedre’s thing, but she could handle herself against it if she h
No.No, this couldn’t be happening again.With all the shit that had happened on her walk with Diedre, she had pushed this to the side. But there it was—the big red wolf. The mother that her sick mind had created. The one that used to speak to her all the time.Layla hugged the water bottle to her chest without taking her eyes off the wolf. It was still as magnificent as she remembered. The silkiest fur she’d ever seen, the greenest eyes. Her mother’s hair and eyes. Her hair and eyes.No wolves in the world were that big or red—she had researched this thoroughly when she was younger. Anything bigger was only pure fiction—werewolves and monsters, shit like that. It was why her dad and counsellor had known immediately that it wasn't real.The only thing that would make the whole messed up situation worse was if the imaginary wolf spoke to her again.‘Hello, Layla.’Shit.No. No, she would not break down now. She’d woken up fine for the first time in days. She’d just had the most exhila
What the hell was going on?A red werewolf? Those were a myth. A tale told their pups to make them behave. Untrackable. Unkillable. They were like fucking ghosts. They could kill you before you knew they were there because they could hide their scents whenever they wanted to. This one had alerted him of its presence on purpose. Why, though? The only wolf that was a danger to a red wolf was him. He would have gutted it if Layla hadn’t been there. Or maybe it had only approached because Layla had been there.Jackson tried to sense the red wolf’s location one last time before he turned around and looked at Layla while she devoured her meal. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and watched the contentment on her face as if they hadn’t just seen a giant red wolf in the woods.Either Diedre’s potion was working a little too well or... or the woman was just batshit crazy.He’d pushed Cain back as far as he could and struggled to keep him there. Cain wanted to go hunting. His skin was itching
Layla closed her eyes and waited for that horrible sound of the lock turning. She was going to lose her mind stuck in the bedroom alone. When Jackson had been close to her, at least she had put all her focus on him. But now, all she had were her thoughts. Again.She had been feeling fine before, but she could still feel those cracks starting to form. If anything else happened, she was going to break. She waited for that sound, but it didn’t come.Instead, Jackson said, “What are you doing up here?” as he closed the door. She opened her eyes and strained to listen. Who was it? Had someone come to hurt her again? She muted the volume on the television and stood, waiting to see if they would come into the room. When they didn’t, she quietly made her way to the door. She could hear their muffled voices behind the thick wooden door. Without daring to breathe, she placed her ear against the wood to make the voices clearer. They were still faint, but she thought she heard Jackson’s crue
Jackson stood by the windows in his office, looking out at the training grounds. A few trainees had started to arrive, but it was far from the number that should have been there.‘They’ve neutered you,’ Cain snarled. ‘They disrespected you, and you let them walk away unscathed. How far are you going to bend over for them?’“Stop it,” he growled.‘You’re not their King. You’re their bitch,’ Cain snarled again. ‘You want to leave our child to a group of people who have no respect for you. The kid will be better off with Layla.’Jackson picked up a paperweight and threw it across the room with so much force it wedged into the wall. It was one thing to have to suffer through all of this shit with his pack, but having that annoying, insistent voice in his head drove him crazy.‘Let me out, Jackson. Let me hunt that wolf. Let me hunt all the people who’ve already hurt my mate. She will never be safe.’“I have time. I’ll make sure she is,” he growled again before pulling the chair out of his
Holy...What the...She had never seen anything like the monsters in front of her. This was not her mind playing tricks on her. She could hear the snarls. She could smell the matted wolf. It smelled like something dead that should have been buried long ago.But the other thing, the one with the red eyes...It was the thing she had seen the night of the storm. It had jumped over her the same way.That couldn’t be real, but her mind told her it was. She’d thought the red wolf was huge, but this thing was humongous! Its teeth were razor-sharp and could easily chomp off half her body without trying. In the reduced lighting in the woods, its dark grey fur looked as silky as the red wolf’s. And while she had never felt afraid of the red wolf, she was terrified of this one.At least she knew she was supposed to be terrified. She felt nothing as she watched the wolves tumble and fight each other.And then a head rolled right to her feet.She stifled a scream as she looked at the matted wolf’
