“Hey, wench! Clean this up and fetch me a glass of water!” Bethel the former alpha and premium asshole yelled, pushing his plate away while glaring at me. I walked over to him and filled his glass with water. Lucien followed my movement with smouldering eyes and a sharp glare at Bethel but I paid him no mind.If these people knew I was the prince’s mate, would they treat me differently? Or would they not care seeing as the prince himself didn’t seem to care? Or perhaps they would want to hurt me for breaking his curse?“We need to talk.” Lucien pulled me to a corner as soon as I stepped out of the kitchen. I looked around, expecting to see one man from the Alpha Pack walking about but I saw nobody. I felt like a fugitive or an adulterous woman, in fact. I didn’t want Lucien to be anywhere close to me.“What is it you want this time?” I pulled my hand from his, putting a bit of distance between us. His brows creased and he looked hurt as I stepped away from him.“What’s your relationsh
“I swear, it’s not what you’re thinking,” I said to Valens, running after him as he turned his back and led us to the pack house.“What am I thinking?” His cool voice asked. The cold in his voice made me numb and desperate. My wolf already formed a connection with him and she was desperate not to ruin it.‘I’ll die if he rejects us, Aysel. Appeal to him. Appeal to his wolf. He is our true mate!’ She kept yelling into my head as I ran after Valens who neither turned me slowed as his long legs strode into the pack house.We got into the elevator to take us to the penthouse – his place. I hustled into the elevator right as it was about to close because he didn’t hold it open for me.“You’re thinking that – that I’m cheating on you with him but I swear on my parent’s grave that it isn’t anything like that.” He didn’t answer me. He continued to look straight ahead at the cool silver walls of the elevator door as it took us up. “Please, alpha, I am not like that. I would never – I would nev
I swallowed down a lump when he took off his shirt. I forgot I was exposed when he too took off his clothes and joined e in bed. I couldn’t tell what made my heart beat faster. Nervousness or excitement or maybe both.I used to dream of how my mate would take me. These dreams stopped after Lucien rejected me but from the moment I set eyes on the prince, when I knew we were mates, it became hard to put those thoughts out of my mind.He pushed my legs apart when he got into bed. I swallowed thickly again because while my wolf may be going out of her mind with ecstasy, I still retained a bit of my senses. I’d never done this before so I didn’t know what to expect. I especially didn’t know what to expect with him angry at me.“Please be gentle,” I muttered with my cheeks aflame when he settled between my legs.“Do I have a choice?” He grumbled which made no sense to me. He made it sound as if he couldn’t hurt me but he called me a promiscuous traitor a few minutes ago. “I’m sure you know
“Baby girl!” Celeste came flying at me once I stepped out of the elevator. “I’ve searched everywhere for you. Where did you disappear to?” The grin I'd been carrying with me since I mated with the prince vanished once I saw my best friend. She was the only person I expected to realize I’d moved out of the pack basement and I still hadn’t readied a reason to tell her if she asked why I wasn’t here anymore. As it turned out, I’d run out of time to come up with an excuse as she ambushed me that morning.“Hi, Celeste.” I hugged her back while my brain went into overdrive thinking of how to come up with a response to her question.“And you smell different too. What cologne are you wearing?” She pushed me to arm's length to look at me. “There is something different about you.” She mused and my heart fell into my stomach in fear. I didn’t want her to discover I had mated because if I told her, she would want to know with who and I couldn’t tell her I mated with Valens.He explicitly forbade
I am not good at a lot of things but I’m especially bad at lying to myself. I hated to admit it but my disposition left me no choice. I was nervous and scared at Clover’s arrival.Her beauty was well-known all over the world. She had the mannerism of a princess and the hidden strength of a hundred seasoned warriors. Compared to her, I was nothing but chicken shit. She was the perfect person to be his mate and I feared that with her arrival, my deficiency would be even more pronounced.I was so distracted throughout that morning that I stepped on Astrid’s toe as I took a tray of food meant for ‘her men’ from her. The slap I received made my ears ring for a full hour.“Where have you left your mind!?” She exclaimed. Claudia chuckled from behind her but she said nothing.If anyone else said something or laughed while she spoke or bitched, the person would have been in equal trouble with her but she liked Claudia. Claudia liked to gossip and although Astrid acted all high and mighty, she
*VALENS*“Why are you here?” It wasn’t like Clover to disrespect me.She had been my good friend since my teenage years, second only to Jabari who was born to be my best friend and beta. She didn’t disrespect me or disregard my orders ever and I explicitly told her to stay at the Black Valley pack after a group of men thought she looked weak and easy enough to target. She took them all down without help but she’d sustained life-threatening injuries after that.She was the kind of woman I expected to spend the rest of my life with. The kind of woman that everyone thought would make a fine princess and a powerful queen. She was beautiful both inside and outside but she wasn’t my curse breaker.“Valens, you know I get itchy when I’m far from you.” She wrapped her hands around me.“I didn’t plan to stay long here.” Which was the truth but it had changed now. I may have to start all over from here since I’d found my mate here. It only meant this land would break my curse totally.“How do y
