Persephone's Wolves, page 35
Only then do I feel a little embarrassment for what we did, knowing we have crossed a line from just kissing to something else.
I don’t regret this, I never could, but somehow I suspect this wasn’t planned.
“Sleep, Mai,” Ragnar whispers to me, and in my sated body, I let my eyes close, and this time, I dream of nothing but them holding me, never letting me go.
Forty-Six
I spin my spoon around in my bowl of corn cereal, wishing for any of them to say something. The alphas are all sitting around the six-seater table, and Trey is on the edge, talking about the rainforest we have passed through.
“Jenny said she saw a tiger. A real tiger!” Trey exclaims. “I’ve only seen them in books, but she said they are bigger and brighter coloured than she thought. I wish I was there, but I was stupidly looking at a bright red flower.”
“That’s so cool,” I tell Trey.
“Kid, you’re going to be late for the drawing class Breelyn is hosting,” Ragnar gently tells him. He shoots up and basically runs out of the seat and down the carriage.
“I think our little boy has a crush on a certain white wolf,” Henderson points out. “It’s cute.”
“It is,” I say before going back to turning my cereal around, my appetite gone. Though, I have eaten three pieces of toast and four slices of bacon before this, so that might be the reason, not just the uncomfortable silence that has occurred since I woke up in Ragnar’s arms, alone in the carriage. I haven’t slept that well in a long time, my body so relaxed, and even then, I burned for more from Ragnar this morning. I was almost glad when Phim knocked to say it was my time in the bathroom. Valentine winks at me when I look up once, and my cheeks burn red.
“Last night...,” I start. “Well, you all look—”
“Pissed off we weren’t there?” Silas states. “Yeah, that’s what the silence is about. Sweetheart, your moans echoed, and it was fucking hot. My wolf is jealous, that’s all.”
“And we promised not to touch you until we get home and you know the cost,” Henderson growls at Ragnar.
“A word in private, brother?” Ragnar growls right back.
“Please don’t fight,” I ask.
“We won’t,” Henderson carefully replies, but I don’t for one second believe him with that tone. They both walk out of the carriage, and I look at Valentine.
“Go after them?” I ask him.
He sighs, climbing out of his seat. “For you, anything.”
Silas crosses his arms, watching me, a wicked smile on his lips. “Time for training.”
“Why do I get the feeling training is going to be painful today?” I ask.
“Because it is,” he deadpans.
I groan, wishing I hadn’t eaten so much for breakfast as we clear the table before heading to the nearly empty carriage we use for training. I pull off my jumper and pile it on the side as Adira and Phim come into the room. Breelyn trains with Phim later today so she can have time with the children. That way all of us are with the kids at some point in the day, which means they get into less trouble, which is good for all of us. I don’t think I will ever forget the day they decided to revolt and not wear nappies.
I shiver from the memory.
Adira walks up to me, shifting the air and growling low before shoving my shoulder as she walks past me. Phim just laughs and winks at me, choosing to lean against the wall nearby. If I wasn’t blushing before, I am now. It seems like everyone knows what happened last night now, but I don’t regret it. I had no clue being touched like that could feel so good, so incredible. There is an ache now, between my legs, that wasn’t there before. I want to do that again and again, and find out if sex can be just as pleasurable, even if some part of me fears sex because of what happened in my past. I know they would never hurt me like he did, but perhaps just because of that tiny bit of fear, I’m not a hundred percent ready to take it to a new level with them. I’m not sure how I could fit the impressive length I saw last night inside of me. Doesn’t even seem possible.
“Adira and Mai. Combat training today. I’m going to draw a circle, and the objective is to get the opponent out of the circle,” Silas instructs. “No hits to the face or below the waist.”
Adira nods, looking pleased, and I gulp, getting the feeling this is going to hurt. The sadistic bastard only smirks as he grabs chalk and draws a large circle. I blow out a breath as I tie my hair back and step into the circle. Adira doesn’t pause as she moves fast, running at me and slamming into my body hard. I fall out of the circle straight away, pain lacing my shoulder.
“Come on, at least be a challenge, or I’m going to sleep right here in this circle!” Adira taunts. I climb to my feet and get back in the circle, bouncing on my feet from one foot to the other, ready if she pulls that move again. Truthfully, I want to let her win a few times so I can observe. I already know she thinks her left side is stronger, and she steps forward with her right foot. She favours her left hook, and she looks up as a cue she is about to move. I see her cue, and I smoothly sidestep her, almost making her stumble from the circle herself. She wastes no time swinging her leg and kicking me in the stomach. I nearly fall back from the pain, but I hold my own and only rub my stomach.