Jackson stood outside his bedroom and made sure Layla was asleep when he locked the door.His fists clenched as he marched down the hallway and the stairs. Two wolves. How did two wolves go past the wards that the supposedly strongest Circle members had erected? How did they both end up so close to Layla?He pushed the door to the conference room so hard it slammed against the wall. Dylan, Micah, Jon and a few other warriors were quietly arguing among themselves, but they stopped when he walked in. “Tell me how the fuck this happened,” he growled.“We checked the walls along that boundary when we looked for the red wolf,” Dylan said. “There was nothing.”“The men are still out there patrolling. There are still no signs,” Micah added. “All of this started happening when the human arrived. Maybe we should question her,” Jon said.He looked at his Gamma and felt his face tighten. After almost losing Layla, he did not need this shit. A growl from deep within him had all the people in th
Jax pulled the ring from his sock drawer and looked back at Layla’s sleeping form.He’d broken her. He knew that. And yet he couldn’t reassure her about anything she had seen because they would kill her the moment she gave birth. He sighed and walked over to the bed. She hadn’t undressed, so he could still smell a hint of the rogue’s blood on her clothes. The witch would pay for doing this to her. He would find her, one way or another, before he died. Even if he had to give himself over to the Circle and their dark magic. He gently took her warm hand, and the contact sent a jolt through him stronger than anything. It had been days since he had been with his mate the way he wanted, and Cain was still content to wait for her to be ready. But for how long? Lust and need constantly flowed between them; he wasn’t sure how long he could hold it at bay. He slipped the ring on her engagement finger and let her hand go. Layla didn’t even stir. He hadn’t tired her much with the run, so he
Jackson grinned when Dylan rolled his eyes at him as Hope led him by the finger to the tea party she had set up in the garden. “Enjoy your party,” he called to them before he turned and walked toward the packhouse. The trainees had the day off today, but he was pleased that most of them took their training seriously and were sparring in the fields. All the kids had to grow up quickly after the last war. In a few days, they would all hold a memorial honouring all the people they had lost. Gavin walked up to him before he reached the door. “Everything is all set, Alpha,” he said. Gavin was the most prominent reminder of what the war had cost him. He’d had to fill Micah’s big shoes. Though it wasn’t his fault, his heart cracked whenever he saw Micah’s replacement as the Gamma. “Thank you. We’ll be ready in time,” he said with a nod. The packhouse was spotless as usual, awaiting all the guests he had invited. As he walked toward the stairs, Faith’s mother walked in, a huge sm
Layla clutched her heart and fell to her knees. Hope started to cry behind her, as if her poor child could sense her pain, too. Faith tried to soothe her, but there was too much fear in the air, too much pain. “Jackson is hurt,” she whispered, looking at her mother. She had held out long enough. The house was full of all the vulnerable people in the pack, and their fear and anxiety weighed down on her. She couldn’t wait any longer. Rebecca walked over to Faith and took Hope from her. And her little girl instantly quietened in her grandmother’s arms. Rebecca met her gaze and nodded. “I will look after Hope. And I will protect everyone in this house,” Rebecca said, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. Her mother knew what she had to do. She couldn’t leave Jackson to fight alone, but if anything happened to one of them, it would happen to the other. “Can I trust you, Mum?” she whispered. She hadn’t called her mum since the day she had abandoned them. “Always,” Rebecca whis
The dark clouds completely covered the sun. Jax stood at his lookout rock and looked over the forest. Even the witch was closing in from that direction when it was supposed to be their safest. He could sense her magic filling up in it even though he couldn’t sense any individual wolves. It was like when she’d sent the rogues who had hidden in the shadows right under their noses. His warriors wouldn’t sense them until it was too late. ‘The women and children are in the packhouse,’ Dylan said in the mind link. He didn’t know if that would make a difference. The strength he could sense in the magic around him was something he had never experienced from the witch before. He could feel it in the clouds above him, in the air they were all breathing. He could feel it rippling over his skin, yet they had not reached their boundary. Cain was silent in his head, already in hunting mode. But he couldn’t hunt everywhere at once. They were surrounded by armies bigger than any that had ever
The air was knocked out of her lungs as Layla landed in a heap in the field. Everything hurt. Jackson had been pounding into her for hours. ‘And not in a good way. How the hell are you getting worse at this instead of better?’ the voice in her head said. Since Jackson had marked her, that voice had become a more permanent feature in her head. She’d been able to shut it off before, but now it was impossible. She was constantly arguing with it and losing focus, and her ability to control her emotions was also on the fritz. Her moods were yo-yo-ing worse than when she’d been pregnant. “You’re distracted.” She lifted her head with the bit of energy she had left and looked at Jackson, who was glaring at her from the other side of their makeshift ring. “I’m tired,” she corrected. “Let’s take a break.” “We can’t, Layla,” Jackson growled. He marched across to her and helped her to her feet. “You pissed off the Circle, and I pissed off the Wicked Witch. It was fine when our sins were
