by Gaja J. Kos
As nightfall came, the extended pack remained in the large castle chamber while the rest of the council retreated to their respective homes. Rose observed them from her seat behind the table, the faces of those who had become so much more than pack or allies. Exhaustion still lined their features—it was too soon for those traces to fade away—but she was glad to see that the shadows that had taken up residence in their eyes after the battle were now absent. And that, more than anything, let her know it was time.
Only her hesitation refused to leave her heart quite so easily.
Warmth bloomed across the small of her back, Veles’s fingers gently brushing away the tension and infusing her with the desperately needed strength to speak. As did the calmness of Morana’s pale blue gaze now resting firmly on her.
Rose let out a shuddering breath, the admission a leaden presence on her tongue.
No time like the present, she thought bitterly as she stood and cleared her throat, gathering the pack’s attention
“When I went to the Glass Mountain, I did not return empty-handed. I hadn’t known why I’d done what I had at the time, but after today—”
The Gamayun’s voice slithered though her mind, those final instructions the wind had brought to her when the creature had already taken to the skies. A gift—and a burden at the same time. But one she, in the end, had chosen to share.
Zarja had been right when she had snarled at her after the attack on the Vedmaks.
The pack deserved to make their choices, even if Rose’s instincts screamed to protect them from the consequences their decisions might bring.
“This world belongs to us,” she said. “We have created it, and we will guard it. My ascension has granted me immortality, and the bond of The Dark Ones protects you from being killed before your time. But it will not keep you from entering Veles’s realm when old age demands it. The Trinity, however, can.”
She dipped her chin, and Veles pulled the glamor from the objects she had laid out on the table beforehand. Golden apples gleamed in the soft glow of the lanterns that illuminated the room, touched by the power the Gamayun had revealed how to embed in its structure.
“But that’s—it’s impossible,” Serafina whispered, recognizing the fruit for what it was.
“Not with our combined energies entwined in their essence,” Rose answered softly, then took in each and every person present in the room. “This means watching your friends and family age, then die. It means safeguarding the world for millennia to come. It isn’t easy. But the apples of immortality are yours, if you want them.”
Silence stretched, thick and potent as they all stared at the fruit. One apple for each of them, who still carried mortality in their veins.
Somewhat to her surprise, it was Zarja who stepped forward first. “I’ll take one.”
“As will I,” Serafina said, and Rose didn’t fail to notice the silver gleam in Morana’s eyes as the goddess watched the Koldunya approach the table.
Jürgen came next, but not before pressing a kiss on Katja’s cheek and rumbling, “Like fuck I’m leaving you alone.”
His grin was broad when he came to stand next to Serafina, mirroring the one blooming on Katja’s face. He glanced over to his twin who hesitated just for a second before taking those steps across the room.
Just as Mark shook his head in silent answer, Rose noticed Sander slip outside from where he stood by the far wall, the door closing soundlessly behind him. But before she could call the Koldun back, Mark’s voice filled the chamber, the rough tone saturated with shock. Perhaps even a little fear.
“Evelin…”
Rose’s gaze fell on the petite werewolf in time to see her move away from her mate. Those emerald eyes fell on the golden apples before Evelin faced Mark once more.
“I want to protect our sons. Even if it means eventually losing them to the passing of time. And I need to do for the world what I couldn’t for my sister,” she said quietly. “No one will suffer like she did. Not if I can help it.”
Mark didn’t say anything, only watched the delicate, dark-haired werewolf join those already standing by the table.
“Tim?” Rose asked to break the tension.
The werewolf shook his head. “My family waits in the underworld. And that’s where I wish to join them.”
“As do I,” Nathaniel whispered, his gaze darting up to Rorik.
But the Perelesnyk simply pulled him into a tight embrace and pressed his lips to his. “I understand. More than you know.” Another kiss. “I’ll stay with you for as long as you’ll have me.”
Blinking away the tears that burned at the back of her eyes, Rose scanned the faces of those she would share her immortality with. Katja, Jens, Jürgen, Evelin, Serafina, Dragan, Morana, and, finally, Veles.
Her mother had chosen to take the path of life and death. But as much as the loss pained her, she also knew her family was here. The family she had made, through laughter and tears. Through heartbreak and joy.
Their bonds unbreakable.
She caught up with Sander just as the Koldun was halfway across the inner courtyard, making his way to the gates leading outside. He spared Rose a glance when he heard her approach, but didn’t stop walking. Not until she wrapped her fingers around his arm and drew him to her, seeking out those power-ridden bronze eyes.
Despite what they had done that day on the battlefield, their truce was still fragile. But she didn’t let it stop her from trailing her fingertips down his warm skin, tracing a path across his corded muscles all the way to his wrist.
Gently, she turned Sander’s hand around, feeling with every inch of her heart that this was how the future had always been meant to unfold.
The Koldun remained quiet as she placed an apple in his palm, then closed his fingers around its golden surface, covering them with hers, and looked up. The question burned as vividly in the hard set of Sander’s eyes as if he had spoken aloud.
