Hey friends! Seems like Bella is gonna work out in the group. And we'll get to see Xander again soon! What do you think about the names that Arya came up with? Personally, I LOVE that Xander will be a part of their lives and they'll be reminded of him every time they say their pup's name. Leave me some love and let me know what you think. See you soon!
Oh, good. Now I can get every uncomfortable conversation done at once. Then I might go take a nap. I deserve it. Treat yo’self! I quickly but thoroughly explain the deal with Casen, Severen, and Rin and their second chance mates. I mean, I’ve given the spiel twice. I know how to efficiently get the information out there. I’ve just finished talking and am looking around to see what everyone is feeling. Starting on my left sit Chloe, Rin, Slade, Kesha, Severn, and Case ending up on my right. The looks of unadulterated shock on Chloe, Kesha, and Slade’s faces are only matched by the complete misery from Severn and Casen. The only one who seems at ease is Rin. Even I'm more anxious about this than she is. Chloe looks at me, but I can see her sneaking glances at Severn and Casen. “Why would the Goddess do this?” “This has nothing to do with Selene’s will, other than you knowing it early and her wanting you to be happy. This has to do with Rin, Casen, and Severn’s relatio
I have always feared finding my mate. Having had little to no control of my life for most of it, I didn’t want to think of someone else choosing who I was going to spend the rest of my time on Earth with. Even if that someone is our Mother Goddess. Like we told Meredith last night, she-wolves were seen as inferior. They were meant for few things, and each of those things were in service of their mate. Many were treated as slaves, created to cook and clean for their mate and to warm his bed at night. The matebond wasn’t even that sacred in our pack. Many of the men frequented the pack whorehouse, the place where all she-wolves from 16, when they got their wolf, until they found their mate were taught how to “please a male.” The only reason that I had escaped that particular cruelty is that Slade had made it known that Chloe and I were his favorites. His father allowed him to keep me for one year without having to share with the other wolves. Had we not left, I would still
Case and I follow Rin out to the bonfire pit. I’m so full of misery right now. I can’t imagine not being with Rin. She’s gone from the little red head that held so much fascination for me when I was a child, to my teenage best friend and confidant, to my mate, to the mother of my pups, to the cause of my torment. I have literally shared every aspect of my life with her. Every major event, every minor detail, everything has had her in it. And now there’s the possibility that it’s over. I mean, I know that over the last couple of days, I decided that I was willing to walk away. Believe me, the irony isn’t lost on me. But, I thought that it would be because we couldn’t get it together. I thought that I would be leaving out of anger or self-preservation. I thought that I’d have some kind of righteous reason to be like, “Hey, I tried. And it just didn’t work out.” Never in a million years did I think that it would be like this. This is calm. Rin seems almost happy, not an
I wake up to see Chloe fussing with some of my bandages. She doesn’t register that I’m awake and I take a second to study her. Her face is blotchy and tear-stained and her eyes are red. It’s obvious that she’s been crying, though I’m not sure why. Her hand goes to the bandages on my chest and I place my hands on hers. “Hey. What’s wrong?” My voice is stronger and actually has some intonation in it. She blinks back some tears and gives me a fake smile. “Oh, you’re awake! That’s great! How are you feeling? Think you might be ready to sit up and have something to eat? I brought your protein shake with me.” “I’m feeling better. If you can help me sit up, I think I could hold the drink myself. You can supervise me while you tell me what’s up.” I give her a meaningful look. She snorts as she turns away to put down the bandages. “Not gonna let it go, are you?” “Not in my DNA. Ask Sev.” At the mention of Sev’s name, I see her tense and she freezes for a minute. Huh.
