LOGINMy gaze sweeps across the courtyard, taking in the faces, the laughter, and the sense of peace that still feels surreal.And then my eyes find her.Xena.I can’t bring myself to call her Lola, just as she can’t bring herself to call me Sadie. To everyone else, we are Lola and Sadie but to each other
“Sadie?” Alec murmurs gently beside me, voice low and coaxing. “You ready?”I turn, and he’s there, exactly where he’s always been. Tall, steady, eyes soft in a way I once thought I’d never be on the receiving end of. He’s holding our son in his arms, swaddled in a light silver blanket that shimmers
He already knows. He always does.“Ready?” I say quietly, though everyone hears me.“Definitely… Been waiting to make you officially mine for months,” he says, earning a chuckle from everyone.Slowly, he puts Aspen down, who is smiling from ear to ear.We told her the truth, that Alec is her dad, an
The night is quiet. Not the tense quiet that comes before war, not the brittle silence of grief but a living stillness, deep and steady, like the world has finally exhaled.It has been a month since the battle. A month since blood stained this land. A month since Kaden fell. A month since I learned
Kaden sees it too late. He lunges, but we are faster.I raise my hand and time stops and light pours from me in radiant waves. Lola steps forward, shadows trailing her like smoke. Light and shadow coil around us, not fighting, but circling, choosing. The air thickens, charged, every particle vibrat
The guilt is suffocating. It crawls up my throat like it wants to rip me apart from the inside.This isn’t how it was meant to be. This isn’t how it was meant to end. Kaden wasn’t supposed to win.I wipe away the tears. No! I refuse to let her die.I feel something crack open in my chest at my deter
A freezing, wet, and hard surface is underneath me. This isn’t like the soft mattress I slept on a couple of hours ago. I want to continue sleeping for a little while, but it’s unbearable. I try to shift, hoping I will get comfortable, but it doesn’t work. Small, hard things press into my skin, incr
I curse the moon goddess for the hundredth time as I make my way back into the pack house. I hate this. I hate it so freaking much. I wish things were different. I wish things didn’t happen the way they did. Maybe then I wouldn’t be here.I wipe the tears away, getting rid of all the evidence that,
“Quiet!” I command once I’m at the podium.They all shut their mouths at my alpha command. I take a moment to think about what to tell them or how to even tell them. It’s not every day you have to tell your pack that you made a mistake.That the woman who you thought was your mate isn’t, and the one
It has been a really stressful day, to say the least, and I can’t wait to go to sleep and just forget about everything, even if it’s for a while.After our talk, Raven left to research more about the confinement spell. She hoped that she could ask around among the witches she knew. Hoped she could f







