**Jade POV**I’d just finished checking on everything in the room when Elliott came up behind me, wrapping his arms around me to reveal a glass of wine. I could tell he was worried we’d all have too much to drink, so I was careful not to take too many big sips. I leaned my head back on his chest, just enjoying the feeling of being held by him. He brushed my hair to the side, so it hung over one shoulder, and he kissed my temple. “You did amazing, sweetheart.” He said gently into my ear, making goosebumps form all over my skin. I fought back a shiver as I could feel his breath so close to my fresh marking spot.I was beginning to get so nervous my stomach was actually starting to hurt when I heard footsteps approaching. William made his way in first, followed by Vera, who had an arm around her. I looked to the side of Vera to see the 3d version of the miniature Elliott I’d seen in all the pictures in his office.“Little brother!” Elliott beamed, pulling me gently behind him. He dropped
**Jade POV**“What can we do then?” I found myself desperately questioning William. “Can we get our memories back? Sebastian knows the same person altered mine, Emma’s, and apparently Jasper’s memories, could we find them and make them give our memories back?” I knew I was being unreasonable, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop asking questions, to stop desperately trying to unlock more information. I could feel my entire past and the memories I had of my parents slipping through my fingers, and I wasn’t willing to let them go without a hell of a fight.“I’m sorry, Jade,” Sebastian answered for William, putting a gentle hand on my shoulder. In some way, it did have a calming effect, but it was nothing like the effect I got from my mate doing the same thing. I had to fight my own curiosity at what other abilities Sebastian must be keeping under his hat. “I can only see IF there was dark magic used. Sometimes I can get an inkling of what was done, even possibly if the same person cast a
**Amelia POV**“MOM! I need your help finding my black cocktail dress for court in a few weeks!” I yelled across the hall. My mom has been so spacey the last few days, which is so unlike her. I strutted across the hall and into her room to find her talking—as usual— on the phone to someone in a hushed voice.“Okay, I have to go now.” She said before pressing the “end” button and putting her phone away, turning to me with a weird smile as if to say nothing was wrong. She should’ve known that tipped me off. Unless she’d just hurt someone, my mother hardly ever smiled.“Mom, I need your help finding my black cocktail dress for court,” I repeated impatiently. Whatever she was keeping from me, I didn’t care. I had bigger fish to fry.I knew Silver Moon would be transporting my dad to trial and relieving the elder security team stationed outside the pack house. I knew Elliott would most likely be overseeing the transport, and probably attending the trial. I knew now he’d found his mate, but
**Elliott POV**Everyone had already had their first, second, and third rounds of drinks. For most of us, there were hardly any effects beginning to show. Wolves did have an extremely high tolerance. But for the girls, it was at least their 5th round and they were starting to show it. Cleo hardly ever drank, and I knew Jade and Emma were extremely new to drinking so—wolf-level tolerance or not—they were beginning to cut loose in a big way.“Do we have karaoke?!” Cleo hiccupped as Jasper gathered her up in his arms and carried her out of the room, ready to take her upstairs and put her to bed.“I’m so disappointed Elliott’s brother isn’t my mate.” Emma said in a completely normal volume that she probably thought was a whisper.“It’s okay, I think your mate is gonna be SUPER HOT!” Jade managed to slur out.“Okay, it’s time for bed,” I said as I scooped her up into my arms and gave Cameron a look toward Emma. He strode over to her and threw her over his shoulder like a potato sack. I hea
**Jade POV**It was snowing outside. Enchanted, I looked out my bedroom window, clutching my favorite dolly close to me. It was dinner time, and I knew I should be headed downstairs, or Mom and Dad would come up to find me and be disappointed I wasn’t washed up and ready to eat, but I just couldn’t help myself. I loved watching fresh snowfall on the ground, I loved trying to see if it would stick or not so I could build snowmen with Daddy. We would build snowman armies on days when the snow was deep enough to have an ample supply. We’d pretend to battle them, and he’d show me real fighting moves he’d used to take down bad guys before, all while we could see mom watching us in the kitchen window while she made us cookies and hot chocolate.It was perfect outside. It looked like a real winter wonderland. At that moment, everything in my world was alright.Screams filtered down the hallway and through my slightly opened door. That didn’t make any sense, why would everyone be making so mu
**Sebastian POV**“About time!” I yelled to my brother who was finally making his way into the rec room. Cam and I had been playing a round of call of duty waiting for the other two to get their mates into bed and goddess only knew how long that could’ve taken.I was disappointed that Jade’s friend wasn’t my mate. Cameron had told me my brother’s mate had an unmated female friend and to his dismay, she wasn’t fated to him, and I’d been hoping to finally run across my mate. I knew it wasn’t like I’d been searching nearly as long as Cam or my brother had, but I was getting impatient to meet the woman I’d be fated to spend my life with.