“Noah, this isn’t…”“No, Sol. You don’t get to fucking play dress up and go off to fucking get closer to death.” Noah was yelling and I kept my face passive.I took a breath. “Noah, please remember we are in the presence of company.”“No! Fuck them! You are not fucking going! Last time you ended up in laid up for a month, Sol. A month and how much time did that actually take off your life? Hm? Two weeks? Three weeks? A month?”“Noah, please…” I looked pleadingly at Finn but there was anger reflecting in his eyes as well. His body language wasn’t much better.Noah stomped over to me and grabbed my arm. “Alpha, stop. Stop this bullshit. You’re already dying. What more can he want from you? More of your life? You’ve done enough.”Pulling my arm out of his grip, my patience finally wained. “I will do my duty, Noah. I am the First Alpha Prince and I will continue to serve my King as such until my last dying breath. Whether it be one month or eleven. It makes no fucking difference. I was ca

*** Silas POV ***Sam, Nate, Charles, and I sat at the bar on a Wednesday morning. Normally, we wouldn’t be here this early but we had some rumors that Noah and Finn needed some help. As much as I wasn’t happy with them, I also no longer wanted to kill them. But what I was witnessing with my own eyes was just pathetic.Noah had spilled going on three drinks now, while Finn hadn’t said a single word to us or to Noah, who obviously needed help. Finally, Nate huffed and got up, going around the bar, he put his hands over Noah’s.“Okay, look. You need some help.”Noah tossed the towel on the counter and threw up his hands. “I fucking give up. I give up.”“The hell is going on with you two?” I looked from Noah to Finn.Finn surprisingly was the one who answered. “She was supposed to be back ten days ago.”My eyes widened. Had it really been a few weeks since their third had left? I mean, she had walked out fully clad in the Alpha Prince uniform. That alone had been shocking but when Noah t

Sam found me first. He didn’t quite seem to know what to make of me, sitting in the very back of our underground dungeon. I don’t know how long I had been there but it was sure as hell at least for a day. There was no light, no windows and it smelled like death but it was a comfort. I knew this place. It was somewhere I was familiar with. My hands shook as I continuously replayed the conversation with Solaris in my head. Eros had already backed off after I screamed at him multiple times. He told me he didn’t tell me just for this reason but he didn’t think that she would tell me. Not after we learned she was dying. Solaris was dying and supposedly she was my dead sister. No matter what, she would go from my dead sister to my dying sister and back to my dead sister. I cackled and shook my head, burying it between my knees. Everything in my life felt wrong. My body was exhausted and vibrated at the same time. I felt manic and completely unhinged while I hyper focused on every detail of

*** Solaris POV *** I stood outside outside the pack house, cigarette between my fingers. Numbly, I placed it up to my lips. My hands were shaking and as I exhaled, I worked the nerves out of my hands.“You okay?”My body reacted and I nearly jumped as Finn touched my shoulder. He sighed.“I’ll take that as a no.”“I’m fine, I’m fine. I just don’t like being here.”He eyed me up and down before crushing me into a hug. “I’m proud of you today.”I wiggled my head out of his pecks and took a drag from my cigarette. “You really shouldn’t be.”“I mean, you could have toasted and roasted his ass right there. You’ve wanted revenge on your father for years. But you turned your back on him and prioritized Silas and Nate.”“That man back there…that was not the man I wanted revenge on. Maybe ten years earlier I may have gotten the revenge on the man that I needed to move forward. But that man? If you can even call him that? Is a stark raving mad lunatic who’s already in his own hell. Alone, for

“There was a hand-off. I woke up at one point in the back of an SUV. There was no sense of time and they started to drug me as well. Then, next thing I knew, I was in a lab surrounded by Hunters. Some in lab coats, other just normally dressed. I was put into a cage and that became my only thing I found comfort in, at least when I was little. As I grew bigger, they could reach me past the bars but for a few years, they couldn’t.At first, they kept their experiments and torture relatively mundane. Taking blood samples, trying to force me to shift, checking pain tolerances, checking anatomy differences; things like that were their go to for a year or so. One of the days, they did actually force me to shift. It was beyond painful and Bellum tried help get me out, tried to escape. She had been making plans this whole time while I just mostly was too exhausted to even move. She did her best, but in the end, it wasn’t enough. A few of the Hunters ended up dying and that was the turning poin