by Hettie Ivers
To Kai, she said, “She did it even though I begged and pleaded with her not to. And then,” Milena revealed with a humorless laugh, “she reminded me that she’d killed my mother and Mateus, and had taken my only brother from me”—her green eyes cut to Raul—“before threatening to kill my best friend Bethany if I didn’t agree to go along with her scheme. Oh, and on top of that, she informed me that if she should come back as the Rogue, it would be my job to end her before the decade of no light’s end.”
I’d been in the dark after all. Milena had kept us all in the dark. I understood why she’d done it with Lessa and the others. And I was eternally grateful now that she’d done it with me as well. Because I, too, had felt the anger and resentment that Milena still harbored for Maribel. I had harbored it myself. And I might’ve acted on it had I come across Sloane before I’d met Avery. Avery had given me the ability to see the Rogue from a perspective I never had before.
“So that’s what your beef is then?” Raul had the nerve to ask his sister.
“You think this is funny?” she hissed at him. “You think I wanted this responsibility? You think I want to kill a child, Raul? A child!”
“No. I don’t.”
“You have no idea what it’s been like for me these past ten years, knowing this day might come. Knowing that she had made this my burden. She told me that I was the world’s only hope. That it would be my responsibility to kill her if she failed to stay dead and was reborn as the Rogue. Do you have any idea how conflicted I’ve been over this? Any inkling of the pain I’ve felt in my heart knowing that—”
“Yes, goddamnit,” Raul said, cutting his sister off with an eye-roll. “Yes, I do know.”
Milena frowned. “She told you?” She paused, then gasped. “Oh, my God, she told you, too, that I would have to be the one to end her if she—”
“No,” Raul interrupted her again. “She told me that I would have to be the one to end her if she was reborn as the Rogue.”
Milena’s jaw fell open. “What?”
“Maribel didn’t think you’d be able to do it when the time came,” Raul confessed. “She feared you were too much of a Pollyanna to pull it off. She was afraid you might go soft, wind up feeling sorry for a child Rogue, and fall into some misguided mission to protect rather than destroy the Rogue as she had asked of you.
“So she made me her backup destroyer. In exchange, she transferred Nuriel’s powers to me so that I’d have enough power to best you if it came down to it—if you failed in the mission she’d given you.”
Jesus. So Azda wasn’t the only one who’d changed her mind. As horrifying as Raul’s confession was—the notion that Avery and Sloane might’ve had both Raul and Milena out to exterminate them these past ten years—I felt myself feeling teary-eyed as I grinned with pride, of all idiotic things. My daughter was so damn adorable she turned her killers into protectors and nannies.
Milena’s nostrils flared. “What? She … she told you, too? She asked you, too? Then—what are you doing? You’d betray a dying woman’s wish to end her soul’s misery?”
Raul rolled his eyes. “Look, sometimes it’s not what people say that carries the most meaning, Miles. It’s what they do. Let’s examine the evidence. She chose Avery for a mother—a woman who doesn’t know when to quit. A woman who would gladly die protecting her. Not exactly the best choice for a soul looking for destruction. Then there’s the fact that she was born scentless, and somehow managed to extend that ability to her mother as well, masking Avery’s scent to all but her mate. Again, not the actions of a soul looking to be discovered and destroyed.”
“But she didn’t want this, Raul,” Milena objected. “She didn’t want to come back as some demented, fractured being attached to a dark curse. Don’t you see? This is her worst nightmare—a purgatory worse than even the one she imposed on herself for all those years in the ether. That’s why she asked us both to destroy her! Raul, she said that if I didn’t—”
“It doesn’t matter what she said, Miles,” Raul’s voice rose in anger. “The whole world doesn’t see in black and white and deal in absolutes simply because you do. I know what Maribel said that she wanted. I don’t need you to remind me. She says nearly the same things now as Sloane—because she lives attached to a dark energy that makes her feel terrible about herself, that tells her she can only do bad things in the world. She says she shouldn’t be here. That she was supposed to stay dead. But that’s not what she wants.”
