by G. Bailey
“You’re my sister, Mai,” she replies, her eyes filled with tears. “This would be a great honour, and it’s only a year.”
She squeezes my hand, and I grab it with my other, holding onto her. “You’re my sister too, that’s why I won’t let this happen.”
“Mai...something is wrong in the pack. Something is coming, and I feel it in every step I take.” She pauses to look at the wolf waiting for us. “He isn’t lying to us. I can feel the truth in his words, and he said you will come back for help. You will need help desperately. That can mean only one thing.”
“That my alphas and the pack are in danger,” I whisper. “It’s the only reason I would come here.”
She rests her forehead against mine before pulling her hand from mine and stepping to the trickster, her eyes locking on me. “Tell Callahan he was wrong and not to come for me.”
“I will,” I say, my voice catching. “And when your year is up, come back to me and be my omega. I will be alpha female.”
“I know,” she says with a cracked voice and a big smile. Her smile drops as she turns to the trickster. “Give her the memories back.”
He bows his head in a patronising manner that makes Breelyn bare her teeth. “Feisty. How interesting this year is going to be.”
The trickster walks over to me, a smile on his lips because he got what he wanted. He lifts his hand and bites into his palm, gold blood dripping from the centre. Gold blood. He offers his hand out to me. “We make deals in blood. Drink from my hand, and we have a deal.”
My stomach turns as I pick up his hand, his skin boiling hot to the touch, and lift his palm to my mouth. The copper taste is mixed with a sweetness, like boiled candy, and I push his hand away the second I’ve swallowed a little.
He walks closer and cups my head with his large hands. “I am going to unlock your memories and unwind the magic like threads on a blanket, bit by bit, until there is a hole. Memories, starting with when you lost the memories and further back, will come to you quickly. And random ones at the start. The rest will take a few weeks and come in bits.”
“That wasn’t the deal. I need all my memories now,” I say.
He sighs. “Mortals are always so impatient, and you’re not even fully mortal. Maybe a couple hundred years will help.”
“I will live hundreds of years?” I whisper, that truth haunting me.
“Mairin, you do have a sneaky way of getting real truths from me,” he replies with a wink. I have no doubt he told me that in apology for not giving me all the memories at once. “If I did unlock all the magic holding your mind back, it would kill you in one blow. Magic like this is delicately woven to grow with your lifetime. It was never meant to be undone.”
“It’s almost like you care if I die or not,” I murmur.
His gold eyes look down at me, so inhuman, so immortal and cold. “I care for nothing and no one.”
“Bye, Mai,” Breelyn calls out.
Gold light blasts into the room, blinding everything in sight before a sharp pain shoots across my mind, darkness following straight after it.
“Mama! He’s back!” I shout, rushing through our home, knowing where to step to make every floorboard creak for fun. We have been expecting him for two weeks, as he only comes when it’s a full moon and the rest of the pack are celebrating the days of the goddess. My green dress moves around my legs as the back door opens and mama’s secret friend steps in, his black wings disappearing in a puff of black dust. The black dust settles in his pitch-black locks of hair and dots the tanned skin of his forearms, the rest of him covered in thick leather and sharp weapons. I wish he would teach me how to use them.
It’s always “You’re eight, Maiy!”
But I’m nine, since yesterday, and if I knew how to fight, I could show the boys!
“Niall!” I squeal and he laughs, widening his arms. I run into his arms, and he swings me around before kissing the top of my head. “Will you—”
“You’re nine,” he replies with a laugh, putting me down and shaking his head. “When you’re sixteen, I will teach you.”
I stick my tongue out at him, and he ruffles my hair as my mama walks into the room. She smiles softly, her pale cheeks brightening. “Any luck?”
“No, Amica,” he sadly replies, using his nickname for her, and her face falls, as it always does.
And I never know why.
The boys always win.
It’s not fair.
I cross my arms and slump down against the big tree outside my house. The tree marked with our names, riddles, and drawings of wolves.
