“Why don’t you guys smell like rouges?” Meredith asks. She really gets straight to the point. “Well…the way we figure it, we came from the same pack and we stayed together, so…we think we’re our own pack. Rogues never go around in groups of more than two. And that’s typically only when they find their mates. The fact that the witch that attacked us at our place had so many with her means that she exerted some sort of power over them,” Case says. “Mmmmm,” Meredith says. “I guess that makes sense. You guys were lucky to have each other.” “I wouldn’t call anything that’s happened to us lucky,” Corinda says sardonically. “Not what I said,” Meredith replies firmly. “I said that you were lucky to have each other. Can you imagine if you were alone? Or even if you had different mates? To be kicked out of your pack. To have lost your pups. The Mother gave you each other to get through these terrible times. So, yeah. You’re lucky.” Well, shit. This chick doesn’t pull pun
Charlie and I are trying not to fall apart right now. It won’t help anything and we’ve got to get ready to meet with these witches. But the only thing that keeps playing in both of our minds is when Brandon was hit with that witch's power. How he crumpled to the ground and couldn’t speak when we ran to him. Yeah, Dev healed him some, but not completely. Based on what he said, that’s why Brandon and Meredith won’t be coming back to us for four days. He’s gotta heal on his own and that’s going to take a bit. Meredith has been in touch with us via her cell and we were able to Facetime. Brandon was asleep, but she said that he had been up and talking for a bit. He had some water and they were on their way to some place safe. She strongly urged against us coming to get them. She said that it could lead the witches to us and Brandon really shouldn’t be moved anymore than he has to be. Both Lily and Bhakti agree. They’ll let us know when they’re leaving in four days. For now,
Hakeem, who happens to be the closest to the door, goes to stand in front of it. Before opening it, he scents the air. Incense, Hakeem links to us all. He looks through the peephole. I got two blondes out here. One’s about Meredith’s height, the other about just a little taller than Citra. Whispering into the phone, Zak asks, “What does your sister look like? What’s her name?” “Blonde. Slightly taller than me. A ton of expertly applied make-up. Stepford Wives clothing. Perfect manicure. Snooty, holier-than-thou expression on her face. Her name’s Celeste.” Citra does not sound happy at all to have to deal with her sister. Hakeem scoffs with laughter in the link. Described to a “t.” Take it she and her sister don’t really get along. “The other high priestess is Isabella Martin. Don’t really know anything about her,” Citra adds. “Alright, we’ll let them in. I’m gonna Facetime you so you can see them,” Zak says at a normal speaking volume as Hakeem unchains and
We stop in a city called Ranger to hit up a pharmacy and get some food. Pain killers, cold compresses, aloe, and wraps for Brandon's more severe burns and wounds. Though Rin was easily able to deaden some of Brandon’s pain, it left her with excess fire energy that she needed to burn off, which was problematic when we were trying to get away from killer corpses. Leaving a trail behind wasn’t an option. So, we got what we could over the counter, along with fast food and all kinds of snacks. We also had to get a breast pump for Meredith and something to keep the milk in. She isn’t going to keep it for her pups, but she doesn’t want to dump it out the window either. It would kind of defeat the purpose of all of the stealth. Then, Meredith gave me the wheel. She sat in the passenger seat, forcing Rin and Sev to sit in the back together. I catch them making eyes at each other every so often and that stubborn spark of hope that I was trying so desperately to quell rose up and flick
The pain of my healing is like something searing through my body. I can almost feel the fire crawling across my skin. It hurts. Like really fucking hurts. “You guys get some pain killers?” I force out of my throat. “We got lidocaine and morphine at our place. Can you hold on for like 15 minutes?” some dude I don’t know says. “Yeah,” I grudgingly say. I can hold out if it means that I’ll get something that will numb it. “I could take some of the edge off,” Corinda says. “You’d have to be able to burn it off and there’s no way to do it now without giving us away,” Meredith says. She digs in a bag at her feet, pulling out a plastic bottle. She dumps some pills into her hand and uses a pill cutter to cut them into smaller pieces. Putting the pills in a water bottle, she shakes them before turning back to me. “This is going to taste awful, but I don’t think you’re going to be able to swallow a whole pill. They’ll at least take the edge off until we get better drugs fo
After we eat, Bella passes out the apple quarters, keeping two back for Citra and Michael. We all hold the apple, looking at each other dubiously. Bella seems nice and all, but do we really want to trust a witch? I think that some of the distrust between wolves and witches, at least on our side of things, is that they manipulate the natural world. Change it into something of their own choosing, not what it was destined to be. And as much as humans would like to think otherwise, we wolves are an integral part of nature. Anything that threatens that leaves us wary. I have no idea what their problem is with us. You know, for all of my open-mindedness about so many things, I’ve never stopped to examine this. Hmmm. Something to think on. I get that knee-jerk reaction not to trust Bella. Not to trust what she is asking me to put in my body. But why? What has she done that is making me not trust her? Citra trusts her. Citra wouldn’t let anything happen to us. I look aro
While Chloe and Meredith get Brandon squared away, Casen, Corinda, and I greet Kesha. We haven’t seen Slade and the girls in almost a year. Kesha’s in the kitchen, making homemade pizza when we walk in. Her cocoa colored skin shines in the ceiling light. She’s grown her hair out to her shoulders and wears it natural, with voluminous twists. Kesha now sports a nose ring, the thought of the silver content needed to keep the wound open making me wince a little. She wears all natural make-up, except for bright pink lipstick on her full lips. She has a curvy body and wears form fitting clothes in bright colors that match her makeup. Kesha smells like fresh dough and sugary icing, the perfect match for baking talent from the Goddess. It’s part of how they support themselves, with a baking business that Kesha runs online out of their house. She’s short, the top of her head barely reaching my chin. Kesha wipes her hands before running up to each of us in turn to give us hugs. “I’
Both Sev and I rush out of the house, Sev making the excuse that he needed to get something out of the car. I said that I’d help him. When we get outside, Sev grabs me and slams me against the wall of the house. His lips crash into mine, his hand going to the zipper of my pants. I moan, trying to keep myself quiet. The whole purpose of us coming out here was so we could burn some of this off without letting everyone know what was going on. Sev rubs me through my pants and my knees feel weak. I reach for his pants, unbuttoning and unzipping his fly. I pull him out of his pants and he hisses at the feeling of sparks up and down his dick. I begin to move my hand, stroking his cock, and he moves away from my mouth. A growl of pleasure escapes his lips and he bucks in my hand. He pushes my shoulders until I’m kneeling on the ground in front of him. I immediately take him into my mouth all the way to the base. One of my hands wraps around his waist while the other quickly pul
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