by G. Bailey
I breathe out. “I want a world where female and male wolves are free to choose their own mates. That they don’t have to let a pool of magical water decide who their mate is. It’s just the essence of whatever’s left over from the goddess Persephone in this world, and it’s not her. I’m the closest they ever got to the moon goddess, and they never even knew it.”
“Do you think that’s why she chose to link you to the alpha of Ravensword?” Henderson asks, a note of anger at even mentioning that alpha.
I draw a swirl onto the other side of his collarbone, and I watch how he flinches a little, like he might be a bit ticklish there. “I think so. I think she wanted me to be an alpha female and in power. So she did what she thought was the right thing, all that she could do with her reach being so little in this world. It’s different now, after being in the forest, I can feel her...soul around me. Like I’m being haunted by a ghost.”
“It’s the same for us,” Henderson explains. “After time, we feel like it’s a part of us and we couldn’t exist without Hades.”
“I never understood why Persephone left Ravensword with all those rules. All the rules about mates, unless some alpha made them up. True mates are rare, right?”
He nods. “Extremely. My parents weren’t true mates, but my mother and Soren are. They knew in their mating.”
“All of the matings are made up in Ravensword, and probably most end in disastrous ways. I want all wolves to be free,” I say.
“Like Jesper?” he softly asks.
“Yes,” I reply, my heart hurting, and I try not to think too much about him. “I’ve been there since he lost his family. I held him until he went back to sleep whenever he woke up crying, read him stories, and hugged him whenever he bumped or grazed his knees in the forest. I love him like a brother, and the way he looked at me last... Knowing he is alone as Alpha Sylvester’s ward... I left him.”
“You had no choice, and he chose not to come with you. He is a kid, and he made a mistake, which I know you have already forgiven him for, but don’t blame yourself for it,” he firmly tells me.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to actually get him back,” I admit.
He puts his hand on my waist where there’s no paint, just lace between me and his large, warm palms. My skin flushes as goose bumps litter my arms. His touch alone is pure longing. His blue eyes seem to burn with the same. “I promise you we will go to Ravensword, take the pack, and rip Alpha Sylvester’s head off his shoulders. That revenge is yours and promised. We haven’t forgotten, and we aren’t moving on. We are building our revenge.”
I hold my head up. “You’re always on my team, aren’t you? No matter where I run...”
“No matter where we run, we will find each other again,” he vows. I shiver, my body remembering the words even if I can’t. I know we used to say that to each other...but all I have is the feeling the words conjure in my chest. Love, safety, and happiness. Family.
I have to look away and carry on with my painting across his chest. I run my fingers over some of his marks on his arms as I finish off, and I step back. “By the gods, I’m really bad at painting. I’m so sorry. Some of the moons look like cakes.”
He laughs. “Don’t be sorry. I enjoyed this time with you. I’ll see you at sunset, Mai. Thank you.”
“Please don’t thank me,” I say, wincing. “How long is it until sunset now?”
He looks up at the clock on the wall. “About an hour. What are you going to do with your free time?”
“I’m going to the library,” I say. “Between training, meals and getting lost in the castle, I’ve not had time this week.”
“I’ve missed you this week outside of training. There has been a lot to catch up. I will be with my brothers if you need me,” he replies, glancing at my lack of a dress one more time. “I really, really hope you don’t until I can touch you.”
I grin. “Wait, before you go, did you hear anything else about Breelyn? I’m trying to trust your mother, but I want to see her. I promised myself I’d protect Breelyn.”
“I’ve not heard anything yet, but I convinced my mother to bring the hearing forward. She really is trying to do the best. I promise you, she’s not put them in there for no reason, and they are safe,” he reassures me.
“I do understand why she locked them away. I tried to look at it from her point of view. If I were alpha female of this pack and someone brought in a wolf from another pack and an angel, I’d put them in there as well.”
“My mother hates the angels with a passion, and she doesn’t understand that not all angels are loyal to their king and follow him without pause or reason,” he replies. “We have a lot of work to do to convince my mother that working with some angels at all is a safe bet and that not all of them are like him. Honestly, that’s why we brought Callahan here with us. We need my mother and Soren to see the angels are not all monsters like their king.”
Makes more sense to me why they brought him along now.
“Your mother told me something about him,” I reply, and Henderson visibly tenses, and I see pain in his eyes. “She told me we grew up together and that he was in love with me.”
“Yes, it’s true, and the only reason we didn’t tell you was because it was part of the blood binding that we couldn’t talk about him. You can ask me anything you want, but I will warn you it does hurt us to talk about him. We were very close. Close as I am to all my brothers, but in the end, he betrayed all of us.”
I hear the pain in his voice.
“Why?”
“He left for six months, randomly, without reason. Honestly, I thought you might have known why he left as he told you everything, but you told us you didn’t. No one knew where he went or what he did, and he came back different with markings on his arms, and his eyes… He had powers.”
“Do you think he found a place to connect with the god he is bound to and it changed him?” I ask.
