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
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