“You can chuck it away if you want. But I think you just might want to hold on to it for a while longer.” A soft, even if somewhat sad, smile pulled on her lips. “Mark refused the apple. But Evelin didn’t.”
Sander’s face tightened, his previously guarded gaze now drilling into hers with such ferocity, she almost staggered under the aura of his emotions. Perhaps her own, as well.
There was a part of her that hated what she had to say, hated the thought of uttering those words that reeked of betrayal. But it was also the truth.
And Sander deserved to hear it.
“Evelin will stay with Mark until the end. And she will grieve. But immortality is a long, long time to spend alone, to not seek out what—who—you desire. She will come to you, Sander. If you wait.”
The Koldun said nothing as he walked away, apple in hand, but the burning amber in his silver-lined eyes, ever so briefly, had told her enough.
He would wait.
He would wait for the werewolf he loved.
“Tell me the truth now, Rosalind,” Veles said as he lay down on the bed, nothing but a towel covering his nude, honed body. It was draped over him so strategically, Rose wondered just how much thought the god had put into its placement.
Not that she was complaining.
After all, she had always liked the incorrigible tease in him, even if the man she had truly fallen in love with was the one resting beneath all the elegant seduction.
“Were the apples really an attempt to keep the council together”—he propped one hand beneath his head, mischief dancing in the corners of his eyes—“or were they just a means to further your matchmaking plans?”
Rose snorted at him, then threw herself on the mattress, her lithe body bouncing slightly before settling down. Veles’s gaze skimmed the glimpse of flesh her loosely drawn robe revealed, embers coming to life in the deep green of his eyes with a promise that he intended to see far more skin than what was on display. And soon.
She laughed even as her cheeks heated. “You’re an ass, you know that?”
&n
bsp; “I know that you like my ass, Rosalind. Still have the claw marks from last night to prove it.”
She flashed him her canine teeth as she grinned, but by the time she nestled her head in the nook between his neck and shoulder, the expression, as well as the lightness inside her, faltered.
“Do you think we can do this?”
His fingers trailed the hem of her robe, teasing, taunting. Daring. “Do what?”
“Immortality. Ruling. Keeping this new world from going to shit…”
“The world will always try to go to shit, srček. The tendency to do so is as much a part of its existence as the endless rotations around the sun. As for the ruling”—he shrugged—“I’m only afraid of our powers failing to contain one.”
Frowning, Rose perched herself on her elbow and studied the chiseled, almost painfully handsome lines of his face. “Who?”
A smile cupped his sensual lips, and Rose’s breath hitched at the desire, at the love—and something else that small expression carried. He placed his hand on her stomach, warmth and power rushing over her skin and wrapping around her core.
As well as the other, resting inside her—a faint pulse she had failed to notice. Until now.
She gasped, drinking in the pure joy undulating in Veles’s gaze, the joy echoed in her heart, in the smile now lying on both their lips.
“Her, srček. I’m only afraid of containing her.”
Keep on reading for a bonus story!
1
New York
The night breeze wove around Ileana, ruffling her black fur in gentle ripples as she darted across the grassy expanse of Central Park. She cut across abandoned paths and zigzagged between trees, their fragrant, lush branches spread high above her.
Cool soil brushed against her paws, the soft bed of nature grounding her and speaking to the heightened wolf senses that always seemed so much sharper when free of the urban constraints of the city.
She rolled out her tongue, tasting the air and letting it fill her lungs. The cloudless, starry sky, the serenity of the late night hours, when the rustle of leaves wasn’t background noise, but an intimate greeting, should have calmed her, soothed the cascade of thoughts tumbling within her mind.
Instead, the only effect it achieved was setting her even more on edge.
Thousands of miles away, the break of dawn was beginning to approach. A dawn of blood and death. Of finality that would stem the last remnants of doubt.
And one Ileana wouldn’t see.
Every instinct in her body screamed to join with Rose. The impulse to help her daughter cut through the heavy cloak of war was rooted inside her as deeply as her werewolf heritage. Rose might not be one of her pack in the traditional sense, but the roaring urge to stand by her daughter’s side was the exact same even if she had been. Perhaps even graver, amplified by the blood and friendship they shared.
And yet it hadn’t been only Rose’s request that had led her to stay in New York. Ileana might have hated it, but she knew her place was here.
While The Dark Ones fought back-to-back with their allies, hoping to contain the battle to Slovenia’s capital, Ileana was aware the tendrils of corruption reached farther than only her home country’s borders.
Over the last years, New York had become a growing hotspot for supernatural activity. Members of all species flocked here as if driven by some unseen force, and accumulated with almost frightening speed. She suspected that within a decade, the sheer mass of supes here could outshine even the likes of Cleveland and New Orleans, where the higher circles ruled with an iron fist to keep everyone in check.
However, even now, those two cities couldn’t rival the numbers of vampiric residents already living in New York.
If her fears gained flesh and the vampires did lash out as a result of the events taking place in Ljubljana, they would do so here in far larger quantities than anywhere else in the States.
