LOGIN"Wake up, little queen."
The words do not belong to me.
They do not belong to Adriel or Mitchell.
They are heavy, scraping hooks dragging me out of the pitch-black void.
My eyes snap open.
A blinding spike of white light punches through my skull.
The sound comes a millisecond later. It is a deafening, concrete-splitting roar that rattles the fillings in my teeth.
I bolt upright.
Betty POV"Are you going to stare at me all day or are you going to help me pack?"Mitchell froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. The dining table sat between us like a frozen lake. For five days, nobody had made a sound in this house. Everyone walked on their toes. Everyone breathed in quiet, careful rhythms."Pack for where?" Mitchell set the fork down without a single click against the porcelain."The knight kingdom." I gripped the edge of the dark wood table until my knuckles turned white. "We are leaving. Today.""Betty, you are not ready." Mitchell stood up slowly, his large frame blocking out the light from the tall window. "Look at your hands. You are still shaking.""I need to fight something, Mitchell." I kicked my chair back. The legs scraped hard against the stone floor, the sound sharp enough to slice through the heavy silence. "I need to run until my lungs burn. Every time I close my eyes, I feel that massi
Novalee POV"Do not touch her!" I scream.My own voice tears through my throat, raw and burning. My eyes snap open. The ceiling is wrong. The air is wrong. My chest heaves as I shove myself upright in the mattress, the sheets twisting tight around my legs.Luka bolts upright beside me. His hand hits my shoulder in a second, his grip hard and grounding. "Novalee? What is it? What happened?"I do not look at him. I cannot look at his face. The images are still burned into the back of my eyelids. Everything was red. Everything was blood and ash."Novalee, look at me," Luka demands. He pulls me toward him, his arms wrapping tightly around my waist. He pulls my back against his chest, his heart hammering against my spine. "You are safe. It was just a dream.""It was not a dream," I choke out. My voice is a thin whisper. My teeth click together, vibrating with a cold terror that does not belong to this room.
Betty POV"Look at the screen, Betty."Jethro shoved the cold glass of the phone against my palm. My fingers clamped around the edges. The screen glowed, illuminating a photograph that made the blood in my veins turn to slush."They look strange," I whispered. My voice sounded flat, bouncing off the stone walls of the pack house. "Jethro, why do they look like that?"Adriel did not answer with words. His massive arms came around me from behind, pulling me backward into his chest with a sudden, crushing force that knocked the air from my lungs. His heartbeat was a frantic, erratic thud against my spine."I found them exactly like this," Jethro said. He stepped back, his eyes darting to the floorboards. "I promised I would never keep secrets from you. Not after everything.""They are just sleeping," I said to the empty air.I fired a mental spike through the pack link, aiming for my mother. Nothing. The bond was a hollo
Jethro’s POV"Get the children inside now before I lose my mind!" I shouted, the steering wheel groaning under my grip as the car tyres skidded onto the gravel.Nina did not move. She sat stiff in the passenger seat, her knuckles white around baby Toby. The child did not cry. He just stared at the dashboard with huge, empty eyes."Jethro, look at them," Nina whispered. Her voice cracked, dry and small. "They do not even know what a house looks like."In the back seat, six pairs of eyes stared out of the windows. Six children. We found them hiding under the floorboards of a ruined cabin. The Blue Claw pack house was gone. There was nothing left but black ash, the smell of burnt hair, and the sticky scent of old blood. All the adults were dead."They know what a car is," I grunted, shifting the gear stick into park. "That is enough for today.""They have the same scent," Nina said, her eyes shifting to the bu
David POV"Move your hands away from the door handle," I say, my voice tight and rough.I do not look at the lycan in the driver's seat. I keep my eyes fixed on the cracked dashboard of the black estate car. The engine idles with a low, heavy rumble that vibrates through the soles of my shoes. My fingers press hard into my knees."The arena is clear," the lycan says. His voice is too deep. It sounds like grinding stones. "You do not dictate where I step, boy.""I do out here," I say. I turn my head just enough to catch the sharp glint of his jawline. "You smell like the monsters that broke my house. If the survivors smell you first, they will run deeper into the dark. They will never come out."The lycan tightens his grip on the steering wheel. The leather groans under his palms.In the back seat, Nina shifts. She holds the strange baby close to her chest. The baby does not cry. It just stares at the back of the lycan’s head with wide,
Adriel POVThe pressure changes instantly.The sound of Ian’s voice, the smell of the infirmary, the burning in my chest - all of it disappears.I am standing up. But my boots aren't hitting stone. They are sunk into thick, heavy mud.I try to take a breath, but my lungs fill with heavy, cold liquid. Water. I look up. Light filters down from a shifting, translucent ceiling thirty feet above my head. I am standing at the bottom of a lake.I push my hand forward. The water moves against my skin like heavy silk, but my ribs don't ache. My chest doesn't leak blood."Hello, Adriel."The voice is high. A sharp, melodic giggle that echoes directly inside my ear canal.I turn my head, my eyes straining against the green tint of the water. There is nothing but empty depth. "Who is that? Show yourself."My voice comes out perfectly clear. The words don't bubble. They don't drift."Technically, you are
Betty’s POV"Get on your knees, wolfless freak, or I will break your legs myself."Madeline’s voice sliced through the damp, heavy air of the Blue Claw storage pavilion. She was balanced on the balls of her patent-leather heels, her pink lips curved into a cruel, perfect line. In her manicured hand
Betty POV"Wake up and look at me," a voice commands from the darkness.The sound does not come from my ears. It vibrates deep inside the marrow of my bones. I am floating in a black, empty void. There is no floor. There is no ceiling. There is only a heavy, suffocating
Adriel POV"Get the hell away from her door, Mitchell."My voice is a low, vibrating snarl that rattles the heavy oak panelling of the corridor.My brother doesn't flinch. He stands there in the dim light of the west w
Betty POV"Your mother is a liar, Betty."Adriel didn't yell. He didn't have to. The sheer weight of his voice cut through the heavy heat of the training arena, freezing the blood in my veins.My mother flinched beside him, her fingers curling into the fabric of her faded tunic. "Adriel, please. Th







