RayneVomit fills my mouth, bitter and foul, and I step back out into the hall and get on my hands and knees. I heave until there is nothing left inside of me. I heave until it’s too blurry for me to see and tears and running down my face. My eyes feel hot and heavy as tears pour down my face endlessly. I then curl on my side right beside my puddle of vomit and stay in that position until I can find the strength to stand and move. Bits and pieces of everything I heard are flooding my mind. First the old lady and then that man. She talked about incest. She looked at me like I was crazy when I mentioned Alaska and Albert. She didn’t even know who they were. By the Moon. She was talking about…about…I can’t make myself think of this. It’s too much for me to bear. I’ll get sick again if I give what I saw in that room a second thought. ‘Betrayed’ isn’t even a strong enough word for what I feel. There has to be something bigger and more earth shattering than that. What’s the word for be
MaxI wake up disoriented and exhausted to the bone. I can barely open my eyes. Everything is too bright and my head is pounding. I sit up while palming my face simultaneously. My mouth is drier than it’s ever been. It takes a few minutes for me to open my eyes a crack and look around the room. My room is empty. Rayne isn’t beside me, which immediately alarms me. I have slept on top of the blankets and the spot beside me is smooth. She didn’t sleep in here tonight. What happened?I try to recall what happened and how I got here. For some reason, I can’t remember even leaving the party. My head hurts when I try to, too, and I’m left feeling for confused than ever. Just how much did I drink?I look around the room for clues of what might have happened. The room looks perfectly clean. There is nothing particular out of place. I don’t even see the bottles of liquor on my dresser open. So, what could have happened? Why does my head feel like it’s splitting in two? Why isn’t Rayne here
RayneWhen I reach my father’s pack, I’m bleeding and naked. A woman sees me and recognizes me, and she immediately grabs a sheet from her hanging line and covers my body with it. I don’t have the strength to thank her. I only nod at her. She doesn’t even see this gesture because she’s staring at the main house and starts racing toward it, no doubt to call my father. I lie on my side in the grass with the sheet wrapped around my sore body, breathing slowly. I ran the whole way here, ignoring aches and pains. In my wolf form, it’s a lot easier, but I’m still tired and exhausted, and my disappointment clouds everything, leaving little space to think about anything else. One thing I know for sure is that I didn’t want to come here. I felt too ashamed. I still do. When I left, it was because I genuinely thought I’d be happy. I told my father how much I loved him, and he encouraged me to pursue this. And now, I’m returning only a week later; heartbroken, perhaps beyond repair. I feel b
MaxThe mess that is my pack can’t be put into words. I have lost complete control and frankly, I let it happen. I can’t bring myself to care about control when all of these terrible things are happening to me. In the space of forty-eight hours, I’ve managed to lose the most precious thing in the world to me and the control of my pack simultaneously. To make matters worse, I have GrayLeaf on my case, which is understandable considering what happened to Alaska. Every time I think about her, I get nauseous and the feeling doesn’t go away. I keep seeing her dead body right outside the doors of the House and how torn apart she was. A brief autopsy confirmed her pregnancy, and the worst part to me is how part of the placenta was eaten. Eaten. My Rayne couldn’t have done that. This thought has been on my mind for some time now, however, I haven’t said it out loud. I have kept this to myself because I don’t have proof and I’ll probably sound delusional to everyone. But Rayne…she couldn’t
Rayne I hear my father's booming voice before I find out what's going on. He's standing at the door and yelling at someone. Or at people. I’m not sure at the moment. Darla and I glance at each other. My heart is racing. I’m wondering if it’s Max and his people. Did he come to see me? It seems likely. Unless Alaska told him what she told me, he probably doesn’t know why I ran away, but I think that’s unlikely. I step forward. I’m too anxious and impatient to wait. “Dad? What’s wrong?”“Stand back, Rayne,” he tells me hurriedly without even turning to face me. “Go up to your room and don’t come back no matter what.”My eyes fill with tears. Judging by the sound of his voice, it’s more serious than I initially thought. “Is it him?” I ask. “No,” he tells me. “It’s GrayLeaf.”Before I can say anything else, I hear a voice from outside. “If the criminal is in there, send her out. Attempting to intervene with the court of law will only cause you more trouble.”“Bring the court and ever
Max I rise, the chair behind me toppling over. “What?”Veronica squares her shoulders and says, “She handed herself over to the court of law. She’s guilty, end of story.”“Is that what she said?”“Does she have to say it?” she demands. “I can’t believe you, Maxwell. You still believe that she didn’t hurt Alaska? She killed her and your unborn child!”I shake my head and turn away from her. “I don’t believe she did that.”She chuckles. It’s a humorless smile. “You sound pathetic right now, do you know that?”“What’s your problem?” I ask, whirling around to face her. “I don’t get it. You went to GrayLeaf to convince them to hear her out and not kill her. Now you’re saying you don’t believe she’s innocent.”“The only reason why I went there to reason with them is because if she dies, you’ll die along with her,” she says through her teeth. “Can’t you see that I did this to save you?”“You believe she killed Alaska, then?”“Why shouldn’t she?” Lambert asks from the door. I forgot that it