Angelic singing. It drifted in and out of his ears and tried to force him from his peaceful slumber. It was beautiful but it was pissing him off. Why did anyone have to sing so much when people were trying to fucking sleep? His eyes shot open. His heart slammed in his chest. Could it be? He turned and saw the face he had fallen asleep next to because it was the last face he wanted to see before he died. Layla’s mouth was slightly open and she was snoring softly. He sat up with a jolt and listened to the singing. Those weren’t angels. That should have been his first clue. His soul had been damned long ago; there were no angels in his afterlife. “What are you doing? Come back to sleep,” Layla mumbled. It took her a few more seconds, but Layla jolted awake and her eyes widened as she looked at him. She sucked in a breath, her heart hammering to match his. Maybe he was dreaming. Perhaps he wanted this so much that he was dreaming about it just before the curse snatched his l
Jackson watched the sleeping baby in his arms and blinked back his tears. He was leaving his precious little girl in chaos. All his efforts to find the witch had failed. She’d disappeared after Amber and Miss Roberts had failed. He assumed the witch knew there was no point now. She’d already achieved her goal of making the rest of his life miserable. “I’m sorry, Hope,” he whispered. “I know you’ll become a better person than I was, even in any adversity. Do you know why? Because you also have your mother in you. You are going to be magnificent.” The more he said it, the more he would believe it. But it was hard to see any such future in a helpless three-month-old. “What the fuck was I thinking?” His chest squeezed as it had done all day. “It’s not your fault.” He looked up to see his mate in the bathroom doorway, a vision in a green, body-hugging dress. It had thin straps, so his mark was on show. For a second, he felt pride in it. But he remembered it was nothing but a death s
Jackson wasn’t too worried about Hugo’s threat. Since Diedre had started feeling better, she had been working hard to remove all the traces of dark magic around their territory. Her well of magic seemed to run deeper, even though it was not yet fully replenished. Warding the whole territory had been beyond her before Layla had healed her. But all the entry points had been fortified. Her magic wasn’t as it used to be but strong. Nobody would enter through his gates without his permission. Even if Diedre’s magic didn’t work on him and Layla, it had to work for the rest of the pack. Right? He was more worried about what the hell Layla was doing there. She should have been home with Hope and the others. Especially since he’d already warned her that the Circle was worse than any Hunter she would ever meet. Layla seemed intent on breaking all his rules. He was about to tell Hugo they had wasted their time when he sensed the rage rising in his mate. It was so dark it felt like Cain’s
Layla opened her eyes and stretched. And then she remembered what she had done. She sat up and looked at the other side of the bed. Jackson hadn’t come back, though she could sense he was close. And he was angry. Rightfully so. She lay back and pulled the covers over her naked body. Her hand went to her neck, and she felt the grooves left by his teeth. She’d assumed his bite would heal like all her other injuries. Maybe that was why they called it marking. Would everyone be able to see it? It tingled when she ran her fingers on it, and though the way she had got it made her cheeks heat up with shame, she didn’t regret it. She had known he would react like that. She would have been livid in his shoes. If he never spoke to her again, then she would understand. But she would never have forgiven himself if he died and she could have saved him. She’d had no choice. She sighed as she pushed the covers off again and slid off the bed. She started walking toward the bathroom, but her st
Everything felt different. The longer he lay on the rock, the more he sensed the differences. Everything was sharper, as if there had been a veil on his vision before. The stars were so clear he felt like he could touch them. The air was sweeter. The chirping of the birds as they woke up to get the worm... Beautiful. Fucking beautiful. And the rage in his heart eclipsed it all. He’d told her. He’d said no over and over again, even before she had known what his bite would do. And she’d gone ahead and violated his trust. Violated him. ‘She was never going to give us up without a fight,’ Cain stated. ‘Stop talking like you knew it was going to happen. This isn’t Romeo and Juliet. We don’t have to die together!’ ‘What would you have done in her shoes?’ That question cooled some of his anger. He knew what he would have done for his love. He’d have moved heaven and earth to save her. He’d have crossed any ocean, climbed any mountain. But this wasn’t about him! “I’ve killed her,”