All Chapters of Mother, May I: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

This feeling is so... strange.So different.I don’t even remember what my body used to feel like, but it wasn’t this.This is just... wrong.Too loose and limitless, yet too tight and finite at the same time.I stretch, and my joints crack. My skin tries to seize up. I hate this. It feels awful—like every inch of my body is crawling, rejecting itself. Clothes scrape like sandpaper. Like they’re peeling me away piece by piece.That is, when I have skin.Because sometimes... I don’t.Sometimes I become night. Just like my namesake. Not a metaphor—not poetic darkness. Real, breathing night. Living shadow. But it’s more than that now. My powers are expanding.I am night. I can call it down. I can become a shadow, twist it, stretch it, devour the light. I can put others to sleep—not kill them, just... lull them into a sleep they won’t wake from unless I will it.I can fly.I’m getting stronger by the day.And the only thing keeping me in this skin is Lucifer’s touch.“Mate,” he says as my

I have no idea what Amelia said to Ryder when I was in the gas station, but I came out to a completely different wolf. He had been an asshole the entire trip, but he was suddenly speaking in full sentences and even cracked a joke or two.Turns out, he and Amelia shared a love for 80s rock music and a horrible singing voice. We’ll just say that their duet to Carry On My Wayward Son would not be making it on CarPool Karaoke anytime soon.The 180 that our roadtrip suddenly took was so pleasant and fun all because of whatever the conversation was between Amelia and Ryder that I knew that I would have to reward her.We decided that we would camp out under the stars tonight. Here in the southern part of the US, it rarely gets to the point that we werewolves are cold, even in the dead of winter. And with the heat wave that had taken over during this part of mid-spring, it was perfectly acceptable for us to be camping. As we go further north, that same action is going to seem somewhat sus

“I fucking hate him!” I scream, hurling the vase of black roses he sent across the room. “I can’t stand how he touches me or breathes against my lips. I just want to fucking kill him!”“I know, Nyx, but you’ve got to wait,” Persephone says, trying to calm me. “You know that isn’t his fate. You can’t be the one to kill him. None of us can. We have to wait for the archangel.”Since gaining my powers, Lucifer’s loosened the reins on me. As his mate, I can’t be away from him for too long without feeling the effects. You’d think that would make our bond stronger.You’d be wrong.Because once my powers settled in, I saw exactly what my “mate” had planned: use me to create a child… only to kill that child with the same blade he used to murder me, so he can absorb its powers.Not exactly a romantic gesture.The problem? To stop him from becoming all-powerful—and to save humanity—I have to wait for Nathan to come here and kill me.Not a thing I’m looking forward to.So yeah, I’ve been a bit gru

“Alright. Let’s run through it again,” I say to Freya.There’s a fresh pot of dirt on the ground, a seed tucked inside for the Earth challenge. Outside the door: a hose for the pool, a pot of mature white-tufted dandelions, charcoal bricks, and an ingot of ore—each waiting their turn to be manipulated and transformed.“Are you fucking serious, Nate? We’ve done it four times already!” she whines.“And we’re gonna do it a fifth,” I say, unbothered. “Let’s go. Earth, Water, Wind, Fire, and Metal. In that order.”She stares at me like I’ve grown two heads. Like I’m speaking in riddles instead of logic.“Frey, you have to be able to do all of these on command. Whatever order they throw at you. Whenever they throw it. You might get days between trials—or they might do all five back to back. You could be teaching acolytes one minute and summoned for the final trial the next.”I kneel in front of her, dropping my voice. “You don’t get to plan your power. You need to be able to use it when you’

Waking up this morning, I had no idea just how monumental the day would be.Sure, I knew it was the start of my High Priestess trials. I’d figured they’d move quickly, considering we’re at war with the baddest of bads. I even suspected they’d have me do all of them today.Nate made sure I was ready for that.Nate. Gods, that male has me wrapped around his little finger. It’s like I can’t get enough of him—and he clearly feels the same. After I recovered from yesterday’s prep, he brought me back to his room and worshiped me. Like he needed me to breathe. Like I was made for his touch.Thank Selene I can’t get pregnant—since we’re not mates.I was curled up in his warmth, thoroughly planning how to convince him to skip training with a little well-placed mouth action, when a sharp, annoying jab hit my consciousness.Mindlink.Someone was trying to wake me up. And for it to be that loud and persistent, it had to be either family…or an alpha.And this particular flavor of annoying? That’s