This time, I go for her.
Copying her move, I swing my leg out, but I catch her left hip instead, knocking her back a step. With my hands, I shove her shoulders, and she falls arse-first out of the circle. Breathlessly, I grin at her.
“Looks like I win.”
“You won’t always,” she hisses, climbing to her feet and storming to me. She punches me hard across the face, surprising me, and I taste my blood in my mouth as I spin to her.
“I said no hits to the face, Adira!” Silas shouts. “Get the fuck out of here if you can’t behave.”
“Sorry, alpha,” she says sweetly, inclining her head. Silas comes to me with a towel and holds it against my cut lip.
“Jealousy is a real bitch, isn’t it?” Phim laughs. “Maybe you should keep your eyes on that one, alpha.”
“Beta Seraphim, don’t you have other things to do?” Silas coldly snaps at her.
She only winks his way. “I know you don’t.”
“Is this the day for females to disobey and piss me off?” Silas demands.
I chuckle, meeting his eye. “Be honest with yourself, the females you surround yourself with are hardly submissive, and you love it.”
His eyes glint with a challenge. “Making certain wolves submit is an interest of mine.”
“I bet,” Phim jokes, but the tone of the room has changed. The scent coming off him has also as he looks at me, red leaking into his eyes. “Right, that’s me out,” Phim says.
I barely hear the carriage door open and shut as I watch Silas. “You’re trouble.”
“I know,” I reply, letting him move closer. He leans down and ever so carefully brushes his lips across mine, the sting of pain and pleasure almost as one. My blood coats his bottom lip as he runs his tongue across it and steps back, a low groan escaping the back of his throat. “You were sent to this world to torment me.”
I shrug a shoulder. “What is a better way to be tormented?” I walk around him and to the carriage door.
“Training isn’t over,” he growls at my back.
“Yes, it is,” I reply, knowing he won’t stop me as I leave him in tormented silence, a train carriage full of our desire to keep him company.
Forty-Seven
I climb onto a plastic brown storage box, which looks filled with clothes, before crawling between two more and finally making my way to the back of the train carriage and to the newly fitted floor-to-ceiling glass window that overlooks everything we pass through. The last carriage is a new addition that the Fenrir city happened to have, and it’s used for storage, meaning it’s nearly always empty. Thankfully, no one else has found my secret hideaway. We are currently gliding through the remains of a small town covered in grass fields and tall trees that stretch into the sky. The small houses, with no roofs and covered in moss and ivy, are sad to look at, to see the shell of the homes they used to be. Now humans aren’t free, not unless you count being in slavery as free.
I sit down, crossing my legs and resting my back against the box, happy to be alone for a while. I found this place four days ago when I stormed off from training when Adira was overly flirty with Silas, and he either doesn’t notice or he is stupid. I’m not sure which it is when it comes to Adira, mostly because every interaction the alphas have with her shows they dote on her like a sister they are bound to protect.
They don’t see how she looks at them, and despite our stolen kisses, our moments, I have no claim on them.
It’s all so complicated, and my heart hurts deep within my chest when I think about it all. I rest back just as I hear the boxes move, and instinctively I slide a dagger out of my thigh clasp and lift it. When I see familiar red spiral hair right before Phim climbs through, I lower my dagger and she raises an eyebrow at me.
“I’m happy to see you finally learnt to trust no one. Not even your pack,” she states. I roll my eyes at her and slide my dagger back as she takes a seat next to me, not close enough to touch, but enough that it would be uncomfortable if I didn’t talk.
“This is meant to be my secret hiding place,” I say.
She laughs. “Make me leave then, bitch.”
I playfully lean over to elbow her, almost remembering the friendship we built before the mountain came crashing down on us, and then everything happened. She was my first friend and then, it turned out, my sister.
So many questions have been burning in my mind about her, about our past, and what she did in the Ravensword Pack.
“I’ve been a coward for not finding you and talking with you,” I start off, clearing my throat. I keep my eyes on the train track we leave behind us, hoping this talk will end with us putting our past behind. “I’m sorry for that, Phim. I want to know everything, if you will tell me, starting from the beginning. It’s also fine if you want to sit here with me in silence. I’m done assuming shit.”
“Thank fuck,” she mutters before crossing her leg over her other one and leaning back. “I’m your half-sister, as you well know, but you don’t know that my father went to the alphas of our pack and demanded I be given to him and his mate. I was taken as a baby, forcibly, from what I was told. They weren’t bad parents to me, and I only found out I wasn’t one of them when I shifted at five. As you well enough know, any female shifting before mating is made out to be impossible in Ravensword, and they control the young female wolves there with some kind of goddess magic. It didn’t work on me, so they hid me, forced me to never shift, and it’s a main reason why my wolf can be a real mean bitch.”
