Filed to story: Owned by the Alphas Novel
I blew out a deep breath before lying back on the water, looking up at the dark sky.
The cold bit into me, but it was surface deep–I wasn’t cold.
I should have been–without Lorelai’s magic, we were prone to feeling more than we usually did as wolves, but the lake never felt cold to me, only refreshing. It relaxed every muscle, every tense breath, and I soaked it in.
I closed my eyes, listening to the crash of the water from the waterfall, then took a deep breath and let myself sink back down into the lake. I made it to the bottom as relaxed and calm as I could be without Lorelai and Nikolai safe.
The second I thought of her, my chest tightened, aching like all hell, but I couldn’t move.
The water locked me in, and I frowned, my shadows thrashing around me. I tried to kick off the lake bed, but the water wouldn’t let me go. It held me in place, and my eyes flung open, trying to see a way out, but instead, I saw something that had me collapsing into the sand.
Lorelai.
She was hanging against a wall, bloodied and bruised, her head hung, her arms out, shackled in silver clasps with the same magic binding seal on them.
I tried to reach out in front of me, to the vision in front of me, shimmering in the water, but it swiped it away. I scrambled for it, making my lungs ache, my eyes burn, but I didn’t care. I needed more.
The lake gave it to me.
Lorelai appeared again, my shadows crowding the image as they tried to get to her too.
She was in the same place, on the same wall, in the same abused state, and I tried not to scream. But the alpha in me, the mate in me, was already there, screaming, clawing at my insides, trying to break free.
But the lake kept us both there, staring at the dull, murky image of our mate.
Until the moonlight I had seen earlier on top of the lake fell on the image, highlighting the silver cuffs on her wrists. The crescent shone right down on them, and I went still.
The cuffs.
They were stopping her from getting out, breaking free, and getting her and Kai out of there.
It rammed home inside me, and I knew what I had to do.
This time when I kicked off the sand, the lake let me go, and I shot through the surface. My shadows were already swirling around me, helping me dress before I was running back to the city.
Before I got there, I sensed I was being followed and spun to face the single entity stalking me, baring my teeth and red eyes, my wolf right there, testing my control as the scent of it hit me. Another wolf. But not one of ours.
“Rogue,” I snarled as it came out of the shadows, scraggly hair with blood around its mouth. It sneered at me.
I raised a brow as her lithe, naked form stopped before me. She was all skin and bone, nothing to her, and I frowned at how annoyed it made me to see one of our kind starving.
“Alpha Braxton.” She bowed, and I snarled again. Rogues didn’t bow, and they did not have alphas. They had given up that right a long time ago.
“What do you want, rogue?” I demanded, anger flaring higher at the interruption when I had to follow through on the plan forming in my head.
Zale and Enzi had reached their mom before, pulled her through a closed portal–
created one–to get her back. I had to get them to do it again, and this time, undo those cuffs.
I wouldn’t let them near the vamps physically, but they had shadows for a reason, and if they let me guide theirs, then I could help her and Kai get out. Give them a fighting chance. I just had to get rid of the rogue first.
“Figures. You don’t remember me, Brax?” she asked, her eyes wary and red as she tried to circle me. I gnashed my teeth at her, and she stopped.
“No, but I know you’re a rogue, which is all I need to know.”
“How does my brother’s wolf feel inside you?” she snapped, and I halted in my dismissal.
My entire frame went rigid as my friend’s face flashed in my mind. He’d had a family. They hadn’t been told much, but she had figured it out. Guilt gnawed at my heart, and every shred of peace I had found a moment ago disappeared.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snapped back, but she smirked.
“Sure you don’t. Look, I’m not going to fight you or challenge you over it. I tried that and got kicked out for it–“
“What?” I demanded, her story not adding up with what I had heard. She gave me a dry laugh.
“Of course you don’t know. They took my brother as a sacrifice, and my parents were so pleased to offer him up to the alpha family. Then your parents had the loose ends killed. Luckily for me, I had fought them on the sacrifice idea, and they had already cast me out, made me a rogue for it. I’ve accepted it, but times are tough, and I need a favor,” she said.
My heart stuttered, trying to connect the dots and remember the circumstances around what had happened, but it was spotty, and I couldn’t put full sentences together.
“What do you want?”
“I want back in,” she said quickly, and my eyes went wide.
“It’s Winter. We can’t let rogue wolves in during that time.”
“I never wanted to be a rogue. I always respected your authority.”
“That doesn’t mean I can just let you back in,” I said, looking over her dirty brown hair and pale features.
I felt sorry for her; there was no denying that. I was sure the pity was all over my face, but there was no way I was letting her in the pack when we’d had so many issues with backstabbers. I wasn’t about to let the next one in.
It also wasn’t my decision. I could, technically, make it, but I wasn’t going to. Not when Lorelai was the reason for my existence and might have a bitch fit about it. A well-deserved one, but still, I had to give her the choice.
“Why not? You know I deserve to be there, and shit is different now. The vamps are everywhere, and I am sick of paying for this shit when it was never mine. I tried to save my brother. I know it went against everyone–“
“What’s your name?” Brax interrupted, and she swallowed.
“Heather.”
“Heather, I know it’s bad out there, and I hate the idea that our kind, rogue or not, is out there getting picked off by those bloodsuckers. But I can’t let you in the city.
Our Alpha and Luna are being held captive by vamps; the wolves are losing their shit. And honestly? It’s a shit show here too,” I explained.
She looked past me to the city, her eyes wavered, and she nodded. “I get it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Any chance you’ve got some food on you?”
I shook my head. “No, sorry. But I’ll have some delivered to the gate. You can pick some up and let the rogues know there will be a basket there every day with refreshments.”
She smiled sadly and shook her head.
“They won’t come. They know you guys are a target and have vamps everywhere.
They won’t risk it, and they will think it’s a trick,” she shrugged, and pain pierced me again. Fuck it, why was I the pushover?
I let out a deep sigh before looking over my shoulder and back at her.
“The water villages aren’t being used by the humans. The rogues can hide out there if they want, and we’ll talk about you joining us again once I get my mate back.
Until then, I can’t promise anything,” I said, and she lit up.
“You said she’s being held by the vamps?”
I nodded.
“And if I help get her back, you would consider taking me back?”
“It’d be up to her.”
“I can help; they had me locked up there for a while. I can get them out.”
My heart raced at that before I narrowed my eyes.
“How do you know how to get them out? How did you?” I demanded, my wolf burning but my shadows calm, and that held me at bay.
“I look like a weak little thing, but I can hold my own. I used that underestimation to my advantage.” She grinned, and I smirked despite not wanting to give anything away.
“My mate, she’s winter born. She’s locked in by magic cuffs,” I explained, and she paled.
“She’s the power they wanted,” she whispered, backing up a little. I frowned at the action and the fear in her face.
“You know they wanted her?”
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?