Filed to story: The Alphas Contract Novel by Taylor West
“Oh, Mallory doesn’t want to go?”
Dane opens his mouth but Damien answers for him. “She’s decided not to. Her and Neah have been getting on really well and she wants to help Neah with the twins tonight.”
“Neah lets her near the twins?” I try to keep the surprise out of my tone.
“I never thought I would say this.” Dane smiles. “They get on well.”
“Oh.” I can’t deny that I was a little jealous. “So Jenson is being buried in the family plot?” I ask, redirecting the conversation.
“Yes. No matter what he got himself into. He is still one of us. He deserves to be buried alongside mum and dad.”
“Thanks.” I mumble
“You don’t need to thank me, Raven. He belongs in Black Shadow.”
If only he had realised that in the first place. Damien clears his throat and is staring at me. Shit, he had read my mind.
“What time?” I ask quietly
“Sundown is shortly after eight. We will start then.”
Making my way upstairs, I briefly check to see f Damien is following me, but I’m alone, though I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted. I guess Jenson’s coma had pushed us apart. Damien didn’t understand why I spent every moment with my dying brother and I couldn’t make him understand.
Wolves tend to move on quite quickly when someone dies. Minus a few exceptions. And from what t could see, Lycans moved on quickly too They would grieve for a couple of days and then accept the persons fate.
I have seen so many people die and the sadness would pass quite quickly. But I guess this time, it’s because I hoped for it not to be true. And Damien just didn’t seem to understand that.
I hear the twins giggling and follow the sound. Neah is laid on the floor on her stomach as Evrin and Logan climb all over her.
Somehow, I had missed how much they had grown. Now they were like actual little people, little Lycans.
The twins climb down and toddle over to me. Pulling at my leggings for me to lift them up.
“They’ve grown.” I mutter quietly
“Every single day.” Neah smiles back. “Though they have missed their Auntie Raven.”
I lift up Evrin first, staring into his bright blue eyes. His hands fumble in my dark hair as he giggles while Logan continues to pull at my leggings.
“Do you ever worry?” I ask in a whisper.
“Every single day.”
“And that doesn’t scare you?”
“Are you kidding me? Logan bumped his head the other day and I went into full blow panic. And that was something he did to himself. Now that they are walking, they don’t seem to understand that they have to duck to go under things that they once crawled under.” She laughs. “The only time I’m not worried about them is when they are sleeping. You will know what that’s like someday.” She beams at me and I shake my head.
“We talked about it, but then Jenson happened. Damien doesn’t get my sorrow and I’m starting to think that our bond is broken.” She screws up her face. “The advice I was given was to talk.”
“I am talking.”
“To your mate, Raven. He’s the one that needs to understand you. He’s the one that can read your mind, can feel what you are feeling.”
“Then why doesn’t he get it.”
“Because you were a twin who shared twin wolves. I mean, I don’t even fully understand how it works. I don’t even understand who decides who gets who. I’m still learning a lot of stuff, but maybe, if you talk to Damien instead of shutting him out.”
“I’m not shutting him out.”
She sighs. “You’ve barely spoken to him. He has made sure you slept, you were fed, that you changed your clothes. He has given you the space you needed to deal with the situation. He made sure you left the hospital even if it was only for a few minutes to make sure you were getting some fresh air. You are wrong about your bond being broken.”
I frown, I hadn’t really thought about that. somehow in my haze of making sure everything was in place for my brother, I had missed everything everyone was doing. “Since when did you get so wise?” I muse
She gets up off the floor, takes Evrin from me and settles into the large chair by the window. “You aren’t asking about being wise, are you. You want to know what’s happening with my darkness?”
I nod and scoop up a begging Logan. “No one talks about it. Are you okay?”
“Damien and Mallory made me believe that I had to fight it. That I have to hold it back and stop myself from going insane. Even Abraxas said something along a similar line but Nyx was never trying to hurt me. Not in the way everyone thinks.”
“I don’t follow.”
“She was frustrated. She had spent years not being able to communicate with me and then when she did, I kept trying to shut her down.” “So you were never going to go dark?”
“I could have, if I had continued not to accept Nyx, I would have eventually gone Rogue.” She frowns and bites on her bottom lip. “The darkness that makes the others Rogue is different, they become their Lycan, But I have a seperate one. Nyx has her own thoughts, opinions and feelings. We had to become one. It was the only way.”
“Dane mentioned that you were practising?”
Neah bobs her head at me and holds out her hand. Claws inch out of her finger tips, just enough for me to see before they disappear.
“It’s getting easier. And I’m not landing on my face anymore.”
I smirk and she returns it. “But you are okay, right?”
“Yes. I finally don’t have this crushing sensation.” She pats her chest and smiles. “And Nyx says about time. But we don’t have to talk about me. We can talk about anything you want.”
I didn’t want to talk about Jenson, not to anyone.
“The new girl, the one that Abraxas brought out of the fire. She’s a Lycan, right?”
“Yes.”
“Why did he help her?” She opens her mouth. “I mean, he is a Hunter, right, so he should want to kill her, but he saved her. That’s weird isn’t it.”
I look at my red eyed nephew. He is a mini version of Dane, even down to the way he looks at me. Like an all knowing look.
“I’m keeping an eye on him.” Neah tells me, but it didn’t feel like the truth.
Is this what it had come too? I grieve for my brother and they exclude me out of some things unless they feel I need to know it.
“Do you think Blair started the fire?” I had to know something. They couldn’t keep everything away from me just because they think I’m going to break at any second.
“Honestly? I don’t know. We haven’t seen her. She hasn’t made an appearance. No one has picked up her scent in the forest. If it was something to do with her and she was using someone else then it could be a possibility. But they said the fire….”
“Took away the scents,” I finish.
She presses her lips together and nods “You are asking about her because you want to punish her, don’t you?”
“She destroyed my brother, Neah. He gave up his own life because of what she did to him. And he never woke up to tell me what she did to him. He was so stubborn that ke kept the information to his damn self.”
“You couldn’t have saved him.”
“I know that now, but I can make sure she pays for what she did to him.”
Mallory
“Can you go and get Neah and Dane, please.” Eric tells me
“I can just link her.”
“I think it’s better if you go in person.” He stares through the gates at the group of people walking towards us. A huge amounnt of Lycans.
“Fine.” I roll my eyes at him, I still hadn’t had a chance to tell him I was pregnant. Or maybe secretly he already had guessed it. He hadn’t questioned me at all when I told him I wasn’t going on the pack run tonight.
I move quickly, but don’t run as I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. There were at least a hundred Lycans walking towards the gate and I don’t care what Abraxas says, he can’t kill that many in one go.
Damien and Dane are in the office. “Where’s Neah?”
“Upstairs with the boys. Why?”
“More Lycans.” They both start to leave. “You might want more backup.”
Dane turns to Damien and instructs him to round up some Wolves and Lycans and meet him at the gates.
Neah was easy to find, I follow the sound of her voice and she seems to be having a bit of a heated conversation with Raven.
“So you think that I should let you kill Blair because of Jenson?” The irritation was very clear.
“Look what she did to him!” Raven snaps back
“Raven, you are not the only one that wants to kill her.” Neah starts reeling off names of who wanted Blair dead.
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?