“I can hear you!” I whispered.
Her head lowered at that. “The Mother is generous in all ways,” she whispered, eying the starfish fingers of my son’s hand as it clung to her fur, which confirmed that Knight, somehow, was reaping another miracle. This child. Kali Sara. What he was capable of…
Then, she robbed me of my thoughts as she told me, “You must know that I only wanted to do what was best for them all.”
My brow furrowed. “You did the worst thing imaginable. You abandoned your sons!”
“And I regretted it. Every day. But I had no choice. I loved the twin’s father, but he wasn’t a good man.” She gulped. “If he had been, Paul would have been able to accept him. But he was a convict. A criminal.”
“Did Paul kill Lucas, their dad? What happened to him?”
“He always said it was an accident,” she whispered, but her head twisted to the side, like she didn’t want to see me doubt her word. Which, of course, put doubt in my mind. “Lucas had tried to steal something from Paul’s office, and instead of dealing with it in-house, Paul wanted to get rid of him. He decided that involving the human cops would work best, so he drove him to town and they got into an accident.
“He almost died, but Lucas was—” She broke off, and when her eyes reached mine, they were loaded with devastation. “He did die. Nastily. Afterward, I was so distressed, I couldn’t cope. I just knew that Paul had done something to force the accident, which essentially ended all our lives.
“Paul knew that our time left was short. Without Lucas, I should have passed on soon after, and with that, he should have as well. He pulled away from Eli, arranged for Maggie May to look after him so that he’d acclimate to her when the time came, and made the decision to give the twins to another woman. I was grief-stricken and, now, looking back, I’d say I had post-natal depression which was exacerbated by the devastation I felt at losing Lucas.”
“But you didn’t die,” I said simply, even though her words affected me more than she could know. “Why didn’t you bring the twins home?”
“Every day, we wondered if it would be my last, but for years after, it never was. I just kept things as they were, because it could have ended there and then. Some days, I wished it would. But the truth is, what kind of safe space would it have been for the twins around Paul? And I couldn’t leave him. I just couldn’t. I was lost without Lucas. Adrift. He was an anchor, even if it was in a port that was continuously stormy. It made me a bad mother and a bad omega. I have many regrets, Sabina. So many. Living my life again is giving me the opportunity to rectify the many mistakes I made.”
I wasn’t about to argue with that, not when she’d been a terrible mother and omega, and had done so many things she should regret, but neither was I about to pour salt in her many wounds. “Do you know why you never passed on?”
“The Mother said it was because Eli needed me.”
“For what?”
“Support, I suppose. Even if I wasn’t very good at that either. When she offered me a second chance, a chance to be with Paul and Lucas again, I took it with both hands, especially when she told me that Eli would discover his mate soon after.” A whine escaped her. “But even that didn’t last long. Paul attacked you, and Austin did what needed to be done.”
She meant back in Nevaehai. “Why did he attack us?”
“Jealousy. I miss him.”
The simple words were, yet again, confirmation that love didn’t have to make sense. As I thought about that, thought about how my mates and I were destined to have parents with little to no control over their hearts and their brains, I thanked the Mother for what we had.
Our love was true, and pure, and strong.
Perfect.
Kali Sara, we were more than fortunate.
A thought occurred to me. “You really can’t shift back?”
“I shifted once, but only in the totem circle, and I’m not allowed in there again.”
I tilted my head to the side. “Why did She let you in that time?”
“Because I wished to talk to Her about my grandson. I wanted to make sure he was safe.”
My heart leaped into my throat at that. “She promised me he wouldn’t be taken from me.”
“She said as much to me too. Sabina, I will always protect you. Always. It is my pleasure, my one joy to be around you all, to be so close and to serve a purpose in keeping you safe. I only ran to the woods because I felt your hatred for me. The boys, I don’t blame them for being wary around me. I was a terrible mother, I—”
Knight pulled his hand back from her fur at that, and even though she shuffled forward, ramming into the invisible barrier between us with an audible crack, and I tried to encourage him to touch her again, he wouldn’t, and when I pushed him through the totem circle, he started bawling his eyes out like I was hurting him.
Quickly bringing him to my chest, I hugged him, holding him close, rocking him and soothing him as I tried to make amends for my attempt at forcing that connection.
When Berry yipped at me, and said, “Totem,” I wasn’t sure what to think. I’d expected her to say she loved Knight or something, not that. So, twisting around, I looked up at the totem, and what I saw made me lightheaded.
