None of the other slaves were here enjoying the dance floor. They were all stuck, locked away in their cells for the evening. At least I had the chance to get out and enjoy the world, even if it didn’t last for long.
I would never be a true princess, but I could pretend for a little while that I belonged in this group of ladies and gentlemen. Even if their intentions were wicked and ugly, I could pretend that we were just a sleepy little mountain village with cozy charm around every corner. I could pretend, if only for a fleeting moment, that love was the heartbeat of this entire village.
My soul felt fulfilled as I continued to spin and whirl across the dance floor. I saw my father’s infectious smile in my vision. I felt the warm embrace of my mother’s arms draped around me as she tucked me into bed at night and kissed my forehead. The visual was so real that a single tear slid down my cheek.
I wished that I could go to a Master Ceremony every night if it meant that I could cling to this beautiful notion that all was not lost. As long as I had legs to dance on, I could continue to survive and hold onto the lingering hope that I wouldn’t allow to burn out in the fiery spirit of my soul.
That’s when I felt something slimy and cold hit me in the arm. My eyes bolted open. At first, I kept dancing, but then I skidded and nearly slipped and fell on a piece of lettuce that had fallen on the dance floor.
Why was that there?
Another catapult of decadent food was hurled in my direction. What was happening? Mashed potatoes slammed into the side of my cheek and slid down to my shoulder, where they dripped to the floor below.
I gasped and stopped dancing, frozen in absolute shock. I watched in horror as people began launching food off their plates directly at me.
Why were they wasting their expensive dinners by pelting me with food that should never go wasted?
I was only trying to perform for them and give them an ounce of entertainment. It had backfired on me tremendously. Had Thom known all along that this would happen?
It had never happened before…
Fury began to burrow beneath the surface of my mind. Rage burned my cheeks hot. I fisted my hands until my knuckles turned white. I was covered from head to toe in grease and grime. It was impossible for me to suppress the tears that flowed down my cheeks, but I managed to choke back a couple of massive sobs while I ran away from the dance floor in the direction of the doors.
I heard the cackling of the Masters as they roared with laughter. I was almost to the door, racing along, when one of Thom’s guards slid in front of me with a sinister leer across his wicked face.
“Not so fast,” he chuckled as he blocked my exit with his burly body. “I guess you are the ugly duckling after all, aren’t you?”
He gripped me by the elbow and shoved me out the door, right into the waiting car that would inevitably lead me back to the prison of Thom’s castle, where punishment would undoubtedly awaited me.
An ugly black swan was all I’d ever be.
8
Ayden
Cameron was lying on the couch in the living room of our bunker.
A blanket was strewn haphazardly across his lap. One arm and one leg dangled lazily off the edge of the leather sofa.
“Cameron?” I asked. “Are you awake?”
“Hmm?” Cameron smacked his lips and yawned. He stretched his long arms out behind his head and gave me a bleary-eyed look.
“Are you coming with me?” I asked him, feeling the beginning stages of frustration start to build inside of me. Cameron, although one of my best friends, was flaky. I wasn’t sure if he had even remembered that we had made plans for this evening.
“Coming with you where?” He sat up and tossed the blanket off of his waist and blinked up at me. He scratched at the top of his tousled chocolate-brown hair.
I groaned and gazed up at the ceiling for several seconds. Cameron must have caught on to my impatience.
“What is wrong with you?” he asked.
“You don’t remember?” I stared at him.
Cameron had a blank expression on his face. “I remember a lot of things, and I don’t remember a lot of things,” he said with a vague shrug.
“You are impossible,” I said and ran a hand through my contrasting blond hair.
Cameron chuckled as he watched me pace around the room. “Calm down, man. Just tell me where you want me to go with you.”
“The village?” I asked in a mocking tone. “You don’t remember that conversation?”
Cameron stood up. “Hardly,” he said with a lighthearted chuckle. “Yeah. That sounds interesting.” Then he glanced at the watch on his wrist and his eyes grew wary.
“We will have time,” I told him with a sympathetic nod.
Cameron cleared his throat and puffed out his chest with pride. “Sure. Yeah…um. Okay. I’m just going to go get ready.” He swiftly jogged up the stairs.
Cameron was a shifter too, but his ability was cursed. At the stroke of midnight every night, he turned into an aggressive werewolf. He wasn’t able to shift at any time before that.
His previous Master had placed the curse on him. Once the clock struck midnight and he began to turn into the aggressive beast, he wasn’t able to come inside the bunker. He was too wild and out of control.
Cameron had never enjoyed the luxury of a peaceful and restful night’s sleep in an actual warm bed. I hated it for him. He could never go out to the center of town past midnight either, because he risked being in front of other people where he might instinctively claw them to shreds.
He had to lurk in the shadows of the night back in the deep forest where we lived until the dawn of a new day cracked its first light against the sky and the curse lifted once more.
A few minutes later, Cameron trotted back down the stairs looking slightly more confident. “Are you ready for this?” he asked.
“Only if you are,” I told him gently.
