Mated to the Lycan King

When Kiyan and I were much younger and more naïve than we now were, my grandmother would sit us down in front of the fireplace every night and tell us a story. It never changed and always began with the same person- Lycaon. He was said to be the first of the lycans, cursed to shapeshift into a wolf by Zeus. The reason? He tried to serve the great and powerful Zeus human flesh. Furious with Lycaon’s trickery, Zeus cursed him. From there the lycan curse spread. Lycans would bite humans, cursing them to the same fate. Eventually, word had spread about these strange shape-shifting creatures. And so, a war broke out between the humans and lycans, both believing that the world had no place for the other. It was a long, brutal war which almost seemed unending until one faithful day. The day the Lycan Kings and Queens were chosen. Each had a unique ability: Queen Aura was blessed with the ability to manipulate fire and could even command the magma within the Earth’s surface by Hephaestus; Que

It was raining when we arrived at the gates of Ophelia’s home. I made a move to open the car door so that I could open the gate. But as I shuffled in my seat, Nicholas placed an arm in front of me. I gazed at him questioningly and then he shook his head before saying, “Lovita will get the gate. It’s raining, you’ll catch a cold.” He was right, it was raining and although I was extremely stubborn and occasionally spiteful, I wouldn’t spite myself. So, I leaned back and stared out the window as Lovita opened the large purple gate. Where I usually struggled with the heavy gate, Lovita moved it almost with no effort at all. She then stood to the side while Floran drove right through. Once inside, I was ready to escape the car and get as far away from Nicholas as possible. But again, he held me back. Then, he stared out of the window, at the sky, and a look of concentration appeared on his face. I watched him closely and curiously. At first, his grey eyes remained stern and emotionless a

“I assume that the plastic stationary bag you’re keeping so close to you contains the writings of the novel you’re working on?” Nicholas asked after about an hour of silence in the car.I gazed at the bag and then nodded.“Might I ask what kind of novel you’re working on?” he asked curiously.I gazed up at him and searched his eyes for a moment as I contemplated whether to answer or not. Behind his nonchalance, I could sense that he was genuinely curious and genuinely wanted to listen. Admittedly I’d never spoken about my novel to anyone besides Ophelia and Kiyan before and although they tried to seem interested, over the years they’d grown tired of hearing me ramble about a draft I had yet to complete and perfect. And so I gave in.“It’s a novel with no set genre. I tried to amalgamate as many of them as I could. When I was younger, I used to fantasize about what my life would be like if humans were free and left to make their own decisions and be in control of their own lives. So,

By the time I’d woken up, the sun had disappeared from the sky. After gazing out into the darkness with swollen and heavy eyes from all the crying, I felt the need to go back to sleep. That was, until my stomach began to remind me that I hadn’t eaten in a while. The idea of dinner sounded quite pleasant to me, but I was certain that it was way past dinnertime. I hoped, however, that there’d still be some food left over in the fridge. But before I could even begin to follow my stomach’s instincts, I remembered that Kiyan was supposed to have given me a call as soon as he was safe. I checked my phone, well aware that I hadn’t switched the sound on and wouldn’t have heard him call if he had while I was asleep. He had. 1 missed call from Kiyan and a rather passive aggressive text to accompany it. I shook my head and breathed out a sigh of relief before trying to call him back. But he never picked up. Instead, I was directed to voicemail. And so I decided to return his passive aggressive t

I couldn’t sleep and spent most of the night crying. Then, just as the morning hours began to show against the horizon and I eventually found sleep, I was rudely awakened by the violent shaking of my body and whispered yells of “Ariya! Ariya wake up!”When I did finally manage to pry my swollen eyelids open, I was met with a concerned set of beautiful dark brown eyes and a deep-set frown. Melissa, I assumed. Her dark, curly hair was in a mess all over her head and there were dark circles underneath her eyes. She also smelled faintly of booze and tried to cover it up with a lot of sweet-scented perfume. Was she hungover?“Oh, thank goodness. You sleep like the dead Ariya!” After she’d said this, she placed a hand against her red stained lips and her eyes widened with fright.Slowly she removed her hand from her mouth before asking softly, “Dante wasn’t lying right… you do prefer us to use your name? That fucking asshole is always trying to play tricks on us. He’s really on the way to b