by Mila Young
There's a monster inside me, one made of teeth and claws and terrifying need. I swallow it down, hiding under the pretense of being normal. But I'm not normal. I'm anything but.
Bonding is the only thing that will save us—me and the Ash pack. Only I need someone strong enough to fight the darkness inside me…and savage enough to stay.
Will the three ruthless alphas help me...when they find out the truth of what I am?
Shadowlands Sector is book 1 in a shifter paranormal romance story for those who love strong protectors, wolf shifters, and steamy scenes.
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Prologue
Meira
The creak of the door alerts me to someone entering my room.
“Mama?” I roll over in bed expectedly.
But it’s Jaine, our neighbor. She rushes to me with wild hazel eyes and messy blonde hair, still in her blue nightgown with patches. Her face is pale, her breaths shallow and raspy. I remember the blood and tears drenching her cheeks when she first came to our settlement after the Shadow Monsters killed her family. It still scares me to remember the fear on her face… and now, she has the same look as she hurries into my room.
The hairs on the back of my neck lift, and I draw my blanket to my chest, a whimper falling from my lips. “What’s going on?”
“Meira, sweetie,” she whispers, breathing heavily. She is a bit younger than Mama, but already looks out for me. “Death stalks the day. We must be swift and silent now.” She chokes on her fast words as tears thread down her cheeks. There’s a glint in Jaine’s eyes, a window revealing a glimpse of her wolf lingering just below the surface. Her fear thickens the air in my room.
I shuffle to sit upright in bed, straightening my shoulders. “Where is Mama?” The morning light drenches my small room, and silhouettes darting past my windows outside. Their shadows are a frightening puppet show playing out across my drawn curtains.
They move fast.
There are too many of them. We’re made up of a dozen females hiding in this settlement from the danger outside. The ten-foot metal fences lined with barbed wire have always kept them out.
“Jaine, what’s going on?”
“The creatures are here.” She glances over her shoulder to the ajar door. “You need to hide.”
A chill fills my body. I hate the Shadow Monsters. I shiver, wrapping my arms around my pajama top and pants. We’ve been on the run from the creatures before, then Mama and I found this place. Our refuge. Or so I thought.
“I have to find Mama,” I whisper.
But Jaine never answers me. She just snatches my arm and yanks me out of bed.
Pain flares through my limbs from the sickness I’ve suffered since birth. I wince as a pain, resembling claws, drags over my flesh. Mama insists it’s related to my wolf side trying to come out. I’m already fourteen and still haven’t experienced my first transformation. I shouldn’t to be alive as a result, but Mama says I’m her miracle girl. For years we’ve fled the wolves who will have killed me for what I am and we joined other random female settlements to keep me safe. Mama lies to the other women and says I’m only eleven and not at puberty yet so they won’t want to kill me. I’m thin and look young for my age. Up to now, we’ve survived.
“Let’s be swift and silent, Meira. Repeat those words in your mind.”
My stomach hurts so bad. My gaze swings to the windows, at the commotion outside. Someone screams, and I cringe, grasping on to Jaine’s arm. Why isn’t Mama coming to get me? Where’s everyone else?
This is a safe haven. This is our home.
But Mama was wrong. The Shadow Monsters broke in like they always do.
Jaine leans down, gripping my shoulders, and looks me in the eyes. “Repeat the words: swift and silent. Over and over.”
Tears well in my eyes. One year of peace. That is all we’ve been granted, and now the demons are at our doorstep again.
Jaine takes my wrist, and we duck low as we hurry out of my bedroom and down the hall. She quietly opens the small cupboard door in the hallway where we keep brooms and winter boots. It’s where Mama made me practice hiding until I could find it blindfolded. There’s a lock on the inside of the door too.
“Swift and silent, baby girl, okay?” Jaine’s voice is panicked and shaky.
I stumble into the hiding spot and spin to face her. My heart pounds in my ears. “I’m scared.”
An explosive crash comes from somewhere in the background, rattling the whole house. Jaine shuts the door hastily, and darkness swallows me. With shaky fingers, I draw the metal lock into place and back away until my heels hit a bucket. Huddling down in the corner amid threadbare clothing, I hug my knees.
I rock back and forth, trying not to whimper too loudly.
Swift and silent.
We were meant to be safe here. Mama promised me.
A woman screams in the distance, and I shudder.