Cameron nodded.
We told the others where we were going before we left. That way, if anything happened, they would know where to go looking for us. We had to wear hoodies and sunglasses to make ourselves look less conspicuous, on the off chance that one of the guards from our old keep recognized us. The likelihood was slim, but we still couldn’t take any chances. The risk was worth it, though, to go into village and figure out what the town gossip was all about every now and then. We had to be alert. We had to keep ourselves guarded, and knowledge was always power.
Once we made it to the edge of the tree line, we both stopped walking and glanced around to get our bearings and make sure we weren’t being followed.
“I don’t see anyone,” Cameron said as his eyes darted left and right with less suspicion than before.
“Me either,” I affirmed with a shake of my head.
A breeze whipped like a current through the trees, making it sound as if waves were crashing in the ocean behind us instead of deep woods crawling up to the mountaintops.
“Let’s go,” Cameron said with a determined nod. “We’re wasting time just standing here looking around in the dark. We aren’t going to find much anyway, which hopefully will work to our advantage.”
“I agree,” I said as we began to trudge forward.
We walked side-by-side as we crossed the main road leading into the village. Quaint window shops were closed up for the night, but lanterns still flickered in sconces hanging up above the doors, lighting the path.
The occasional restaurant or pub patron walked in or out of buildings, some arm-in-arm, some hand-in-hand. There were couples out on dates, but there were no children out at this hour.
Children were prime meat for the Masters, and no one wanted their children being stripped from their hands at this late hour. Only the bravest would go outside after dark, myself and Cameron included.
And we had been captured by the Masters before.
We couldn’t take our freedom for granted.
“Let’s go in here,” I suggested, as we wandered past a pub with live m
usic streaming out to the sidewalk where we stood.
“It looks crowded,” Cameron said with an approving nod.
I knew exactly what he was thinking. We were less likely to be recognized in a packed bar.
We grabbed a seat at a booth in the back of the tavern and ordered a couple of beers. Our attention was at a peak, it was as if we had internal antennas that were tuning in to the hum of conversation drifting through the room.
“The uprisings are coming this way, I heard.” A man with a long, dark-colored beard and an oval face nodded to his friends as he took a swig of his beer at the table beside us.
“Don’t you think those are just rumors?” His friend sitting beside him frowned with uncertainty.
“No.” The bearded man shook his head confidently. “There are groups of militias going around to each village trying to recruit people. They originated in the mountains. No one knows for sure who the leader of the groups is, but they’re trying to get other shifters on board to overthrow the Masters in the castles.”
Another man sitting at the table let out a cynical snort. “Fat chance of that happening. Have you seen those guards? They are as aggressive as they come.”
“I’m not afraid of those men,” the second friend said with a defiant flicker in his eye.
“Me either.” The man with a beard shook his head somberly and placed his beer on the table. “But if the rising army came to me and asked me to join, I’d hesitate.”
His friends frowned with disapproval. “Why is that?” one of them pressed.
The man shrugged. “I just think it’s best sometimes to not get involved. Safer that way.”
His friends bellowed with laughter. “Are you saying you’re a pussy wimp who wouldn’t stand in the way of the Masters?”
“I’m not saying that at all,” the bearded man argued. “I am just saying, I don’t want to be a part of a group.”
“Well, I would jump at the chance to join,” a snaggle-toothed man at the table said with a gleam. “I’d be the first to try and take out those guards once and for all.”
I exchanged a glance with Cameron. His expression reflected the same thing I felt inside. This was good news. The fact that enormous clusters of people and shifters were gathering together to destroy the Masters in the villages sent a bolt of hope radiating up and down my spine.
“What do you think?” I asked in a whisper as I leaned across the table.
“I think it’s promising,” Cameron said in an encouraging tone.
“We should tell the others when we get back,” I said.
“Agreed,” Cameron nodded. “They will be pleased.”
“I heard the neighboring village has already been infiltrated by the growing militia,” another man — who’d been eavesdropping from an adjoining table — called out over his shoulder.
The original men didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that others had been listening to their conversation. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if they were making a point to be discreet anyway.
“Masters are starting to get scared of their futures and their role as reigning dictators. Their control is beginning to bleed. Guards are leaving them when times get rough and the stress of the attacks is too much for them to bear.”
“Wow,” I mouthed to Cameron, who seemed to be as stunned as I felt.
I never could have imagined that those trained guards could be taken out by a group of ordinary men, but if there were shifters in the mix with magical abilities, it made sense. The guards were normally non-shifter, and so were the Masters. That’s why they were so inclined to keep a tight leash around the villages — because they were jealous of the shifters and their respective powers.
After a time, listening to the exchanges between men, I glanced down at my watch and my eyes grew as huge as the mountains right outside the tavern windows.
“Shit…” I trailed off, trying not to throw Cameron off with my demeanor.
“What?” He sat up straight. Alarm washed over his features that were secluded in the shadows of his cloaked hoodie.
I took the last sip from my bottle-necked beer. “It’s getting late.”
