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
When Chloe comes back in the house, she’s wearing a huge smile. When Slade asks her what’s going on, she just giggles, saying that she’s thinking of something that happened at work. A few minutes later, Casen and Severn come in, furtively looking at each other and shooting glances at Chloe. It’s not hard to figure out what happened outside and I expect it to upset Rin. But she’s too wrapped up in conversation with Kesha to see what’s going on with her mates. Slade doesn’t miss it though and it’s easy to tell that he’s having a mindlink conversation with Chloe. Whatever is said doesn’t seem to make him happy, but he doesn’t say anything. “Sooo, Meredith,” Casen says, clearing his throat and clearly trying to clear up some of the awkwardness. “You wanted to talk?” “Well, yeah, I wanted to know how it’s possible that you guys are friends, to the point that Slade would help us hide from murderous Madame Tussands wax figure rejects,” I say. “I can’t imagine that a partnership
After we eat, we all separate to our rooms. Hakeem and I both shower and then lay together on the bed. We mindlink with Meredith, filling her in on everything that happened with the witches and getting updates from her about who Slade and the she-wolves with him are and how Brandon is doing. She seems to be doing well after the whole ordeal of her seizures and Madre Selene (Mother Selene) taking over her body. But, she’s understandably exhausted. As our conversation fades, so does her energy. Vete a dormir, mi cielo. Has tenido un largo día. Hablaremos contigo por la mañana. (Go to sleep, my heaven. You've had a long day. We'll talk to you in the morning.) I murmur to her in the link. Voy a Facetime tu mamá para poder ver a las chicas antes de irme a dormir. (I'm going to Facetime your mom so that I can see the girls before I go to sleep.) Meredith yawns through the link and I’d be surprised if the call lasted more than five minutes. But I understand the need to see our p
Well, that was awkward. I turn back to look at Citra. She’s sweating slightly and her heart is beating fast. It wouldn’t be evident to anyone but a werewolf, but it’s pretty obvious to any wolf in our group. I walk to Citra, pulling her aside, gesturing for Michael to stay where he is. “Talk to me. What’s going on?” “It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she says, not looking at me. “I believe that. I just want to know what we’re walking into. How we can support you.” I duck down trying to catch her eye. Citra finally looks at me, a surprised smile spreading across her face. Suddenly, she jumps into me, hugging me fiercely. I look at Michael, who has been keeping a wary eye on us. He’s not a part of my pack. This could be seen as a threat. I want to give him the chance to tell me to let her go. Michael smiles and shakes his head, as if in exasperation with his mate’s overfriendliness. He waves at me to go ahead and hug her and I gingerly wrap my arms around her slender
The next morning, I go to checkup on Brandon. Chloe is in the room, too. She had taken a paramedic and a few nursing classes before deciding to go for her dream of being a tattoo artist, so she is tending to all of Brandon’s medical needs. When I walked in the room, she was bending over and fiddling with something at the side of his bed, her tight jean-clad ass right in front of me. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. She has to have some idea of what she's doing, right? None of this is coincidence, is it? She looks at me over her shoulder before smiling and straightening. “Hey Sev. G’morning.” My mouth is dry and it takes me two swallows before I could respond. She's wearing a low cut tank top and her full breasts look mouthwatering. Snapping my eyes up to hers, I manage a smile. “Morning, Chloe. How’s the patient?” Thank the Goddess, she turns to apply some vaseline to Brandon’s lips and I can adjust my boner so it isn't front and center against my zipper. Fuck! How d
I bring Casen and Severn outside with me and we walk a ways into the woods. I don’t want anyone to be able to hear us, so I have to make sure that we get far away from the house. I’m thankful for how kind Kesha, Chloe, and Slade are. Kesha loaned me a pair of sweats, though I was wearing one of Slade’s long sleeved shirts, since I obviously didn’t have any clothes of my own. The shirt hung on me all the way down to my knees and I’d had to roll the sleeves up nearly half way to find my hands in them. Luckily, the pants were regular length instead of the petite that Kesha normally wore. I wasn’t going to be setting any fashion trends anytime soon, but beggars can’t be choosers. Quick glances back at them let me know that they’re mindlinking, along with a loud “WHAT THE FUCK!?” from Casen. At that point, he pulled Severn to him and scented his chest. I knew exactly what he was doing, but I needed them to focus on what I had to say. I feel the Goddess inhabit my body, taking t
I stare at Meredith open mouthed. She couldn’t have surprised me more if she had said that she wasn’t a werewolf, but shifted into Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Second chance mate? Are you freaking kidding me? Sev is stuttering beside me, his hand clutching mine. “What…what do…how…why?” Each time that he starts a sentence, he doesn’t seem to know how to finish and he eventually stops. Meredith gives us some time to come to grips with what she just told us. She waits until Sev stops talking before she begins again. Rubbing her eyes with her fingers and then running her hands through her hair, she sits up straight and lets out a sigh. Her hands dance in the air as she explains, almost as if she’s got to move to get her message out. “Ok, here’s how Selene explained it to me. Your bond with Rin severed long ago, soon after the Black Night Pack fucked with you guys. When she stopped feeling the bond towards you, it was as if she rejected you. You still felt the bond be
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