Rayne The prison is worse than I thought it would be. It’s a dirty, soulless place. As soon as I entered it, I knew that there was much I would have to endure still, and that it wouldn’t be as easy as I thought it would be. For starters, they put me in a filthy cell. The good thing is that I’m all alone here, which is unlike most of the prisoners. They’re all packed in the same cell and they were catcalling me as soon as I entered accompanied by the guards. They’re still calling to me and saying foul things, which I try my best to ignore. It isn’t easy, because they’re so loud that I can hardly think. But I try. I try because it’s all I can do. Nothing has been explained to me. I don’t know when I’ll be questioned or what to expect from this. I don’t know how long I have to stay in this cell. It’s dark and there’s a sweet smell of decay in the air. I wonder if anyone has died here, but the answer is written everywhere. This place is a prison and a graveyard. If things go wrong,
Rayne The man—who I now know is the prison warden—comes to ‘speak’ with me a few more times. Each encounter is more painful than the last, and I have to admit that I’m starting to lose some hope that everything is going to be alright, as I initially thought it was. They don’t want to hear my truth. They have no interest in that. They want me to admit to Alaska’s murder and I highly suspect that her pack has something to do with this. My regret is as deep as the ocean. If I had listened to my father, I wouldn’t have been in this situation. But I was thinking about peace. I never would have guessed that we would have gotten to this point. I groan in pain when I try to move. Ever since the warden left a few hours ago, I’ve been feeling this pain in my lower back. I can’t even move without feeling stabs of pain that travel all the way to the front of my body. I don’t know how much more of this I can take, but I know this—I won’t confess. Not ever. I’ve come too far and I’ve gone throu
Rayne Reaching MoonWater fills me with excitement and dread. The last time I was here, we were still in the middle of the war. It was Max’s idea for me to leave and go to Iron until things cooled down. I agreed because frankly, I was tired of the bloodshed. I felt I had nothing left to do but go away, and so that’s what I did. I haven’t been back since. Max and I have been communicating with each other but not as often. Our communication is mostly nonverbal. I can’t hear his words in my head or even send a message across; it’s more of a swapping of emotions. This has gotten stronger over the weeks, and now that I’m here, closer to him, I feel the bond’s strength. I exit the carriage and near the gate. I inform the guards of who I am but they don’t ask me to wait for them to call someone. They open the gates for me instantly. I walk through them, leaving the carriage behind. Everything looks as I remember, pre-war. This has to be a good sign. I continue walking until I reach the f
RayneThe war with GrayLeaf only ended with their Alpha’s death. It was Max himself who killed him. There was no way around it. He never believed it was Veronica’s doing, and when he found Albert dead, he assumed Max was the culprit. There were many casualties. My father lost men he trusted. AmberMane lost some of their own, the biggest loss being Victor. I have to admit that I thought they would hate and blame me for his death because I most certainly blamed myself, but nothing between us changed apart from the loss we now shared. I didn’t know Victor as well as I could’ve, but he’d been a friend to me, and he had helped me make myself stronger. I wish things had gone differently. I wish he didn’t have to die. Things took a long time to settle down after the war. GrayLeaf collapsed completely. The remaining members of their pack became rogues. I offered to help them but Max said it wasn’t the right choice to make. A lot of the people who remained were widows and children of the f
RayneI watch her slowly shift back to human form, hissing in pain. The arrow went straight through her shoulder. She tries to touch it but groans in pain when she touches it. I’m afraid that she’ll break it in half and slide it out but that doesn’t happen. I near her and nock another arrow. I point it straight at her face this time. “If you dare to move, I’ll shoot you.”Her eyes meet mine. Her lips are starting to get pale. “You’re going to hit me anyway, so why should I bother? You didn’t follow me all the way here to talk to me.”“You’re right, I didn’t,” I reply coldly. She shifts and cries out. I’m tempted to hit her again. Her pain is comforting to me. I want to tell her that now she knows how it feels, yet the pain she’s experiencing now can’t be compared to mine. That pain left scars that will never go away. Because of her selfishness, I’ve lost parts of myself that are irretrievable. “What are you waiting for, then?” she asks breathlessly as she tries to sit against the