Thundering growls, smashing glass, and scrambling footfalls hit the floorboards. I inhale my cries and wrap myself around my bent knees.
Shadow Monsters are in the house.
I can’t breathe… They’ll rip me apart.
There’s a scraping sound, like something is being dragged across the floor. Then it falls deadly silent.
All I hear are my breaths, the hammering of my heart.
Shadows pass over the wood slats just outside my door. With it comes a rancid meat smell. My stomach tightens so much, I think I’m going to vomit.
I flinch as another scream pierces the air, and I bite down hard on my bottom lip to stop myself from sobbing.
Someone slams into the wall just outside my hiding place. I shove backward, my spine pressing against the wall. Every inch of me is trembling ferociously, but I don’t speak. Not a sound. Or they’ll hear me.
A slurping sound mangled with screams fills my ears.
I want to yell, to run. My hands plaster to my ears and I tuck my chin into my chest, rocking back and forth.
Swift and silent.
Swift and silent.
Swift and silent.
Swift and silent.
I don’t know how much time passes. Tears drench my cheeks. I can’t stop trembling. I finally push forward and press my ear to the door. Sweat trickles down my back. My legs are cramping from sitting so long in one spot. Mama, where are you?
When I get too anxious to wait anymore, I unlatch the lock. The door creaks as I push it open. My heart stops.
I freeze on the spot.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Sitting here makes me an easy target. Swift and silent. So I force myself to look out.
The walls look like someone splashed red paint across them, but the sickening odor tells me it’s blood.
Jaine lies on her back, her legs and arms twisted and broken. Her stomach lays splayed open. Shattered ribs poke up through the fabric of her pajamas. I’m going to be sick.
Terror bubbles on my throat.
“Don’t be afraid of death,” Mama would say. “Our bodies are just vessels before we ascend to heaven. If you see someone dead, just look away and keep going.”
I whip my gaze away from Jaine and scramble out of the closet.
The silence is suffocating.
Moving fast through the old house barren of furnishings, I find no one around. I rush barefoot from one room to the next. Abandoned. Mama, where are you? Cold sweat sticks the fabric of my pajamas to my skin.
There are other homes in this homestead she may be hiding in, so I creep outside into the yard.
Rain falls as the bruised sky rumbles with thunder. A flash of lightning plunges across the heavens.
But I gasp at the sight before me.
Bodies lie everywhere, chaos all around me. Mothers. Children. Guards. A splitting ache tears through me. I should have tried to help rather than hide. I scan familiar faces, my stomach churning from the sickness, from seeing friends and neighbors torn apart and bleeding.
I hurry from one body to the nex
t, searching for her face. Hope flickers inside me that she made it out alive. That she found a hiding space. I pivot around, and my gaze lands on a familiar face.
“Mama!” A cry bursts from my lips, and I rush forward, dropping to my knees by her side. Blood is pouring from the deep gash across her torn throat. I can’t look at the injury, so I cup her face and place mine close to hers like she’d always do to me. Our noses touch; her skin is cool against mine. Tears fall and drip onto her cheeks. Dark brown hair spreads out around her head, her skin pale, tainted with blood. Everyone always says I’m beautiful like her with sharp cheekbones, small nose with a sprinkled with freckles, and a round face. But the only similarity I see right now are the light bronze eyes I look into.
“Mama,” the word escapes my lips.
My insides shatter like glass.
“Mama! Please. Wake up.” I hold her face, my arms trembling. “Please don’t leave me.” I won’t survive on my own. I’m completely alone.
She never responds, and I just cry at her side. Mama is all I have left in the world. My breaths billow, and I hug myself. A cold wind cuts through my hair. The rain comes down heavily now, drenching me, but I don’t move.
Mama will never drag me into her arms ever again or cover my face in kisses. She’ll never wake me up with tickles. Or hold me tight at night when the storms come. I feel so lost. So angry. So scared. My breaths don’t come easy as my heartbroken sobs float on the air.
Mama looks so peaceful lying down, her muscles relaxed as opposed to her always being tense when she was alive. My heart gives a painful throb when a gravelly snarl grows behind me.
I jerk my head up and twist around fast. Terror reverberates through my head.
A Shadow Monster stands at the corner of the house. Lanky and thin, his torn clothes hang loosely from his bony frame. He has no lips; they’ve been eaten away. Only teeth, broken and stained. That’s all I see at first. Then the bulging eyes from the gaunt face. He is so skinny… starved.
