Lucy's POV The air cracked like a bomb a split second away from blowing up. Deep within my bones, I could feel a twisting that only happened whenever my wolf was kicked into the forefront of my mind—something I usually tried to avoid. I gripped the sides of my chair to keep steady, and also to stop myself from lurching forward at Ahmad with the cry of frustration I had been keeping in for ages.“Are you fucking kidding me, man?” A bewildered Shaun jumped to his feet. Eyes flashing with anger. “We come all the way here just for the old fart to dump all this responsibility on us? What was he thinking in these last few days of his messed up life?”Seth placed a hand on his brother's shoulder. “Shaun, it's dad you're talking about here. He didn't do much for us but, this pack doesn't deserve to fall apart just because he's gone.”But Shaun wasn't having any of that. He shook his brother's hand off his body. “Fuck all of them! What did they care when Mom died? They did nothing! And now no
Lucy’s POVThe letter made me uneasy, because it could seriously implicate me if anyone else came across it. I couldn't have people thinking that I had a hand in the death of Daven, even though I didn't care much about the man. Especially now that his sons were around, I had to be more careful than ever.I ripped up the paper into tiny bits that I was sure wouldn't be readable, and disposed of them into a little nylon bag before disposing of it. Doing something like this made me feel like I was some sort of criminal, but I couldn't let my guard down at that moment.The letter bothered me for the whole day, and was the last thing I thought about before going to bed.The next morning brought only more situations to anger me, because while on my way to get some breakfast, I saw that the triplets were already seated in the dining room—which was filled with about half a dozen women who were giggling and flipping around like idiots.“What's going on here?” I questioned, unable to believe w
Lucy's POVEverything went as smoothly as it could when you were trying to avoid running into the sons of your enemy. If I could help it, the chances of crossing their paths were as low as fifteen percent on certain days.Just when I had started falling into a routine, Ahmad called for a meeting again. The second one we were having in less than two weeks. Reluctantly, I accepted the invitation, because he didn't look like the type of person to bother someone just for the sake of it. I might not have liked the man, but I could at least appreciate his work ethic.We were using Daven's office as our meeting place now, since obviously we couldn't be using the same hall where he had met his end as it no longer held up to the definition of security. Those in charge of protecting the pack—the guards—were still searching for the person behind that attack, but so far, their hands had only come up with sand and air. I took my seat in the hall, folding my legs as demurely as possible. The flowi
Lucy's POVNo. This wasn't the plan at all. I never planned to put my own people under public scrutiny. But my mouth moved too fast for my brain, and now I was facing the consequence of that action. I didn't know for certain that no one from Bloodbath could have been the killer, but we were already enslaved and watched over like hawks. Would one of us really have been so willing to risk their own life? No man had made it out of the pack with us, but what if out of all the rubble and flames, some people had actually made it out and were looking for a way to avenge the pack?No, it was just mere conjecture. I could only protect those I knew about, who were the young women that had also been brought here with me as well after that terrible raid. We were already discriminated against because of our status as slaves to the Moongrowl pack, we couldn't be branded as potential murderers as well. The only thing that would accomplish was making our situation even worse. Once Ahmad made the
Lucy's POV As if having to watch my people get treated like shit wasn't enough, Ahmad put me in charge of the interrogations. Now, I had a front-row seat to how it would proceed, and the thought of it already made me a little sick.The interrogations were scheduled to hold indoors in one of the rooms within the pack house barely used to limit leakage of information, and to ensure that if anyone happneot slip up, they would be taken care of swiftly without causing harm to other people.Apprehension boiled within me. I really wanted to hope that the attacker wasn't anyone from our pack, but what if it was? It would give members of Monngrowl pack have another reason to treat us poorly. I had been shielded by the little authority I had when Daven was still alive, but with him gone, no one saw the need to keep up with some of his rules, especially respect—and his sons weren't making things any easier.That morning, I put on my thickest skin. The enslaved Bloodbath members weren't going to
Lucy's POVThe woman's eyes narrowed. “And why in the bloody hell would I do that?”Shaun stepped forward, arm brushing my shoulder. “Because we're in charge here, and you have to obey what I say.”The woman's mouth twisted into an ugly frown, but something in her eyes held . . . fear. “You can't take what belongs to me.”“That child doesn't belong to you. You only have her because my father was too much of a power-hungry ruler that he didn't see the need to protect little children like her. Now, hand her over, unless you'd like to give up an arm instead.” A dark aura spilled out from him at his last sentence. It screamed danger . . . and I knew that he had just tapped into one of the inner powers that he possessed as an apex werewolf: the ability to bend lesser wolves to his will.The woman tried to pretend like it wasn't getting to her at first, but eventually she whimpered, shoved the girl forward and scurried away. The only way to get rid of a predator was to bring an even bigger
Lucy's POVMy feet moved of their own accord once I saw that he wasn't going to be able to evade the arrow on time. And I didn't know what the assailant was using that made them difficult to detect, but like last time, no one took notice of them until it was too late.I shoved Shaun forward, pushing him out of the way, but this put me where he had been standing, and before I could swiftly dodge, the arrow found its mark in the flesh of my shoulder. Wild, hot pain zipped through my brain, consuming my every thought. My legs wobbled underneath me, before crumbling like ruined ash and bringing me to my knees. A loud sound kept pouring into my ears over and over again. It was my screaming. The last thing that crossed my mind before the darkness was the thought of how a normal arrow shouldn't have hurt so much. —“ . . . Losing blood.”“ . . . Arrow was poisoned.”“Wolfsbane?”“They got away again, damn it!”Voices flowed in and around me, and like hands, pulled me back to the surface.
