Not having set foot on the Silverdale Manor property since her father's banishment, Angel was terrified by the very ground she walked on. With every step onto the property, she began to feel more and more anxious, glancing over her shoulder at the thought of suddenly being accosted by Marcus' most loyal. Yet nobody seemed to notice her until she joined the crowd at the far end of the property, where the entire pack had gathered around the edge of one of the open fields to witness the alpha challenges. The main families of the pack all stood at the center, surrounding their eldest sons and offering encouragement for the day ahead. Angel thought it was pretty barbaric and she would have liked nothing more than to put a stop to it, especially when she saw Layon amongst them, standing alone save for his father's second, Roscoe, who had taken over her father's position after his banishment. The whole thing seemed like pure idiocy to Angel, and yet it was the way things had always been
It had taken months to talk his father round, insisting that everything was different now that the future of their pack was secured, but now he finally had some good news for his mate. AS he had convinced her to move to Silverdale Manor and out of her rat-infested apartment, Layon had only a short distance to travel from his room to hers, and he did so with an extra bounce in his step that morning, anticipating her reaction to all he had to share with her. When he knocked, his insides began to twist with anxiety. What if she rejects me? he thought in the moment before she opened the door. Living at Silverdale Manor had been an amazing thing for Angel. She had become even more radiant since the stress and hardship had been lifted from her shoulders, and her smile warmed his heart when she gazed at him with affection and welcomed him into the room which she had clearly made her own, with all her little knick-knacks and her baby blanket, which she insisted upon keeping at the end of
Lara was ashamed of what she had become. Once she had been set to be the alpha’s mate, but after being passed over for no less than the daughter of a traitor, she was practically left with nothing. It was humiliating. Life just wasn’t working out. Even after graduating Silverdale University at the top of her class, Lara felt as though she had nothing to show for the first thirty years of her life. She was still stuck in Silverdale, the locked supernatural community where her pack were practically the rulers of the place, and yet she felt like less than nothing. Especially when her parents so often liked to remind her of the fact she could have quite literally been Silverdale’s queen if she hadn’t messed things up with Layon Silverdale. It was her mother’s face, so much like her own, that she saw in her mind’s eye, smiling at her with a dark expression of sheer disappointment in her hazel eyes as she said, “You wouldn’t be sitting here now if you hadn’t let him go so easily!” Y
Even after several days and certain that he had managed to wash Lara’s scent from his skin, Jason found he could barely look Layon Silverdale in the eye. Standing in the library of the Silverdale Manor with his hands clasped behind his back, Jason chose instead to avert his gaze to the floor as he listened to the latest report from his future alpha. “We’ve had reports of strange wolves in the area,”Layon explained, running his fingers through his glossy black hair as he sat on the desk where his father usually sat in order to give them their orders. Already Layon was looking like the embodiment of an alpha, sitting all high and mighty in his father’s chair, and Jason couldn’t help but feel a twisting in his gut whenever he thought of what his best friend might do if he found out about him and his ex-girlfriend. “Tyson and Lukas even scented a couple within the boundaries of the community, but what we can’t figure out is how they are getting in.” Stop thinking about Lara and focu
“You have got to be kidding me! Jason Rathbone? No way!” Lara cringed at her sister’s words, knowing that she probably shouldn’t have told her anything about the night she had spent with the future second of the pack. Yet it had been a few days and she hadn’t heard from him, nor had she managed to pluck up the courage to give him a call herself. She had to talk to somebody about it. Tanny stared at Lara with absolute astonishment on her face. The two had been sharing a quiet meal together at the Silver Moon. That was until Lara had dropped the bombshell on her. Now Tanny’s green eyes glittered with curiosity and surprise. She brushed back her ash-blonde hair and leaned across the booth to look Lara directly in the eye before asking, “Well, what was it like? Was he any good?” At the question, Lara’s insides tingled. She remembered all too well how good it had been, and it was clearly written on her face the moment Tanny asked, “That good, eh? Who would have guessed it from a big
3 Days Later “Thank you,” Jason smiled to the beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed she-wolf who placed a mug of coffee in front of him on the penthouse coffee table twenty-five floors up in Harrison Wolfe’s New York hotel. It had been less than a year since their last visit, though things were definitely much more peaceful than the last. “You’re welcome,” Acacia Wolfe returned his smile and turned to her newborn son, who had begun to coo and fuss in his Moses basket at the edge of the room.“I am sure they won’t be too much longer.” “Alphas will be alphas,” Jason responded with a shrug. Though he could hear Layon and Acacia’s husband, Harrison, leader of the New York pack, talking in the library down the hall, he was trying his hardest not to listen to what they were actually saying. If they had wanted him to know what they were talking about, they would have invited him in on the meeting. Jason couldn’t help but wonder whether something might be wrong between him and his first
Lara wasn’t sure how long she had been down there in the dark. She wasn’t even sure where there was, but what she was sure of was that therope binding her wrists and ankles wasn’t just any ordinary rope. If they had been, she would likely have already managed to yank herself free of them.No, the people who had kidnapped her were well-versed in kidnapping werewolves because the acrid stench of wolfbane that hit her nostrils every time she tried to pull herself free told her so.As if rope burn wasn’t bad enough, the wolfbane was slowly seeping into the cuts and scrapes of the coarse material, and it was weakening her from not only the outside in but also the inside out. She could feel the poison slowly leaking into her veins, making every single inch of her body scream for a release from the agony.The sound of thudding somewhere above her head alerted Lara to the fact that she was no longer alone. The sound grew distant as thoughsomebody was walking past above her head, and then
Standing outside Layon's office inside Silverdale Manor, Jason debated whether to knock for the hundredth time. He had been fighting the urge to approach his best friend for the last few days now. It had been two days since their return from New York and since Layon had received the call from Lara's sister, and still Jason was feeling as though something wasn't right. He had called Lara's phone over and over again whenever he found himself alone, hoping and praying that she would answer, even if it was only to tell him to fuck off. Even if she said she wanted to forget all about what had happened between them and that she never wanted him to contact her again, he could face that. What he couldn’t face was the dreadful thought that something awful had happened to her while he had been away in New York. He wasn't sure he would ever be able to forgive himself if something had happened. Why would it be my fault? he asked himself even as he raised his fist to knock on the door for the