*VALENS*“You’re not in a good mood.” I turned to Cia who was staring at me with complex emotions in her eyes. “What’s the matter?”“Why are you here?” I asked rather than respond to her question. Her face wrinkled and for a minute, it looked like she would lash out at me but she comported herself in good time.“We’re twins, Vee,” she said in an uncharacteristically soft tone.I say uncharacteristic because throughout the years Cia and I spent together growing up, she’d been a bully. We never spent two hours together without breaking into a fight and her zapping me. Valencia was not the type to speak in a soft tone. No, she’d rather yell to make sure her point was communicated.“Can you stop?” It made my chest twist up weirdly when she made me remember the past. The past was the past and there was no going back there. We could not go back to being thick as thieves and no matter how many times she tried reminding me of the relationship we once had, I was not the ‘twin brother’ she reme
*IRENE*I never dreamt that my stay in Redville would result in this. In all my plans, I didn’t expect to end up in the dungeons. What was worse was that I didn’t even know what I did wrong. The last thing I remembered was having lunch with this man, taking a walk with him through the pack dwelling and then waking up in the Cursed Alpha’s office with a woman pulling my hair.I tried to think back to what had happened but every time I did, I broke out in a cold sweat. I didn’t want to think of what could have happened, didn’t want to imagine that I’d been taken advantage of while drugged. My body trembled and tears gathered in my eyes but every time, I shook my head and tried to pretend, tried to assure myself that nothing like that ever happened.Yet, the doubt!I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. Being left here all alone made me think more and the more thoughts that entered my head, the more I panicked. My heart never stopped racing since I was first thrown in here. I w
My leadership was met with a lot of resistance – as expected. No one outrightly said anything to me but there was a lot of passive aggressiveness. I had to work with Dahlia and a boy named Daniel. Of the both of them, Dahlia was the most amiable as Daniel had trouble concealing his hatred for me. He was nineteen at most so I didn’t understand why he was so averse to my leadership but it turned out he just hated me as a person.“Oh, Daniel, he’s just a kid. Angela’s niece was his girlfriend,” Dahlia informed me one day when the teen all but broke my door in half as he left seething after I asked him to do some work.I’d all but forgotten about Angela until Dahlia mentioned her. I couldn’t even remember if her family got banished along with her. Angela got her family into this mess but I guess it was easier for Daniel to hate me than the person that caused his relationship to fall apart.“I am going to give him one last chance,” I said. Only a few days had passed since I actively took o
“What are you doing?” I asked the warden who had climbed on top of her despite her struggles. It was an unsettling sight to witness and I felt awful for Irene in that moment. Her eyes were wild and ferocious, filled with tears yet sparkling with determination. Her voice was loud, broken and terrified.“Who are you?” The prison warden stopped as he cast a disparaging look at me but when his eyes fell on Dahlia, he lost all the colour in his face. “I was just disciplining her as I was asked to,” he said, his jaw quivering as he tried to clench his teeth.“Does disciplining her have anything to do with forcing yourself on her?” I asked. Even as we were speaking, he still had her pinned to the ground. “Is this a new security method I’m unaware of?”“She refused to corporate and tried running away so I held her down.” His words would be plausible if it weren’t for the awkward position he was in while speaking them. She tried running away and so he ripped her shirt? I’d never heard such bul
It was wild. I didn’t expect to be thanked but I did not imagine I’d be slapped for getting her daughter to safety as soon as I could. Why did she take one look at her daughter and decide that I, a heavily pregnant woman, would have hurt her?“Mum, stop,” Irene said, her tone barely above a whisper when her mother grabbed a hold of me.It wasn’t enough that she had slapped me, she was now trying to shake me to get me to speak but I didn’t. I was too stunned to speak. My cheeks stung. My face was hot and something inside of me was rising in temperature. Asia growled curses and my heart beat fast as hell yet I could not believe I had just been slapped, and so hard!“What the hell did you do to my daughter? Answer me!” She was yelling.The people who had come out of the elevator with her watched with open mouths. Dahlia grabbed her and tried pulling her off me but Thelma had experience harassing me. Her grip on my shoulders was tight, her nails pinching into me. There’d be an ugly bruis
I never expected Irene to show up like this, vulnerability written all over her. When I saw her at the other end of my door, my first thought was that she had come to act out one of her many scenes where she ended up as the good guy and me a bully but she seemed more demure than usual.“What is it?” I asked when I saw her. She gave me a bitter smile that did not suit the image I had of her.“It may be too late but I know I owe you an apology so here I am.” She bowed her head. “May I come in?”I won’t lie, I was sceptical. My history with Irene did not allow me to trust her no matter what face she wore or how softly she spoke and being in an enclosed space all alone with her did not appeal to me.“I just have a few things to say, I promise and after today, we may never see each other again.”It was the last part that made me budge. Yeah, we may never see each other again and there was no sadness behind that realization. She said she wanted to apologize so I’d give her the chance to. On
