Kaiya The guards herd me into a small room full of young she-wolves. Before I can even ask what’s going on, one of the guards, a burly male, slaps a collar around my neck, threads a chain through a loop on the collar, and binds my hands in iron cuffs. “You’re really in for it, Rogue.” He giggles like a four year old, and leaves. In for what? I wonder. I know Alpha Dorian’s reputation, and he’s not one to gather breeders or keep a harem, but he can’t stand rogues, although he couldn’t do anything to me as long as I didn’t enter his territory. Tonight, of all nights, I just had to go and blunder onto his lands like a stupid, clueless pup. Dammit, I should have been more careful. I knew taking a shortcut through Alpha Dorian’s territory was a bad idea, but I was cold and hungry and I was in a hurry to get home. His warriors ran me down in minutes. I’m fast, but I’m not faster than a fully-grown and well-trained wolf warrior. For a while, I just stand around, trying to manoeuvre my

Bowden I finish up my work and switch my laptop off just before it runs out of battery. I put it aside and stare at the sleeping girl across from me. At some point, she just lay down, curled up, and went straight to sleep. I’ve been searching for a mate for months now and I haven’t been home in close to a hundred days. Not a single one of the she-wolves that the Alphas presented to me pleased Knox. I couldn’t care less one way or the other. If I want sex, I go out and get it, company is easy to come by if I crave it, but I rarely need or want relationships. They just get in the way. I don’t form bonds with my mates anymore. I haven’t in decades. Time after time, I had to watch my mates die, and I’d be left here alone, trying to glue back the pieces of my broken heart. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I started keeping my mates at arm’s length. Finding a mate is really all about making my wolf happy. It took him longer than usual to get restless this time. He really loved our last mat

Bowden I pace past my comfortable old leather couch for the hundredth time while I wait for Kaiya to make her appearance. I've been restless all day, to the point that I'm afraid I'll hurt someone if I can't find a way to calm my nerves and settle my wolf. “Mate,” Knox growls in my head. “Go get our mate.” Knox is behaving completely out of character. Usually after we've found our mate, he'd settle down, content knowing that she was here if he wanted her. There are no female Lycans, and since we have no need to procreate, our wolves merely crave the emotional bond with a mate. They don't care one way or the other about a physical one anymore. The need for a mate bond is woven into our DNA. A holdover from the ancient times when female Lycans still existed. Before we became immortal and we still needed to breed. Knox shouldn't be acting this way now that we've found our next mate. Neither should I, for that matter. I want her here, in my arms where she belongs. I haven't felt this w

Kaiya I stare at the closed door, a feeling of utter despair settling over me. It’s not as if I had been mistreated. The king even treats me decently, despite the rumours about how much he abuses his breeders, rumours that turned out to be untrue by the looks of things. Then why do I want to run away from him so badly? Maybe, if I try, I could even be happy here. There’s no happiness to be found in captivity though. A gilded cage is still a cage. I don't want to live like that ever again. Sighing, I turn away from the closed door and fetch the clothes from the bed. I’ll figure it out later. Tomorrow perhaps, when I’ve had a chance to speak to Clara. She's older than I am and she's been on the run for close to ten years now. She'll know what to do. For now, there’s not much I can do. The king is in the apartment with me, and with his super senses on high alert, I won’t be able to fart without him knowing about it. I gasp in surprise when I enter his bathroom. I thought mine was lu

Bowden I spent most of the day focusing on my work, not even leaving my desk to eat lunch so I could make a dent in the mountain of paperwork waiting for me. There are always endless requests for extra protection from the smaller packs, or a need for mediators between feuding packs. Orphanages need funding and widowed she-wolves need protecting. It never ends. Since I’d been gone for nearly four months, the wolves had to wait until I returned to see me in person, and today there was a long line outside my public office on the ground floor. Most of my day were taken up dealing with their problems while I tried to work through everything else in between listening to wolves' endless, petty grievances. Griffin and Jaeger can usually handle most of the wolves’ personal issues and only refer the most serious cases to me, but even after they filtered out the unimportant requests, the sheer amount of people waiting to be seen was overwhelming. I close my laptop and pinch the bridge of my n