All Chapters of Bride of the Sea-King Alpha: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

CassianI can feel Lyra’s relief as she speaks with her family. There’s no doubt it was a brutal kill, but it’s understandable with her lack of experience and the danger to her sister. I’m glad her mother and sister are supportive.It makes it easier to get on with cleaning up this campsite. Supplies should reach us soon. Every minute we spend here is one more moment of delay in getting back to Oceana. I fear that what’s going on there is dire.We need to stop Assanan as soon as we can.Everyone’s exhausted. We’ve been up all night. ‘The caravan of supplies will arrive by morning,’ I tell my men in the mind-link. ‘Everyone, get some rest. We’ll want to leave as soon as we have restocked and are loaded up.’With no tents left standing, the men spread out along the ground. Even a lumpy pile of earth is a comfortable mattress when exhaustion takes over. They position themselves in a circle around the rogues, though I doubt any of them will want to escape.Their bellies are full, and they

CassianEvery day, I’ve been grateful that no other rogues or other surprises have yet decided to slow us down, but I know my luck is probably going to run out.I’m especially concerned now that there are so few of us making the trek up the mountain. I’ve tried to convince Lyra’s mother and sister to wait behind at the base camp, but they aren’t having it.I left Belfor in charge of the camp, confident that he can manage the supply rations as well as coordinate runners to communicate with us up on the mountain. It has been days since they set up camp, a large cluster of tents covering a clearing just at the base of the mountain.The rest of us trudge on; just me, Lyra, her mother and sister, the High Priestess, and two Royal Guardsmen for added protection.Thankfully, the terrain isn’t horrible, but it’s a bit of a challenge for a human princess and queen, though they both try to downplay it.“We can rest, if you like,” I suggest. “But we shouldn’t linger long.”“I’m fine,” Iridessa i

LyraIt’s hard to move from this spot. Crawling through the cramped, dirty cave entrance, I’d thought the end of it would just be a box or something that we’d have to carry back out to open. For a while there, I was wondering how we were going to even turn around.But this place... it’s huge. We must be a hundred feet underground to have the ceilings this high. The chamber is as big as the ballroom in the Maelie castle and far more impressive.The walls are covered top to bottom in some sort of blue crystals that shine almost silver, the kind of twinkling light that Silanya used when she charmed the grizzly bear. The floor is solid stone—marble, I think, judging by the silver and blue veining meandering through it.To the right of us is a gently trickling waterfall coming right out of the wall. It flows into a small creek that splits the chamber in half, its water so clear I can see every detail of the stone beneath it.Other than that, the chamber looks empty. Cassian verbalizes my f

LyraThere are times when I wish I’d never opened my mouth. Now is one of those times, when we’re chasing a pack of wolves with some sort of power to dissolve people in an instant.I’d insisted on coming, demanded it, in fact, telling Cassian that we were in this together. I know we are, but I can’t help the fear that’s crawling up my nerves as my paws pound the forest floor beneath me.I don’t know if I’m built for this kind of thing. At least, I have no formal training for fighting. I don’t know what in the world I thought I was going to do when we confronted them. I guess I should have Cassian teach me how to fight sooner rather than later.If we live through this.But we have to. The only way we can beat that awful Assanan is if we have the Amulet of Light. I don’t know how he got the darkness power, but I can’t think of a worse person to wield it.Fear or no fear, I have to help Cassian get the amulet back.Cassian runs ahead of me, along with the one Royal Guardsman who came alo

LyraFor several days of the return trip, I’m glued to the Tome of Glory once again. It’s as if an entire new world has opened up to me between my new experience shifting and learning everything I want to know about wolf shifters.Well, not quite everything—I still have a whole treasure trove of books from the Oceana castle library waiting for me to explore back home.For now, I’m enthralled by this one, which explains much of the history of the wars between humans and shifters long ago. The struggle lasted hundreds of years. In the beginning, shifters were thought to be inferior. They were so drawn into the propaganda of that nonsense that they began to think it was real. They didn’t even try to fight. They thought being shifters made them outcasts, mistakes.That sure hits home for me.But I’m past all that now. I think the people who thought we were inferior were inferior beings themselves—like King Chez, who pretended to be my father while holding back my powers.It’s such a wast