All Chapters of Caught In Between Lust And Desires Book 2: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

🖱️ Victor 🖱️Pregnant Jayden.Did I hear that right?I asked myself the question, turned it over once, twice, and then shoved it back down into whatever overcrowded corner of my skull was already housing a homicidal ex-fairy, an ancient extinct assassin cult, and the fresh, throbbing ache at the back of my head courtesy of Jane's open palm. I was definitely hearing things now. Definitely misheard something Sammy had muttered to Jane earlier, some fragment of a sentence that had slipped past me while I was still nursing my wounded pride and a stale sandwich.I filed it away, because there was no room left in my head for one more impossible thing today."And don't leave anything out," Jane added, her voice carrying none of its earlier warmth, arms crossed, watching me like she was fully prepared to smack me a second time if I so much as blinked wrong. "Not this time."I looked past her, past Sammy still perched stiffly on that low garden wall, and settled my attention squarely on the

🖱️ Jayden 🖱️"Show me everything," I said again, when the guard hesitated a beat too long.He snapped into motion immediately, leading me through the eastern wing at a pace that felt too slow and too fast all at once, my mind already running through everything I'd need before I'd even seen the actual scene.The council chamber, when we reached it, had been sealed off, two guards posted at the doors who straightened so fast at my arrival I heard one of their spines crack audibly."Your Majesty." The taller one bowed low. "We weren't informed you'd be—""I wasn't planning to be here either," I said. "Open the doors."They did, and the smell hit me before anything else… copper and something colder underneath it, something that made the back of my throat prickle with an instinct I hadn't needed in years.Seven elders. All seated, or arranged to look seated, around the long obsidian council table where I'd made countless kingdoms sign treaties they didn't want to sign. No visible wounds.

🖱️ River 🖱️I'd never seen Sammy look like that years, the only time he had this expression was when Victor died.But not during the search. Not during the four months of watching Jayden bleed from a mark that wouldn't explain itself. Not even an hour ago, storming out of that hotel room to go interrogate a resurrected king over a stale sandwich. This was different pale, silent, his hands clenched so tight around the edge of the seat that his knuckles had gone white, staring out the window like he could physically will the car to move faster through sheer force of dread."We're almost to the station," I said, taking the corner faster than was strictly legal, gravel spraying out from under the tires. "Forty minutes, tops, once we're on the rail line.""That's too long," Sammy said, voice tight."I know.""He's been gone over an hour already.""I know that too." I glanced at him in the rearview mirror, at Jane sitting beside him with her phone still pressed to her ear, already coordin

🖱️ Jane 🖱️The lights went out first all at once, plunging the entire train car into a darkness so complete it felt physical, pressing against my skin like something with actual weight."That's not normal," River said, already on his feet, and I heard the low, dangerous rumble of his wolf surfacing beneath his voice."Nothing about today has been normal," I muttered, fumbling for the small emergency light clipped to my belt, my fingers clumsy with adrenaline. "Sammy?""Here." His voice came from somewhere close, tight and alert. "The train's slowing down."It was. I could feel it in the floor beneath my feet, the steady rhythm of the wheels stuttering, dragging, like something enormous had reached out and simply decided the train wasn't allowed to move anymore.Then the windows shattered, all of them simultaneously, glass exploding inward in a spray of glittering shards that River threw himself in front of me to block, his back taking the worst of it with a hiss of pain. Cold air ru

🖱️ Victor 🖱️I was three sentences into explaining the feather when the garden went cold.Not weather-cold kind of cold… it more like something crawled up from the ground itself and settled into my bones like a warning, and I stopped mid-sentence, every instinct in my body suddenly screaming at once."Victor?" Wren's voice sharpened, alert."Something's wrong."‘Yes,’ my monster said, and I felt him surge forward inside me, more alert than he'd been in weeks, like whatever had just happened had shocked something old and dormant awake in both of us at the exact same moment. ‘Something happened to the bond. Not our bond. Theirs.’"Jayden's," I said slowly, understanding hitting me like ice water. "Sammy and Jayden's bond."Wren was on her feet immediately, moving toward me with a speed that defied her ancient frame entirely. "What do you feel?""I don't know." I pressed a hand against my own chest, chasing the sensation, some old, buried instinct I didn't fully understand pulling me