Filed to story: Mated to the Alpha and His Beta Novel Free >>???
I knew there was something desperate happening to my body. Hands on me. Voices calling my name.
Katie, Lanie, Katie, Lanie.
Who was I?
Who had I ever been?
Who would I become?
When I got into the meadow, the scent of flowers was like some sweet perfume that made my head spin. Dizzy, I sank onto a bed of soft grass while the flowers crushed underneath me and cast out even more glorious scents. I looked up at the sky and saw the sun, so bright I had to shield my eyes.
But also the Moon at the same time. So much smaller than her sister, and to some, less powerful. She guided and blessed the wolves and kept us from harm, while the Sun had the strength and power to give life…and take it away.
My back arched as a groan slipped out of me.
In my mouth, I felt the sharpness of vampire fangs. They dented my bottom lip, piercing my own flesh until I tasted a hint of blood.
Vampires die in the sunshine without protection, and I had none.
“No,” whispered the Moon Goddess. You have me.”
Then I was floating, my toes barely grazing the ground and the grass and the crushed flowers.
The Moon and the Sun both bathed me in their lights. Silver and gold swirled around me.
From the Moon, I felt strength and power, as well as comfort. Assurance. Guidance.
From the Sun came ferocity, determination, and an edge of fear. A promise of punishment,if I did not obey. “I don’t understand, Moon Goddess! Please, as your humble ser vant, I beg of you to help me understand.”I couldn’t see her, but her voice filled my head with a chime like bells. Like the soft hush of waves rolling against a shore. Like a mother singing her babies to sleep.
“You are not only mine, child.”
“I owe my allegiance to you!” I cried.
Her soft chuckle made me feel like I was wrapped in a warm blanket, being rocked like an infant.
“And I welcome it. But you have more than wolf inside you, and you must accept the blessings and restrictions of the sun, as well.
Accept who you are. Fully.”
Above me, the sky turned to navy, sprinkled with glittering stars. The Moon and the Sun continued to shine. I felt like I could feel the earth turning beneath my feet, but I wasn’t dizzy.
“Your daughter would not be a Celestial if she had not been born to you,” the Moon Goddess said. “You created her, and you have raised her.
Now is the time to take her counsel. She is no longer a child.”
“But Alaina and Isaac are. Don’t they still need their mother?” I lifted my face to the skies,pleading to understand. “How can I leave them behind in the care of someone I can’t trust?
Can you give me assurance that Gabriela won’t let them come to harm?”“You stand in the Sun, and you do not burn.
That alone should tell you enough.”
I fell onto my hands and knees and pressed my face into the sweet smelling earth. A single word had hung behind my closed eyes,illuminated like a neon sign.
Xander–
“So, what happens if she doesn’t wake up?” I asked Stella.
“We don’t have time to keep messing around with this s hit,” Mason spat. “Stella, if you expect us not to fight you, then you have to tell us what we can do.”
“Gabriela could come back here at any second,”
Zane said quietly. “If she sees Lanie like this,won’t the High Council also see it? How will we be able to explain it to her without revealing everything?”
“This is a pretty terrible time for the Moon Goddess to put her in a f ucking coma,” I said with my fists clenched. I waited for lightning or something to strike me for my blasphemy.
I almost welcomed it. At least that would be something I could understand.
Something I could hate the Goddess for.
“She’s not in a coma. She’s walking in the world between,” Stella said after a moment. Her expression shadowed. “She’s having trouble returning.”
I growled. My wolf paced. He wanted to leap out of my skin. I wanted to let him. If I was my wolf, I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this.
No. I shook away that cowardice. An Alpha didn’t run. Not from a fight. Not from trouble.
And not from this.“I was going to leave her as long as the Goddess wanted her, but…” Stella hesitated. Her shoulders bowed, and her head hung. “I’m sorry, fathers. I’m sorry for how hard this all is.”
Her head went up. Her eyes blazed with a swirl of colors, finally settling on a brilliant gold rimmed with silver. I’d never seen anything like it, and the sight had my blood running cold. I’d known our daughter was powerful, but in this moment, she didn’t look…human.
“I will go alone,” Stella said. “I will go to Standard to the High Council and let them take me. If they have me, they’ll leave everyone else alone!”
Mason went to her at once and gathered her against his chest. “Never. I will never allow that, Stella, so you can stop with that nonsense right now.”
“Have you seen what happens if you do that?”
Zane asked quietly.
“It doesn’t matter. We won’t let her face them alone,” Mason snapped back at him.
My brother had been there for Stella’s first moments in this life. He’d been her father before either me or our Beta. She clung to him now, her face against his chest, while he stroked her hair. I couldn’t see those strange and wild eyes anymore. Right now, she looked like a scared young woman seeking comfort from her father.Which was exactly who she was. My heart twisted. She was our daughter, and there was no way we were ever going to let her face danger without us at her back.
“Stella, what happens if you go alone?” I asked, not because I didn’t know, but because I wanted to force her to say it out loud.
If she had to admit the future she saw along this path, I hoped she’d realize she couldn’t take it. I even sent up a prayer and an apology to the Moon Goddess. I begged her to take care of our Luna…and also our Celestial.
Stella shook her head against Mason’s chest,but then, after a few seconds, lifted her face.
Tears streaked it. Her silver and gold eyes had faded to their normal color, but I would never forget the sight of them.
“If I go there alone…”
“She dies, that’s what happens,” Mason snapped.
“She’s a Celestial,” I said quietly, holding her gaze with my own. “They wouldn’t kill her.
They’d find a way to use her, and that would be worse.”
“You’d be safe… Brightsky would be safe…”
“For how long?” I challenged her.“For as long as I made them!” she cried. “Id make sure. I wouldn’t do what they want unless they swore not to hurt anyone here!”
“They’d use you to destroy everything else,Stella. What are our lives worth if the rest of the world suffers?
How could we ever live knowing that we were only safe because everyone else wasn’t?” I asked her.
Her expression twisted, and she pulled out of Mason’s arms. She turned her back to us. Her head again.
Mason spoke next. “You might have every power ever known. You may be able to change the tides control the weather and whatever other talents exist that I don’t even know about. But none of that mean have to do any of this alone. Ever.”
Stella heaved a sobbing gasp and faced us. “I want to make you all proud-”
“You do!” Mason assured her. “Always.”
Zane hugged her, then stepped back. “Of all the possible paths you can see, which is the one with the best outcome? Is it still leaving the twins behind with Gabriela while we take you someplace else and lure theHigh Council there?”
“Yes,” Stella said. “Many paths and many outcomes, but that is still the best one. I’ll go to the world.
between and bring Mother home.”
Lanie–
I’d been working with my grandfather and Charlotte to access my different traits. I’d mastered some of them and learned there might be some I’d never be able to control. But until I stood under the mutual glow of both the Moon and the Sun with the stars dancing between them, I hadn’t ever truly accepted that I was not wolf-kind.
I was a hybrid. Many pieces together in one vessel. The body that I’d left behind. The one I needed to return to so I could support my daughter.
For a second that might as well have been an eternity, I tipped my face up to the Sun.
It bathed me in its glow. I held out my arms, letting the golden light cover me all over.
I’d walked in the sunshine for my entire life without worry, not knowing I had vampire blood running in my veins. Not realizing how lucky I was that the Sun didn’t choose to fry me alive.
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?