When I woke up it was still dark and there was a slight chill in the air. At some point during the night I must have kicked the covers off my body because my body was now naked and exposed. I turned over seaking for the warmth of Elijah’s body but he wasn’t beside me. My eyes shot open and I scanned the room around me. Elijah wasn’t here and his fading scent told me that he hadn’t been here for hours. It wasn’t even 6am yet, where could he have gone so early? On closer inspection of the room there were a few things that seemed out of place. The covers were on the floor a few inches away from the bed and there were clothes and other personal effects laying all over the floor. The room looked as though someone had packed for a tip in a hurry and there was a note on the pillow where Elijah’s head usually rested. The note was in my mother’s handwriting, I unfolded it and read through it quickly. Dearest daughter, I have so much to tell you and I wish I had more time to do it, but Ar
I realised two things the moment my eyes opened. Firstly, I was no longer in my own bed and secondly, I was tied to whoever’s bed I was in. It felt as though my restraints were laced with silver because no matter how much I pulled against them, they showed no signs of giving way. It also felt like my connection to my wolf was weaker than it usually was. I could still feel his presence but I couldn’t speak to him or hear his responses. Maybe these ropes were coated in silver nitrate. Pure silver would suppress my wolf completely but silver nitrate would only weaken him. It was either that or I had been drugged. Ugh, I hope it wasn’t that, who knows what they could have done to me in my sleep. Trying to put such thoughts out of my mind I took in my surroundings. I would have harboured some hope that this was a sex game that Diana was playing if it wasn’t for the decoration. This whole room looked as though it had come straight out of a gothic nightmare. There was nothing like this in
The books my mother wanted me to read were duller than any of my maths textbooks, they were harder to decipher too. If I wasn’t convinced that my mates life might be saved by the information in one of these books then I would have thrown them out of the window by now. The problem was, I still didn’t have a clue how I was supposed to use the information in these books to get my mate back and defeat Arthur. Most of the sections I had read so far talked about how to effectively protect my mind and how to control the minds of others. Maybe once I had finished reading the remaining passages then I would be able to formulate some kind of plan for my attack. But at the moment I was still clueless.“Well this section is useless.” Felix complained. He closed the book he was reading through and rested his head in his hands. He looked thoroughly exhausted despite the fact he had only been here for a few hours. Mark decided to help Ryker and I early this morning but it took Ava a while to convi
In my estimates I had been here for nearly three days and in all that time I hadn’t been allowed to leave the bedroom once. During that time different people came into my room to bring me what I needed and Diana’s mom came a few times a day to teach me how to hide my thoughts. I was getting better at it but it was completely exhausting. Whenever she left my room I felt the same as I did after spending all night negotiating with a rival pack on a business deal. It would be so much easier if I could somehow fight my way out of this mess, but that didn’t look like it would be possible.I was being watched at all times. Even when I was locked in this room I could hear the sound of breathing and heartbeats on the other side of the door. Arthur would know the moment I tried to leave this room, there was no way around it.‘It doesn’t matter, we can take them all down.’ My wolf growled. He hated being restrained. He wanted to take control of my body and break us out of here. The longer I wa
I knew that I wouldn’t be able to convince Mark or any of the others to let me travel to Arthur’s pack alone. That was the reason I didn’t bother to ask. Instead I went straight from Mark’s office to the garance, I took one of Elijah’s cars and started to drive. I would be at Arthur’s pack before nightfall, that would be when the hard part started but I didn’t want to think about that right now.I had spent the last hour or so listening to music as I drove in an attempt to clear my head. It didn’t work but at least it was better than driving in silence, this road was eery enough without that. Arthur had chosen a pack that was pretty much in the heart of the forest and the roads on the way there were thin and winding. Just like they would be in a horror movie. I was expecting some mysterious creature to jump out at me every time I went around a bend. Onyx growled in frustration within my mind. She knew we were heading straight into the territory of our enemy and she wanted to go in wi
I was so happy to see Diana and know that she was safe but it was still terrible having her here. I had been planning to leave last night but I couldn’t do that with her here and now I was second guessing my whole plan. It was one thing for me to put myself at risk, but I couldn’t put my mate in that position. I was going to have to come up with a new plan now, one that didn’t involve as much risk. “What’s wrong?” Diana asked. Her head was on my chest and I had been sure that she was sleeping a few moments earlier. I must have woken her up with my frustration or my loud thoughts. Even though I had gotten better at hiding my thoughts it still didn’t come easily to me and if I wasn’t concentrating it was easy for me to slip up. “I am just worrying about how we are going to get out of here.” I replied.“It’s ok, I have a plan for that.” Her voice was still groggy from her sleep but she sounded confident. I was desperate to know what she was planning but I knew better than to ask her
I still wasn’t sure exactly what Arthur was capable of. He made it clear that he wanted me to be sitting at the table waiting for him when breakfast was served, so that is exactly where I was. Even though it meant I had to get dressed in a hurry and practically run down all those flights of stairs. I arrived in the dining room a couple of minutes before Arthur instructed but he was nowhere to be seen. I sat down in the cold, empty dining room and poured myself a cup of coffee while I waited for him to arrive. The food hadn’t been placed on the table yet but there was tea, coffee and more types of fruit juice than I had seen in one place before. ‘Does he think he is running a hotel or something?’ Onyx grumbled in my mind, making me giggle and almost spit coffee across the table. Maybe Arthur was trying to impress me with the table layout and the wardrobe full of designer clothes but that showed how little he knew about me. I wasn’t concerned about luxury or material possessions. Aft