“You were covered in mud,” I said and her cheeks reddened.“You remember,” she laughed again, the sound getting progressively drier. “Yes, in my excitement I’d tripped and fallen into a mud puddle when we entered the arena but I was a child. What’s wrong with being a little muddy? You ruined my experience that day and when I told my mother, she was pissed. I’d talked about Funland for months on end and when I finally got there, I could not enjoy it because of some snotty kid. My mother blamed herself for our status in life which made me easy to look down on.”It seemed the mother and daughter had their insecurities but they decided to blame me and I told her just that. Who the heck hates a kid because they didn’t want to hold hands and run around in mud in their princess dress?“You’d been feeling inferior already but you decided to project all that on me. Was that why you always said you’d get back at me? That you’d have the final laugh as if we were competitors?” I asked and she fro
*VALENS*“Are you okay?” Dahlia asked.I was getting these questions a lot these days and it irked me. Who would be okay with the nonsense happening around me these days? My mate now had to work and as much as I told her to take things slow, she always ended up exhausted at the end of each day. It hurt and annoyed me that she was stressed on top of being pregnant but every time I suggested a break, she looked at me with dull eyes. She thought I doubted her competence and although that was far from the case, there was no convincing her. I loved that she was great at her job and tackled each obstacle with enthusiasm but I’d rather she rest.Recently, she wasn’t plagued by all manners of sicknesses. Her appetite fluctuated from time to time but for the most part, she was fine. She had a healthy glow about her, her colour was back to normal and she was healthy. It felt like tempting the devil to put her to work just when she started getting on her feet.Aside from the issue of my mate wor
“Uggh,” I sighed as I collapsed onto the sofa. “I’m tired of being pregnant,” I muttered as I sank deeper into the new sofa. I was a few weeks away from delivery and I felt huge, as in HUGE. There were times when I saw doors and I was scared I wouldn’t be able to fit through. Of course, it always ended up being my imagination but my back was killing me and my feet were now atrociously large. Most of all, I was more than eager to meet my babies. “We’re done, Luna,” the pack members who’d come to help Valens and me move into our new home announced. I’d been looking forward to this day for a long time and it was finally here. The house was fully decorated and we’d set up the babies’ room a while back. Everything was perfect. Life was awesome. We hadn’t moved all those months ago because aside from having to decorate the house, I didn’t think it was right to leave the pack house when the pack was still grieving. Redville had not experienced a battle in decades and although there were a
The sun hitting my face forced me to open my eyes. The sterile smell of antiseptic assailed my nostrils and made me wrinkle my nose. The hospital remained one of the worst places for me. It reminded me of the many long hours I used to spend in fertility clinics trying to conceive. I touched my stomach or I tried to. One of my hands felt numb and the other was gripped in someone else’s hand.I took a deep breath to calm myself as a flood of memories passed through me. It was as if I was being held at knifepoint again and my heart trembled. My lips pursed and tears rapidly filled my eyes. I’d been so scared, goddess, I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I’d been as scared as I was then. My life had flashed before my eyes and I saw everything I was about to lose.I tried to breathe but my chest felt like it was caving in on me and I could still feel a hand around my neck choking the breath out of me. The nightmare was over but the scars it left were permanent. As I lay there in bed
As the howls faded into the night, I continued to pace. Beth tried to comfort me but I couldn’t listen to her. Lucian had dispatched more wolves to the battleground and I knew my mate was badly hurt from the pulsing pain I felt at my side. All I could do now was pray to a goddess that had never answered me. Although I’d trained a lot in the past to augment my lack of strength as an omega, I’d neglected training since I entered Redville. Even if I was not pregnant, there was nothing I could do to help my mate at this point and it made me feel like a failure.My mate was out there risking his life to protect me, to protect us, and all I could do was hide. As his Luna, I should be by his side always and if I should die, I was to die by his side but I was hidden here, biting into my nails and holding back tears. Nestled in the pack’s sanctuary, I could not keep still. I and many other women were wide awake like an owl, the air heavy with tension and fear.Even after the moon waned and nig
