AxelAn unknown heat ran through my body, but I could not move.Mal roared so loudly inside my head that I had to compartmentalize myself to keep from falling prey to the pain. It took every ounce of strength I had stored inside my system.But it was hearing Selene's laughter that really placed me in time and space. It was an abrupt jolt from my reality to realize that I wasn't dreaming, that what my eyes were seeing wasn't some damn nightmare feeding my fears. Especially since I realized something that tore at my soul.The woman I loved was seeing another man with love.I clenched my hands, but it was Nick who put me out of my misery.“Is that woman Selene?” My friend asked incredulously, and I couldn't answer.Selene and Izan walked away and out of my sight, as if they were a fucking mirage.I don't know how long it took from the time Nick asked the question until tears began to well up in my eyes, but the sensation of the salt water running down my cheeks finally brought me fully a
Axel“Let go of me!” shouted Lena briskly as we led her to her father.Part of me wanted to push her away and interrogate her, but by law I knew I could not do such a thing without Duncan's consent. If Lena had done that on my land, I would not only have imprisoned her, but I would also have punished her as the law dictated.“Shut up,” Nick ordered Lena.Lena began to twitch and scream, but people were not coming forward to help her.At that moment I realized that her reputation must precede her, because I didn't understand why people didn't reach in for the Alpha's daughter. When I arrived at the gates of Duncan's pack, the guards immediately approached.“What happened?” asked a tall, stocky, middle-aged man I knew very well.He was Don, Duncan's brother and Beta.“I need to speak to Alpha Duncan,” I said sternly. "It's a delicate matter involving his daughter. It's time-sensitive to talk about it."Don walked over to his niece and growled.“What the fuck did you do this time, Lena?”
SeleneI spent days with swollen feet.Walking was a torture that I couldn't even control; I had to stay in bed as long as possible, so when Amelie came to the herd and told me everything, I felt worse. But that morning, she saw me with a frown. She took some ointment, cast a little spell on it, and gave it to my aunt to give me a massage.Ten minutes later, my legs were fine; I had no swelling and felt much better.“I thought you weren't coming to my room,” I said honestly.Everyone had given me space, and Amelie had told them what was going on detail by detail in the South. My aunt and I were the ones who didn't know the details. And Bella, who had devoted herself to taking care of me.However, I felt stronger to deal with the whole truth.“Zanders explained the situation to me,” Amelie said. "A sorceress who knows about necromancy is coming tomorrow, so we will check the bodies of those who have fallen from the silk sickness. We need to make sure that was a vampire creation before
Axel“You really dare to ask me about Selene?” questioned Maurice without hesitation.The defensive way he reacted was not unexpected.“Yes, I do—”“I don't care what happened; there's no turning back now, and if you want to renegotiate, the best thing you can do is not to ask about Selene,” Maurice said painfully. “She has nothing to do with this.”His harsh words hid a big undertone, one that I was about to discover.I saw a glimmer of opportunity in his eyes, so my hopes immediately rose.“Okay,” Nick said. “It's clear how things are going to be.”I looked at my Beta with a frown.“Did they bring the latest financials?” asked Maurice carefully. “The real ones, the ones that don't have any makeup on them.”I gritted my teeth and pulled out the folders with the information.Maurice lasted minutes at a time reading page by page with extreme care.I wasn't just showing him the overall finances of the pack; I was showing him the finances of the council, the councilors, and myself. If I
AxelThree days later, Nick and I arrived in the East.The place was warm, beautiful, and noisy.It was very different from the South, where the humidity made the body sweat more, even though we were not yet in summer. So I took a handkerchief and wiped my forehead before we settled in a hotel downtown, a place where all the packs from the East lived together.“Do you want me to go ahead and go to the bank?” asked Nick, and I denied.“No, after we take a shower, we'll go to the Alpha who's in charge of this area, introduce ourselves, and tell him what we'll be doing at the bank,” I said calmly. “If I don't, I can get us in trouble.”“Fine, we'll do things the way you have them figured out,” Nick said carefully.Unlike me, who was really urgent to get everything sorted out, Nick looked very anxious and fidgety. Something about him didn't feel right.“Is something wrong with you?” I asked carefully.“No,” Nick said. “Or well, yes, I can't stand this sweltering heat.”I couldn't help but
AxelAfter the first notification, another official notification came directly, asking me for evidence of anything unusual, out of place, or that had been attempted against the pack. It was easy for me to do that because I still had traces of Clare's magic signature, as well as the parasite that screwed up the crops and livestock. And the betrayal. But saddest of all was finally having the exact number of Crescent's death toll as a result of the silk sickness.It was a bitter fucking pill for me.Twenty 23% of Crescent's population died, and of that percentage, 74% were elderly people who contributed a lot to the community. It was crazy to know the terrible losses we had, and I was sure that had the cure they created in the North not arrived, we would have possibly been decimated to a much worse number.Nick looked at me calmly and sighed at my expression of unease.“We should be glad that the dead were not young people,” Nick said, and I grunted. "Sorry to be harsh, but if the young