“I have no idea. He came back with Oisean and an army. They wanted you to go with them, and when you didn’t want him back, when you wouldn’t go with him, he slaughtered the pack as they gave you time to flee. We all fought, the best we could, but it was madness, and we barely managed to get away with some of our families. Ten of us, to be exact,” he says. “We lost Adira and you. But we found Adira on our travels and sent her here, but she clearly got distracted along the way.”
“He must have been so young...,” I whisper, knowing I was just twelve. “Gods, hearing that a young wolf killed my mum and so many others…”
“He was the oldest of us all, but yes, just a teenager,” he replies. “But his power? It was deadly and destructive. He could destroy land with a click of his fingers, escalating his power from his angel blood and morphing it into something else.”
Like I saw Demeter do in my dream.
“Half angel. Half wolf. Does he have wings?”
“Yes, but they’re not like angels’.”
“What was the god that he was connected to?”
“No one knew. His mother died in labour, and he was brought up with us,” he explains to me. I can see the point where he is getting tired, and I stop.
“You don’t have to tell me anymore,” I softly say.
“I promised you no more lies,” he replies, his eyes tired. “And I meant it. The blood bond forced me to avoid the truth with you before, but I won’t ever do that again.”
“I know, and I trust you. All of you,” I firmly say. “I won’t ever not trust you again. I know who you are.”
“Then you should know the second I get my hands on the king of the angels, I’m going to kill him,” he warns me. “I’m going to kill C—”
“Wait.” I pause. “I don’t want to know his name, not here, in our home. He killed my family, tore my life apart and is likely still hunting me. If I know his name, I might think of him and fear him...and I won’t do that. I will never say his name because he does not deserve to hear it. He doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near me,
because when you kill him, I will be there. For my pack, for my mother.”
“The king of the angels will die for what he cost us all,” Henderson states. “We’re making alliances in the Fenrir Court on our way because when we do go to war, we’re going to need some of the angels to help us win. It will be a brutal fight, Mai, and my mother and stepfather’s tunnel vision is going to cost us.”
“Hopefully, Callahan will be able to sway their judgment,” I say, putting a lot of pressure on his shoulders. “We have to win this world back, because how could we ever have a future with the threat the angels constantly pose?”
“Us against them,” he agrees.
“What about the humans?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “The human lands of America are still there, but they’re useless. They don’t have that many people left, and what is left is scattered all over the place. They don’t have armies, and what is left in the city in the way of weapons isn’t going to be anything useful against angels. They also trade humans to the angels. Food for food.”
I shiver. “They don’t care about fixing or saving the world. They might even side with the angels as they did lock us wolves up behind a wall. Or at least they thought they did.”
I smile sadly. “Is it naïve of me to wish our future wasn’t so complicated and painful?”
“No,” he replies. “Hope is never naïve.”
“You best go and get ready,” I suggest.
Henderson nods. “See you at the rite... I haven’t said it yet, but I’m proud of the fighter you’ve become. They are watching you with the gods, you know that?”
“Who?”
“Everyone you’ve lost, even if you don’t remember them,” he softly tells me. “I bet Daniel is cheering you on, and your mother is telling the gods to help you.”
I smile. “I miss Daniel so much it’s hard to let myself think about him too long. With my mother, it’s easier because she isn’t a real person I can remember. I just imagine a random woman.”
“I do the same with my real father. I know a few things about him, and I like to pretend he was really a good person. Surely he was handsome,” he says, wagging his eyebrows at me, “but still, I can’t see him. It isn’t the same as losing someone you really knew. He wasn’t even aware I was born.”
“Thank you, Henderson. I don’t know how you do it, but I feel...safer. Stronger,” I admit.
He grins. “I’m training to be your mate, and that’s a mate’s job.”
I chuckle. “Your interview is going well, that’s for sure.”
“It will go better when I can touch you,” he replies with a wink. “See you out there, Mai.”
“See you,” I reply as he walks out the door, leaving me smiling and my heart feeling full.
I slide my feet into my slippers as Erin comes back into the room after Henderson and breathes out a long breath. “He didn’t touch the paint. Thank the wolves.”
I silently laugh to myself. “No, I told him he couldn’t. He wanted me to paint him, actually.”
“I saw,” she replies with red cheeks. “Luckily, no one’s going to be looking at them when you’re up there.”
Any woman or man would be looking at them, if they had any sense. They look like gods. They are gods, well, partly. Sometimes, when they use their gifts, I feel like they aren’t even touching the true potential they have.
“Come on, Mai, you want to go to the library?” Erin questions.
“Yes, definitely,” I say, walking to her side by the door. “Where is Phim?”
“Seraphim was speaking with Alpha Heir Henderson outside,” she replies, and sure enough, when we get out of the room, they are talking quietly together. Phim bows her head before walking over to me.
“Ready for the library?” she questions.
“Always,” I reply, and she rolls her eyes at me as we head down a few corridors before coming to a set of stairs behind a yellow patterned door. We have to walk all the way up to the top before the stone staircase leads to a balcony corridor that overlooks the waterfalls. The balcony itself is wet on the floor from the spray of water, and it’s noisy here, the water hitting the rocks making most of the sound. I can also hear the echo of the city like white noise. I watch waterfalls as we walk past, the orange and pink sunset in the distance highlighting the falling cascades like a rainbow is stroked through the water.