Diana’s mother staggered into the room clutching her throat, bruises in the shape of fingers were already starting to form around her neck. I wondered how many times Arthur had given her bruises like that over the years he had kept her as a prisoner. She didn’t seem too fazed by it, so my guess was that it was a frequent occurrence.“Don’t worry about me. His bark is much worse than his bite.” She might have been able to fool me if she wasn’t so unsteady on her feet and her voice didn’t sound so weak. She looked at me for a moment, probably reading my thoughts. I tried to block her from my mind even though I knew it was pointless. Her dishevelled appearance had me flustered, I had to do something to stop Arthur before he could hurt Diana like he had hurt her mom.“You alpha’s always think you can control everything. Why don't you focus on shielding your mind and leave the escape plans to your mate.” She suggested, rolling her eyes at me. Being held prisoner for years clearly hasn't d
Sometimes I look at the way my life turned out and it is hard to believe that it is real. It has been over nine years since I accepted Elijah as my mate and in that time he has given me more love and happiness than I ever dreamed possible. We decided not to start our own family right away, instead taking a few years to focus on each other. But now that we had started having children we couldn’t seem to stop. Over the last four years we have added two sons and one daughter to our growing family. Elijah was an amazing father. He loved spending time with the children, so much so that our parents were constantly complaining that they didn’t get to see their grandchildren often enough. Today would be an exception to that rule, because today was our oldest son’s fourth birthday party and we were going to need all the help we could get. Elijah had dropped the kids off with his parents early this morning then joined me to prepare the venue for the party. I had also managed to rope in a f
The last four days have been amazing but also incredibly tiring. Diana craved sex almost constantly, only resting for a couple of hours at a time before waking me up so I could take her again. That cycle continued until late last night when her heat finally broke and we were both able to get some rest. That rest was a lot shorter than either of us would have liked. Diana’s mom knocked on our door shortly after dawn the following morning. She told us that we needed to get washed and dressed so we could get back to our pack for the celebration they were throwing in our honour. I wasn’t too happy with the idea of a party in our honour while Diana was so exhausted, but cancelling it would have been an unpopular move. I couldn’t even be unhappy at Mark for organising it, he was only trying to do his best to raise the morale within our pack after what had been a difficult couple of weeks. He knew as much as I did that the best way of doing that was spending time together as a pack, Dian
My skin felt as though it was on fire and the only Elijah’s touch made it feel a little better. It made me want to rip all my clothes off and beg him to take me. I didn’t even care that we were in the middle of a staircase where anyone could walk past and see us. I let out a frustrated whine. “We are nearly here honey, just hold on a few seconds longer.” Elijah sounded as though he was struggling just as much as I was. He practically dragged me up the remaining stairs and into the bedroom we had shared together for the last few days. He didn’t wait for me to undress, as soon as the door was closed behind us he shredded my clothes with his claws and pushed me against the door. By the time my back made contact with the wooden door he was already kissing my neck. He held me in place with one hand while using his other hand to shred his own clothes and throw them to the floor. Now that we were both naked he let go of me and took a moment to admire my body. “Beautiful.”“Are you going t
Diana had prepared for some kind of epic battle but things didn’t really work out that way. With Arthur’s powers neutralised most of the people in the pack gave up without a fight. They seemed to be disorientated more than anything else so Mark and the others gathered them all in more of the larger reception rooms so we could address them. I needed to explain to them what had happened to them. It was disorientating when you woke up after being controlled by someone but I had only ever been controlled for a few minutes. There was no way of knowing how long these people have been controlled for, it could have been weeks, years or even decades. There is one thing I knew for certain though, they were going to need help to integrate back into society. I was planning to offer them a place in our pack, at least until they had pieced enough of their life back together enough to know what they wanted to do. “What happened to Arthur?” Mark asked once everyone was assembled. “I bound his wri
I tried not to react as confusion washed over Arthur’s face even though internally I was squealing with excitement. Our plan was actually working and this whole ordeal was close to being over, I could barely believe it. We had hoped that putting silver in the water would be enough to weaken Arthur’s control but I never really believed that the result would be so profound. When he walked out of the room I was sure that I could sense his panic, but I didn’t have time to gloat over it. I closed my eyes and drew upon my powers to check on the progress of our forces. They were about an hour from the border of Arthur’s territory but those were only the forces that I could reach. As long as there had been nothing to change the plans in our absence, there would be a force of vampires arriving in just a few minutes' time. I was getting ready to open a mindlink to Mark when Elijah pulled me out of my seat and started dragging me towards the door. “Wait a moment, what are you doing?” I asked.