“How do you know that?” Milena shouted. “How can you be so arrogant as to interpret that what she wants is other than what she so clearly told us both?”
“Because I just can,” he growled. “Because I just know, okay? She came back. She picked Avery. She found me before I ever found her. She pulls me into her nightmares when she gets scared—that’s how I found her. And I know that she wants what any soul wants. She wants redemption. She wants a second chance. And I’m going to see that she gets it. I’m not letting you or anyone else take that away from her.”
It was a lucky thing after all that I hadn’t killed Raul that fateful day in the dining hall ten years ago. After over four centuries, it seems I could still be surprised.
I’d just been yanked back from death’s clutches by the two people I’d wanted to exact retribution from the most throughout the past decade. And for the first time ever, I felt fully alive.
Once Raul had stormed off, I’d been left to rebuff another round of empty apologies that spewed forth from my family and former pack members. They were still apologizing for failing to protect my mate. Apologizing to me for Avery’s death—which they were only sorry about because it had nearly caused my death.
They didn’t get it. Hopefully one day they would.
I knew Milena’s heart was in the right place regarding her position on the Rogue. I had never known Milena to not have only the best of intentions. And that’s what scared me the most about her now.
History was full of terrible events borne of the best intentions. Raul was right. Milena did see the world in black and white. And Sloane was grey, uncharted territory—dangerous and unknown. Which made it almost hard to fault Milena for her stance. Seeing the world in black and white could make any great warrior blind.
Avery
Six months later in Bariloche, Argentina
“Oh, fuuuck, Chaos—”
My hips shot up off the mattress as Alcaeus’s fingers replaced his tongue inside of me, finding my G-spot with the ease of a natural-born predator who’d spent the better part of four centuries indulging in the study of the female anatomy.
His tongue licked higher, circling and tormenting my throbbing clit, as he hummed happily, pausing every so often to tell me what a gorgeous cunt I had.
Somehow he always managed to sound so sweet while at the same time like a filthy bastard.
He stimulated my G-spot to the point of unbearable pleasure, before withdrawing his fingers and licking them clean. Leaving me hanging—my body painfully primed and on edge.
Holding my thighs spread wide, he rubbed his scruff-covered jawline over my sensitized lower lips, making me moan and writhe as I yanked against the chains securing my arms above my head.
“Chaos, please …”
He alternated between sucking, blowing, licking, and straight-up devouring my most sensitive parts until I was begging him to finish me off.
He raked his teeth gently over my swollen bit of flesh then, causing me to buck and shriek. Then he sucked the whole thing into his mouth.
Oh, my God, how did he do that?
I swear it felt like he had my entire pussy in his mouth at times. The suction on my clit felt otherworldly.
I was on the verge of coming, when he stopped.
I groaned in frustration as he held my spread thighs immobilized against the mattress and blew lightly on my drenched, needy slit.
“Who needs to be rescued?” he taunted in that sexy bass of his.
“I do.” I panted. “I do, you fuc
king sonofabitch.”
He chuckled and slowly kissed his way up my belly. “Such a sweet, sexy damsel in distress,” he murmured against my skin.
He licked the length of each scar on my ribs, kissed and nibbled my breasts, and sucked each of my nipples into his mouth, one at a time, rubbing his scratchy facial hair along the valley of skin between my breasts as his mouth traveled back and forth between their pebbled peaks, tormenting me.
“So helpless all chained up like this. Desperate and begging to be fucked …”
His fingers slid down between my folds—teasing, but not satisfying. “So wet and needy for cock …”
I moaned and pleaded, “Yes. Please, just save me, now. Please rescue me. Fuck me, already.”
He licked and sucked his way up my neck. I felt the blunt tip of his erection nudge against my inner thigh, and I began begging him to fix me, to fill the ache in me, as he threaded his fingers through my hair and turned my head to the side.
I sensed his inner animal emerging. I knew he was on the verge of breaking as his tongue found and laved the mating mark he’d made on my neck. That mark always set me off, too. So I told him I’d die if he didn’t fuck me hard and fill me with his cum.