So even with her distance from Rose clawing at her mind with relentless determination and weighing down her heart with an ache she knew wouldn’t subside, Ileana roamed the paths of Central Park, seeking out potential victims where they were most likely to appear. Not on the streets, where the light and traffic breathed life into every atom of the air. But here. In the privacy and serenity of nature, sought out by those who wished to stay out of the public eye.
Away from its safety.
Living in New York for as long as she had, it hadn’t been difficult to map out which areas she had to avoid while running in wolf form, to rank them from most to least dangerous when it came to flaunting the supernatural in plain sight. Now, those were the precise locations her paws led her through.
If she were wrong, if the vampires decided to start their murderous spree elsewhere— Then gods help them all.
One shot was all she had to protect her home, and it drove her forward with a kind of single-minded determination she hoped would be enough to sway fate on her side.
Silver moonlight created flickering strips of light and darkness as she dashed through another thick copse of trees, keeping as close to the paths as she could without actually being on them. Under the cover of night, she preyed as vampires would, more than grateful for all the interspecies hunts she had attended that had given her insight into the vampiric, predatory minds. Honest or corrupt, there were patterns they all followed. The only difference lay with the end result.
Her paws made no sound as they touched the ground, leaving the stirring of her surroundings as pure as if she were nothing but a disembodied consciousness, floating on the breeze. She curved around the lake and pushed deeper into the heart of the greenery, all the while keeping her mental grid firmly in place. Section by section, she cleared the areas known for less than savory activities, then circled around again, retracing her steps like a vigilant guard on patrol.
When she neared one-third of her winding path for the second time, she smelled it.
A hint of immortality.
And, a little farther ahead, the stench of inebriated humanity.
Ileana cocked her head to the side, ears held straight and muzzle raised towards the sky. Briefly, relief unfolded the unpleasant knot in her stomach.
There was still time.
She exploded through the brush, not caring about the noise she made or the branches that pressed against her skin hard enough to draw blood in those moments before they snapped away. Instead, she ran at full speed towards the south where the group of vampires she’d sensed was slowly closing in on their prey. She spotted their silhouettes as she skirted around more towering trees, confirming what she had already gleaned through their scent.
There were four of them. Three twentyfourhourly women and a traditional man, all of them baring fangs that glistened in the moonlight, and emitting the heavy tang of excitement before a kill.
Not a feeding.
A kill.
A low growl slipped between her canine teeth, masked by the soft murmurs of leaves as the vampires pushed on, oblivious that the hunters had become the hunted.
Their minds had already succumbed to bloodlust, a state in which nothing existed but the pulse in their chosen victims’ throats. But while their urge made them careless, shredding not only their awareness of the wider surroundings, but their stealth alike, there was no true need to hide their approach, either. Even if the humans heard the disturbance in the nature around them, their legs could never hope to outrace the preternatural speed of their pursuers. Not when the vampires were already so close.
And the high presence of alcohol lingering in the air certainly didn’t work in their favor.
Ileana bared her teeth, her gaze drilling into the four figures.
Cowards. They were cowards to strike those unable to fight.
But they would die just the same.
2
Munich
Liesl Freundenberger padded beneath the yellow glow of the streetlamps, her eyes taking in each and every one of the early risers gathering in the center of the city who
had just begun to shake off the mist of slumber.
She had always enjoyed seeing Munich in the light of the approaching dawn. There was something enchanting about how the first hint of daybreak seeped through the multitude of grays and created a gentle palette that complemented the elegant, old-world buildings with their unique blend of warm and cold hues. It had always given her the feeling as if the display was meant for her and her only, Munich’s own whispered greeting that gracefully dispelled before the masses descended upon its streets.
Today, however, the sky was nothing but a distant background, and the city’s gentle murmurs nothing but a plea to not let its white streets taste the spread of blood.
Hans, Liesl’s oldest, was solemn as he walked by her side, his long blond hair pulled back and making his expression even harder. She wanted to say something—anything to break the tense calm—yet the pensiveness she witnessed resting on his features told Liesl Hans wasn’t lost in thought. He was already engaged in a conversation, if one-sided.
She glanced at the discreet com unit in his ear, linking him with his brother, out in the streets, just like them.
While Ludvig had never been overly thrilled with the idea of pack life, preferring his digital drawing over the harsher art of combat, he had nonetheless grown to be an esteemed member of the Grünwald pack. And it was those werewolves who were now patrolling a section of Munich farther south, under the pretense of trying to stem a rogue pack’s attempt at overtaking friendly territory.
The cover wouldn’t hold under heavy scrutiny, but they needed to come up with something to draw the werewolves out without revealing the truth.
Even now, with everything already in motion, Liesl hated the thought of bringing her children into this mess. Just as she knew Ludvig hated having to lie to his pack. But secrecy and numbers were far more vital than any individual grievances she and her son might have had. The time to deal with them in depth would come after they survived the whiplash of whatever was yet to happen in Ljubljana.