“Damn.” Cameron looked at his own watch and leapt to a standing position.
I held my breath and tensed my muscles, waiting to see if his reaction would gather any notice from the pub patrons. When I realized we were in the clear, I stood up too.
“Let’s get out of here before I turn,” Cameron stated with a worried look blotching the completion of his cheeks.
“Good idea.” I nodded swiftly as we placed some cash on the table for our beers and casually tried to remove ourselves from the bar without making a spectacle.
I glanced over my shoulder. Cameron was visibly uncomfortable. He scratched at the collar of his hoodie and ran a shaky hand through his hair.
“Pull it together,” I whispered in a collected tone.
“I’m trying,” he hissed back. “I already feel myself changing though.”
My heart pounded like a drum in my chest. If he shifted right here in public, we were in serious trouble. I hadn’t meant for us to cut it this close. I had lost track of time, listening to those men in the pub.
I blamed myself. I couldn’t believe we were still in the center of town this near to midnight. Because the thing about Cameron was that once he was completely shifted, he became extremely violent.
All bets were off. He had no control over his behavior whatsoever. The Master who had trapped him had another shifter cast the spell over Cameron while we all watched.
It had been a gruesome ordeal. He had twisted and withered on the floor, convulsing in agony as the shifter had been forced to stand over him and chant the spell that would turn him into a violent werewolf unfit for society during the terrifying night hours.
I swallowed hard and shot a nervous glance at Cameron. Fur was beginning to sprout on his hands and his arms. He continued to scratch at his neck uncomfortably as he turned. Midnight was only a few minutes away and we were too far into the town to race back without being spotted by someone.
Cameron would have to run into the woods and disappear until sunrise. It would be up to me to hunker down in the bunker and make sure it was locked up tight so that Cameron wouldn’t be able to enter. It was gut-wrenching not being able to offer one of my best friends a safe haven for the night, but Cameron knew that he was a danger to all of us in his werewolf form.
“I’m turning into a monster,” he said in a pained tone.
I ached inside for him. He wasn’t my brother by blood, but he was as good as any brother I could have when he wasn’t in his werewolf form.
“You’ll make it through,” I told him in a reassuring voice. “You always do.”
Cameron roared as his entire body became covered with hair. His eyes glazed over with a film of black, and his fingernails became sharpened and jagged.
He opened his mouth to cry out again and his razor sharp teeth glistened under the light of the moon. I winced and purposefully trailed behind him just in case things went south. I hated being afraid of him, but if worst came to worst, I could always shift to defend myself. But killing one of my brothers would never be in my life plan.
Cameron hurtled ahead, speeding through the shadows and the alleys.
“I hope you make it,” I whispered to him as I glanced down at my watch.
It was officially midnight.
9
Cameron
I glanced over my shoulder. I was already turning, my skin lined with fur from head to toe. Ayden was trailing behind significantly now, and rightfully so. I knew what he was doing. If he got too close to me, I might unintentionally rip him to shreds.
I couldn’t stop myself. It was like a primal urgency, a hunger in my mind that spread throughout my body. The force of nature worked both for and against me when I was in my werewolf form.
I clenched my jaw shut as I looked to my side and saw people tucked safely behind the glass windows of pubs and bars
that were still open this time of night. I ducked and dodged down every darkened alleyway and side street, appreciating the lack of city lamps overhead. The shrouded streets were less likely to have a lot of foot traffic at this hour.
My method was simple, really. In my brain, I knew it was wrong to seek out innocent people and kill them, but my wolf body had other ideas. I squeezed my eyes shut and groaned.
Not here, not now. I will make it out of this village without attacking anyone.
It was a vow I had made to myself a long time ago, and a promise I intended to keep. The villagers already had enough to be frightened over without me adding werewolf problems to the mix.
“You’re almost there,” I told myself as I quickly hurtled across the street without looking at the cars waiting at the stoplight.
“Don’t glance their way,” I reminded myself. “Don’t give in to the temptation or you will have blood on your hands, Cameron. Do you really want that?”
Talking to myself and engaging in mental pep talks were the only ways I could slide through this mess and still come out the other side without having to do any damage control the next morning.
It had all started with a curse from my old Master back at the castle in his village. He had despised me, and if I hadn’t been able to escape, he would have killed me eventually.
My life had been a living nightmare in the dungeons of my particular Master’s castle. He would have his shifter slaves unleash their spells on me, one of which was, of course, the werewolf curse.
My Master hadn’t been as clever as he had originally assumed, however. He didn’t realize the danger of turning me into a monster nightly, from midnight to daybreak. He didn’t expect my werewolf to be force to be reckoned with, a terror that couldn’t be tamed. My Master had inadvertently set in motion his own torture when he forced those other shifter slaves to curse me.
The joke was on them, because that night, all of them died, including my Master. As soon as it was midnight and my animal form took over my body, I chewed through the lock on my cell door and let myself out. I roamed the hallways of the castle, taking out each of the men who had enchanted me. I didn’t feel any remorse at the time, and I had no regrets even to this day.
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