He growled and snapped his hips forward, penetrating me with one forceful thrust, then filling me to bursting with the second.
He held himself over me, leaning up on one elbow as he hooked his other arm under my bent knee and raised it up toward my shoulder, as he withdrew and slowly penetrated me again.
And again.
With slow, measured strokes that made me want it to go on forever because it felt so good—and made me want to kill him when he settled in and paused, his entire length lodged deep.
“Chaos. If you don’t save me right this fucking minute, I’ll break these chains and strangle you wi—”
He smothered my mouth with his, stroking his tongue that tasted of my sex in and out between my lips as his hips did the same between my thighs, rolling and thrusting, harder and faster, as he sent me over the edge at last, my inner muscles gripping and squeezing and convulsing in the most brutal, beautiful ecstasy, as he emptied inside of me.
“You’re terrible at this,” he told me, the breath bursting from his lungs as he collapsed on top of me. “Worst damsel in distress ever.”
The chains fell away from my wrists, and I immediately brought my right palm down onto his taut ass cheek with a thwack.
“Hey now,” he said with a laugh. “That’s it. I’m chaining you up face down, ass up, and starting all over again. We’re going to keep doing these therapy sessions until you get better at letting me use your sexual torment and distress to make my dick feel bigger.”
“Oh, no, not again,” I protested weakly in my best breathy rescue-case voice.
Chaos laughed. “Oh, yes.” His lips brushed against mine. “You’re going to endure being rescued as many times as it takes, honey.”
I felt Raul trying to tap my mind and groaned. Damn.
“Therapy time is over,” I announced. “Raul and Sloane are headed back.”
“Aw, come on! He’s had her for an hour,” Chaos complained, sounding like a big child himself. “Tell him to suck it up and watch Frozen again.”
“It’s been at least two hours,” I pointed out. “Hang on, let me talk to him and tell him to give us five minutes.”
“Five? Tell him to give us sixty. And tell him I said to stay the fuck out of my wife’s head.”
I answered Raul through our mind connection and asked him to walk Sloane along the scenic route from the main house so that Chaos and I would have at least ten minutes to straighten ourselves up. Since I’d gained my werelock capabilities, Raul, Alcaeus, and I had figured out how to get around the mind shield that Sloane had constructed.
Raul responded back that he and Sloane were teleporting over in the next two minutes, before quickly breaking our connection.
“Ugh. He says they’ll be here in two. They’re teleporting.” I patted his back as Chaos buried his face in the crook of my neck, cursing and making pouting noises. Sometimes he was worse than Sloane. “Come on, big guy, get off me so I can get up.”
Chaos, Sloane, and I had relocated to the Salvatella pack’s stronghold in Bariloche, Argentina. Known as the Switzerland of South America, it was like something out of a fairytale. Nestled between the Andes Mountains and a glacial lake, it was the most picturesque place I’d ever seen.
Alcaeus had insisted upon building us our own private residence within the walls of the Salvatella compound—a modest home for just the three of us, situated a short distance away from the main estate. I had a sense it was because he still didn’t quite trust every member of the Salvatella pack. And I couldn’t blame him—given the long history of deceit, violence, and bloodshed between the Salvatellas and the Reinosos.
But Chaos insisted that he’d done it so that Sloane could have more space and privacy as she got acclimated to her new environment. And also so that I would feel comfortable screaming for help as loudly as Chaos wanted me to during our hero-complex therapy sessions.
Wyatt had been in Bariloche for the first few months that we’d been here. But following Wyatt’s initial werewolf introduction and pack-life assimilation, Raul had sent him to the Salvatella pack’s estate in Puerto Iguazú, saying he needed his help with something there for a few months. I was sorry to see Wyatt go, but it had been for the best. Things had been very strained between Wyatt and Alcaeus as a result of Wyatt’s rejection of Alcaeus’s sister, Lessa. And it was difficult for me being caught in the middle.
Azda hadn’t moved with us to Bariloche, choosing instead to relocate back to her community on the Navajo reservation. I don’t think she liked the idea of living abroad amongst so many skinwalkers. And it seemed clear she felt that Alcaeus and I needed to get used to parenting Sloane on our own.
