When Case floated Sev up to him, I almost expected to feel a pang of jealousy surge through my chest that he hadn’t done the same for me. But, I didn’t. Instead, I just feel that “awww” moment that you get when you watch sappy movies and the main characters finally get together. Happy for them, somewhat wishing that you had it yourself, but not really wanting to be a part of their moment. I don’t really dwell on the feeling long. Sev wasn’t completely wrong when he accused me of not being in love with my mates any longer. I am…but more as long time friends love each other. I guess you could call us friends with benefits? I hadn’t really felt love for them in…years? Even the fated sparks have died down for me. I don’t really feel them when I touch my mates anymore. I had hoped that once my revenge was exacted that I would start to fall back in love with them. It hasn’t happened though. I still feel too angry. At least, now, I have a new enemy to vent my anger on. I turn
It all seems to happen in slow motion, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Rin spins towards Brandon, her fist already pulled back before she releases a punch that would have definitely dislocated and possibly broken a human’s jaw. But Brandon catches her hand in mid-throw. Suddenly, she’s on the ground beneath him, her hands grasped in his, his knee in her stomach, and his face menacingly close to hers. “I wouldn’t do that, Corinda. You have to know how my gift works. I’m not sure why I didn’t see Sev’s tree coming, other than it isn’t really living, but I’ll see anything you try to do. Don’t do that again.” His voice is a growl, threatening her. I feel Case tense beside me, but I can feel his conflicting feelings through the link. She kind of asked for this, but that’s our mate that’s being threatened. The most unexpected thing happens when her arousal scents the air. It temporarily leaves both Case and I immobile in utter shock. Brandon moves off of her almost fas
Zak and I had just made our way into the Alpha Council when we feel Brandon’s distress and pain. It’s like something is squeezing our throats, making it hard to breathe. Almost like an asthma attack, nothing at all like Brandon is feeling, but still scary as all hell. Wheezing, Zak and I fall to the ground, clutching our necks. Arya and Dev run to our sides, our other friends close on their heels. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?” Dev cries, holding us up so that we can get deeper breaths of air. Through short, panting breaths, I say, “It’s Brandon. He’s dying.” “No!” Dev screams. He holds me while Arya holds Zak and their demi-god powers lessen the pain. It makes it so we can think. And tap into Brandon’s side of the link to see what’s going on. What we find is scary as fuck! Casen is holding Brandon down with his wind power while sucking the air from his lungs. The process is slow and excruciating. If feels like he is dry drowning, searching for air when there is no
I know that I took my anger out on the wrong person. It’s just so much easier to take it out on Brandon than it would be to face Rin in that moment. But I have to face her now. We’ve got to get out of here and to the safehouse. And we have to deal with the shit that just went down. FUCK! I can’t believe that she got off on Brandon holding her down. She hasn’t gotten horny like that since…I can’t remember the last time we’ve made her horny with just a word or a touch. We have sex so rarely and when we do, it takes her so long to get wet. We have to use lube and do foreplay for what seems like hours for her to get wet enough to take us. She rarely, if ever, seems interested. But a wolf can only go so long without being with their mate after they are marked and mated. It’s helpful that Sev and I can be together and that pushes the need off some, but we need each other. At least Sev and I need her. I catch her scent quickly and follow her through the woods. Though she is a
I didn’t leave. I wanted to. Really, really badly. I wanted to run home, to be with my mates and my pups. But a couple of things kept me there. One – I have no idea where the fuck I am. I mean, as a wolf, I’d be able to get my bearings rather quickly, but will it be fast enough to get me away from Casen and Corinda? I have the feeling that Corinda would burn the forest down to make sure that she found me to use me against my mates. Two – Though that was some fucked up shit that just went down, I want to make sure that Sev is ok. I couldn’t give a shit about what Corinda thinks. And Casen? I’m not sure how I feel about him. I mean, dude had tried to kill me. I understand why, though. If anything like that happened with Charlie, I would have done the exact same thing. He ain’t all that bad. I gotta make sure they’re ok. Three – Selene had said that I needed to be here for a week. Why? I don’t know. But if the Goddess said I had to be here, here is where I had to be.
“Somebody give me something,” I say walking into the Alpha Council meeting room. Charlie and I had been a mess while Brandon was chained. That hour of not having contact with him was one of the worst of our lives. He trusted Severn and Casen, but Charlie and I were having a lot of trouble leaving him in the hands of someone who had tried to kill him earlier today, as well as the crazy she-wolf who had planned his kidnapping and the killing of multiple packs. Yeah, they had their reasons, but their brand of psycho near our mate was killing us. As was the knowledge that he wouldn’t be coming home with us tomorrow. The only thing keeping us from freaking out was that Brandon was currently safe and in nearly constant contact with us and that we have a project that we can focus on: finding out who The Red One is. To do that, we call in Citra, the witch that helped to escort Nathan here from Julian’s pack. “Whoa, there cowboy,” Dev says. “How’s Brandon?” I plop down in my seat at t
It’s a six hour drive to the safehouse. We decided to go with the one that was closer to Texas, to where we would meet the trios tomorrow at the Meteoric Rise packhouse. If we travel half way there today, we’ll only have about six hours to drive tomorrow. We’re about 30 minutes into the trip and no one has said anything. Brandon is lightly snoring in the back. I hear Sev playing on his phone, the soft music of Candy Crush coming from its tinny speakers. Corinda has been staring out the window the whole time, though I occasionally see her look at me in my periphery. I know that we need to talk, but I’ll be damned if I’m the first one to break the silence between us. Childish, I know, but she screwed this up. She needs to take the first step to fix it. Sev feels the same way, but he’s keeping his distance. It seems like he’s been burned one too many times by our fiery-haired beauty. He won’t extend a hand anymore. She’s got to do it herself. Both of us are really upset abou
“Wait, so why haven’t we heard of them until now?” I ask. “You would think if there were these all-powerful witches out there that hunt down werewolves, it would be a big topic of conversation.” Citra shifts uncomfortably. “That might be our fault.” “What do you mean?” Zak asks, his voice and body language tense and agitated. “Down, boy,” I whisper to him, grabbing his hand in mine and putting it on my thigh. He relaxes some, but both of us are still on edge. It’s going to be like this until Brandon gets back and it’s fucking exhausting to be honest. “Sorry,” Zak mutters. Citra nods before she continues. “The American witch community has tried really hard to ensure that what has gone on in Europe with the Riding Hoods doesn’t come over here. No witch that has any ties with their coven, no matter how remote, is allowed to enter our borders and we’ve cut all ties with the European covens. But that means that we also have limited information about them. Wolves tend to be qu
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