My wolf is growling and trying desperately to push his way to the front of my mind. He knows that as much as this might look like a civilised breakfast, it is more akin to dining with the devil himself. At any moment he could suddenly turn on us and with his powers, there would be very little I could do to save those around me. I was particularly worried about the young girl. She didn’t look much older than four or five but, even so, I couldn’t sense any trace of a wolf in her. She was completely out of place here and so much more vulnrable than any of the rest of us. Yet she seemed to be unaware of the threat which Arthur posed as she used her pieces of apple to build a house-shaped structure on her plate. Arthur coughed to grab my attention.“I guess you are probably wondering who she is. She is my daughter and her name is Cora.” The smile he gave me as he spoke was the first genuine smile I had seen from him. As Arthur didn’t have a mate that could only mean one of two things, t
My nerves were on edge from the moment Arthur left us alone the previous evening. Elijah held me and kissed me for a while before falling asleep with me in his arms. I on the other hand couldn’t get to sleep, I laid there staring at the ceiling for hours until the sun started streaming through the curtains. That was when I decided that it was useless trying to sleep when my mind was so preocuped. So I decided to do something more productive with my time. Being careful not to wake Elijah, I slipped out of bed and went into the bathroom. Once I had locked the door and I was sure there was nobody coming to distract me, I sat down on the floor and prepared myself for what I had to do. The first time I had tried to take over the minds of another werewolf it hadn’t been easy. It had taken many hours to make me feel anything close to normal again but it was early in the morning. Arthur would still be asleep so his control was likely weak in many places. It didn’t take me long to find one
I felt sick. Arthur’s men had me tied to the bed with ropes infused with silver. I wasn’t strong enough to free myself from the ropes so I had no other option than to watch as Arthur sunk his teeth into my mate's neck. She screamed out in pain and started thrashing her arms and legs wildly against the men who were holding her in place. Arthur and his men let go of Diana then took a couple of steps back before she could punch any of them in the face. She let out a frustrated growl before checking the wound on her neck with her hand. I could already tell that the wound wasn’t acting like a normal mark would. There was more blood and it wasn’t healing almost instantly in the same way as a mate’s mark normally would. There was a smug smile on Arthur’s face when he stepped away from her but as the seconds ticked on, his smile started to falter. At the same time Diana’s smile grew wider. The bite on her neck was already healing and there was no sign of a mark being left behind. “Well, I
I had been expecting Arthur to come for me again straight after the little distraction we staged, but he didn’t. Instead he left me alone for the rest of the day and the next morning as well. That had me concerned. I was worried that he had realised there was something else going on, or that he had somehow worked out what I did. One moment he was talking about spending the whole day with me, the next he left me alone and ignored me for twenty-four hours. Something about that didn’t seem to add up. To make things worse, I didn’t feel any different after the spell that I cast with Elijah and I was worried that it had failed. I had followed the instructions to the letter but maybe I had missed something. Maybe there was another step to the spell that was mentioned in a different part of the book. There was so much about all of this that I didn’t understand yet. I wish there was a way I could ask my mom about it without Arthur finding out what we were talking about. Who knows, that mig