Raul was now our main help and childcare backup in Bariloche—the only person who could babysit Sloane for us when we wanted time alone as a couple. Sloane adored Raul in a way I’d never seen her take to anyone else. She liked Alcaeus well enough, and was warming up to tolerating him more every day, but she had a kind of hero-worship for Raul, our new Alpha.
Sloane was still pulling Raul into her nightmares. It bothered me less now than it bothered Alcaeus. In truth, I sensed there was probably a bit of a rivalry brewing between the two men when it came to winning Sloane’s affection—mostly on Alcaeus’s side.
“Why can’t they walk? It’s barely a hundred yards. Who teleports that short of a distance?” Alcaeus was still complaining and grumbling to himself as he pulled pants on and stowed our bed chains away. “Raul’s such a lazy shit.”
I teleported from the upstairs level of our house to the downstairs level when Alcaeus wasn’t around, actually. I told myself I was doing it for practice, but really, it was because that shit was fun.
I’d just gotten my clothes on and was heading down the stairs when Raul teleported into our living room with Sloane in his arms.
I gasped and nearly squealed at the sight of them, before slapping my hand over my mouth.
“Don’t even say it,” Raul warned in his Alpha voice, his eyes hard on me as he set my daughter down on her feet next to him. “Not one word.”
While it still amazed me to witness Sloane allow someone to pick her up and hold her the way that she did with Raul, that wasn’t what had me struggling to contain my shock and laughter now.
“No one in the pack hears about this,” Raul ordered me as he straightened to his full height, adjusting the hot pink, satiny Princess Anna costume cloak draped awkwardly around his broad shoulders.
I shook my head, still covering my mouth, as tears of laughter welled in my eyes.
Sloane was wearing her ice blue Queen Elsa gown and sparkly cape, along with her tiara.
“Hol-y sh—shirt-cape,” Alcaeus said as he bounded down the stairs behind me. He was still struggling not to swear around my daughter. “You girls look stunning!”
he managed to say to Raul and Sloane without choking on the laughter he was attempting to keep in check. “I need a photo.”
“No,” Raul immediately declined, while Sloane responded with a stoic, “Yes.”
“Hey, so as you know, Mike’s had some of our guys tailing Kai and his crew for a while,” Raul confided to me in the kitchen as I poured myself a cup of coffee. Raul was absent his hot pink cape now, dressed simply in his standard, casual surfer-boy attire.
Because Chaos was now wearing the cloak in the other room—trying to prove to Sloane that he made a better Princess Anna to her Queen Elsa than Raul did.
I nodded. Kai had gone back to the States after returning briefly to Brazil, taking a smaller team of men than what he and Alcaeus had on their original Rogue mission. Mike, who’d been tracking Kai’s activities, was a higher-ranking Beta within the Salvatella pack and more or less Raul’s head of security detail. Beyond that, Raul and Mike were close friends, and I knew that Raul trusted him.
“Mike thinks that Kai may have found one of the next great seers,” Raul said, lowering his voice and leaning in to me where we stood next to one another at the kitchen counter. “There’s a college-aged woman that Kai has been … well, stalking is the word Mike used.”
Technically, Alcaeus was Raul’s head Beta, not me, but often Raul and I vetted and formed strategies on matters related to Chaos’s family members and former pack mates prior to discussing them with Chaos.
Alcaeus’s family’s betrayal was still too raw of a subject for him. And Chaos often became enraged at the mere mention of Kai’s name. So we felt that there was no sense in poking that tiger until we needed to.
“Stalking?” Interesting. I raised my coffee mug to my lips and took a sip.
“Yeah. Mike says Kai’s behavior has been a bit off lately—all over the place, actually—ever since Kai began tracking this coed twenty-four-seven. And most recently, a few weeks ago, Kai dismissed all of the men he had with him in America.” Raul raised his palms in the air. “Ordered every single one of them back to Brazil for no apparent reason.”