The four wolves, black and red-eyed, surround me.
“Until I can shift, I’m powerless,” I mutter, kicking a pile of dead leaves. Everyone our age can shift but me, and it’s not going to be long before they decide to be friends with Adira, the pretty wolf, or other females our age.
A horrible feeling attacks my chest when I think of them being friends with anyone else.
They are my wolves. Silas and Henderson nudge me to my feet, and we run for hours in the forest until my legs burn. Until I can run no longer with my pack.
“He must be dead,” my mama cries, her voice full of pain. I sink against the stairs tighter, holding on. “If you haven’t found him in Australia, where else could he be? Those damn weapons, those damned clues he has followed for eight years, are empty promises. They won’t save anyone.”
“I don’t know, Amica,” Niall replies, his voice tense. “I have more news, bad news. The angels are stirring in secret, building what looks like an army. I don’t know what for, the commander tells me nothing, but—”
“You worry for Mai,” she interrupts with a guess. “Would they come for the children? The ones born and changed by the gods by Oisean?”
“Seven of them like he said,” he states. “And there are seven—”
The stairs creak, and they both look up. I run to my room before I get told off.
“Why can’t I see my sister?” I ask my mama as she braids my hair, the sun glistening down on us in the moss garden by our window. Her scent, moon-kissed lavender and petals of sunflowers, surrounds me. She is everything comforting in the world, and I always want to be with her.
Mama is always so sad when she talks of Seraphim, my sister. I know she has red hair and eyes that are bright like a glistening star. “You’ve always been too young for me to explain, but you’re eleven now... Her father stole her away to an evil pack. I cannot go there; they treat females badly.”
“I will save her when I’m older and strong.”
She kisses the top of my head. “I pray for nothing else than to see you both together. As it should be.”
Fire licks the side of my house as I crawl under the table, my heart racing a million times a minute since the angels came. Since he came back, changed and different from the boy I grew up with, and demanded I go with him. His name... Why can’t I think about his name or what he looks like? Brown hair. Maybe.
Howls and screams echo outside, and pain cuts deep in my heart. My pack is dying, and I’m too scared to move.
I’m so scared.
My mama, with a glowing yellow sword I’ve never seen before, cuts down angel after angel who tries to enter our house until there is nothing but a pile of bodies, dead eyes looking at me. Tears wash away the ash and smoke sticking to my skin as I stare into the empty eyes of a dead angel in front of me, his throat slit. Mama looks under the table and offers me her blood-soaked hand. I take it and she drags me up the stairs, past my bedroom, and pulls down the attic door. All of her is soaked in blood and gore, almost masking her fear-filled scent.
“Go!” she pleads, pushing me up the steps.
“But Silas, Valentine, Ragnar and Henderson are out there! I can’t leave them!” I shout, and she pushes me until I’m in the attic. She pulls the stairs up. They are my best friends...my alphas. I will serve them and love them always.
“He wants you and he can’t have you,” mama says, placing he
r hands on my shoulders. “Stay here and wait, I will come back, and if I don’t...well...”
She pauses, her hands shaking as I sob and shake my head. “Niall will be here soon. He knows your father and is looking for him. Niall is the only angel you can trust. Do you hear me?”
“Y-yes,” I cry.
“My sweet Mai,” she says, cupping my cheeks. “One day, you are going to burn bright enough to outshine every star in the sky. Remember that.”
My mama goes to the door and looks back at me one more time, her sword glowing so brightly in the darkness. “I love you.”
“I love you too, mama.”
Those were the last words spoken between us.
“Niall, mama told me this pack is evil to females,” I say, my voice shaky. I’m so scared.
Niall looks and scents of fear, too. He walks in a circle in the snow, my mama’s sword clipped to his hip, before stopping.
