LOGINZara
"Rude" I mummured.
Judging from the kind of person Alpha Ryan was, it wasn't hard to see that he was a man of pride who didn't beg. He saw begging as a way of being weak and left for me, I was ready to break him until the only thing left for him to do was to beg. I closed my eyes for a bit, thinking back to everything that led to this very moment. A few days ago, I was working my ass off in order to pay up the student loan I was immersed in, just to be sold off by my adoptive parents to one of the most ruthless men there was. "My life is a joke." I paused, looking at my hands that were shaking on their own accord. Ryan had inflicted so much fear in me that I was finding it hard to even think for myself. There were many things I could do to him but what was the point when all of those things would most likely lead me to my death. I looked out the window, barricaded so tight, it felt like I was in a supermax prison when ideally, I was in his pack, a fortress built so tight it felt like a cave. One thing I knew here was that, I was never getting here alive and it would take me a miracle to leave here unharmed. Sinking on the bed, my mind went through so many what if's and moments I knew I could escape if I knew what was coming for me. I was the last living Eserai but now, with this new clause Ryan had drawn up for me, it could very well be my last moments on earth because I sure as hell knew I wouldn't survive whatever amount of blood he wanted to draw out from me. "Penny for your thoughts?" My head snapped up when I saw Mira standing by the door, a look in her eyes I couldn't quite comprehend. I hadn't even known when she opened the door and now, it felt like I was looking at an apparition because I didn't expect her to be here. "What do you want?" I shouldn't have sounded harsh but who was I kidding? She now saw me as a threat, sent here to take her man even though this place was the last place I wanted to be but here we are. Shutting the door with a small click, she walked further inside, taking time with her steps even though we both knew she was trying to assert dominance, to prove that she was the lady of the house, Luna and I was... well, nothing but a slave to be used as they pleased. "What do you want?" I asked again, this time, rising to my feet. "Calm down... You don't need to be rude. I only came to reintroduce myself properly since, well, we couldn't earlier." Who was she fooling? There was a mischievous look in her eyes that told me she was far from being a friend. She was here to break me, not with tools but with her words and she was doing a perfect job of that. "I don't need to know you. You are Ryan's wife, that's all that matters." I snapped, looking away. At this point, I was already close to tears because I hated being in a situation like this. It made me feel weak, like I had no hope of getting out of here and it pissed me badly. "Ryan's Luna," she corrected. "Isn't that the same thing?" I asked, my eyes not leaving her. She chuckled, leaning on the wall, as her eyes trained on me. It just felt like she was trying to read me, to understand me even though I had no idea why. I shrugged, giving up because if they wanted to kill me, they could as well do it now. I was tired of this, tired of the way they treated me like it was a taboo and a wonder to behold all at the same time. "You know the reason why you are here." She didn't pose it as a question so I didn't see the need to answer her so I simply kept quiet, watching her every move. "Answer me when I speak to you!" she barked. I hated that I jumped in fright because it just felt like I was scared of her, but at that moment, what she did caught me completely off guard and so, my reaction was completely understandable but not to her. To her, she felt like she owned me. "Yes," I simply said. "Good and then you know that you would do everything you are being told to do without questions and that includes feeding Sinclair with your blood when he needs you," she said, coming closer. I squared up, staring at her as if challenging her to a fight. I saw a flicker in her eyes, just barely noticeable before it was quickly replaced by her stoic expression. "Yes," I said, again. "Good. Then we have no problems. But I must warn you, if you fail to carry out your responsibilities, if you even hesitate to, I will put you to death and Ryan wouldn't know." She smiled frostily, enjoying every bit of this and I knew she was, giving the twinkle that now appeared in her eyes. Her jet black hair, which fell loosely by her side made her look every bit of the witch she was. Though strikingly beautiful, I knew her heart was anything but beautiful. "Do what you are supposed to do and we will have no problems," she smiled. Without another word, she walked out of the room, giving me one final look of warning before shutting the door, this time with a loud bang. I sank on the bed, holding, my head in my hands because now, I was faced with an impossible task, feeding the very person that I knew deep down was responsible for the near extinction of my kind. We had a long history, that much was certain and if i dug deeper, deeper than the lies and facade i was made to believe, Ryan and his family wouldn't be far.Now here, under his watch and order, I knew I needed to do everything possible to avenge my parents and make him pay for everything he had made me pass through and in that moment, I knew just where to begin- with the very thing he craved, my blood.
