“You ready for this shit?” Kesha asks me as we start putting our shoes on to head to the Alpha Council meeting. Devin and Arya are supposed to be here any minute to pick us up. “Oh, hell no? You really think I’m ready to meet my new mates? I just hope they aren’t at the meeting. Maybe it’ll give me a chance to acclimate to just being in a new pack and deal with the judgment we’re sure to get from them,” I say on a sigh. Looking up at Kesha, I ask, “What about you?” “Shit, I don’t know. This is just a lot to deal with - “ She’s cut off by a sharp knock at the door. “Looks like we have no choice, now doesn’t it?” I say. I wipe my suddenly sweaty hands on my pants and go to open the door. On the other side are two drop-dead gorgeous males. Fuck! If all the guys here look like supermodels, finding my new mates isn’t going to be a hardship. They both are close to my age, one guy black, the other Middle Eastern. The black guy has skin so dark that it’s nearly ebony. His eyes
“What the fuck just happened?” Jamal asks me. “Bitch got hers is what just happened!” I cackle next to him. “But the twins…For one, they’re not 21 yet and for two, they’re twins! They can’t be each other’s mates!” Gregory says. I cock my head and squint at him. “Obviously. They’re both her mate, not each other’s.” “How do you know this?” Jamal asks, squinting right back at me. “I told them,” Meredith’s voice says, her crescent glowing. “Ah, ok. Gonna leave that one alone then,” Jamal says, turning back to his mate with a shrug. “Wait, what about you? You got a mate in our pack too?” Gregory asks, leaning towards me. “Yeah,” I say, a bored look crossing my face. “He’s running around here somewhere. Goddess, I hope I only have one. I don’t think I could put up with more than one man cold at a time.” Jamal snorts some of the drink he just took a sip of. Gregory laughs loudly while clapping his mate on the back. “Oh, I like you,” Gregory said. “We’re gonna keep you arou
I had forgotten that Keegan’s beta, Donavon, didn’t have a mate yet. He was just so quiet, mostly keeping to himself. But the way he literally picked Gael up and moved him out of the way to get to Kesha was impressive…and freaking hilarious. The look on Gael’s face when Donavon wrapped his meaty hands around his waist and literally picked him up and moved him to the side was priceless. Goddess, I wish I had a camera. After about five minutes, Donavon walks out of the bathroom carrying Kesha in his arms. She’s trying to insist that she can walk, but he refuses to put her down, kissing her face and hands. They don’t even spare the room a glance as Donavon strides to the exit and out the door. Meredith walks out of the bathroom, the Goddess having left. Hakeem meets her at the door with a soda and piece of chocolate. She kisses him, pops the chocolate in her mouth, and opens the soda. Gael is still kind of standing off to the side, a little embarrassed. But honestly, Donavon i
Ok, ok, ok. I get it. I talked a big game about maybe not even telling my mates that they were my mates and going away from them before they were old enough to figure it out and then I go and tell them immediately upon seeing them. But, I dare you to look at someone that fucking hot, see their carbon copy right next to them, feel the draw to them, the need for them, and not go to them. The second that I said they were my mates, their eyes widen and their jaws drop. They looked around, directing their gazes to Arya, Devin, and Meredith. All three nod encouragingly. Immediately, both boys step towards me. Seth wraps his hand around the back of my neck and immediately pulls me into a kiss. Mike moves around behind me, feeling my ass and delving his fingers into my hair as he nuzzles my neck. Neither of these boys seem particularly worried about the other wolves in the room and, at that moment, neither am I. I hear Kesha boom out, “Get a room!” Never breaking my kiss with Set
I can’t believe that she’s ours. She’s beautiful and so responsive to everything we do. Her scent of woodsmoke is comforting and so intoxicating and it enveloped me as her hair whipped around me on the ride from the council hall. The little minx felt the effects that she had on me and began rubbing her ass up and down on my boner. Shit! The feeling of that perfect ass on me was way too distracting for me to be able to drive and I needed to get her home. The bed, the couch, the floor…I didn’t care where I had her, but I needed to get her behind closed doors. The things I have planned for her…no one but my brother and I should see her like that. I will say, it probably wasn’t the best idea for me to touch her like I did while driving. It put my wolf in a frenzy, making him threaten to burst out of me and take her right there. Seth and I had had to keep ourselves as outcasts in Mathias’s pack. It was the only way that we were able to stay out of the pack’s constant jockeying fo
I’m so sensory overloaded by what Mike just did to me that all I can do is lay there and try to figure out how to reuse my limbs. I’ve never felt anything that intense. I know that Mike and Seth are talking, but I have no idea what they’re saying as I try to catch my breath and bring myself down to earth. I feel Mike lick at my bite mark and I know that he’s closing the puncture wounds from his fangs. Any wolves’ saliva can help stop bleeding, though only a mate’s salvia will encourage healing. That’ll only work if they have actually marked either other, though. So, for right now, all he can do is stop any possible bleeding. I expect him to stand, to move to thrust inside of me. Instead, he continues licking up my thigh until he comes to the apex of my core. He inhales deeply before latching on to my clit with his teeth. “Mike!” I moan, loud and long. He hums against me and the vibration travels from his teeth through my clit and makes my entire body vibrate as I feel the
“Ok, we’ve got housing figured out. We get to move…AGAIN!” Kare huffs out a breath that blows her bangs out of her face. “What are we going to do about the cloaked hags?” Silence settles over the room as we think about what really brought us together for this council meeting. “We can’t just let them come to us. Who knows the havoc that they’d wreak?” Bhakti worries. At her tone, Liam puts his arm around her and Sandra grabs her hand. Sandra brings Bhakti’s hand to her mouth and kisses it. Bhakti’s tension seems to ease a little, but worry still creases her forehead. “She’s right,” Dev picks up her thought. “We’re sitting ducks if they figure out where we are.” “They’ve always been behind us, never far from another attack,” Charlie works through her thoughts. “They’ve been hunting us from the start.” “What are you getting at, Charlie?” Jamal asks. “What if we start hunting them? We know where they’ve been recently. It shouldn’t be hard to find them. I’ve taken two sho
Donavon is fucking sexy as all hell. His scent of maple sugar and woodsmoke fills my senses as he insists on carrying me out of the council hall. He’s kissing my face as I make a show of asking him to put me down. Secretly though, I love it. I love how big and strong he is. The feeling of his muscled arms holding me up makes me feel so safe. And turned on. Once we make it outside of the council hall, I turn my face so that his next kiss lands on my lips. I grip the back of his neck, keeping him right there. He grunts and I run my tongue over his lips, asking for entry. He opens his mouth at the same time that he readjusts me in his arms so that I’m facing him with my legs wrapped around his waist. He backs us up so that my back is against the wall of the council hall. Our tongues wrestle in our mouths, moving in, out, and around the other in an attempt to map each other. In the background, I hear the loud roar of a four wheeler or a motorcycle. I’m not sure which. Honest
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