We finish a good two-thirds of the cake and half of the pretzels before I roll over on the blanket with a groan. “Shit! We shouldn’t have eaten that! I’m so freaking full.” “But it was so good!” Brandon grunts out next to me, holding his stomach. “I thought we were supposed to make good decisions as adults. We run a pack, have won a war, and have two pups. Why are we still doing stupid shit like this?” Zak whines. I chuckle and then hold my stomach. “Don’t make me laugh! That hurts.” We settle next to each other, my head cradled on Zak’s chest and Brandon’s head laying on my thigh. One of my hands is stroking Brandon’s hair, the other clasped in one of Zak’s hands. “Can you believe all the stuff that’s happened in a year? I mean at this time last year, we were all at the packhouse, celebrating the new year and my birthday with our folks. I was all worried about finding my mate in the morning and becoming Delta of the pack. And now, I’m Luna with two mates, twin pups, an
Charlie looks just as beautiful and devastatingly sexy as she did all those months ago, the first time in the playroom. Her long, glossy black hair flows down her back like an inky river, longer than before. She hasn’t cut her hair since she got pregnant, and it now hangs down to the middle of her back. Her breasts are fuller from her pregnancy and breastfeeding, and they nearly spill out of her corset as she moves towards us. The heels make her shapely legs seem even longer and her breasts and ass thrust out as she balances. The thong frames her round ass and I can’t help but want to rip it off with my teeth. Zak and I both watch her walk towards us, the sound of her heels on the wooden floor and the scent of her arousal filling the air. When she’s standing in front of us, I push her shoulder down. “On the couch, Red. Spread your legs wide.” She willingly complies, watching me as she sits with eyes completely bled the color of a rain cloud. Zak moves the coffee table out of
Brandon ushers me to head towards the playroom, so I lead our little trio that way. Once in the room, I turn on the light and see my present in the middle of the room, a big red bow on top of it. Just the sight of me makes me wetter, though I’m not exactly sure what it is. Folding my bottom lip between my teeth, my eyes remain focused on the black bench while I circle it. It almost looks like a spanking bench with the long padded bench for my torso to lay on and the padded knee rests. But the knee rests are spread further apart than the typical spanking bench, wide enough for someone else to stand between. There is also a headrest, almost like one you would see at a massage parlor or a chiropractor, and armrests. Buckles line all the pads where the arms, body, and knees go. The biggest difference between this bench and a spanking bench is the height. Though spanking benches can be any height, they are typically at a level for the submissive to kneel, lifting their ass in the a
I continue to rub the lidocaine cream into Charlie’s skin, making sure that the sting comes out. Her werewolf healing has kicked in and the redness is starting to dissipate. I move my hands along her ass, her hips, her thighs. Her inner thighs and pussy are glistening with her juices from how excited she is from the spankings. I can’t help but run my fingers along her slit. She moans as I push my fingers between her folds, finding her wet, and warm, and ready. “Goddess, baby. Look at your pussy sucking on my fingers.” She moans louder and I move deeper inside of her. Harder. Faster. “How do you want us to fuck you?” “On the bench, Alpha. I want to be tied down. Completely at your mercy.” Her words come out on a long, low moan. I can’t help but moan as I speed my hand up inside of her, adding two more fingers for a total of three. I look up to see Brandon pushing his pants down over his hips, kicking them off when they hit his ankles. “Look at me, Red,” he rasps out.
