Dmitri came to find me long after I’d sent Blake and Kelly away to start their respite. “I thought you would’ve come to join me so we could join everyone at breakfast together,” he watched me from where he leaned against the doorframe. “I told Caleb and Jeanette that you were personally seeing to some discomfort Kelly was having, and Sophie explained that it was just Braxton hick’s contractions but you wanted to make sure Kelly was fine all the same.” “I’m sorry,” I tucked my hands in my lap to keep from chewing on my nails. “I didn’t realize it was so late.” “It’s not like you to lose track of time like that,” his brow creased with concern. “Were you aware that my aunt and probably my uncle knew the truth about me?” “How could they?” he pushed himself up straight and made his way towards me. “You didn’t even know the truth, how could they have known?” “Add it to the list of questions I want answers to

‘I’ve watched you go thru this five times,’ there was that voice again, closer this time. ‘I’m not going to watch it again. It’s time to for you to wake up and face the consequences of your actions.’ The rain froze in midair; all the screaming and sounds of battle fell silent around me. Even Giorgos was frozen in time; inches from snatching me up off the ground. I looked around, “Who’s there?” A large black wolf with a bright white patch of fur on the forehead in the shape of a starburst weaved their way between the people frozen in their horrific death scenes and padded towards me. ‘Why did you’re wolf abandon you here to torment yourself?’ “My wolf?” Who was this strange she-wolf to come into my personal hell and question it? “I gave up my wolf before any of this to be a Luna to my mate. It was the price I paid to leave The Vὅlsung, packs cannot have two Alphas.” Her fur rippled as she laughed, ‘Your mate was a cowar

“This is all very exciting,” Jeanette beamed a big smile at me, “It’s very rare for someone to challenge an alpha at all these days, but for a female alpha such as yourself it has to be even more rare,” she took a deep breath. “It’s like we’re getting a front row seat to history, isn’t it?” Caleb nodded at her with a big smile of his own. “Thanks, I think,” I tried to smile back at her, but I’d never addressed the whole pack all at once before, in fact this was going to be the first time many of them were included in a link at all. If I could pull this off, it might be enough to distract Caleb from this morning, and it would be a big step towards the changes I wanted to see in our pack. “Just breath through it, and don’t let them overwhelm you,” Dmitri, stroked the small of my back to try and calm my nerves. “I’ll be right here with you through the whole thing.” The fact that he was encouraging my plan to unlock the link to all the pack members who cou

The closer it got to sundown, the more it felt like I was vibrating out of my own skin. ‘It’s just the pull of the moon,’ Bo reassured me for the thousandth time today. ‘Knowing that doesn’t make it go away,’ I growled back at her. It wasn’t just that I could feel the moon lifting into the sky above us, I could also feel the way she’d been melding into me and settling into my bones. Maybe the reason women didn’t shift anymore was because we were more sensitive to the sensations of a foreign presence taking root within us. ‘How much longer will it feel like this,” I scratched at my arms again, unable to satisfy the underlying itch. ‘It’s just a couple more hours, but if you’re having doubts…’ her thought trailed off. ‘No,’ there wasn’t any hesitation in my mind. ‘I don’t have any doubts. I just feel miserably uncomfortable right now. Will it be like this every month?’ Her mood brightened, ‘It’s just the bonding process

It was surprising to see Kelly as a wolf, but she was noticeably smaller than Sophie turned out to be. In fact she was smaller than Blake’s wolf too. Not many of us knew the origins of their wolves, so they likely didn’t notice the difference in size. But, it was hard to ignore that they had the exact same coloring, making them look like sisters. Isabel rushed forward, bombarding Kelly with questions and trying to assess her physical condition, interrupting the two mates greeting each other as wolves for the first time. “Isabel,” I hissed at her, “Can’t you see that you just interrupted a very intimate moment? She’s fine now get out of their way.” Blake snorted his agreement beside me. “As for the rest of you standing around and watching. The show’s over,” I called out over the crowd staring in stunned silence at the spectacle, “are you going to stand with your mouths hanging open all night? Or are we going to run?” I smiled at the sudden flurry of act