*LUCIEN*“You look like shit. What happened to you?” Skylar said, closing the door to her room behind her.“What do you think?” I snarled at her, collapsing into one of her seats in exhaustion.“Stand up!” She shrieked. Her sudden loud voice startled me up like a soldier responding to a command. I flew out of her seat at once before glaring at her. “I don’t want you to get blood on my seats.”“You really are a bitch,” I muttered under my breath. Her eyes narrowed dangerously.“What did you say?” She hissed, her eyes darkening in a second.“Nothing. I came here for a reason.” I could feel a pulse all over my body. My eyes were swollen but my left eye was worse. I could not see through it as I spoke. I walked with a limp and a sharp pain in my left leg with blood trickling down countless parts of my body.“Does the reason have anything to do with why you’re all bruised and bloody?” I shrugged in response.Skylar was a very smart girl. Smarter than people gave her credit for. I knew she
The penthouse suite of the pack house which the prince now inhabited had a full-length mirror. The only times I saw a full-length mirror were the few times I went shopping with Celeste.I took my time to look at myself in the mirror, appraising myself from head to toe. My clothes were blander than my face. Brown eyes and dark brown hair, a small nose, pouty pink lips and a slim jaw.My chest was a handful at most but I suppose it would be half a handful to the prince. My stomach was flat not because I worked out but because I never had a full belly. No pronounced hips but I think they would have to do. Maybe they weren’t wide and full like Claudia’s but they were fitting.I shook my head, wondering why I was doing a body appraisal when we had to ready lunch soon. Claudia’s words got to me when they shouldn’t have. She could never be with Valens whether her body could accommodate him or not. He couldn’t be with another woman asides from me since we mated. His body would not respond to
“… I now crown you, Alpha Valens Thomas Castillo I, the king of werewolves.” The temple reverberated with applause as the oracle crowned Valens. She placed the crown on his head, took a step back, and curtsied. Applauses followed after that and I was grinning from ear to ear. I looked at the smaller crown which had been sitting beside the king’s when the oracle stepped towards me. I had a smaller one that was a replica of it. It was the same one Valens’ mother wore on the day she died. He’d let me wear it on our Mating Ceremony and it meant everything to me. I didn’t know it then but him giving me that crown was the best way to let me know that he had let go of his past. He had left the path of vengeance and chosen to look forward to a future with me. He let me, a daughter of a traitor from a line of traitors, wear the crown his beloved mother wore in her final hours and he was able to smile and laugh with me as I wore that crown. “Do you, Luna Aysel Valens-Castillo, swear before
*VALENS*“I promised you would feel my wrath, didn’t I?” I looked down at the girl I once called my friend. I looked down at the girl that I once favoured. She made numerous sacrifices for me. She fought for me and with me but at the end of the day, she did not know not to mess with me. “I have prayed for forgiveness,” she said, looking up at me. “I have prayed away my sins. At this point, Vee, I don’t care what you do to me.” She sat down, her feet trapped underneath her. “If you had not come back, I would not have known. Do you know what you took from me?” Why did I quiz her still? I wanted to reconcile the Clover I used to know with the one before me. I wanted to see if there was anything left of the other girl, a person to mourn, perhaps. I never loved her the way she wanted me to but I loved her. She was my friend. My confidant. Now, she was my enemy. “How do you even know the child was yours?” She looked up at me. “All I ever wanted was to protect you, Vee.” “No, you wanted
“I don’t care what happens to the rest of them. I want Zavier hanged. He will be an example to this pack of what happens when people challenge me,” Valens was saying to the Elder who was to conduct the trial of Zavier, Skylar, and all who aided them in invading Redville. So the trial started. It took two weeks for us to work up from those who were minor parties in the insurgence before we made it up to the trial for Skylar and her father. They would all be tried on the same day and their verdict was already settled.I sat in the front row with Valens beside me. In the past two weeks, things had been strained with him. I wanted to pretend it was because we had so much to do, getting the pack together after the invasion and preparing for trials every day, but I knew I was wrong. I told him everything the moon goddess told me about my mother and since then, things changed. He had simply said he’d suspected after I got my magic, but nothing more than that. “The Alpha will pronounce the