I scramble backward up on my feet, panic kicking me in the gut.
He lurches forward, groaning.
Retreating, I want the world to open up and swallow me.
But the creature doesn’t come to me. He falls to his knees in front of a dead woman and shoves his mouth into her torn stomach, eating. That slurpy sound makes me gag.
Bile hits the back of my throat. I recoil when someone brushes against my shoulder.
Spinning, I shriek to find another undead creature inches from me. Instinct kicks in, and I back away. Hair like straw dangles over her lifeless face. My heel hits something, and I fall. Hitting the ground, I shuffle backward, noting the fleshy, gory, torn-off leg I tripped over.
Fear pummels through me as my brain numbs. I can’t do this. I can’t.
The creature pounces.
I yell and flinch backward.
But it dives for the dead child beside me. My heart pounds in my throat.
The Shadow Monsters didn’t see me. How? It’s as though I’m invisible or something.
That’s who I am. Invisible. I have to believe that or I won’t move.
I scramble to my feet and find someone’s disembodied finger stuck on my pajama pants with so much red gung.
Nausea pulses through me.
The undead’s head snaps up in my direction, eyes falling to the stain. I shove the pants down my legs and toss them aside. I recoil as the creature eyes the pajamas crumpled on the ground.
Another creature who staggers on his feet bumps into me before pushing past me. A strangled cry escapes from my lips, and I slap a hand over my mouth to silence my sobs. I back away from the river of undead coming this way through the broken fence.
God, there are so many.
Shadow Monsters were once shifters, just like me. Or maybe mere humans, or one of a number of other supernaturals in the world. Mama said the virus that destroyed our world didn’t discriminate and took everyone it could, turning them into the undead.
Not one of the Shadow Monsters so much as looks my way, but they dart to the recently dead to feed. It’s all they know.
My heart is beating too hard, too fast.
I don’t know what’s going on, but I have to get out of here before my strange luck runs out and they start noticing me. So I push past the horde of creatures.
Once clear, I run toward the main street, my feet now bare and bloody and in pain as I pound the worn path.
Jaine was right. Swift and silent.
Continue Reading Shadowlands Sector here…
Shadowlands
Shadowlands Sector, One
Shadowlands Sector, Two
Shadowlands Sector, Three
Chosen Vampire Slayer
Night Kissed
Moon Kissed
Blood Kissed
Winter’s Thorn
To Seduce A Fae
To Tame A Fae
To Claim A Fae
Shadow Hunters Series
Boxed Set 1
Wicked Heat Series
Wicked Heat #1
Wicked Heat #2
Wicked Heat #3
Elemental Series
Taking Breath #1
Taking Breath #2
Gods and Monsters
Apollo Is Mine
Poseidon Is Mine
Ares Is Mine
Hades Is Mine
Haven Realm Series
Hunted (Little Red Riding Hood Retelling)
Cursed (Beauty and the Beast Retelling)
Entangled (Rapunzel Retelling)
Princess of Frost (Snow Queen)
Kingdom of Wolves Co-write with C.R. Jane
Wild Moon
Playing with Hellfire Co-write with Harper A. Brooks
Playing with Hellfire
Hell in a Handbasket
Thief of Hearts Series Co-write with C.R. Jane
Siren Condemned
Siren Sacrificed
Siren Awakened
Broken Souls Series Co-write with C.R. Jane
School of Broken Souls
School of Broken Hearts
School of Broken Dreams
School of Broken Wings
Fallen World Series Co-write with C.R. Jane
Bound
Broken
Betrayed
Belong
Beautiful Beasts Academy Co-write with Kim Faulks
Manicures and Mayhem
Diamonds and Demons
Hexes and Hounds
Secrets and Shadows
Passions and Protectors
Ancients and Anarchy
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About Mila Young
Best-selling author, Mila Young tackles everything with the zeal and bravado of the fairytale heroes she grew up reading about. She slays monsters, real and imaginary, like there's no tomorrow. By day she rocks a keyboard as a marketing extraordinaire. At night she battles with her mighty pen-sword, creating fairytale retellings, and sexy ever after tales. In her spare time, she loves pretending she's a mighty warrior, walks on the beach with her dogs, cuddling up with her cats, and devouring every fantasy tale she can get her pinkies on.
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