The obelisk, so tall, so stalwart, so timeless…had a massive crack down the center. Exactly as if an axe had cleaved it in two, like it was a log for the fire.
Then it hit me.
Knight’s intervention… this was the result. Which meant when he’d healed the pack, there’d likely been damage, we’d just never noticed it.
Well, there was no failing to notice this.
His healing, it became clear, came with a price.
As I jerked onto my feet, I stared up at the damage, and a sensation of foreboding hit me. One so deep and so strong, that I feared for the future.
Not mine, not my mate’s. But Knight’s. And the babies in my belly.
Hugging him close to me, protecting him while I could for as long as I was able, I stared up at the harbinger, well aware, deep in my heart, in my very soul, that nothing would ever be the same again.
Daniel
Six years later
I stared out of the window, onto the city buildings, a vista that some might find beautiful, with the ocean glinting in the background, just barely visible in between the skyscrapers, but for me, it was a prison.
A concrete jungle that I longed to be free of.
I missed the trees, the fresh air, and the open spaces. I missed the ability to run, the freedom to go outside, and be at one with nature. I missed all that as much as I missed my family.
Mother, it had been too long since I’d seen them. Over three years because the last time Seth had gone home, he’d attacked Grace and had been banished from the pack. Which meant, though it wasn’t as binding for me, that I’d been banished too.
My home was lost to me for as long as Seth lived, but it was my sacred duty to guard him, to protect him.
The day was coming, that was all I knew. A day that would see sides being chosen.
Irony of ironies, Seth thought I’d have his back. Why wouldn’t he?
When didn’t I protect him?
He was strong, but he was only a beta-type at most. With his past, and with the way he treated people, if he didn’t have me at his back to defend him, he’d have had the shit kicked out of him long ago.
I was his guardian. The barrier between him and the repercussions of the choices he made on a daily basis.
But I was waiting.
Just waiting for that day when I could take up my stance and join the rightful side.
Grace’s.
I figured she’d have more than one mate. She was barely five, and already, the power she held was captivating. Enough to marvel at, to behold with astonishment and joy.
I’d met her that first time when Seth had, and he’d attacked her. Even as my wolf had been snarling at me to tear out his throat, the enforcer in my soul, a duty that was written into me b
y the Mother’s word, which bound me by the covenant that had gifted me Grace, had forced me to hold him back.
To take him away.
To keep him from her.
She was only a child. Barely ready for pre-school. I was getting ready for junior year. My other mates were children too. It was strange to have three mates all under seven, made me feel like some kind of freak, but seeing them grow wasn’t a privilege I was allowed to have because of Seth.
My driving urge was to protect them. To keep them safe. But that wasn’t something I could do because of him, and any sense of duty that bound me to him was slowly turning to hate. With every letter I read, with every call from home, I missed my family. Not just the little kids that would, ultimately, become adults that were as bound to me as I was to them. But Sabina, Ethan, Eli, Austin. I missed their counsel, their wisecracks. The security of their love, the way they grounded me just by being them.
I even missed Lara and Todd. Missed the Thanksgivings and Christmases I wasn’t allowed to visit home for, and only the Mother knew when I’d be able to.
I was homesick, and it was way worse than when Sabina had found me, my grubby hands on a candy bar that I’d pocketed to ease the gnawing ache in my belly, when I was older than my mates were now.
My mother had died, my father had been slain in a challenge, and though I’d been cast out of my pack, the pain in my heart was nothing in comparison to this.
The gnawing ache inside me.
“Come to bed,” Seth grumbled. “Shut the curtains. We have to be up early in the morning.”
“Since when do I always do as you tell me to?” I growled back, not even bothering to twist around to glare at him.
I knew he sensed my mood.
That was the bitch of it.
Seth was sure I was his mate.
Talk about a clusterfuck.
But I wasn’t.
He wasn’t mine.
I had enough mates to know what that kind of connection felt like, even if they were all kids and there wasn’t anything other than a small link between us. One that tied me to each of them. Like a sparkler flaring to life instead of an atomic bomb.
With Seth, if we were mates, we’d have been at each other like rabbits. And though we’d messed around a few times last year, something he wanted more of, I wasn’t interested.
Fucking for the sake of fucking wasn’t fun. Not when you knew your destiny.
Not when you were waiting for the slow passage of time to crawl on by so that your mates were old enough to fucking graduate.
I scrubbed a hand over my face, wiping away the fatigue that hit me. I was, I knew, getting maudlin, and that was leading to me being depressed. Of course, that made me tetchy.
Dumbfuck that I was, I thought that was understandable, only Seth didn’t get it.
