When I come out on the other side of the portal, Leticia is waiting to greet me with open arms and a huge smile. Much to her surprise, she is met with my most vicious right hook I can muster to the face. I feel the satisfying crunch of the bones in her nose collapse under the weight of my punch. I watch her collapse to the floor. Blood pours from her broken nose onto the gray carpet. Around us, my sisters gasp in surprise at my actions. “HOW DARE YOU CROSS ME?” my goddess voice booms, “YOU WILL PAY FOR KILLING MY BETA, LETICIA!” “Kas, I’m sorry. I-” Leticia looks up at me, prepared to beg for mercy. She won’t find any. I grab the collar of her shirt and force her down by her neck, and kneel on her chest while I continue to pummel her traitorous face. I barely hear the rest of the Mavri Magea trying to stop me and pull me off her. The typhoon in my mind suddenly stops churning, giving me the ability to focus on Leticia. I clap my hand over her mouth, making my purple aura surround
The murky water laps up and almost touches the soles of my shoes. The dark gray stones of the shore are wet with a thick gelatinous coating, making them slippery under my feet. I shuffle back slightly to avoid letting its poison get too close. One drop could kill me. The landscape is dead and soft at the edges. There is no bright white here, there is no pure black either. Just a world composed of shades of gray. Purgatory. I assumed it would be awful here, that it would be full of pain and suffering, but it’s actually still and peaceful. I close my eyes for a moment and let the silence engulf me. Finding my way here has taken me halfway across a world I never knew existed. Now that I’ve witnessed what purgatory is like, I’m pretty sure it would satisfy me to exist with its blank, empty feeling. It’s better than the darkness that has taken over. It is a comforting contrast to the Mavri Magea apartment. Trying to reforge a cursed blade and block out the pitiful whining of my sisters
Bronx’s POV The portal closed. Kas is gone. She left with them. She chose the Mavri Magea over our pack. I look back at Lenora in my arms. I feel myself rocking back and forth. It isn’t for her comfort. Lenora can never be comforted ever again. I take the hem of my shirt and try to clean the blood away from her face. All it does is smear it down her chin. “Leni. Come back. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave us. I need you. So do Milo and Codi and the pack. Please Lenora, come back to us,” my lip trembles, pleading with her. Tears drip down from my chin onto her forehead as she looks blankly at me. I look into her green eyes one last time before I run my hand over and close her eyelids. Now she looks like she’s sleeping. I pull my shirt off and lay it over her, trying to hide the gaping wound on her neck and chest. I can't bear to look at her that way. When the searing pain of our family bond and pack bond breaking at the same time hits me, I pull her closer. I cry out in an Earth-sha
Katherine’s POV The estate is unusually quiet when I get home from work. I don’t notice the usual hustle and bustle, but I chalk it up to coming home later than I normally do. I push open the door to my darkened office, pour myself a glass of scotch, and make my way over to the desk. I turn on the desk lamp and sit down, taking a deep sip of my drink. “Hello, Iokaste,” I lean back in my chair, addressing the woman in the tall wingback seat across the desk, “You look like shit.” “Hello, Katherine. Thank you for the compliment,” she snarks at me and leans forward from the shadow, letting me see her pale skin and sunken eyes be more clearly. Her spindly hand supports her chin. The longer I look at her, the more I realize she is way too thin. “K-Kas. Are-are you alright?” I stammer when I see her true condition. “Don’t worry about me, darling. You never have before. I’m here because I need you to do something for me. I’m going to give you a choice on how you do it,” she says, steepl
Bronx’s POV Halloween comes and goes. Thanksgiving comes and goes. Winter Solstice is only a couple of weeks away. The frigid Montana winter trudges on. The world keeps turning as if Kas never existed. Last week, I heard Katherine Santoro’s abandoned estate in Greece burned down to the ground. No fatalities and no signs of the other residents and staff who lived there several days prior. A few days later, hunters found Katherine’s naked body, along with an unidentified woman, both mauled by wild animals in a wooded area of Mongolia. The artist's sketch of the other woman is clearly Cora. As soon as they confirmed Katherine was dead, I had my people get to work on acquiring Santoro Enterprises. Within several months, I will be the CEO, absorb the company into MasonCo and create a logistics division. If there are any Manae hiding among Santoro Enterprises staff, I will flush them out and throw them into the dungeon to rot. It’s what they deserve. If Kas ever dares show her face aga
Kas’s POV I wake up in the morning feeling stiff and sore. I slide out of bed with a groan and look in the mirror. Even more than yesterday, I don’t recognize the reflection I see. Pale skin with dark bags below my eyes. All the violet from my irises is gone, replaced by a gray so light, it could be mistaken for white. I gently run a brush through my brittle, thinning hair. It is no longer gray and glittery. It’s turned into a dull shade of white that matches my eyes. I put on a loose dress and a heavy long cardigan to hide the joints protruding from all my angles before I go out to address my sisters for one last time before escorting them to Kardiá tou Manae. When I first met Lenora, bruises from my nose being broken upset her. What she would think now at my self-imposed deterioration. I turn to the side and admire my growing belly. I let myself smile when I feel the impatient little kicks coming from inside. I spend time with each team of sisters and make sure they are still on
Milo’s POV Marco had told us to find her binder before Bronx ordered us to lock him in solitary confinement. He said Kas kept note cards and binders for everything. We just had to find the correct binder to figure out what she was up to. He couldn’t tell us anymore because of some sort of potion he had swallowed. He was right. We rifled through dozens of binders in her office until we found one in her desk drawer that had a sticker labeled ‘Manae Notes’. It detailed everything, complete with cute pictures of rooms and furniture she wanted to use magic to create so her sisters would be comfortable in the home she was building for them. Some of the note cards were actually thin sheets of parchment that looked like they were hundreds of years old. Others were thick handmade papers that were crumbling on the edges. There were at least six different languages among the cards. Musu helped us translate most of them, but a few she said were in dead languages she wasn’t familiar with. Regardl
Bronx’s POV “Come on, man. It’s been a month. We’re sick of this shit. If this is your order, if this is truly what you want, then man the fuck up and come to the dungeon so you can see your damn handy work,” Milo’s steel-gray eyes bore into me, “Like you said, you don’t give a fuck anymore, so prove it. Come see what you’re doing.” “Watch your tone, Milo,” I stand up, growling at him. “Look, Bronx, you can come with us right now or you can find Blood River another Beta. I have plenty of packs who have already said they would give me asylum. Fuck being a Beta. I’ll take a job as a front gate guard and call it a fucking day. I’ll pack my shit, take Codi, and leave today if that’s how you really want this to go down. Your choice,” he crosses his arms and stares me down. Behind him, Reggie has his hands on his hips, looking at the floor. “What about you, Reggie? You're awfully quiet. Are you part of this ultimatum, too?” I lean forward against the desk, giving him a chance to speak u