The next morning, I’m checked by the doctors and released from the hospital. Marcus tries to insist that I go home with him, as does Arthur, but I need time to myself. I need to process everything that’s been going on. Grieve. Commune with Hecate. Worry. And just let myself miss my friend. I do allow Marcus and Arthur to drive me back to my house in one of the coven’s golf carts. They insisted that I relax and I was too consumed with my own emotions to really protest. The ride through the covendom is heartbreaking. Scorched earth. Rubble from fallen walls. Craters in the ground. Fallen trees. Our beautiful home destroyed. But my people are out. They are clearing roads and sidewalks so that we could accommodate Liv’s entire coven for the night before we move to the Meteoric Rise territory. They are passing out food to the workers and loading luggage into trucks and trailers. They are caring for each other in the wake of destruction. And it’s amazing. My people call ou
After dropping Bella off at her house, Arthur and I head over to my sister’s house to pick up my daughters. They stayed with my sister and her husband while I’ve been with Bella. I came home last night after the impromptu council meeting in Bella’s hospital suite. I don’t believe in keeping things from children. Information needs to be given at their level, but I think they need to know. So, I told them all about Bella being in the hospital, Iris’s kidnapping, and Talon’s death. They would find out anyway. It’s better that I tell them, in words that I can control and they can understand. Isla, at age 11, and Ivy, at age 9, can deal with a lot more information than their five year old sister, Indigo can. So, I told Isla and Ivy together, making sure to answer their questions as best I could. They know that we’re moving to try and keep ourselves safe from the Riding Hoods. They know that the wolves are helping us. That we are doing everything that we can to find Iris. I al
I push away from Hecate, anger covering my features. “What do you mean that you told him? He killed himself because of something you told him?” “No, he didn’t. He sacrificed himself to make sure that you and the entire coven were safe,” Hecate says, her voice firm but caring. “He sacrificed himself because he loved you and he wanted you to live out your fate.” “And what is this fate that’s so important that my best friend died to save me?” I nearly scream in the face of my goddess. Hecate stares at me, silent for a moment in the face of my rage. “Do you really want to know?” There is a gravity in her voice, a meaning that I should pay attention to. But I don’t, too consumed by my grief, pain, and anger. “Yes!” I insist. The astral plane changes around us, the stars extinguishing, taking all the light with them. In the blackness, I feel the bed beneath me drop away and I am left on what feels like a cold, hard stone floor. From the darkness, I hear the sound of three wome
I awake to find the left side of the bed cold. Sandra is still sleeping on the other side of me, but Bhakti is gone. Rubbing my eyes, I gently extricate myself from Sandra’s arms and reach over to the side table to grab my phone off of the charger. There’s a text message from Bhakti: Got called in for an early meeting to talk with the head surgeon about my workload while I’m on maternity leave. *eye roll emoji* I’ll be back by 9:30. I love you both! Looking at my phone, I see that it’s 9:15. We never sleep this late. But given all of the craziness that’s been going on and us staying up for the new year last night, I guess we deserved a little lie in. I put the phone down and lay back down on the bed. Still asleep, Sandra rolls into me, her arm going around me, her face nuzzling into my neck. Her scent rolls over me and I can’t help but feel an erection growing at her touch and smell. Goddess, the things my she-wolves do to me. Her body moves against me and her breasts near
6 months later…Somewhere south of the Hoia Baciu Forest, Romania “How is she doing?” I ask as I follow the tunnel through the twisting and turning passageways. “She is much more stubborn, much more resilient than we would have thought. But, we believe that we may have turned the corner, High Priestess,” my Thane, Sybil, explains. “Oh?” This is an interesting turn of events. Morgana’s torture has been so slow, so…unsatisfying. She has been so hard to break. You see, torture has very little to do with the actual physical punishment. It is about psychologically breaking your victim, making them lose their very sense of self. And then making your victim wish they were dead, pray for death, and denying it over and over. Until they no longer breathe, no longer blink, no longer eat, without your say so. But Morgana has proven very stubborn. It’s been nine months. Nine months of us breaking her body and healing her on a daily basis. Of allowing rogues to use her however they w
The ride from Texas to our packhouse should normally take 21 hours, but we’ve made it a one week trip, sending our beta, Landry, ahead of us in our plane. He will help our people move in and settle while Brandon, our parents, and all of our pups take a little side trip for some downtime. Carl, Richard, and Lauren elected to move back to Artemis lands with us. It’s where they lived, where Carl and Richard grew up, and where they had raised their older children. Now that they had a new set of pups on their own, they wanted to come back. My mom and Charlie’s parents were also moving back with us. It was their way to see their grandpups grow, but also to honor the lives of my father and Charlie. Carl, Richard, and Lauren were a little upset that Dev, Arya, Jakey, and the twins are remaining in Texas and that they won’t be able to see them as much, but we’ve already got a couple trips scheduled back and forth so that all the cousins could get together and we could see our best friend