Lucy's POVI never cared much for birthdays. Maybe it was because being a werewolf made you only see them as milestones that one had to cross before attaining some level or maturity, or because celebrating them didn't always bode well if you turned 18 and hadn't been able to find your true mate by then. Like me.However, despite my best efforts to not look forward to this one, my body couldn't entirely settle once the clock struck 12 and showed me a new day.I had been deemed fit to leave the care of the pack doctor a few days back, and I couldn't have been happier about that development. My shoulder had been permanently scarred from the tissue damage caused by the wolfsbane which my werewolf blood couldn't heal up. The doctor mentioned that it was likely that it would take a long while for my body to completely expunge the poison, because of how deep the wound has been. But it didn't really bother me much because I could at least still ise the arm. It would have been a waste to los
Lucy's POV“You're the one who killed her,” Shaun continued, slowly rising to his feet despite the chains wrapped around his ankles. Shadows hid a portion of his face, giving him a severe look. “You're the one who took her from us.”The man didn't even seem fazed by what Shaun said. He simply took off his mask completely and bared his face to us all. Asides the scars, there was nothing else particularly remarkable about the man's face. Small beady eyes, a hooked nose similar to an eagle’s beak, and skin so pale it could have been mistaken for chalk. Despite the bland adjectives that came to my mind when I was describing him, it wasn't even done intentionally. He was just someone that looked really average. The kind of person that you wouldn't have ever thought would have been capable of committing atrocities like cold-blooded murder.“Yes, I was the one, and she was very persistent. She refused to die so easily,” he said while smiling. “It was a shame she had to be killed. She was q
Lucy's POVIn the near dark, something warm gently brushed my foot, but the foreign sensation jolted me awake. In the process of shaking my leg, I twisted my ankle awkwardly, and got rewarded with a bout of pain flowing through my limbs. “It's alright, I'm not going to hurt you,” a familiar voice said—one too familiar to me that all the wolfsbane-induced drowsiness left my eyes immediately.It couldn't be . . . They couldn't have come for me . . . Could they?“What—what are you doing here?” I asked Shaun, full of surprise to see him and his brothers chained down to the rocky, imperfect ground as well. I couldn't quite believe what my eyes were seeing. “You can't be here.” Maybe I was feeling the side effect of the poison and it was causing hallucinations. “We came to find you,” Seth said, seated with his legs crossed as though he didn't mind being chained up. “Unfortunately, we just ended up in the same position as you.” He gracefully undid the knot keeping his hair in a neat bun, a
Shaun's POVIt had been close to three years since the destruction of Bloodbath pack, and still, the smell of death hadn't completely left the air. The atmosphere held a lot of darkness, as though every negative thought and feeling that had occurred there had been permanently etched into the very fabric of the pack’s territory. It was no longer a pack, because calling it such would have indicated that people still inhabited it, but based on what we had been told and knew, none had been left alive aside from the slaves that had been taken. We stepped down from the carriage that brought us, taking in all the ashes and broken, dried-up skeletal corpses lining the earth. Some were too small to have belonged to adults and internally I recoiled from the gruesome sight. Father hadn't been a good man, but now, I could see the true extent of his wickedness. Many claimed that after the loss of mother he practically lost his mind, going on senseless rampages out of paranoia, but I didn't think
Shaun's POVWe were going stir crazy in the silence, trying to think up the best ways for us to go after Lucy that would be equally smart and efficient. We couldn't rush in without proper planning, because that would end up making things worse for us. If we really wanted to attain the upper hand in the situation, we had to be well prepared and ready to embark on such a mission that demanded the best strategy.But we had met our first hurdle—getting the exact location of Lucy. All the letters she had been sent left no clues as to where she could have gone. Also, back in that training field, I hadn't been able to sense a proper trail indicating where she had gone. If we didn't even know where we were headed, how did we hope to even fight for her?“Maybe we should just ask Ahmad—” Seth started to suggest, but I picked up a pen from my bed and flung it at him.“Don’t even finish that statement. We aren't going back to him. He'll only laugh in our faces and call us incompetent. We can do t
