I don’t have a plan but I know I need to get out and figure out something. When I open my door, there are no guards there. I don't know why I expected Hunter to put somebody to watch me. Despite everything, he's very confident in his plan.But if I leave right now, in the middle of the day, he will hear about it.So I decide to wait till dinner time when everybody would be in the common room. So I pack up a few essentials and wait. I can't look like I'm leaving. It has to seem like I'm just going for a walk to stretch my legs.Not surprising since shifters do need to run. Now, I may not be able to shift, but I still have the desire to feel the earth between my feet and just run.I time my escape very carefully.I’m counting on the fact that the spell Lucas has had put on me to prevent my scent from being tracked is still working. When dinner time arrives, I slip out, quietly, without my shoes. I have them in the small backpack slung over my shoulder. It takes me

The wolves come pouring out of the trees, their teeth bared as they rush towards the shifters, members of my own pack who had been chasing after Lucas.I stand tall and firm, hatred in my eyes as I watch the wolves go after them.My pack mates look stunned at first as they look at me and after fending themselves off. They realise that they’re not going to win so they turn around and flee. “Stop,” I say, quietly and all the wolves freeze, turning to look back at me and I continue. “Let them escape.”I know who they are. I glimpsed the scars on their paws.They are Hunter’s private soldiers. Alphas don’t usually have a private army but it Hunter’s father had created one. It was a small force of ten very deadly shifters. Hunter had once revealed their existence to me when we were young. He had boasted about how they would serve him when he became Alpha. All ten members bore rigid scars on their wrists. It was their identifying mark.So that’s what Hunter meant when

Despite my pain, I scowl, “You’re supposed to be resting. Go back.”But the wolf pads over, nudging me with his nose and licking at my tears. I push him away, “Just go. Leave me alone.”But Lucas seems to have no intentions of leaving. He stands by my side, towering over me and I look the other way, the wounds far too raw for me to deal with him.However, when nothing he does gets my attention, he plops down on the ground, resting his head on my lap.I push it off, “No.”
He puts it back on and when I bring my hand closer to push him away, he licks them shamelessly, making me scowl.His head alone is too heavy for me to get up and the more I try, the more adamant he is on not letting me leave.“Do what you want,” I mutter, bitterly. “In fact, why don't you hurl a few more accusations at me? Maybe tell me I deserved everything that happened to me? That -“The wolf in my lap transforms into an angry looking man who pushes me back onto the ground, holding me down, “I

“Mate?”This time Ted looks at me, visibly shaken before looking back at Lucas, “You took Sarah as your mate? Don’t you know she can’t shift?”His words are deliberately cruel but they hurt none the less as if the fact that my wolf is trapped within my body makes me less of a human.“I know,” Lucas says, steadily and I can feel a thread of cold anger in him as he adds. “It doesn’t matter to me. Sarah is smart, resourceful and kind. Why wouldn’t I want someone like that to be the mother of my pups?”Ted flinches at his words and casts a guilty look towards me which I just ignore. Rejection and disdain from my own pack mates, who once loved me, is something I have to now live with. When I was brought back the first time, I had avoided everyone unless I absolutely couldn’t avoid it and hence, I had only interacted with a handful of the pack.My gaze wanders over to two of the soldiers and I recognise them as being the ones who had grabbed me when Hunter had banished me. The

It doesn’t take long to fill in my father on everything that has happened ever since he brought me back to the pack. However, I expected him to be angry on hearing what Hunter’s plans were for me.However, he shows no signs of anger.“I’m not surprised,” He says, coldly. He looks at me and his voice is regretful, “There is something I have never told you, Sarah. We didn’t want to tell you because it didn’t matter to us. When your mother was pregnant, we decided to go roaming. At the time, we didn't know she was expecting. It is only during your travels and we found out and I thought I was too late to go back to the back so we decided to find a place and stay there till our child arrived. I built a hut for us and we stayed there. One of those nights, a few months after we started living there, your mother was caught int he crosshairs of an attack. Some shifters were pursuing a pregnant shifter and they mistook your mother for her. I managed to save Laila but we lost the child.