We start to go outside, but see that Rin is still out there, talking to Kesha now. Slade and Meredith are nowhere to be found, but it feels weird to have this conversation out where anyone can hear it. “You guys want to come to my room? We’ll get some privacy there.” There’s no ignoring the tremor in Chloe’s voice as she says this. As much as all of our minds are in turmoil with everything that’s happening, our bodies have no difficulties understanding what they want. The thought of being in a room alone with her, a room that is covered in her scent, has my adrenaline spiking, along with my breathing. “You sure, Chloe?” Sev asks. I can tell that he’s having just as much trouble fighting his body as I am. “Yeah. I mean, we’re just gonna talk, right?” Her words are confident, but her eyes are looking everywhere but at us. Honestly, I think that we have a snowball’s chance in Hell of keeping our hands to ourselves, but I’m gonna do my best. It won’t be hard if she doesn
Case and Sev leave to go talk to Chloe. I hope that they all accept each other. Honestly, it would be a huge weight off of my shoulders to know that they had found someone that could make them happy when I couldn’t. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for them, for them to be happy. I’m not stupid enough to think that I ever could give them the happiness and carefree life that Chloe could. There’s too much history between us. And I just don’t know that I’m strong enough to try and make it work. Even though Meredith said that we could eventually repair the bond, could eventually make the love and the sparks and all the good stuff come back, it would take years. And shouldn’t love be easy? I know for humans that it’s harder. Love is something that they have to strive for, fight for. But for wolves, it’s supposed to just click. You’re given your mate and that’s it. You automatically love them. You automatically have no other feelings for any other wolves. They are the other part
Case and I sit in two chairs in Chloe’s room. She’s surprisingly neat for her age. I remember my mom yelling at me every time that she came into my room when I was 19 to clean my room. I never really got the whole cleaning routine down until we started to move from pack to pack, with barely anything to carry with us. We had to be ready to go on a moment’s notice, in case the pack figured out that we were a trio. It keeps you organized, whether you want to be or not.I missed being that young and carefree, having someone else worrying about the big stuff. Really, I just missed having parents that cared for me. Parents that loved me. Too bad that they didn’t try to reason with Case’s dad. Didn’t stand up to him when he threw us out of the pack. Thinking about my new mate, she never had that as a pup. One of the many reasons that I’m glad that we destroyed the Black Night Pack, but also a reason that I wished that we had made their deaths take longer.If she’ll let us, I’ll giv
I can’t believe the clusterfuck that my life has become in the last six hours. Not only have I lost any alliance that I could have possibly had with the wolves, now my coven’s inner circle knows that I can’t have children.What those damn demi-gods said was true. With a barren High Priestess at the helm, the coven will wither and die. We’d seen a recent troubling trend of pregnant witches having complications with carrying their babies, which has led to a couple of stillbirths. The next step would be come spring when the animals started to get pregnant. There would be a rash of miscarriages, still-births, and animals that just couldn’t get pregnant.The Mother aspect of Hecate is the goddess of fertility. That is supposed to be my power. But if I’m barren, my entire coven will be as well. It was half the reason that my mother had kept her alliance with Julian’s pack. We all knew that he was psychotic, but he would willingly give us what we needed to complete the potion to make
The tunnels twisted and turned in an endless labyrinth beneath the Hoia Baciu Forest. The scent of damp earth mixed with the faint metallic tang of blood and decay. The flickering torchlight cast eerie shadows along the stone walls as I strode through the corridor, my Thane, Sybil, walking briskly beside me.“How is she doing?” I asked without breaking my stride.“She is much more stubborn, much more resilient than we anticipated,” Sybil admitted. “But we believe we may have turned the corner, High Priestess.”“Oh?” I arched a brow, intrigued. Morgana’s torture had been… sluggish. Less satisfying than I had hoped.Torture, after all, is not simply about the body—it is about breaking the mind. True suffering comes when a victim loses their very sense of self, when they beg for death, only to have it denied over and over. And yet, Morgana had proven difficult to crack.Nine months. Nine months of relentless torment. We had shattered her bones and healed them daily, forced her to endure t
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 raised their older children. Now that they had a new set of pups, 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 were remaining in Texas and that they wouldn’t be able to see them as much, but we’ve already got a couple of trips scheduled back and forth so that all the cousins could get together and we could see our best friends.Our side trip t
