Novels by EstherJ

Elena’s POVA few days had passed since the war happened, and since we didn’t really gather any destruction, it was quick and easy to clear things up and go back to our usual lives.The boy who helped us bring him down, our enemy, was also trying to gather his life back.Before going back to the pack, he and his sister wanted to speak to us one last time, so we gathered in the guest living room.“Thank you, your highnesses, for not going back on your word. Thank you for protecting us,” the sister said softly.I smiled. “You don’t have to thank us. You also played your part, and it is one of the reasons why we had so much success without losing too much. I just hope you guys are able to find peace in your new lives.”She gave a small smile. Although I could tell that she had a lot going on in her mind. Perhaps, she was still trying to get used to her new freedom.“Have you been able to gather any of your people so far?” Horace asked. “Yes, but just a few. After we sent the word out, s

Horace’s POVThe worst was now over, but it didn’t mean we could rest. We still had a lot to do.The doctors and nurses came in, carrying out the injured people one by one. The lifeless were also taken out, and although none of them were my men, I couldn’t help but feel a slight tightness in my chest.Most of those people were just unfortunate to have been tagged with the wrong person, and they paid for that with their lives.I sighed deeply, turning to my wife and taking her hand in mine. “It's over, Elena. We can finally breathe again.”She drew in a deep breath, staring at the scene in front of us. “Yes, it’s over. And it’s left our children with a bit more maturity than they had yesterday. One has had her first proper fight, and the other has crossed the line he can never come back from.”I nodded gently. “A line he must get used to because, clearly, whether he likes it or not, he must fight. Even when he tries to avoid it, bastards will come from nowhere with little to no reason

Elena’s POVAs soon as I heard the loud scream, I quickly turned my head towards where it had come from. It was Lila, but the scream had nothing to do with her. Instead, she was looking in a particular direction, so I turned my head towards it, and to my horror, the animal who started all of this had a dagger aimed directly at my son.“Ethan,” I shouted, my heart skipping so quickly for a few seconds. The man was so close, and I was sure that it was certainly going to hit him. But just like we all heard the scream, it seemed to have alerted him on time also, and before the man could pierce the top of his head, he jumped, using his claws to scratch against the man’s face fiercely. This disoriented him, causing the dagger to fall from his hand and his body to the ground.Just then, Horace ran towards my son, ready to help, only to see that the work had already been done.He paused in his steps, staring at Ethan with a surprised but proud look in his eyes.But that wasn’t the time to

Horace’s POVThe doors burst open, and sure enough, Elena was right with her sign. They were the ones— strange men dressed in sacks.However, to their horror, the smiles they had on their faces had wiped off the moment they walked in, as they weren’t expecting what we had prepared.Every single person in that room was a warrior. Even my young daughter, who decided to stay back for the fight against my wish, seemed ready for them. I made sure my best fighters were ready to take them on.With them was the boy who exposed their whole plans.Beside him was a girl who looked a bit like him… certainly had to be the sister he spoke about.They still hadn’t discovered that the boy had betrayed them, which was a good thing.The man let out a smirk, stepping closer to the middle.I mirrored his movement until we were a few meters apart.“Who the hell are you and what do you want?” I asked sternly.He paused, running his eyes over the scene in front of him. He was still in disbelief.“Alpha, w

Ethan’s POV“I was never witness to people from the beginning. I don’t even know who they are,” he said softly.All the bravado he had from the beginning had completely washed off, and all I saw was a little boy in distress, trying to protect whatever little peace he had left.This left me and my father more confused about the whole matter.“So how did you end up with them?” I asked gently.He gave a small, sad smile. “It all started one day when we noticed strange men around our pack. My father, being a global heart, decided to welcome them without suspecting anything. However, we never knew this act of kindness would lead to the destruction of our family and pack.”He paused, sobbing lightly.“One day, while we were having a small pack celebration for a milestone, a loud noise came out of nowhere, and before we could understand what was happening, we noticed this strange man attacking us from different angles. At first, even as a young child, I didn’t want to believe what was happen

Horace’s POV“Your highness, he’s coming towards you. He’s alone,” Dave voiced into the walkie-talkie.I moved forward, Ethan behind me as we prepared to block the boy. “So what are we going to do when we get him, Father?”“Well, for starters, we have to question him. Hopefully, he cracks and tells us what his people are planning. I really don’t want casualties. I want to downplay this war as much as I can.”We heard footsteps and quickly paused, hiding ourselves from view. We didn’t need to wait long because a moment later, a young boy walked past us, not knowing that we were right behind.“Don’t move,” I said, coming out of the shadows. Ethan quickly moved forward, blocking him in case he tried to run.The boy looked between us, shocked and terrified, but I could tell that he was trying to stand his ground.“Who… who are you? What do you want for me?”“I think that question is meant for you.”He squinted his brows. “What do you mean? I don’t want any trouble, okay. Just don’t bother