“Did you know the rivers have two names after two female wolves who died in the river many years ago?” Erin asks me as we walk, and we both watch her, but her eyes are on the waterfall. “The rivers are twins of each other, like the females, starting at one point, separating for their life and then meeting once again at the end. So they are named Arianna and Brianna.”
“How did the girls die in the river?”
She looks over at me. “They jumped in after a male baby, who survived thanks to them and became the first beta wolf in history. He asked the alpha, Alpha Soren’s father, to name the rivers after the girls, and he did.”
“It was very honourable of him to do that,” Phim says. “The pack we lived in would never have named anything after a female.”
“What fools they are,” she replies with a growl.
“Agreed,” both Phim and I say at the same time. Erin holds open an old wooden door, and we step into a small outdoor pathway leading to large green glass doors. Instinctively, I feel drawn to whatever is behind the doors, and everything fades away as I walk up to them. I don’t hear Phim or Erin as I turn the silver handle, walking in through the doors that cast a green light on the black wood floors and the carpeted cream rug that leads from the door to the small wooden counter before the biggest library I’ve seen. The library stretches up into the ceilings, filled with rows and rows of books of every colour, some of the spines glittering in the light from the glass rooftop. The bookcases themselves are all white stone, some of them repaired with white painted wood so the effect they have isn’t lost. At the end of each bookshelf—the fourteen that I can see—there is a statue of a goddess or god holding various things, just like the ones on the stairs. The one right in the middle is Persephone, holding a bundle of pomegranate seeds as she looks up at the glass.
The library stretches far back into pits of darkness, and up above, there are more sections that circle around, with white ladders to climb the different sections. Something deep inside me feels at home here, relaxed, and almost like I never want to leave. I turn around as Erin and Phim come in with me, and above the door is a panel of green metal with silver words written across, symbols and shapes that slowly merge in my mind into letters I can read.
“For my love, my queen, my end and my beginning.”
“How did you read that?” Erin questions. “That’s the language of the gods. Did you study it?”
“No,” I admit. “But I can read that.”
Erin bows her head. “By all the gods.”
“Another cool thing about you, sis?” Phim mutters. “You’re making me look bad at this point.”
I laugh and shake my head before turning around. Erin walks past me and goes to the counter, ringing the gold bell in the middle of it.
A brush of air blows against me, and suddenly there is a little person sitting on the edge of the counter, next to the bell. The...person? Or whatever she is. She has long grey hair, is about the size of a doll, and has a white tunic dress on with navy cowboy boots. On top of her head is a cream cowboy hat with a little blue flower stitched on. Her skin is yellow, the colour of sweetcorn, and her eyes are pure white.
I can’t scent her; she literally smells like nothing. Like she isn’t really here when I can see her. My mouth drops open, and when she chuckles sweetly, I close it.
“Welcome to my library, Mairin Elysia Astra Fall. You are not as pretty as the goddess once was,” the creature says. Ouch. “Never mind. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
“Who are you?” I coldly ask.
She grins, flashing me a row of sharp yellow teeth. “A secre
t that I’m not about to tell you, young goddess. We earn secrets in this life.”
“Many call her Dot,” Erin says, helping.
Dot’s sharp, intelligent eyes turn on Erin. “You are worthless of my time when yours is so little.”
Erin pales and I clear my throat. “Are you always so...well, sharp tongued?”
“I’ve been called worse names,” Dot replies.
I feel like I’m being led into a verbal trap with this creature, whatever she is. I change the subject, ignoring the amusement I see in her eyes before I even say a word. “So you look after the library? Can I borrow a book?”
“Yes,” she replies. “But if one of my books is damaged by your hand, I will take it off.”
“You will not touch Mai or—”
“Violent child, shh,” Dot interrupts Phim. “Mairin—wait, I don’t like that name. I much prefer Astra, so I should call you by that.”
“No one really likes to call her by her full name,” Phim replies, not offended too much as she stares down Dot. I prefer Mai, but I bet Dot doesn’t care.
I believe she is wondering if she could take her. “You couldn’t win a fight with me if you tried, Seraphim. Not yet, perhaps not ever. The books haven’t decided your future yet.”
“Have they decided mine?” I ask.
Dot flashes me a feral grin. “That is a question I would never answer, Astra.”
She moves super quick, disappearing and reappearing with a book, and hands it to me. “This is the book you’re looking for.”
“I never asked for a book,” I say, walking over and taking the book that is literally the same size as her.
“Astra, next time, come to my library alone,” Dot replies before vanishing from sight.
“There is little chance in hell she is coming here alone!” Phim shouts into the library. I swear I hear Dot’s laugh echo down from the darkness.
I look at Erin. “You could have warned us about Dot.”
“That would have meant explaining Dot, and I don’t think that is possible,” she replies. “And before you ask me what she is, I have no idea. But she has never hurt anyone.”