“But they are better than the angels...and it’s the only place you will fit in and be safe,” he says, going to his knees in front of me. He hasn’t said it, not when he came to the house to find me, holding my mama’s sword and scenting of her blood.
He hasn’t told me she is dead.
But I know.
I know and it hurts so much.
“I have to get revenge, not hide!” I shout at him, and he grabs my shoulders.
“Listen to me,” he firmly says. “You will get revenge. We will, together, but not now. Not while the earth is being ripped apart by angels. Not while they are looking so actively for you and you’re a child still. Maiy, I need to take your memories and protect you with magic.”
He pulls out the sword. “This is a magical sword called Chaitala, given and kept secret by your family for many years. It holds pure magic, and it can take memories. It can hide you from anyone who seeks you.”
“I don’t want to forget,” I cry out.
Mama. Valentine. Silas. Henderson. Ragnar. Aunt Reine. Uncle Soren. My pack.
It would all be gone.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, standing up. “But I promised your mama to protect you, and I will. Please make it easy on me.”
“Mama wanted this?” I whisper.
He nods. “It was the plan if the angels ever came for you. And they did. I wanted to save...but I didn’t get there in time.”
“How long must I live here in secret?” I ask when I hear the pain in his voice. The tears marking his cheeks.
“Years,” he replies. “I will come back when you’re sixteen and give you back your memories with the sword. I will be back.”
“Then do it,” I tell him, being the strong wolf mama always told me I was.
Niall looks proud, even in his sadness, and he presses the tip of the sword on my forehead, yellow light washing away my sadness with the memories it took.
I wake up with a gasp, my head hurting like a thousand horses kicked at it. “He never came back. He never came back for me. He never came back.”
“Mai,” Henderson says, grabbing my hands as I keep repeating the sentence.
Silas roars. “I’m going to rip those wolves apart! Look what they have done to her!”
“Stop!” I shout, looking at them all. “No matter where we run, we will find each other again. No matter how we fall, we will pick each other up. No matter who we are, we love each other.”
“You remember us?” Henderson questions, and I nod, a smile tilting my lips up.
“Bits here and there. Some of it...he said it would all come back within a few weeks,” I say with a bright smile. “How long have I been out?”
“A few hours,” Phim says, lifting herself off the doorframe. “Where is Breelyn?”
“I’d like that answer too,” Callahan demands from the corner of the room, his voice like ice.
My heart, even so happy to have some of my memories back, feels like ice as I answer. “Breelyn is living with The Wolves of Mnemosyne for a year in exchange for my memories. It was her choice.”
“How could you do that?” Callahan furiously shouts, stepping towards me. Valentine moves in between us, blocking him from me.
“It was her choice,” I say again, firmer this time. I already feel awful and as far as I know, Callahan doesn’t even care for her that much. “She told me to tell you that you were wrong and not to come after her, Callahan.”
Something changes in his eyes. “I called her a self-serving coward.”
“Then you were wrong. She is my sister in every sense and anything but a self-serving coward.”
He storms out of the room, and the alphas sit with me for hours, talking through every memory I have.
I suspected it all along, but I’ve always loved them. It was always us.
Valentine Fall
“You look like I did when I met a mate who was wilful and strong. Who never listens to advice and does what she wishes,” Soren says, sitting down next to me on the ledge overlooking the courtyard. I breathe in the scents of the forest, the dampness of the river, the busy guards and maids rushing around as the sun sets softly in the distance. I found this place a week ago, and it’s nice to sit up here, in the silence, without guards following me around, pretending not to be stalking my ass. Coming back here was like being hit with a wall of reality, and reality comes with political meetings, the rite, and everything we dislike about being alphas. The responsibility.
I don’t know how Soren does it so easily, or he makes it look that way in the meetings around the betas.
It seems like I’m not just fucking up at being alpha heir, but with my intended mate.
Mai went alone to do something dangerous and reckless without trusting us, because we told her no instead of listening.