ZaraThe explosion did three things in the first half-second.It erased the ridge line noise. It compressed the air in a way that felt personal, like a hand flat against the chest and it told me exactly where Elena and Rourke were not."Move," I said.Ryan was already moving, because Ryan's body also knew things his brain hadn't caught up to yet, which was one of the qualities that had kept him alive long enough for me to develop opinions about his survival. I followed his line and then corrected it, because his line went toward the blast, and the blast was information, not a destination."South," I said. "Not back.""Elena...""Elena ran. You told her to run and Elena is not a person who makes promises she doesn't keep." I believed this because I needed to believe it and because I had watched Elena Voss absorb a cascade of impossible information in a forest and not fracture, which meant she was the kind of person who ran when she was supposed to run. "South. Now."The man on the ridg
RyanI had approximately one second to process the fact that Simon had been in the scrubbed file and zero seconds to do anything about it because the shot came from the direction we were walking and my body moved before my brain caught up, which was fine, the body usually knew better than the brain anyway.I hit Elena first, which was tactical and not unkind, and she went down with minimal resistance which told me she'd been military adjacent at some point, and then I was moving toward Zara because Zara was the thing in the scene that would get us all killed if it went uncorrected, and Zara was already moving, which meant she'd heard what I'd heard, that the shot was a message, not a kill, because if someone wanted us dead we would be dead and instead someone wanted us aware.The trees became useful then. Rourke herded Elena further back and down. Simon, to his considerable credit, didn't panic or posture, he just folded himself behind a broad trunk and his hand was on what I would ha
ZaraThe photo was small on the screen and I wished it were smaller.I'd met the woman once. A Tuesday, unremarkable, the kind of day that doesn't announce itself as the day you file something you'll need later. A corridor at Vauxhall, a turned face, seven seconds at most. I hadn't known the name then. I knew it now because Ryan had said it, quietly, in the farmhouse, in the specific register he used for things he was not going to say twice.I didn't ask him how long. I could read the how long in the set of his shoulders, in the way he'd looked at the photo for exactly three seconds before his face had finished doing what it needed to do and stopped doing anything at all.Some information arrived and you absorbed it. Some arrived and absorbed you. I could see which kind this was and I gave him the four seconds it took without filling them."Northern track," I said, when the four seconds were done. "Is it viable."Rourke shook his head. "B road's a minute out. They'll have it.""So we
RyanThe window had been intact three seconds ago.His body processed this before his mind did, which was probably why he was already moving, already low, already putting the table between himself and the source before he'd consciously registered the direction. Glass across the flagstones, and cold air through the gap. A sound outside that he classified instantly and without pleasure as a suppressed rifle, subsonic, close, which meant someone had been set up, had been waiting for an angle, and had found one.Daniel Rourke had dropped.That was the first thing he saw when he came up from behind the table, hand on the Glock, eyes on the window. Rourke was on the floor with the particular economy of someone trained by the same people who'd trained him, the kind of drop that said *I know what this is* rather than *something is happening to me*, and that small distinction, that reflex, produced something in his chest that was complicated and unwelcome and would have to wait."You hit," he
Zara"Keep moving," Simon said. "Don't look back.""I'm not looking back.""You're thinking about looking back.""I'm thinking about a lot of things," Zara said. "Looking back is the least of them."He didn't argue with that, which meant he agreed with it, which was not reassuring.The east field was exactly what it sounded like... cold, open, and completely without sympathy for the person crossing it at a run with a shoulder that had filed a formal complaint somewhere around the second hundred metres. She ignored the shoulder. The shoulder could take a number.Simon was ahead of her by three paces, moving with the particular efficiency of someone who'd done this kind their whole life and had stopped finding it remarkable, not fast exactly, but purposeful in a way that ate ground without appearing to. Elena was between them, keeping pace without being told to, and Zara noted that too, filed it in the part of her brain that was always filing things even when the rest of her was occupie
RyanThe knock was three times. Patient and unhurried, the kind of knock that wasn't asking permission.I'd heard it from the treeline, carried flat across the cold morning air, and I was already moving before the third one landed because I knew the farmhouse and I knew the track and I knew that three knocks at that hour from someone who wasn't expected meant the geometry of the morning had just changed shape and I was already behind it.I came off the ridge low, using the old stone wall along the eastern edge the way it wanted to be used, staying below the sightline of the windows, and I checked the car on the track without stopping, one glance, nothing in the back, keys in the ignition like whoever had driven it here hadn't planned on needing a fast exit, or had planned on a very permanent one. Either way the car was a question I didn't have time for yet.The side window gave without argument, the latch old enough to have stopped caring, and I was through it and into a utility room
ZaraEverything inside me went still in a way that felt unnatural, like my body had finally decided it could not keep up with everything happening around me anymore while my mind tried to catch up with words that did not make sense no matter how many times I repeated them in my head, because mating
RyanThe second Denver said those words, I already knew this night was about to become a disaster.I kept my expression calm because that was what years of control had taught me to do, but inside, every instinct I possessed was screaming violence. The ballroom around us remained bright and elegant
ZaraThe way his touch felt on me was something I would never forget in a hurry, it enveloped me so much in that short period of time and till now, I was still feeling the effects of whatever he had done to me. It didn’t help because the music within the ball was getting increasingly louder with ev
RyanI had a good mind to stop Zara as she stalked away but on the other hand, I decided to let her go simply because it was in situations like this that she needed some time alone. The ballroom music grew louder with every minute that passed, and so did my heartrate. It was one thing to be all ove