*VALENS*My moon stared at me and I stared at her. We both knew what was coming. My wolf was already bristling with anticipation. Chantelle’s face was pale and I needed to reassure her.“It’ll be alright,” I said and I was sure of it. In seventeen years, I’d conquered twenty-four packs. There was nothing to fear from Dahlia and Jackson. I told her just that and it almost felt like bragging.“Then, you couldn’t be killed,” she responded, her voice disturbingly quiet. “But not anymore. Anything could happen and I’d lose you.” Tears filled her eyes and my chest tightened.“I’ll be by your side forever. That’s a promise. You’re mine in every lifetime so I’ll always be by your side, moon.”“Don’t say that.” She shook her head. “It sounds like you’re planning to die and leave my side. Don’t make it sound like you’re saying farewell.”“Farewell? We’ve not even moved into our new home. I’m not leaving you to raise our pups alone.” I hugged her to me. The sensation of having her pressed tight
*JACKSON*“Alpha Jackson, you are a genius!” Alpha Shawn praised me.Shawn was one of the many Alphas I met through my mysterious benefactor and the most powerful of all the Alphas I’d been introduced to. I found him obnoxious and too talkative but he had a large number of resources to throw away as long as he could watch the Cursed Alpha get trampled on. His stocky build was more like a Beta’s and he constantly stank of garlic so he wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around.He was a man that I would have dismissed if I didn’t know the power he wielded. Sometimes while we conversed, I felt resentful that a man like this had so many resources to spare while I was now battling bankruptcy thanks to Alpha Park.As if that bastard had known what lay ahead, he’d started to sell his properties in Blood Moon. I heard he’d made investments in Redville. Thelma had somehow found out that he’d willed everything, including his clothes, to his daughter. Everything he had left would go to her. I
By evening that day, the entire pack was silent. It was weird to me because usually, I’d ask Dahlia to tell me what was going on in the pack and now she wasn’t here anymore. It’s like she’d disappeared into thin air. Knowing her better now, I knew she had planned that too. She was smart so there was no way he didn’t know she’d be caught one day so she must have put in thorough plans into escaping when her crimes were exposed.As for her brother, he was not in jail because he was Valens’ Beta. I’d had to step in when it looked like my mate would unsheathe his claws and take a swipe at his chest and I knew the Beta would not try to defend himself. He’d take it without a word. For now, we put Lucian on probation.I was stressed, feeling feverish and stewing over Dahlia’s lies and how well she played me. It was as if the puzzle of life suddenly clicked. Everything made sense now, from how protective she seemed of Valens to the things happening around me. A girl like Dahlia who could sell
It was chaos after that. Chaos and pandemonium and everything in between.The first thing I did when I got out of my office was to go find my mate and tell him everything Lucian had confessed. His expression, much like mine when I first heard from Lucian, transformed from surprise to anger in the blink of an eye.“That stupid bitch.” I caught him by the hand when he almost stormed out. I’d felt a sharp pain at the side of my rib so I held his hand and doubled over as I gasped for breath.“What – where does it hurt?” Valens doubled back, his anger morphing to concern in the blink of an eye.“It’s - it’s okay. Just a normal random pain.” I didn’t mention it hurt as much as getting stabbed. “I asked Lucian to put her in the dungeons.”“You trust him to not give her a heads up to run?” He asked.It was not an irrational concern and I was ashamed to say I’d never thought of that. Despite it all, I continued to see Lucian as Valens’ Beta. He was loyal to Valens and although he tried to pro
I was taking a break from work by scrolling through an online baby store when someone knocked on my door.“Who is it?” I asked, adding a cute set of baby sock-shoes to my cart.“It’s Lucian. May I come in?” It was rare for the Beta to visit me like this so I asked him to come in with a curious frown on my face. “Good afternoon, Luna,” he said, his expression as blank as usual.“Yeah, good afternoon,” I said as I locked my phone and sat upright. “Is there a problem?”“No,” he responded but after a bit, he spoke again. “Yes. Well, it depends on how you look at it.” Another pause during which he drew a deep breath and then released it. “What am I saying? It’s a problem.” He shook his head with a stiff posture. His beefy muscles were corded and he looked like he was on the verge of an explosion.“Have a seat first.” I offered him a seat, partly due to the tension I read on him and the fact that he was fucking huge and towering over me in an enclosed space.Lucian was supposed to be my Bet
I was going through an appeal from pack members to increase the budget for the kitchen when my phone rang. I picked it up with glee, not even bothering to check who was calling because I needed an excuse to escape the tedious work.“Hello?” I said into the phone.“You sound tired,” came a familiar voice. My eyes lit up and I could not stop myself from exclaiming.“Dami!” Even my wolf was excited to hear her voice. “How have you been?” As I asked that question, I felt a bit of guilt because I’d let myself get carried away to the point I forgot to even contact her.“Oh, I’m alright,” she responded with a laugh. She sounded a lot happier than the last time we spoke. “How have you been?” She asked.“I’m alright! How are things going for you? With the moving and all.” I brought the conversation back to her.In all honesty, nothing was going on with me except for the fact that it felt like Valens was hiding something, something that made him incredibly pissed. Every time I asked if somethin