Lucy’s POV2 Years Ago“Oh Lucy, he's so dreamy!” Rosa squealed, flopping down on my bed like it was a cloud made to transport her to the land of her dreams. She wore a big grin on her face and kicked her legs up and down like an overstimulated child. “I can't believe that he's really my mate, you know? It's all so . . . surreal.” She took the pillow I was resting on and squeezed it to her chest with a hug. “Ohhhh!”“Disgusting,” I deadpanned. “People are going to think we're up to no good up here, Rosa.” I rolled my eyes. “What's so special about him anyway? You know he's had sex with like . . . half the girls in this pack, right?”Rosa swiped my arm. “Lucy! That's so horrible of you to say. Those were just rumours. You know better than that.”“Uh, yes, I know better, and that's exactly why I'm telling you this. I caught him once with Brenda Jenkins back at the stables, and that wasn't enough to stop them from gyrating their hips like lusty wolves.” Rosa’s lower lip trembled, and the
Lucy's POVA drop of water splashing on my forhead brought me to the realm of sheer consciousness. With a gasp, I lifted my head up, and looked around. I could barely make out my surroundings from the poor lighting, and for some reason, I couldn't make my eyes adapt to the lighting conditions. I tried to move, but my legs were forced together. I reached down and learnt that they had been tied together so tightly that even the slightest movement was painful. I sat up properly. “Hello?” I called out. I couldn't make out much of my memories of what had happened before I ended up here, but I was certain that I knew nothing of this place. The cold floor beneath me had a damp feel to it, like it never got enough air to completely dry up, and the air smelled like salt and stagnant water.Another droplet fell right on the top of my hair, startling me. That was when it dawned on me that I must have been in some kind of cave, or something very similar to one. After pushing my mind to remembe
Shaun’s POV 13 Years ago“Mom! Mom!” a young Shaun shouted with glee, racing past the front door wuth his brothers following behind him. He flung himself into his mother's waiting arms, giggling with great joy. “I found you first!”Scott came in second, followed by Seth, who looked to be the most exhausted. They did the same as their brother, capturing their mother in a tight hug.Their mother, a beautiful woman with long flowing golden hair wrapped her three sons in a hug full of warmth and joy. Combined, their happiness could be felt throughout the whole house.If only they could have been prepared for the terrible things that were to come.“Alright now boys, what did I say about playtime?” their mother asked with a playful smile. One after the other, she tapped a finger on their noses, eliciting playful yelps. “It's time for a bath to get rid of the stinky and dirt.” She pinched her nose and fanned the air, ensuring that her voice had become high pitched and nasally. The three b
Shaun's POVWalking to Ahmad's office was a little torturous. The letters I carried weighed in my hands like they were made of rocks. There was no real way for us to know whether what we were doing was the right thing, but this was the time for more action and less talking.Noon had come already, with the promise of evening nearby. Wherever Lucy was, she had spent more than five hours already. I could only hope that she was still safe based on my speculations on the reason behind her kidnapping.We got to Ahmad's office quickly, or maybe it had to do with the fact that we jad all been walking as fast as we could.Ahmad quietly perused the letters, making quiet huff here and there, but ever showing any emotion. When he finished, he carefully placed them on his desk and leaned back into his chair. He kept looking at them, as though there was something hidden within them that he had to uncover.“These letters are incriminating evidence against Lucy, do you know that?” he finally said, lo
Shaun’s POV Returning to Lucy's room, the first thing that stood out to me was how thick the tension in the air was. It was thick enough to choke on. The scent of her lingered in the air still, as though it was mocking us of the time we were wasting by not immediately going after her. But no matter what we did, it wasn’t enough to ease the frustration growing in my chest. My brothers, Seth and Scott, were already going through her things, their movements sharp and frantic. Anyone looking at us from the outside would think that something was burning and we were trying to pack all our things and escape. They wouldn't be able to see what was happening on the inside of each of us: the fear that something was going to happen to a woman who was connected to us in more ways that we could have ever imagined. Tessa also moved around the room, under the bed, and other places where she felt that she could find something belonging to Lucy that we could use to track her down.Something caugh