Sirius Chocolate Novels & Stories

Zack clears his throat. "We have been dreaming about Brandon Snow." "Ahhh," Lucille says, smiling and nodding her head. "The future Beta. And a white wolf to boot. Your future pups will be quite beautiful with Charlie's chocolate coloring and Zak's reddish hue. The three of you will make wonderful parents." Zak's mouth drops open and Charlie squeaks out, "Our future... pups!" "What do you know of Selene and her mates?" Lucille asks. "Mates? I only know of one mate. Pan," Charlie says. "As the god of the wild and the goddess of the moon, Pan and Selene's children became werewolves. Wild creatures who were controlled by the moon." "Ahhh. Is that what they are teaching the young pups now? That Selene only had one mate? I knew that they didn't want mate trios any longer, but I didn't know that they would attempt to change even Selene's story," Lucille chuckles. "Alpha, Luna, do you truly believe that if there was no humanity in their coupling that we would be human at all?" "Wait. What?" Zak says. "If we were only children of Pan and Selene, we would always be wild creatures. Nymphs, satyrs, centaurs. But we aren't. Of course, we could remain in our wolf form all the time if we wish, but we always have the ability to shift into human form. No, young ones, Selene had two mates. One, the god Pan. The other, a human man named Endymion. We get our wolves from Pan, our pull to the moon from Selene, and our human selves from Endymion," Lucille says. "Why..." Zak licks his lips and starts again. "Why weren't we told this?" "Ahhh," Lucille breathes out, taking a sip of her coffee. "Because not every wolf has two mates, as Selene did. As you two do."

He almost never texts me first, and in person he barely says a word. In three years together, he's never remembered a single anniversary, and he's never once suggested we celebrate a holiday. But the second I message him first, he lights up, all "baby" this and "baby" that, fussing over me, coaxing me to sleep. Sometimes I'd get this strange feeling that there were two different Noahs. His explanation was that he was just bad with words face-to-face, and that texting or voice notes felt like less pressure. I kept telling myself that being together meant meeting each other halfway. He was quiet and reserved, so I'd be the one to reach out. He forgot anniversaries, so I booked the restaurant and reminded him to keep the night free. He had no time to schedule our engagement shoot, so I handled the whole thing with the studio myself. He was too busy with work to help us move, so I packed everything alone, booked the movers, and got it all done. When I was so worn out I was about to break, I'd send him a voice note, and he'd say, "I'm so sorry, baby. The lab was insane today. I couldn't be there for you, and it kills me to watch you run yourself into the ground." Hearing how guilty he sounded, all my hurt just melted away. And that's how I carried three years of this relationship on my own, running on the flawless tenderness he only ever gave me online. Until today, when I found a program on his laptop called Boyfriend Assistant. It analyzed every message I sent and generated the perfect reply, the perfect response, every single time. Cold snap? It sent: Bundle up, baby. Time of the month? It pinged an API and auto-ordered hot chocolate to my door. All those late nights he spent "working," the gentle voice notes that lulled me to sleep, every one of them was synthesized in Noah's voice. For three years, the person who'd been there for me, day and night, was never Noah at all. For three years, I'd been performing a one-woman show.

I paid Curtis Robinett 200 thousand dollars a month to be a standby blood donor. My fiancée, Eden May, thought it was a waste of money. So she reassigned him to work part-time as her personal assistant instead. When Curtis accidentally submitted my marriage license appointment as a divorce filing for the 99th time, I kicked open Eden's office door. She didn't even look up. "We're in no rush to get married anyway," she said calmly. "Curtis is just careless. That's how he's always been." Later, in the emergency room, I called Eden while doctors rushed around me, my throat shredded from yelling. "Where's my emergency medical kit?" I rasped. "What did you do with it?" Curtis answered instead, his voice warm and smug. "You mean the expensive leather bag you kept in the cabinet? I swapped it out for a large party snack box. It holds everything just fine, and honestly, it looks a lot more cheerful. "Ms. May's brother and sister-in-law are both career soldiers. Your bag didn't really match that image, so I thought this would be more appropriate." My vision dimmed. My hands shook as I told Curtis to come donate blood. Eden laughed softly and cut in, "Stop pretending you're anemic just to get attention. If you're actually sick, deal with it. You're at the hospital; I think the doctors are fully capable of keeping you alive. Curtis is afraid of needles. He's not coming." Then, she hung up. She didn't appear until the surgical lights finally went dark. "Curtis had me bring you chocolate milk," she said. "It's good for recovery. It's not that he didn't want to help. He just faints at the sight of blood." She placed a settlement waiver on my bed. "I was the one who told him not to come. That 200-thousand-dollar monthly salary is his pay as my assistant. It has nothing to do with you. You didn't have to call the police for that. Sign this, and I'll go get the marriage license with you." I thought of what I had just seen in the operating room. Eden's brother, Harvey May, was bleeding out on the operating table, waiting for a lifesaving drug that never came. In the final moments of surgery, he could do nothing but lie there and die. I looked at her and said evenly, "You're the immediate family. It's not my place to sign that."