The past few months have been some of the most emotionally difficult of my life. Not only am I nearing the end of my pregnancy with our little boy, 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 will be gone by tomorrow.The last three months have been consumed with finalizing pack laws, succession rules, and building the new packhouses for each territory. We've been moving everything from our old homes, figuring out pack logistics, and ensuring every wolf is accounted for. It’s been exhausting, but necessary.We also had to choose our new betas, gammas, and deltas. In a twist of fate, Donavon asked to be our beta so that Kesha could stay close to Slade and Chloe. Rin made the same request to serve under Case, Chloe, and Sev, so their families could stay together. That means Mike and Seth will also be moving up north. But the tech squad doesn’t need to be in the same room to work together, so at least that transition will
"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 Hoods on American soil,” Hawk says.We’re in one of our combined council meetings, with 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. There’s also 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 groups like the Riding Hoods. We’re hoping to expand this into a global alliance—a kind of supernatural U.N.For now, the fae are willing to let the U.S. be the test subject. Convincing the other shifter groups, however, has been difficult. Many remain elusive or outright resistant to the idea. Zak’s presence would have helped—his Goddess gifts have a way of swaying even the most stubborn mi
After the ceremony, Gregory and I help Jamal back to our cabin. Every time I see him in that damn wheelchair, I get livid all over again. Those witches. I can’t believe Locasta and Morgana got the drop on him.He freely admits he was distracted—he had taken a call from Seth and Mike about incoming witches. It turned out to be nothing, just the Crone coven sweeping through like they promised. Apparently, no one had thought to inform our tech team of that part of the plan. And no one but Jamal had their phone turned on.Morgana had woken up just before the call. While Jamal was preoccupied, she directed Locasta to retrieve a knife from her boot—silver and coated in wolfsbane. They cut themselves free, then stabbed Jamal in the back of the neck, severing part of his spinal cord. He collapsed immediately. The wolfsbane knocked him out, and the silver cauterized the damage. For a time, he couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t even breathe on his own.Arya and Dev managed to purge the wolfsb
Zak and I have been in a fog since Charlie’s death yesterday. The one and only thing that has brought us any solace is 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, their chins more pointed, their cheeks hollowing slightly to reveal high, sculpted cheekbones. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but others in the pack have noticed it, too.Our families are around us. Friends come in and out of our cabin. All of our mothers—Lauren, Danielle, and Clara—busy themselves with the pups, cooking, keeping things moving as if that will help. The house bustles with people, but I barely register them.The only things that ground me are Zak’s hand in mine, the weight of Christy’s sloppy kisses on my cheek, the warmth of Jerry’s small body as he curls into my chest.I know I eat. I shower. I dress. I might even respond to people. But it’s all
So many emotions. Thank the Goddess on High that I’ve been training on how to empty myself of other people’s feelings. If not, I’d be drowning in them, rocking in a corner with my thumb in my mouth. Despair. Pain. Rage. Dread. Determination. They flood over me like a tidal wave, crashing against my mental defenses. But using the techniques Meredith taught me, I let them wash over me and drain away, like waves receding from the shore.I have to keep my head on straight. My job is twofold. First, I need to help my friends process their grief without letting it consume them. Zak and Brandon’s pain is like a living thing, a force that threatens to unravel everything if I don’t keep it contained. I push their suffering to the back of their minds, tempering their anger to something useful. They don’t want this—but they need it.Then there’s Dev. His grief is just as raw, just as deep, but there’s a difference. Beneath his devastation, there’s acceptance. A flicker of hope. He knows that he’l
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 surprises her, giving Jamal the time to step into the room after his mate. His power fills the space, nullifying all the goddess gifts of those within a 100-foot radius (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 immensely satisfying. Unfortunately, o
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 read every version I could find 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 of me back. Like I’m starting to wa