LOGINAurora“What are you guys doing here?” The question slipped out before I could stop it, my gaze darting between them.“What’s up, pretty face?” Daniel ignored me completely, striding over like this was a damn social call. He lifted his hand and brushed his knuckles against my cheek, casual, infuriatingly calm as if he just didn’t bring Jaxon here.I slapped his hand away. “Don’t.” Jaxon didn’t look at me.Didn’t acknowledge me.He walked past me like I was made of air — straight toward Ryan, who was still groaning on the gravel.Jaxon grabbed him by the collar and hauled him up effortlessly.“What the fuck do you think you were doing?” His voice wasn’t loud.It was worse.It was controlled.Ryan wiped blood from his nose, smearing red across his knuckles. “I should ask you the same fucking question,” he spat. “What the fuck are you doing in my pack?”“Your pack?” Jaxon let out a dry chuckle, devoid of humor. “So daddy’s little boy thinks he’s leading now?” He tilted his head slightly
AuroraMom had practically forced the car keys into my hand today.“Go out,” she had said softly, but there had been steel beneath it. “Take a long drive. Clear your head.”Clear my head.As if my head was the problem and not the shattered thing inside my chest.I hadn’t wanted to leave my room. The walls at least understood my silence. But to keep her from worrying herself sick, I took the keys. I didn’t argue. Didn’t protest. I just walked out like a ghost wearing my own skin.The engine roared to life beneath my hands — the beast responding instantly — and I drove.I didn’t think about direction. I didn’t think at all.And somehow, without meaning to, without even realizing—I ended up here.The lake.The one place I should have avoided.The one place too close to Jaxon’s house. Too close to memories that still bled.Now I stood at the edge of the water, staring at its surface as if it could swallow everything inside me. The wind moved gently across the lake, ripples forming and di
Jaxon“Christopher, let me just meet her once,” I begged, spitting blood onto the grass. The blades shimmered wet and dark, painted crimson by me.We were at the border. The place Christopher had always loathed to guard—until today. Of course he’d be here. He knew I’d come running after her, and this was his way of stopping me.He’d been beating the hell out of me for half an hour.And I had taken every single hit.All because… I just wanted to see her again. Once.“You’re not seeing her ever again.”Christopher grabbed my collar and hauled me upright, his knuckles splitting skin as another punch cracked across my jaw. My head snapped sideways—I heard a bone crack this time.“I suggest you hit his nose next,” Daniel drawled lazily, stealing a cigarette from one of the guards. “Leaves a lasting impression. Then you can end this and let him see Aurora.”“I’m not letting him see Aurora, asshole!” Christopher snarled—and took Daniel’s advice anyway. His fist collided with my nose. Sharp,
JaxonI was losing my mind.Actually losing it.Craving her scent like oxygen. Her touch like salvation. The sound of her laughter — soft, unrestrained, the way it used to fill a room and somehow settle something feral inside me.I missed the quiet sound of her footsteps down the hallway. The soft pads against the floor. The way she’d tuck her hair behind her ear and the faint, sweet scent of it would flood my senses whenever she moved.It was suffocating not having her near me.The last two days had been a storm.Simon wasn’t the traitor.Natasha was.And she left with Lilith.Everything started making sense — the smoke at the borders, the strange haze in my mind that night. That’s how Lilith slipped in.I forced myself to replay it all.The warriors.Frozen.Still.Like statues.Baron walking in beside that bitch.Natasha had controlled them. Simon told me yesterday about her mind-altering abilities. How she could slip into someone’s head and bend perception like clay.My brain had
AuroraTwo days had passed.Forty-eight hours.And yet it felt like time had frozen the moment I saw him with her.I stayed home.Dad paced the house constantly, his footsteps echoing through the halls, his worry hanging thick in the air. He was concerned about my safety — because I wasn’t exactly safe here, not within this pack, not with tensions still simmering beneath the surface.But that wasn’t what was destroying me.What was destroying me was the absence.The silence.The emptiness where Jaxon used to be.Every second without seeing him, without hearing his voice, pressed down on my chest like a weight I couldn’t lift.And no matter how hard I tried—I couldn’t erase the images.How he touched her.How she arched beneath him.How his hands moved over her body like she was the only thing in the room.Like she was everything.That was what hurt the most.The way he looked at her.Those images didn’t fade.They didn’t dull.Even after two days, they were fresh. Burning. Brutal.I
JaxonHow it happened.Why it happened.I knew nothing.No memory. No control. Only the aftermath.One second, I was gone — stripped of reason, locked inside my own head — and the next, I was there. With her.Lilith.Her hair tangled in my fingers. Her breath against my neck.And the terrifying part?In that stolen, corrupted moment, I thought she was the one I loved.Reality had been ripped to ribbons and stitched back wrong.The man who existed in that bed wasn’t me — he was something hollow wearing my skin.When the fog finally cracked open and I came to, I was lying there beside her. Lilith was fixing her hair like nothing had happened.And then memory crashed in — jagged, merciless.I’d actually done it.I didn’t think. I ran. Down the stairs, barefoot, dizzy, the walls blurring around me.And what waited below was worse than death.Aurora — crumpled on the floor, eyes empty, the pieces of her heart scattered where I could never reach.And it was because of me.Now, as her slap s