“Yeah, yeah, the single guys are annoyed with the mated ones! I was you guys literally a week ago, keep your pants on!” Elliott quipped, flopping into one of the seats nearest me. A wide smile took over his face as he looked at me. “Seriously. I know the circumstances suck but I’m so glad you’re home dude. We missed you!”I smiled back at him and clapped h
**Jade POV**I’d woken up to Elliott gently shaking me awake from my dream. Or was it a memory? I could feel cold beads of sweat forming all up and down my body, I felt chilled as if I really had been trudging through snow for hours.There was something about the dream that resonated with me, that told me it was real. “It feels real to me too,” Astrid said almost as a question in my head.None of this made any sense. Vera and William would’ve told me if I’d had any siblings. I’d asked Elliott point blank, and he’d told me he didn’t remember me having any siblings. I’d begun to wonder if there was a possibility that Emma and I had known each other at Mystic Moon once Sebastian suggested it, but I’d fallen asleep before I could really think through it. The thought of knowing Emma before going to River Bed was odd and difficult enough to work through. Now I somehow knew my mate’s best friend? And not just knew him, I was to believe I was related to Jasper? And if my dream was real on any
**Elliott POV**The light was barely filtering in through the windows of my room when I heard a firm rapping on the door. I reluctantly got up, covering my naked mate with the heavy comforter so as not to accidentally let someone else see her glorious form and shrugged on my pants from the night before that lay discarded on the floor next to the bed. I heard Jade pout in her sleep once the warmth of my body was gone, but she didn’t wake up.When I opened the door, I saw before me a very unenthused looking Emma. “Cleo banged on my door about 5 minutes ago. She said Jade and I have a half an hour to be dressed and in her office for our next lesson, and she asked me to make sure Jade got up and at em while she works on breakfast and coffee for us.” She was rubbing her eyes and yawned twice while she was attempting to get the sentence out, but I nodded and stifled a chuckle at her disheveled appearance. Someone had definitely chosen the wrong night to have so many drinks. I wondered to my
**Jade POV**“Emma?” I called gently, tapping lightly on her door. No answer. “Come on, Em. It’s just Cleo and I. We know what’s wrong and we just want to talk.” I tried to turn the doorknob but it was locked. I put my ear up against the door and heard light snoring. She was asleep. Cleo held a finger up, running down the hall to my office and returning with pen and paper. She scribbled a quick note before showing it to me.“Come to Jade’s room when you wake up. We just want to talk.” I nodded in approval of the note, and Cleo slid it under the door. “Now what?’ She asked.“Brunch?” I asked, knowing we’d only be a few minutes late and could have the benefit of some quality time getting to know Elliott’s sister without the group. Butterflies swarmed in my stomach at the thought of meeting her acquaintance without Emma or Elliott as security blankets, but I had the next best thing: my brand-new sister.Cleo smiled and linked arms with me and we headed for the elevator.I was fidgeting w
**Emma POV**I had to get out of there. I didn’t know what else to do besides bolt. Taking a moment to silently thank Elliott for giving me my own space just down the hall, I crashed through the door and locked it. What had just happened? My heart was racing; I didn’t know how to make it slow or calm down. I’d looked into a pair of striking green eyes and now everything was somehow different.“He’s our mate, you dumb bitch!” Leona, my wolf who had even less qualms about telling it like it was than I did, purred in my mind.“I don’t think he’s out mate, he’s too hot,” I confessed out loud. It was just her and I, why have a silent conversation? Especially when I was getting the sense that I’d need to vent my frustration through yelling.“We’re hot!” Leona retorted, offended I didn’t agree.“Not as hot as him, or as Jade or Cleo!” I yelled back. “He met them first, he’s probably so disappointed he didn’t get one of them! He’s going to reject us.”“I think you’re wrong. You didn’t even gi
**Jade POV**Jasper nodded slowly; his eyes still illuminated in an eerie way. “We hid you and ran to help Mom and dad. We thought we’d be able to get back to you. We thought wrong. Jasper didn’t know what to do, he was so afraid. I was still dormant, but I managed to find the strength to take over and carry him through.” He was looking stoically only at me as if we were the only two people in the world. I could sense Cleo’s eyes on me, could hear her sobs, but somehow, I couldn’t break this eye contact.“We were on our way up to the alpha floor when we saw Laurel. We grabbed her and told her exactly where to find you. She tried to make us leave with her, but we ran away before she could catch us. We had to help mom and dad. We couldn’t just leave them to die.” He sounded robotic, devoid of emotion, but I knew Axel had come forward to protect Jasper from having to speak through this new memory. While Axel seemed calm and in control, I could only conclude that Jasper was everything but
**Jade POV**“What do you mean? She was the beta’s daughter?” I asked Logan as more of a question than a statement, but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he was telling the truth. It was like it had all hit me at once.Chasing each other through the hallways of the packhouse, making flower crowns with our mothers in the forests, playing princesses, sleepovers, hide and go seek when Elliott and his family would visit, her having a silly crush on my older cousin when he moved to the—I looked to Elliott whose eyes looked almost the size of golf balls. What was he thinking? Was he remembering things too?