Rayne Lambert changed plans halfway to GrayLeaf. He said he had a better idea. Rather than attack GrayLeaf and cause an unnecessarily high death toll, we could simply try to frame Veronica instead. He said he would speak to Albert and convince him to be in a certain place, at a certain time, where he would then confront Veronica. Naturally, this would still make him lose his place amongst his pack, but he said he never cared much for the pack anyway. He always wanted to be a rogue, where he could live life in his own terms and not have to follow strict rules all the time. I have to say that at some point, I wanted to be a rogue, too. I wanted nothing but freedom whenever I thought about my life. There are times when I forget I was even a slave, but there are others when it's all I can think about. I see myself on my knees in the middle of the grand hall, scrubbing until my fingers bleed. I'd wonder what it felt like to be free. Now that I know what it is, I realize that it comes
Max It doesn’t take long after Veronica leaves for someone to come for me. I don’t ask questions as they untie my hands and then tell me to walk. Humiliation burns inside of me but I keep it down and walk. I walk through the relatively empty dungeon all the way up the short stairs I used on my way down here. There are currently three guards behind me. Any thoughts of trying to run flee from my mind. It would be a reckless decision to make and would undoubtedly bring me more humiliation. The only thing assuring me that I won’t be killed today is Veronica’s alleged plan. She wants me to mate with her, after all, so how could she let them kill me? It all depends, of course. I try not to think too much about it as I walk outside. I take a deep breath of fresh air and instantly feel better. The air down there is stale. It felt like I was slowly being smothered to death. We’re walking toward the mansion. My guess is that there is going to be a discussion of some kind where I will once
MaxThe pain on my side has diminished considerably but the humiliation I feel is burning right through me and I can't overlook it. I'm locked in a dark cell. Thankfully, I'm alone, so nobody else has to see me being brought down to this level. So many things are going on all at once. I've been extracted from my pack, which is now vulnerable. GrayLeaf can attack at any time and we'll fall, just as they wanted it to. I don't understand for the life of me how Veronica can do this to our pack. Does she really want to see GrayLeaf winning? If so, why? And if not, then what's going through her head? I can't understand her. I realize that I never knew her at all. Helplessness plagues me. I'm here tied to a chair and unable to do a damned thing to stop her and her schemes. What's worse is that she could possibly get us all killed. Playing this game with GrayLeaf is dangerous. Does she even know what she's doing?I don’t know what to call this behavior of hers. Childishness isn’t a good
RayneThe plan we come up with is simple yet effective. I go with Iron and AmberMane to MoonWater and take over. As the Luna, it’s my right to do so. Word will spread to GrayLeaf, undoubtedly, but by then, we’ll be ready. Lambert thinks that we have to attack them first and we have to do it hard. We tell them that we only have two requests to end this war.The first request is that we want them to release Max. The second is we want Veronica. At that point, we’ll tell them everything they’ve done. Lambert will confess everything he did and they’ll probably exile him from the pack, but he says he doesn’t care about that. “Why?” my father asked him. “Why do you want to be exiled from your pack?”“I don’t have anything to do there,” was his answer. “I hate those bastards more than you do. If they hadn’t insisted on marrying her off to an Alpha, she would be alive by now.”I wanted to ask him where he would go but I figured it was too intrusive. It didn’t matter, anyway. What mattered wa
Rayne I look back at him. He’s running his fingers through his hair in despair. I’ve already pieced this together. I know why he’s here demanding this truth from me. Why he’s given me this letter to read. It makes perfect sense. The only reason why I’m not saying anything is because my own heart is shattering. I’ve doubted Max. I thought he was a scoundrel and now I have proof that he isn’t. Veronica did it all. The man gets on his knees, his back facing me. A few beats pass and then he says, “I loved her. You don’t understand how much I loved her. You can’t begin to imagine.”I lick my lips and say, “Sure I can. You literally sabotaged her mating day. You put me there just to prevent her from mating with Max.”He glares at me over his shoulder. I glare right back. I’m trying to keep an eye on him while sorting through the mess in my head simultaneously. It isn’t easy. I’m just thinking about Max and how Veronica ruined us. Tore us apart. I can’t take my attention from him entire
RayneI still haven’t decided if we’re going to go to war against GrayLeaf. I want to. I can’t say that I don’t. They’ve done enough to hurt me and I would be thinking solely of revenge if I chose to fight. The time I spent in that prison was something I’d only wish upon my worst enemy. I have lost too much because of them. I want to fight. I want to bring them to my knees. At the same time, I have no idea if it’s the right move. A leader has to think of everyone else, not just themselves. I would hate it if my father, Darla, or even Victor got hurt because of this thirst for revenge of mine. It’s not fair to them. Besides, fighting means we have to join arms with MoonWater, because otherwise we don’t stand a chance. Do I really want to get that close to Max?I’m going to have to be the one to talk to him, which is why my father said the choice is up to me. He’d probably do it if I asked, or insisted, but that’s a coward’s move. I have to be the one to do it, not him or anyone else