“How do you know when you’re being smothering instead of protective?” I question, asking and needing advice. I don’t have anyone else to turn to, to ask about things like this. I want to protect Mai but not smother who she is or stop her from doing what she wants in life. Like getting back her memories.
I’m happy she has them back, that she looks at us like we haven’t ever been apart, because it’s always been like that for us, but it came at a massive price: Breelyn, the wolf loyal to Mai. And I know she will never forgive herself if something happens to Breelyn while she spends a year with The Wolves of Mnemosyne.
I should have been the one she came to for advice; instead, I was one of the people she hid it from.
I fucked up.
“Our wolves demand we protect our females,” Soren starts. “But our wolves rarely understand that our alpha females are forces of their own, and we are there to weather the storm with them, not protect them from it. There is a line to be crossed and marked again in the sand, but understand you are still learning. I am still learning to this day, and I thank the gods for each day with my Reine.”
“You’re right,” I tell him, patting his shoulder. “Thank you for the advice.”
“I hope to advise you for many years to come, Valentine. I’m proud of the male you have become,” he tells me, and something deep down needed to hear that. From him, from a male who watched me grow up and fuck up more times than I can remember. I can only give him a shaky nod before I walk away and follow Mai’s scent, past her room and to her next favourite place: the haunted library.
She shouldn’t be out of bed, and my wolf grumbles as I walk in, searching for her. I follow her scent down two tall bookcases and find her on a faded leather chair, a book in her hands, and her scent wraps around me like a vise.
“How are you?”
She looks up from her book, her eyes wary. I hate that I did that to her. “Perfectly healed.”
Good. “I’m mad at you and myself. We both handled this wrong, and I want us to figure out how to move forward with the plan that we do things together.”
I walk to her and go onto my knees, picking up the book and setting it aside. Her breaths are laboured as I pick up her tiny hands in mine, so warm, so perfect. “I’m so in love with you, and when I
saw you hurt, it felt like my heart had been ripped from my chest. You’re taking years off my life every time you are hurt.”
“I know I shouldn’t have gone—”
“No, you should have,” I correct her, and she looks surprised. “But not with your omegas in training. It should have been us at your side. Always us.”
“Do you hate me for lying and not telling you?” she whispers.
Her eyes, like inhuman green stars, meet mine as I lean up. My body roars to life, pressed against her like this, feeling every soft curve of her body, her scent so intoxicating this close up. “I never could hate you. I love you, but I want you to promise me.”
I pause and run my lips across her jaw, tasting her skin. Her body arches into mine, a small noise escaping her that I want to hear again and again. “Promise me you’ll choose to argue with us until we listen. I’m a stubborn bastard, but I’m learning.”
“I promise,” she breathes out, and I kiss her, unable to stop myself. She moans into my mouth as I devour her lips, so soft and delicate, while she kisses me back with more passion than I expected. I pick her up off the chair, the curves of her body melding to mine as I press her into the bookcase, the proof of how turned on I am pressing against her. She wiggles against me, teasing me with her small body, and I push the hem of her dress up to her waist.
I know she has done things with Silas, but this would be a first for us, going this far. I hook my fingers in her underwear and rip them off, not wanting to wait. She gasps and kisses me harder, desperately, like I feel for her. I cup her wet core, groaning at the sticky heat I feel there as I slide one finger into her tight core, rubbing her nub with my thumb. She buckles, moaning loudly, and I devour each one of the noises, wanting to hear that noise forever.
I rest my forehead against hers, watching her as she peaks and tightens around my finger, crying in pure pleasure. Her glazed eyes meet mine, and she slides her hands down my waist, my skin burning everywhere she touches until she gets to my belt. I can barely breathe as she undoes the buckle and then my button before reaching in and cupping my hard length. I groan in ecstasy as she strokes me, harder and faster with every stroke. I grip her ass tightly as I feel my balls tighten, and take her lips as my own as I come into her hand, making the world disappear until I can only see her and taste her.