AYSELArtemis wasn’t bluffing when she said the magic was stronger when we shifted. I hadn’t shifted in a while so I hadn’t noticed but the minute I changed from human to wolf, I felt like an entirely different person. Artemis was stronger. The little training we’d received was certain to make a difference in confronting Skylar but the magic we now had was everything we needed and so much more. When she moved, she moved with better grace than ever before. Skylar’s wolf and Artemis met midair, rolling off to the ground but not before Skylar smacked the edge of Valens’ desk. I was atop her when we went down, my claws digging into her brown wolf. She tried to wiggle out of my grip, tried to get my claws dislodged from her neck but Artemis had a far superior grip than she expected; it was evident in the surprise in the wolf’s eyes. I wasn’t the timid girl she used to know. I was not where I wanted to be, having barely hit half of my full potential, but I was far, far away from the per
VALENSI should have destroyed this pack from the beginning. I should never have let their disrespect and brazenness mount to the point where they thought they could defy me once, twice, and then start an insurgency. Redville did not matter until I took over the pack. They would not have lasted another fifty years as a pack without going bankrupt or succumbing to rogue attacks considering the two idiots they had in line as Beta and Alpha. I saved Redville because it became mine but Zavier and his men had no honor. I would teach them. “He is somewhere around here,” the warrior who alerted me to Zavier’s presence on pack lands said, pointing to a dark alley. I could indeed scent Zavier. I did not need him to be pointed out. He carried the stench of one who would soon turn rogue. The scent pricked my nostrils and made my wolf edgy. What the warrior beside me didn’t know was that I was not born the previous day. I could scent an ambush from miles away. Did he think I had no nose to sme
“I’ll go get it,” I volunteered. Several pairs of eyes turned to me as I spoke. Throughout the night into the day, I followed Valens around, rallying the warriors and trying to keep their spirits high while Valens discussed strategies with their commanders. Not unexpected but we hadn’t seen Skylar when we expected her. I knew she would prefer to make a sneaky entrance than arrive when she was expected. I felt like I knew her schemes better than these strategists but they had won numerous wars while I had no experience. We were at the southern borders where we expected would be the easiest part for Skylar to enter the pack. The elders had decided there was no point going out to find her. We could lure her in and have the upper hand that way since we would be battling on familiar grounds. “Gavin will drive you.” Jabari threw his keys to a burly warrior who I’d come to know was named Gavin. “You are sure you know where it is?” He asked me. “Yes, it’s in his office. I’ll be back soon.
“What do you mean you let down the security? We are just going to let her walk in?” I almost pulled at my hair. I didn’t because he hugged me, cutting me short mid-rant. “Stay still a while. I have to be out of here soon.” He pressed his cheek into my hair. “I’ve missed you today.”“Valens, is this a good plan?” I asked, my hands going up to wrap around him. “Are we certain it’ll work?” “It will. I know who she is working with.” He pulled me closer to himself, squeezing me for a second before he let go. “Who?” I asked. “Some guy I thought I ended last year. Alpha Callan. He is Skylar’s mate.” My mouth rounded in surprise. She’d found her mate? Of course, he would be someone that had a bone to pick with Valens. The world always seemed to align for Skylar when the time came for her to do evil. She didn’t even have to try hard, there were always people to do her evil work while she lurked in the shadows, dishing out commands. “An alpha mated to an alpha? Nice,” I said, trying to fo
“You are coming with us,” the taller of the two men said. He was right beside my bed. There were guns pointed at me from two different angles. One wrong move and it would be adieu. “I’ve been instructed to stay home.” I shrugged. There would be no wrong move. I felt a deep calmness inside me and it had nothing to do with the short sleep I just woke from. There would be no wrong move. I could almost see how everything would play out. Magic whispered in my veins, secreting through my system. It helped me stay calm, giving me a sense of control. My wolf stirred and she too felt the calmness. She did not pace, did not ready herself for an attack. She was relaxed as if we didn’t have guns pointed at us. One of the men cocked his gun. I smiled at him. “You have a lot of nerve coming in here. Did Skylar tell you how dangerous it would get?” I stretched in bed. “Get out of that bed!” One of them hissed when I continued to grin at them. “Or what? You shoot and miss, and I promise, you w
‘Come in if you dare,’ I replied the unknown number and set my pocketed my phone.“Celeste, I have to find Jabari,” I said to my friend, standing. She rushed to her feet to block me. “No, wait. You can’t leave until you promise you’ll spare my parents,” she grasped my shoulders. “Please, Aysel.”“Your parents are traitors. As much as I would do anything for you, this is outside what I can do. Except they aren’t part of this, there is no way I will let them walk free.” “I – I know they will be punished but maybe – maybe a sentence? I don’t want to lose all my family, please.” “When the time comes for that, I’ll see what I can do.” I tried to sidestep her but she blocked me again. “You promise?” “I promise.” I was starting to get impatient but she was adamant about getting a promise. “Now, let me pass. Skylar is here.” Her eyes widened and she looked around as if expecting Skylar to be sitting in the room with us. “Where is she?” She asked, still looking around. “She just texted