*Maddox*The sun is up as I blink my eyes and check the time. I’ve woken just before my alarm is set to go off, so I quietly switch it so that it will not sound. There’s no reason to wake the beautiful woman sleeping next to me.Rolling back toward her, I take her in. Her eyes are closed tightly, and her long lashes flutter every once in a while. Perhaps she is dreaming. I hope that her dreams are sweet.I hope that I am in them.She’s curled up with one hand under her chin, reminding me of a cherub, of a precious angel, and as I listen to the sounds of her soft inhales, I remember how good it felt to finally be inside of her the night before.We’d made love for the first time, and she had made me feel sensations I hadn’t experienced in years. The countless faceless women I’d been with since my wife passed all faded away as I remembered what it was like to meld into another person, to give and take with them, not just to receive pleasure but to gift it to my partner as well.All I can
*Isla*Sitting in the chair in my room next to the window, I read the not again, ‘Had to go on a quick business trip. Be back soon. Stay safe, M.’I had found it on my pillow this morning—in Maddox’s room. I wish it said more. I wish I knew where he had gone and exactly when he’d be back.But I wasn’t in any position to ask those sorts of questions. I was just his breeder after all, and even though I felt a connection to the king, that didn’t mean that I was nearly as important to him as I wished I could be.“You’re not planning on sitting there all day moping, are you?” Poppy asks as she comes back into the room after delivering my breakfast tray back to the kitchen. “You have to live your life, girl!”I can’t help but grin at her and shake my head. She has such a unique way of putting things. “No, but, I miss him, that’s all.”She shook her head slightly at me. “How lucky are you to be in a position to know what to miss!” she exclaims.“Did you see Beta Seth?” I decide that changing
*Maddox*The drive to Willow pack is uneventful, once we’ve gotten away from the castle. I use the time in the back of the car to get some work down on my phone, the best I can anyway, on the bumpy roads. Godfried is a skilled driver, but we need to look into doing something to get these roads repaved. They are full of potholes.Eventually, I see the main village in Willow pack up ahead in the distance. The forest opens up as the road leads into town. Factories fill the sky with gray smoke along the far northern side of the town, giving the air a slightly dirty look that smells of burning chemicals and plastic products. I need to do something about that, too. I’m certain there are better ways to make the products created here, but Alpha Ernest is a cheap man, and I am certain he will not willingly spend his own money to bring anything into the current century without some prodding by me.Depending upon how this meeting goes, it might not matter. Ernest may not have a say in anything h
*Isla*The village is exactly how I’ve imagined it in my mind, though it is also nothing like my hometown. The main village for Willow pack is called Ernestown. It was changed a few years ago when Alpha Ernest became Alpha. Before that, it was just called Willow Village. I guess our Alpha wants everyone to know who the boss is in our pack lands….Our village is rundown and full of factories. The sky is always hazy, and it’s hard to see the blue through all of the gray that hangs over the city from the chemicals filling the sky from the various plants that make all kinds of cheap goods to ship to other parts of the kingdom. Most of the people who live in our town are either middle class or poor, like my family, and it’s rare to see a car because most of us can’t afford them, let alone other luxuries.But here in the heart of the kingdom, the village, called Wolfcrest, is lively and full of color. The buildings are all freshly painted in vibrant hues, and there are plants and flowers ev
*Maddox*The Alpha’s mansion is completely on the other side of town from where the Moon family resides. It takes about six minutes to get there by car. I notice there’s really not a lot of traffic here, and many of the driveways have no cars in them either.I am beginning to think that Willow pack is not as wealthy as some of the other packs in the kingdom, and if many of the citizens have been treated similarly to the Moons, then I suppose I know why.Ernest’s house is palatial. It’s a Victorian-style home with a huge wrap-around porch, gingerbread cutouts along the overhang, and lots of grand windows. It’s painted a pristine white, as if Alpha Ernest is pure somehow. That notion almost makes me laugh.I assume he is here and not off in an office somewhere. I believe I heard that he no longer went to the office anymore a few years back.The house isn’t gated, but there are plenty of guards standing around. When the car pulls up out front, I tell Helena and Lionel, “I intend to handl
*Isla*Back in my room, I sit on the bed and admire the cufflinks I’ve purchased for Maddox… with his own money… while Poppy is off fetching Mrs. Dixon.I need to figure out what to do with them. I don’t want to leave them lying around, but I’m not sure that locking them up will do any good either, not when there’s someone like Mrs. Dixon around.I remember something my mom did with my father’s birthday present a few years ago. She had pinched and scraped and waved every penny she could find for months in order to buy him a new baseball glove so that he could play catch with my brothers. Afraid that Dad would find the gift in our small house, she ended up finding a loose floorboard and hiding it in there.This is a castle, though. Would there be a place in the floor or wall that was loose enough for me to hide them?Poking around on the floor, I don’t notice anything like I did back at our house where the floor creaks with every step. For a moment, I think back to the house we used to
*Isla*Something is wrong, and by the afternoon, I know it. I just don’t know what to do about it.I know in my heart that Maddox should’ve been back by now. He would’ve told me if he was going to be later, and if something came up, he would’ve sent a message to Beta Seth for me.But when I go to the Beta’s office, he is super busy, and he barely has time to look up at me with the phone resting on his shoulder as he tries to find something with one hand and write something with a pen with the other.Feeling out of place and stupid for standing there, I start to back away, but he motions for me to stop. In a moment, he gets off of the phone. “Hi, Isla,” he says. “Sorry. I’m really busy now that Alpha Maddox is out of the office for the day.”“I understand,” I tell him. “I just… wasn’t Ma—uh, Alpha King Maddox supposed to be back by now?”Beta Seth grins at me a bit for my slip up. I’m getting too familiar with the king, obviously.“He said he’d be back a few hours ago, but you just nev
*Maddox*My wolf’s paws tear up the ground as I run as fast as I can toward the castle. When I had seen that it was going to take a long time for us to get anyone to help us fix the car, I’d decided to take off for home in my wolf form, against my guards’ and driver’s better judgment.But I just have a feeling in my gut that there is something wrong. It isn’t something I can explain, not easily anyway.I run all the way back to the castle. It takes hours, and by the time I get there, the sun is setting. I use the mind-link to call Beta Seth out to meet me in the courtyard with some clothes so that I can shift and get dressed. As soon as I see him coming toward me, using the mind-link, I ask him, “Is everything okay in the castle?”I see Seth’s forehead crinkle. “Yeah, everything’s fine,” he answers with his human voice. I can’t talk because I’m still in my wolf form, but he sees no reason to use the mind-link, obviously. “Why do you ask? What’s going on?”We walk behind a tree so that