Hey friends! More pups. The legacy generation is starting to shape up, but we've got a lot more pups to come. Leave me some love and let me know what you think. See you soon!
Several days after we found Nissa, my mates and I gather a group of two other wolves and five witches to continue our search for the Riding Hoods.Jamal and Gregory had elected to stay behind to help Bella, and with most of the wolves cleared, we felt that we could be of better use out in the field.We choose different witches to come with us this time. Part of that was obviously because Nissa and Arthur were too messed up after Winnie’s death to be of much help to us. But, those witches also needed a break after being in the field for over a month and we needed to see if them being out of the field had anything to do with the Riding Hoods finding our people.So far, over the three weeks we’d been back in the packs, the other two groups had found the witches that had been tailing them and taken them out. This was huge, since the Riding Hoods had seemed to be completely surprised by this. We had gotten some valuable information about drop off points and supply pickups from their ca
“NOOOOO!” I scream, sweeping everything off of the desk in front of me. My face is contorted in rage and I know that my power is emanating off of me in waves as the acolyte in front of me cowers. “How the fuck did this happen?! I want answers and I want them now!” The stupid, sniveling child is cowering and crying in front of me. “I - I - I don’t k-k-k-know, P-P-P-P-Priestess. I - I - “she stutters out, but I make a backhanded gesture and she goes flying across the room, hitting the wall and crumpling into a heap beside the door. “GET OUT! Find me someone who can answer my questions without wetting themselves!” I scream, my voice thundering in my office. The girl gets up, blood leaking from her nose and a large gash on her forehead as she scrambles out the door. I scream once again, venting my anger by unleashing my power at a mirror on the far wall, reducing it back to the original sand that formed the glass. Within seconds, the door opens again and I send a blast of power
I hadn’t originally wanted to help the Riding Hoods at all. I actually hated their mission. There was nothing wrong with werewolves. Honestly, down the line of my family tree, we had a few weres in our bloodline. Granted not wolves, but the Riding Hoods didn’t need to know that.No, I didn’t want to betray the wolves. But…I had to.A year ago, when Winnie and I had sat down with Liv in a request to be handfasted, her mother had met us with a mild resistance. Of course she had known that Winnie was bi-sexual and that we were together. We’d actually been together since we were 15, each other’s first kiss, first girlfriend, first love, first sexual partner. Shit, we were each other’s everything. Liv had nothing against that. Neither did Leo. In fact, they both encouraged us to be together.I’m not going to say that everything was all puppies and flowers for the three years between our first acknowledging our feelings and when we were handfasted. Just like any high school cou
1 month later… This last month has been so full of shit, but so little has actually happened at the same time. If that makes any sense. I mean, we’ve made a lot of preparations for things. Finding a site for the orphaned pups from Slade, Chloe, and Kesha’s old pack to stay and stocking it with everything they would need. Continuing the search for the Riding Hoods and the traitor, both of which were turning out to be a long and arduous process. Preparing the governmental systems for when the whole thing is eventually over. Making room for the West Coast packs and the rogues that they were bringing in. All of this led to construction, moving people, and trying to keep everything quiet so that we weren’t drawing attention from the Riding Hoods. That’s something that I still don’t understand. The traitor hasn’t revealed any of our locations. They haven’t told the Riding Hoods about the West Coast packs moving to our compounds. Or the plan to gather up and bring as many rogue
Today is the day of the full moon and I can’t think of a better day to welcome the first group of orphans to our pack. For the past month, Carmen, Declan, my mates, and I have been working hard on setting up the home for the pups. I refuse to call it an orphanage. Many of these pups were left at orphanages and the humans refused many of them. For whatever reason, they were left behind. I’m not sure if this was something that Selene ordained so that it would be easier for us to get them back or if there is something in our wolf nature that kept the humans away. For whatever reason, these pups were left in these orphanages, given whatever love that the workers could provide. But with little state funded resources and money always hard to come by, there was only so much time that could be spent with them. That’s my fault. I mean, not completely and I don’t bear all of the blame, but I am guilty. We should have found other packs for these pups. We should have made sure that th
One second I’m bent over the bed in Devin and my bedroom, pants soaked and Devin screaming that we have to go to the hospital. The next, I’m standing in the bedroom we share with Xander, Devin clutching my arm and Xander staring at me like he’s seen a ghost. “What’s going on?” Xander cries out, though he has to know. “She’s in labor. Her water just broke!” Devin’s voice is on the edge of panic knowing that we’ve just been taken away from all medical help. I’m surprised that he’s not full-blown panicking, but then I remember his gift. He’s gonna need to use it on Xander before this is over, I can just tell. “Get my mom!” I grit out between my teeth as a contraction hits me harder than before. “She’ll know what to do.” Ma used to help the midwives deliver the pups in our pack. She’ll grab whoever needs to come and make sure this comes out alright. Then when Lily gets here…Fuck! Lily’s not gonna be here to take away the pain! Well, that sucks. It’s only then that I notic
“Liv and Leo, you both are doing so much better! I’ve been so encouraged seeing you out and about around your people, in the dining hall, walking around in the parks. I’m so happy to see you healing!” I say, genuine happiness abounding through me. “Thank you, Bella. And thank you so much for all that you’ve done for our people,” Liv says, her eyes shooting between me and Leo, who is sitting beside her. Liv and Leo had requested this meeting with me a few days ago. I know exactly why they want to meet. They want to take the leadership of the coven back into their hands. Honestly, I would love nothing more. Attempting to run two covens, getting to know my new mates, and trying to find the Riding Hoods, a traitor, and my sister has been extremely stressful. Though, my mates have been very helpful in the destressing department. Hecate’s flame, those two wolves are everything that I could ever want. Kind, attentive, romantic, strong, and very skilled in many different ways.
Two months later… Two months! Two full months and nothing. No leads on the traitor. No idea where Iris is. No signs of the Riding Hoods. Nothing. It’s not like we haven’t been actively looking. It’s that we have to interrogate every witch personally with Bella, Arthur, Liv, or Leo present to ensure that they’re telling the truth. The witches have a spell to act as human lie detectors, but it has to be done by a High Priestess or High Priest. It also tired them out as they were basically putting their consciousness into another person’s brain in order to sift through their memories to make sure everything matched. We could do a max of two interrogations per day, so it was taking forever to get through the several hundred witches we had in our territory. The fact that we were going so slowly through the witches was killing me a little more every day. So far, we’d made it through 90 of them. There were still 142 witches left to interrogate. This is the slowest investigat
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