Chapter 23 – part 1
I remained in a terrible mood for the rest of the afternoon. I couldn’t concentrate or focus on anything. Two days in a row, I had seen Valen. The bond was buzzing, and I could feel it was making it increasingly difficult to do anything. On top of that, I had his lingering threat and the worry that came with it. He had the power to destroy the hotel we saved, the parting gift Valarie had given to Valarian and me. I felt protective of it; we built this place from its bare bones and gave it back life. I wasn’t about to stand by and let him take it from us. Yet I would be powerless against him in a city where rogues meant nothing.
It would be a lie if I said I wasn’t worried; I was. Macey, Zoe, and I have worked our asses off for years building this place back up. And for him to threaten to destroy it made my blood boil. The question lingering in the back of my mind remained: would he really destroy this place, harm his own mate’s business all because I refused to give into him?
“Ah mommy,” Valarian’s worried voice reaches my ears, and I lift my head to look at him. A shriek leaves my lips when I realize I was burning the grilled cheese. Smoke was billowing from the grill, and I rush over, ripping the tray out only to forget it was piping hot, and I wasn’t wearing oven gloves.
My fingers sizzle, and I drop the tray before racing to the sink and quickly turning the tap on to run my hand under the cold
water.
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Chapter 23 – part 1
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“Casey, don’t touch that,” I tell her when she leans down from the kitchen table to pick up the hot tray. She sits back up, and Zoe comes racing out with all the commotion. The smoke alarms suddenly start blaring loudly, and she opens the window above the sink before using a tea towel to waft the smoke out the window.
“Shit, Eve. Are you ok?” I nod, holding my hand under the cool water. My fingertips blistered while Zoe used the tea towel and picked up the tray, placing it on the stove and discarding the ruined grilled cheese. She then uses the broom to smack. the fire alarm, jabbing the button and cutting off its deafening noise.
“Let me see,” Zoe says, looking around me at my burnt hand.
“It’s fine; it will heal,” I tell her, and she clicks her tongue.
“You have been distracted all afternoon. What’s going on with you today?”
I glance at the small dining table in our cramped tiny kitchen. Both kids went back to their drawing and no longer paid attention to us.
“He came by again today,” I tell her, and Zoe sighs before running her fingers through her hair. I knew she worried I would turn out like Valarie, she and Macey had expressed multiple times they wanted me to mate another rogue to ensure I didn’t die, but other men didn’t faze me in the
Chapter 23–part 1
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slightest. I was content on my own, I liked my independence, and didn’t need a mate to be whole. However, I can’t deny. how the bond affected me.
“You need to figure something out, last night, you couldn’t sleep and were pacing all night, and now you’re burning yourself. Go for a run. Val always told you to run it off. Seeing him always weakened her. The more you see him, the more fragile you will become,” Zoe says before chewing her thumbnail and watching me nervously.
Zoe’s right, and I remembered every time that Alpha came to visit Valarie, she would be out of it for days. We would have to force her out of bed. Yet, that couldn’t be happening to me. Not yet surely. Valarie lasted decades before her deterioration got so bad that it killed her. The memory makes me shudder.
“Go, you know you should. When was the last time you even shifted?” I shrug, knowing she’s right and it had been well and truly over a month.
Yet I hated shifting. It was a constant reminder of what had become of me. Each time, my wolf side became smaller and weaker. If I didn’t shift, my mental state would start to
deteriorate along with my body. When she was still able, Valarie told me that shifting helped ward off the effects of the bond.
Gosh, how I miss that woman. She was one of a kind and one of the best women I had the pleasure of ever meeting. She would have been a great grandmother had she gotten the
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chance to live longer. One thing I will never forgive Alpha Kalen for, he killed her, and I just had to make sure his son didn’t make history repeat itself.
Valen won’t kill me, and he won’t get my son; I will make sure
of it.
“Go, you can tell me about it later when the kids are in bed,” says Zoe. I nod, looking over at them. Valarian’s amber eyes. stare down at his paper as he works on his picture, concentrating hard, his tongue poking out the corner.
Zoe sets a glass of juice on the table beside him, and he stares at it and his lips purse while his brows furrow as he glares at it before moving it onto the coaster. He then does the same with Casey’s. Meanwhile, his pencils are all straight in a row, set perfectly and even sharpened to the same length. However, Casey’s are in disarray, and I could see his fingers twitch to straighten them for her.
“Sorry, Valarian, I forgot,” Zoe laughs softly before ruffling his thick dark hair. He looks like his father, a spitting image, and I sometimes notice this particular stare. It was clear there was power in him. He already had a particular atmosphere about him, he was an Alpha in the making, and I wasn’t sure it would remain hidden. One day someone would notice he wasn’t like other rogues. He was born from Alpha parents. Even though I no longer had an aura, he was strong and dominant.
His personality is quite intense for a child. Casey was like any child; though she looked like Zoe, I could see her father in her
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Chapter 23–part 1
too. Casey had his dark blonde hair and brown eyes, though her soft facial features and her nose she got from her mother.
“Eve, go. The kids are fine,” Zoe tells me, and I nod. I felt like I was failing my son, I hardly had time, and I hated spending it away from my son when I did. I felt so spread thin, always racing around the hotel and lacking the energy to function by the afternoon, always working, building our village, and his future.
I kiss Valarian on the cheek as I walk around the table to grab my sneakers.
“Can I come?” Valarian asks, and my heart thumps at the thought. He loves watching me shift, not realizing how much weaker I was to a regular werewolf. How was he to know when I am the only one he has seen? But lately, the reserve hasn’t been safe.
A few forsaken have come into the city recently, it has been unusual. Though the city’s border patrols quickly put them down, it made me nervous about taking my son out there. Since the last encounter reported, I hadn’t been out after a group of rogues was attacked.
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Chapter 23–part 2
