Novels by Jokes Writes

Raiden’s Pov Day 16, Afternoon. Eleven days left. The bond lights up like a damn flare and my knees just give out. *I hear you. I’m here. I’m still me. Wait for me.* Nyssa. Clear. Sharp. Still kicking. Still *mine*. “Thank fuck,” I choke out, half laugh, half sob. Senna’s there in a second, grabbing my arm. “Alpha? What the hell just happened?” “She talked. Through the bond. She’s...” My throat closes up. “She’s still her.” Relief hits Senna’s face hard, then worry creeps right back in. “How long till day three?” “Thirty-six hours. Maybe less.” I drag myself upright. “Kael’s gonna move the second she’s mortal again. We’ve gotta be ready.” “Defenses are set. Sentries rotating. We moved the kids and elders south. But Raiden…” She pauses, eyes flicking to the crater. “We’re stretched thin. Forty-two of us against his seventy-three. And half our fighters are running on fumes after two straight days holding the line.” “Then we don’t play fair.” I stare north toward where Kael’s

Nyssa’s Pov Day 16. Eleven days left. God, there’s no time in here. No sunrise, no night, no clock ticking. Just this endless silver fire and a power that’s screaming through me, trying to rip me apart and rebuild me into something I never asked to be. I don’t even have a real body anymore. I’m just… awareness. A burning thought. A soul getting hammered in a forge that was never built for someone like me. The Silver Matriarch, or whatever this thing is, keeps whispering. Over and over. *Let go.* *Surrender.* *Become what you were always meant to be.* And honestly? It would be so damn easy to just stop fighting. To let the fire eat everything. Nyssa Voss, the girl from Greyhaven. The assassin. The idiot who fell stupidly in love with the wolf who burned her whole world down. Poof. Gone. Ashes. Whatever crawled out of those ashes would be flawless. Clean. Unbreakable. No more pain. No second-guessing. No fear. Just purpose. *Dominate. Command. Rule.* It almost sounds like

Kael's PovDay 15, Evening. 12 days left.This rogue camp reeks. Failure, sweat, and that sour smell of wolves who’ve given up. Smells like home to me.Perfect.I weave between the half collapsed tents and piles of scavenged junk, doing a quick headcount. Forty-three so far. Nowhere near enough to storm Raiden’s pack head on, but plenty to stir up some serious trouble.Especially since about half of them are already eating out of my hand.“Kael Shadowfang.” A mountain of a wolf steps right in my path, six-five easy, face like a road map of bad decisions, one ear gone. “Heard you’re building something. Heard you’ve got an offer.”“Depends,” I say, sizing him up. “You chasing coin or something that actually means anything?”“Both.”I smirk. “Smart.” I jerk my head. “Walk with me. Name?”“Vex. Ran with Ironwood till their alpha got himself torn apart in some bullshit territory spat.” He spits into the dirt. “Three years rogue. Sick of living like a damn scavenger.”“How many you got behi

Raiden's Pov Day 15, Dawn. 12 days left. I wake to find Lily sitting beside me, staring at the crater. The little girl shouldn't be here. She should be safe in the temporary camp with the others. But somehow she slipped past the sentries and made the two-mile trek through dangerous territory to sit next to a man watching his mate burn. "She's pretty," Lily says softly. "Like a star." "Yeah." My voice is rough from disuse. "She is." "Is she going to die?" The blunt question hits harder than it should. Children always ask the things adults are too afraid to say out loud. "I don't know." "My mama died." Lily pulls her knees to her chest. "She got sick and then she was gone. Papa said she went to the moon. Is that where Nyssa's going?" "No." I pull the child against my side. She's too thin. Too fragile. Another victim of Kael's poison, sav

Raiden’s Pov Day 14, dawn. Thirteen days left. I set up camp right at the lip of the crater. Close enough that I can see her, really see her. Far enough that the leftover silver energy doesn’t start peeling my skin off in strips. The wolves think I’ve lost it. Honestly? They’re probably not wrong. “Alpha, you need to sleep,” Senna says. Again. Third time in an hour. “You’ve been up for a full day straight, you’re bleeding in like six places, and the pack...” “The pack’s got you.” I don’t take my eyes off the glowing silver shape floating in the middle of all that ruin. “Deal with it.” “Raiden...” “Order, Beta.” She flinches. I never snap rank at her like that. Feels like kicking a puppy. She walks away without another word. I can’t move. Can’t think about anything except Nyssa burning alive in there by herself. Kael said three days. Three days of this… whatever this is. Either she comes out immortal or she comes out dead. And all I can do is watch. Again. Helpless. Ho

Nyssa’s PovDay 14, midnight. 13 days left.The second I step inside that ring of chained-up skeletons, the altar wakes up.These old symbols carved into the black stone start glowing bright, cold silver. Same exact shade as the fire licking across my palms right now.Kael’s pacing around me, slow and deliberate, knife in one hand, the other dragging along the edge of the altar like he’s caressing it.“Last chance, Silver Blade,” he says, voice almost gentle. “Give me the blood willingly. Let me tweak the curse. Raiden gets to keep breathing, you go quick and easy. Everybody wins.”“Except me, obviously.”“You’re dying anyway.” He stops walking. Looks me dead in the eye. “I can see it eating you alive. Hands shaking. Silver creeping up your neck, streaking into your hair. Few more hours and there won’t be anything human left in you.”I let the fire flare brighter. “Good.”He actually laughs. “Good?”“I was never trying to stay human.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Humans d