“I think he’s telling the truth.” Elliott linked me and I nodded slowly, trying to refocus.“Well, let’s move past that part for now.” Elliott offered diplomatically. “We’ll circle back at the end of the story.”“Okay,” Logan sniffed, looking positively bereaved as if he were the one who’d done all of this and not his father. “Well, I looked for Emma and her parents, but all I saw was—wa
**Cameron POV**I took Emma with me down the hall and we got onto the elevator. I snuck a glance at her to see how she was handling all of this, and she definitely looked shell-shocked. “I sent Sebastian to tell William and Vera what’s going on, so they can communicate our regrets to Juliet that we’ll all more than likely miss brunch and have to meet her at dinner.” I tried to ease her into the nitty-grity of the situation.To my surprise, Emma nodded and turned to me. “Okay, what’s happened and what do you need me to do?” she asked, all business. My heart swelled with pride at the seriousness with which she took the situation before she even knew what it was. A true leader.I’d told her about our search of Mystic Moon’s grounds and our run-in with some warriors and the stranger who appeared to be escaping. I’d confessed I’d only gotten the abridged secondhand version from Elliott about what was going on there because the most important thing for me to focus on was the prisoner. I tol
“I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought. I should probably start from the beginning of what I know, that’s why I’m here.” He smiled sheepishly at me, almost as if he were trying to read my face to see if I’d lumped him in with his father or if there was any level of trust. I decided to be open-minded and give him a chance to explain himself.Elliott gestured for Logan to come and sit in the sitting area Emma and I had just been in the day before talking about her strange dream. I wondered why he wouldn’t want this meeting to be more formal and at his desk, but I didn’t question him. Jasper pushed one of the larger chairs in front of the desk over to the area, and Logan gratefully took it. As he plopped into the chair, he closed his eyes almost as if he hadn’t sat anywhere remotely as comfortable in a long time. I began to look him over. The scars on his face were nothing compared to the rest of his body. Though he did appear to be wearing Elliott’s clothes as they were a bit too large,
**Elliott POV**So strange. One moment, Jade was reaching out for a handshake and then next, she was gasping, and her eyes clouded over as if in a private link. When they came back into focus, she looked blankly and wordlessly at our guest for at least 15 seconds.“You’re Logan.” She almost whispered. How could she know that? He’d only just told me his first name on our way up to my office so I would know how to introduce him.“Do you trust me?” He asked my mate, looking almost as if he could see into her very core.I saw Jade nod stoically in response. “But I don’t know why.” She admitted in a whisper.I saw him reach out as if to hug MY mate, and I couldn’t stop Aries from interfering. I liked to think of myself as more evolved than my wolf, but he had a point. Why was this stranger touching our mate knowing she bore our mark?A growl came from deep inside me, a carnal and possessive one. I could see the fear on Logan’s face, and I didn’t care. It wasn’t until I looked at Jade and s
Before I could spin out too much, the door swung open. My breath hitched and I sprinted toward my mate, jumping into his arms, and inhaling deeply into his hair. “Are you okay?!” I realized I was crying.“Yes, love. I’m just fine, and I think we may have made a major breakthrough about your old pack. Mystic Moon, I mean.” Elliott’s voice was the greatest sound I’d ever heard. I was barely processing what he was saying and just wept into his shoulder. I knew he was fine now, but I realized the thought that he’d been hurt—or maybe even worse—had frightened me more than anything ever had in my life.I finally realized what Elliott had just said to me when I heard someone clearing their throat. The sound was coming from behind Elliott, so this must’ve been the ‘them’ they were talking about.I slid slowly down from my mate’s grasp before looking behind him. There stood a man with dirty blonde hair falling in messy-looking curls down past his shoulders. His hair was even longer than Elliot
**Jade POV**Cleo pulled away suddenly and I could see a very confused and slightly alarmed look on her face. “That was Cameron. Evidently there’s some sort of emergency and we all need to go into Elliott’s office and wait for them.”“Is Elliott okay?!” I asked, wondering why he didn’t link me himself.“I’m not sure.” Cleo bit her lip. Her eyes clouded over, and I wondered if she was mindlinking back to ask.“I just linked Jasper. He said Cam asked him to come too, but if Elliott were hurt Jasper would be one of the first people to be linked,” she seemed to be trying to calm me, but my eyes got a bit wider wondering why the beta would be told before Elliott’s mate. Why was Jasper more important? And why was I so upset about it? “You’ll be the first to know as soon as you’re able to be linked!” Cleo patted my arm, trying to explain it to me and I felt a bit of relief.We made our way into the hallway, and I saw Cameron and Sebastian naked and rushing toward us. Being wolves, nudity was