3 months later… This has probably been some of the most emotionally difficult months for me. Not only am I nearing the end of my pregnancy with our little male, but we are also leaving Texas. All of us. Except for the old Diana pack and Arya and Dev’s pack, the rest of us are leaving tomorrow. The past three months have been about coming to a consensus about pack laws and succession rules, building the packhouses for each of the seats, moving all the things from everyone’s old homes to wherever they are going, and figuring out who is where in terms of pack members and how we will keep track of them. We also had to figure out who would be our betas, gammas, and deltas. In a surprise twist of fate, Donavon asked if he could be our beta so that Kesha would be close to Slade and Chloe. Rin also asked to be beta for Case, Chloe and Sev, so they could all be together. This means that Mike and Seth will also be moving up north. But the cool thing about the tech squad is that they
1 month later… “Reports have been consistent from all of our sources. Other than one of the fae discovering what was left of Locasta’s body in the bayou, there hasn’t been a single sighting of any Riding Hood’s on American soil,” Hawk says. We’re in one of our combined council meetings, all the alphas from every pack in the U.S. as well as the heads and representatives of the Maiden, Mother, and Crone covens for Hecate. We also have a representative from the Seelie Fairy Court and an ambassador from the Unseelie Fairy Court. The sooner we can get all of us on the same side, the better we’ll be protected from all of those groups, like the Riding Hoods. We’re hoping that we can make it a global thing. Sort of like a U.N. of supernatural beings. Right now, we’ve got to prove to the fae that it can work. They are more than willing to make the U.S. the guinea pig for the experiment. We’re trying to get some of the other shifters to participate, but they are proving to be fair
After the ceremony, Gregory and I help Jamal back to our cabin. Every time that I see him in this fucking wheelchair, I get livid all over again. Those stupid bitches. I can’t believe that Locasta and Morgana got the drop on Jamal. He freely admits that he was distracted, having gotten a phone call from Seth and Mike about incoming witches. Turns out it was just the Crone coven sweeping up like they said they would. Apparently no one had gotten in touch with our techies about that part of the plan. Likewise, no one but Jamal had their phone turned on. Morgana had woken up shortly before Jamal had taken the call. While he was distracted, she directed Locasta to get a knife out of her boot. It was silver and coated in wolfsbane. Once they cut themselves free, they stabbed Jamal in the back of his neck, severing part of his spinal cord. He can’t walk. The wolfsbane had rendered him unconscious and the silver cauterized the two ends of his spinal column. For a while, he co
Zak and I have been in a fog since Charlie’s death yesterday. The one and only thing that has brought us any solace are our pups. It seems like, overnight, they began looking more and more like their mother. Though both of them have always had Charlie’s gray, raincloud eyes, their faces and bodies seem to have gotten leaner, both of their chins coming to more of a point, their cheeks seeming to hollow some showing high sculpted cheekbones. Granted, it could have all just been wishful thinking, but many of our pack and those that saw the pups commented on it. Our families are around us and friends keep coming in and out of our cabin. All of our mothers, Lauren, Danielle, and Clara, busy themselves with the pups and cooking. People bustle around us, but I don’t really remember. The only things that really make impressions on me are Zak’s hand in mine, a sloppy kiss on the cheek from Christy, or the heat from Jerry’s body as he lays on my chest. I know I ate. I showered. I dre
So many emotions. Thank the Goddess on High that I’ve been training how to empty myself of other people’s feelings. If not, I would be drowning in these feelings and rocking in the corner with my thumb in my mouth. Despair. Pain. Rage. Dread. Determination. All of them flood over me like a tidal wave. Using the imagery that Meredith taught me, I let the feelings wash over my body and flow back out, like a wave on the beach. I have to keep my head on straight throughout all of this. I’m obviously going to need to help my friends deal with their pain at the loss of their mate, putting their pain to the back of their minds, cooling their anger to rational levels, calming their desperation so that they can focus on the task at hand. And get out of here alive and back to their pups. Right now, I know it’s not what they want, but it’s what they need. I can feel Dev’s pain, too. It’s nearly as deep as the pain that Zak and Brandon feel. Understandably so. Charlie was like a
Zak and Brandon push through the door, Brandon almost immediately shoving Zak to the floor as a ball of lightning rushes through the air toward them. It slams into the door, just above their heads before Gregory vaults over them, a shield of the same crackling energy covering us as we begin to move through the doorway. Gregory’s ability to mimic Morgana’s powers surprise her, giving Jamal the time to walk into the room after his mate. His power fills the room, nullifying all the goddess gifts of those within 100 feet (we checked). That includes all the witches’ powers. The only ones that won’t be affected by Jamal’s power are Arya and me. Our gifts aren’t Goddess-given, but Goddess-like. He can’t take away what is part of the Goddess. The look on Morgana’s face as she drops like a fucking stone is almost enough to make me smile. Her scream echoes through the stairwell, the resounding thud as she lands and the breath whooshes out of her is quite satisfying. Unfortunately for
I don’t know what gave me the idea of the salt trail. Honestly, I haven’t been able to think of much since I’ve been here. The thought of us being so close to freedom seems unreal. I never thought that I would escape the Riding Hoods alive. It makes the frustration that Charlie is feeling about us going around in circles barely register to me. I’m still finding it hard to believe that we’re going to get out of here. But the salt sparks a memory of my favorite childhood fairytale. My mother hated it, the way that the witch was portrayed, but I loved the thought of children being able to outsmart an adult like that. I have read every version that I could find of the story and acted it out with my toys all the time. I even made Mom, Dad, and Bella call me Gretel for about a year. So, I really shouldn’t be surprised that my old favorite story came to me in a time of need. The whole scenario was made better by the fact that Charlie called me Gretel. I feel like I’m getting some