He didn’t want to be in Highbanks, ergo, I shouldn’t want to be there either.
He loved Miami. Loved it. Loved the nightlife, the energy, even the fucking heat.
Me? I was miserable. Absolutely goddamn miserable.
I heard his sheets rustle as he climbed out of bed and stepped toward me. His hand moved to my shoulder, gripping it gently as he asked, with a softness no one outside these four walls would believe him capable of, “What is it? What’s wrong?” When I didn’t say a word, his hand moved down, around to my waist and to my dick. “If you can’t sleep, I can help you with that.”
Grabbing his wrist, I yanked his arm up and out, before I twisted it behind his back.
“I told you not to touch me.”
His nostrils flared. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Daniel? We’re mates.”
The words were enough to have me letting go of him. He tried to get into my face, tried to move into my space, but I shoved him back, shoved him away, deeper into the bedroom where our twin beds, with the oak head and footboards, lay flat to the walls.
But I pushed him too hard. Too fast.
He moved back, all right, skidding on the rug as he went. I watched him, his feet sweeping out from under him, as he toppled, his head cracking against the solid footboard as he went down.
For a second, I could only stare at him.
Could only gape at his still form.
Then, the blood started to seep from his head, pooling into the navy rug below, creating a stain that was close to black with its density, and I knew, I knew he was dead.
I’d killed him.
I should have felt shame. Guilt. Terror.
But the only feeling that whispered through me was relief…
Daniel’s tale continues in SUN CHILD.
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Secrets & Lies is now free!
Meg’s love life was missing a spark until she discovered her need to be dominated. When her fiancé shared the same kink, she thought all her birthdays had come at once, and then she came to learn their relationship was one big fat lie.
Gabe has loved Meg for years, watching her from afar, and always wishing he’d been the one to date her first and not his brother. When he has the chance to have Meg in his bed—even better, tied to it—it’s an opportunity he can’t refuse.
With disastrous consequences.
Can Gabe make Meg realize she’s the one woman he’s always wanted? But once secrets and lies have wormed their way into a relationship, is it impossible to establish the firm base of trust needed between lovers, and more importantly, between sub and Sir…?
This story features orgasm control in a BDSM setting.
Secrets & Lies is now free!
Also By Serena Akeroyd
For the latest updates, be sure to check out my website!
But, if you’d like to hang out with me and get to know me better, then I’d love to see you in my Diva reader’s group where you can find out all the gossip on new releases as and when they happen. You can join here: www.facebook.com/groups/SerenaAkeroydsDivas. Or, you can always PM or email me. I love to hear from you guys: [email protected].
Until I see you there or you write me an email or PM, here are more of my books for you to read…
The Year of the Wolf
Wolf Child
Moon Child
Sun Child (Coming Soon)
The Five Points’ Collection
The Air He Breathes
Filthy Rich
Filthy Dark
The Kingdom of Veronia Collection
Theirs
A Dark And Dirty Sinners’ MC:
Nyx
Link
Sin
Steel
Cruz
Dragon Bound
Coven
Leman
Eight Wings Academy
The Ascended
HawkRidge High
Dare You To Love Me
Dare You To Keep Me
Hell’s Rebels MC
All Sinner No Saint
The Sex Tape (Co-written with Helen Scott)
The Professor
The Caelum Academy
Seven Wishes
Eight Souls
Nine Lives
Naughty Nookie
Sinfully Theirs
Sinfully Mastered
The Gods Are Back In Town
Hotter than Hades
The Sun Revolves Around Apollo
FourWinds
Queen of the Vamps
QUINTESSENCE
Hers To Keep
Theirs To Cherish
Hers To Hold
Forever Theirs
Secrets & Lies
The TriAlpha Chronicles
Origin
Trinity
Triskele
Triad
Triumph
Trierna
TriAlpha
Los Lobos
Bound
The Salsang Chronicles (written with Helen Scott)
Stained Egos
Stained Hearts
Stained Minds
S
tained Bonds
Stained Souls
About the Author
I'm a romance novelaholic and I won't touch a book unless I know there's a happy ending. This addiction is what made me craft stories that suit my voracious need for raunchy romance. I love twists and unexpected turns, and my novels all contain sexy guys, dark humor, and hot AF love scenes.
I write MF, Menage, and Reverse Harem (also known as Why Choose romance,) in both contemporary and paranormal. Some of my stories are darker than others, but I can promise you one thing, you will always get the happy ending your heart needs!
Moon Child: A PNR Shifter Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 2) Page 32