Dane's Pov I counted to ten in my head. Then twenty. Then thirty. Every muscle locked up tight, screaming to move, to rip into them. But I held it. Barely. Not while those assholes still had their hands on Freya. One twitch from me and she’d be the one paying for it. Viktor kept chanting, those creepy old words making the air feel heavy and wrong, like breathing soup. The pool around her kept getting brighter silver light crawling across the water like something alive and hungry. And through the bond… God. I could feel every bit of her pain. Her fear. And something else something massive waking up inside her, stretching, pushing. *Hold on,* I kept sending. *Just hold on, baby.* Her answers came back faint. Broken. Like she was getting pulled under. “Dane.” Henry’s whisper was so quiet I almost missed it. “We can’t wait much longer. Whatever he’s doing...” “I know.” My jaw hurt from clenching. “But if we rush in now, we’re all dead.” “And if we don’t, she is.” He wasn’t w

Freya's Pov The silver burned like nothing else.That was the first thing that really cut through the fog in my head these damn chains eating into my wrists, leaving raw, red streaks that had no chance of closing up. Not that they needed to. I’m not a wolf. I don’t heal like that.Viktor didn’t know, though. He figured the silver would keep me weak, keep me from doing anything stupid.He wasn’t exactly wrong… just not for the reason he thought.Truth is, I was weak because I hadn’t eaten in three days. Weak because every time I tried to close my eyes, one of his goons would shake me awake. Weak because whatever tiny scrap of hope I’d been holding onto was shrinking smaller every hour.Dane wasn’t coming.He couldn’t. Even if he somehow figured out where I was, Viktor had made damn sure the choice would be impossible. I’d overheard the wolves laughing about it, the pack house attack, the perfect distraction. How the “noble Alpha” would have to pick: his people or his mate.And he’d pi

Dane's Pov We’d been sitting there maybe three hours when the pack bond just… detonated. Pure panic slammed into me like a freight train.I was up in half a second, hand flat against my chest. Fear. Chaos. *Attack.*George was right there with me, his own palm pressed over his heart. “What the hell is it? What’s going on?”Didn’t need to say it. Every wolf in the clearing felt the same thing ripping through the bonds. Something bad was happening back at the pack house. Real bad.Henry came sprinting down from the rocks, face ghost-white. “Alpha. Thomas just called for help. Viktor’s people hit the house. Full force.”My stomach dropped. “How many?”“Fifty at least. Maybe more. Coming at us from three sides.”Fifty. Against Thomas’s thirty.That’s not a fight. That’s a slaughter.“It’s a diversion,” George said right away. “He’s trying to drag us away from here.”“I know.” My jaw locked so tight I could feel my teeth grinding. “Doesn’t make our people dying any less real.”The bonds w

Dane's Pov I stopped in the doorway and it hit me hard, right in the chest.That smell. Vanilla mixed with wildflowers. The exact soft, sweet thing that was just… her.My wolf lost it instantly, throwing himself against my ribs. *Mate. Gone. Find. Protect.*Yeah, I know, bud. I know.The room felt all wrong compared to a week ago. Back when Freya started crashing in my bed every night, her scent slowly taking over the sheets, the pillows, the whole damn space. It smelled like us. Like home. Like something I didn’t even know I was missing until it was there.Now she’s not.Her side of the bed is still messed up from three nights ago – last time she slept here before Viktor snatched her. You can still see the little dip where her head was on the pillow. One of her black hair ties is sitting on the nightstand next to a glass of water she never finished.I walked in slow, throat tight.Fourteen hours.Fourteen hours till moonrise. Till that bastard tries to bleed her dry at the waterfall

Dane’s Pov We hit Blackwood territory right as the sun started creeping over the trees. I’d been running the whole damn night in wolf form, two straight days of hunting and I still wasn’t even winded. The pack stayed with me, every warrior bone-tired but refusing to slow down. We all knew what today was. Full moon. The day Viktor tries to kill my mate. The day I either bring her home or die trying. The second we crossed the border, I felt it slam through the pack bonds pure anxiety, sharp and electric. Something was seriously off. I shifted back mid-stride, didn’t bother grabbing clothes, just stormed toward the pack house naked and pissed. George shifted beside me, face hard. “You feel that?” he asked. “Yeah. Something’s wrong. Really wrong.” Henry was waiting at the front door, pale as hell. “Alpha. Thank God.” “Talk,”

Freya’s PovI don’t know how long I just sat there after Viktor walked out.Time didn’t exist anymore. There was only the cold biting into my butt through the stone, the cuffs that felt like they were fusing to my skin, and this huge, empty hole inside where I used to feel… anything.Across the way, Connor and Jessica were finally asleep, sort of. They’d curled up against each other like puppies trying to stay warm. Their wounds were bandaged, kind of. Enough to stop the bleeding, but they were gonna have some nasty scars. Inside and out.Same as me.I let my eyes close. Too tired to keep them open. Too broken to give a damn.This is what losing feels like, I thought, the idea floating somewhere far away. This is what being broken actually is.Then footsteps. Fast ones. More than one person.I didn’t even bother opening my eyes. Whatever fresh hell Viktor had lined up, I didn’t have the energy to care.“...gotta move now,” one of his wolves was saying, voice low and urgent. “Scouts ju