Independence Lovers Reunion-Kurzgeschichten & -Kurzromane

I came to Chicago with my friend to visit her boyfriend. Three days in, her boyfriend said he'd show us "something fun." The car kept driving—farther and farther out. By the time we realized something was wrong, we were locked inside an abandoned factory. My friend was gone. Her boyfriend shoved me into a room and threw me a line: "Your friend sold you for twenty grand. Stay put and wait for arrangements." I scanned the room. A few men in black suits leaned against the doorway. Silver-gray pins on their chests. Shield-shaped. Dark red thorns. An inverted dagger. The family crest of Caleb Richardson—don of the New York mafia. I was held captive by him for three years. I barely escaped with my life— And now I've been handed right back to him.

I was a two-hundred-pound girl. But on the night of graduation, I slept with Nova, captain of the Ashbury Ravens hockey team. The next morning, laughter drifted down the hotel hallway from his teammates. "Nova slipped his room key to Sienna last night, right?" "What, you think he'd give it to the Zamboni? That tub of lard. One look at her gives you nightmares for three days." "Did you guys see her reporter's notebook? It's covered in Nova's name. She's actually got a crush on Nova. Disgusting." So the room key that had slipped into my notebook wasn't meant for me. And the name he murmured against me in the dark wasn't mine either. My eyes burned with humiliation. I got dressed, walked out alone, and disappeared for six years. Six years later, my mother, Diane Quinn, was three months behind on her dialysis bills, and the sports website I worked for was on its last legs. My editor, Claire Bennett, slapped a file on my desk. "Nova. Newly crowned MVP. Not one interview in six years. Land him, or you're out."

I was an ordinary pharmacist's apprentice. To save my gravely injured brother, I agreed to a mysterious deal and slept with a man. Then I found out I was carrying six wolf pups! From that day on, I lived as a fugitive, hunted endlessly by the Silver Cross. When they strapped me to the silver altar, my six children were right in front of me. Their hands and feet were clamped in silver rings. The smallest, Nell, had already stopped breathing. The warden held a moon core extraction needle and said half-blood pups had no human rights. They were nothing more than experimental specimens waiting to be taken apart. No one knew their father was the Northern Alpha, who had gone three hundred years without an heir. Nor did anyone know that to find us, he had followed a cracked moonstone, three decoy prison wagons, and seven trails of blood for three full years. I tied the torn strips of my dress back onto my six children's wrists and told them, "Don't listen to them. Mommy is still here." The next second, six howls tore through the sanctified silver seal. The cathedral doors shattered. A man covered in snow stepped through the silver dust, his golden eyes fixed on me. "Take your hands off my family."