TANYA'S POVThe kettle started the way it always did, a low hum building toward something, patient about the processI was standing at the counter in the early morning dark, the way I'd stood at another counter in another year, in a graduate student block kitchen with a single window and linoleum that never looked clean regardless of effort. That morning I'd been waiting for tea and not thinking about anything in particular, and the mechanism hypothesis had arrived unbidden, complete, like something that had been waiting for me to stop looking directly at it.This morning I was just waiting for tea.The revelations were in the papers on the shelf. This was just Tuesday.I poured the water, let the tea steep, and carried the cup to my desk. The fourth-phase study design was open where I'd left it the night before the question Cormac had asked in the first year of the study, sitting at the measurement station with his hands loose in his lap: can people move, and do the cellular metrics

TANYA'S POVMax went first.He stood up without notes, which I'd told him not to do, and looked at the room with the particular expression of someone who has rehearsed something and then decided at the last second to say the other thing instead."When we were kids," he said, "Tanya used to carry a notebook everywhere. Not for school. Just …a notebook. She'd write down things she noticed. Patterns. The way certain situations kept producing the same outcomes. My mother thought it was sweet. Our father thought it was concerning." He paused. "They were both right. What it actually was was research. She's been doing research her whole life. She just didn't have a lab yet."He looked at me then, and his voice shifted still steady, but the steadiness of someone holding something carefully rather than easily."The girl I drove to Moonstone two years ago was hiding," he said. "Behind the glasses and the gothic friends and the boy who kept her a secret because he couldn't stand to share her but

GIDEON'S POVLiam had stopped doing the thing with his watch approximately thirty seconds before the ceremony started, which I took as evidence that everything was running on schedule.We were standing at the front of the hall, the same hall where I'd taken the Alpha seal six weeks ago, rearranged now, the formal council configuration replaced with something warmer, rows of chairs, flowers at the ends of the aisles, light coming through the high windows at the angle it only achieved on clear May mornings. "She's at the door," Liam said quietly, without looking at me."I know," I said."Stop calculating and just look."I stopped calculating.Max came through the door first, and beside him, Tanya.I have tried to find the right language for the moment, and I don't think there is a version that isn't smaller than the actual thing. So I'll say it plainly: she looked like herself. The most exact, complete version of herself I had seen in any room at any point in the past year, not dress

TANYA'S POVThe dress was ivory, which I had not expected to choose and then had chosen immediately when I saw it, because it was simple in the specific way that meant it had been made by someone who understood that simple is harder than complicated and did it anyway.I was standing in front of the mirror in the room the pack's formal venue had set aside for the wedding party, and the room was fuller than it had any right to be at nine in the morning.Gina was doing something precise and determined to the back of my hair, which she had been doing for twenty minutes and which was apparently not finished. Jess, not Jess, the old Jess who had turned out to be something else entirely, but Gina had brought a friend from home who also happened to be named Jess and who had been confused about why this required explanation, was sitting on the window seat working through the flower arrangements with the focus of someone who had been given a task and intended to complete it correctly. Max was

GIDEON'S POVI'd been carrying the ring for three weeks.Not because I couldn't find the moment. Because I kept finding moments that were almost right and then understanding, on reflection, that almost right wasn't what this deserved. The dinner where the restaurant was too loud. The walk by the boundary fields where it started raining in the specific way that would have made the whole thing a story about the rain instead of a story about us. The evening in the lab after Elias left when I'd had the ring in my jacket pocket and Tanya had been so deep in the baseline assessment revision that pulling her out of it would have felt like an interruption rather than an arrival.I wanted it to be an arrival.On a Tuesday morning in May I got up at six thirty, walked to the south road before the blue awning place had been open for an hour, ordered two medium roasts and told them it was for the Research Wing, and carried both cups to the library.Second floor. Our table. The one by the window

GIDEON'S POVThe ceremony was in the morning, which I hadn't expected. I'd imagined it at night somehow, the ceremonial lighting, the formal darkness. But my father's transition had been at ten in the morning, and the Alpha council kept precedent where it could, and so at nine fifty-five I was standing in the anteroom of the pack's formal assembly hall in a jacket I'd last worn to a council dinner, listening to the building fill up on the other side of the wall.Liam was beside me, straightening his own jacket unnecessarily."You've been ready for this for eight months," he said"I know," I said."Then stop doing the thing with your jaw.""I'm not doing anything with my jaw.""You're clenching it. You've been clenching it since the car. It's the same thing you do before a council session when you've prepared extensively and are still convinced something will go wrong.""Something could go wrong."Nothing is going to go wrong," Liam said. "Your mother is already seated. The council is