“Gods,” I whisper, unable to speak of the horror. Taking a baby from a mother is disgusting and cruel. The mother should always be able to choose what life she wants for her child. “So you were taken to Ravensword? I thought the story of you being thrown out for loving a woman was made up. Or at least part of it.”
“It wasn’t. My father and his mate took me out of the Fall Pack and to Ravensword Pack, making a special agreement with the alpha. Not the bastard currently ruling that shit show of a pack but his father,” she explains. “He told the Ravensword alpha all our secrets and, in exchange, my father was allowed to live there if he bound himself to the pack with his mate. I was to be bound when I found a mate.”
“So we were in the same pack all those years?”
“Yes. I heard of you, who didn’t? The female wolf found in the woods and kept as a foster kid,” she mutters. “But I didn’t live near you or the main city, mostly because my parents wanted to stay off the alpha’s radar as long as they could. I was thirteen when they both died, poisoned by the alpha himself, and I ran, only to be caught. I was kept, mated off to an idiot who couldn’t understand why I hadn’t shifted in front of him. He was high up in the wolf society, and I knew he would throw me to the alpha if he saw my black wolf that didn’t change white, because I may have said the binding words, but my wolf didn’t want to change alliance. Things were rough, and my worst fear was falling pregnant. That fear came true,” she tells me. My heart hurts for her.
“Oh, Phim,” I whisper, my voice a mess of emotions.
A single tear falls down her cheek. “I found a healer who could…fix my problem with medicine, old science from humans. I couldn’t have that baby; I was barely a teenager, and I hated my mate. I couldn’t do it.”
“I don’t judge you for your choice,” I softly tell her.
“I met Lucinda Ravensword the same night, and we fell in love. My mate”—she says the word with disgust—“found out somehow, even though we were careful, and ripped her apart. I killed him and ran, jumping into the sea before any of them could find me. Before getting to the Fall Mountain Pack, I really had given up hope on finding my past, and my current life was nothing short of painful. The alphas told me who they really were, who I was, when they met me and knew my scent was like yours. Your bloodline.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I tell her. “I really am.”
She nods. “I’d rather we didn’t speak of Lucinda again. It hurts to even say her name, and it will take many years for me until it doesn’t.”
“Of course. I’m honoured you told me,” I tell her. “If you ever want to talk, I will be here.”
She smiles, just a little bit. “Did you know you were from the Fall Pack at all then?”
“No, I didn’t. They told me everything, and I wanted to find you, desperately. I fought hard in the pack to become beta and teach the alphas I could be trusted, and they became my friends as my respect for them grew. So, with the alphas’ permission, I went to the commander of the king of the angels and he loved me so much he claimed me as one of his “children”. It’s a title to him as he sees himself as a creator of life. I played him, stayed close for eight months, looking for you when I was supposed to be spying on the alphas for the king. I told him lies about the alphas, pretending to hate them, and did terrible things to stay by Commander Oisean’s side, just in case you turned up.
“We went to every city, everywhere, and nothing, but I could feel you were alive just like the alphas could. It was like I knew you existed, something in my gut connected me to you. Maybe the gods told me, I don’t know. I gave up when it was clear you weren’t being kept by the angels, and I came back empty-handed, pretending to be Commander Oisean’s spy, but the alphas knew everything.” She pauses to laugh, humourlessly. “Then you just turned up, and you couldn’t remember our mother. When the mountain fell, I was blindsided. Oisean found me first and told me he was disappointed in me for not telling him that you were found. I lied and said I didn’t know who you were. He fell for it, and I had to play my part in the Ravensword Pack to save both our asses. I was lucky Alpha Sylvester never saw me and no one recognised me, or if they did, they didn’t say anything. Likely too scared to annoy the angels or their alpha.”
“You did that for me?” I whisper, tears stinging my eyes.
“This world is brutal, and I didn’t want you to be broken before I could save you,” she admits, looking away from me. “I was too late, and I fucking hate that.”
“And I didn’t remember anything to tell you. I don’t remember our mother either,” I say, understanding her. “You wanted to find me so I could tell you what she was like.”
“I wanted to find you because you’re my only family left in this world, and I won’t let the world take you from me. I’m your sister,” she firmly states. “Yes, a part of me longs for you to tell me what she was like, but I suspect that is something neither of us will have.”
“The alphas have told me little things,” I mutter, “but it’s not enough. I feel that.”
“Look at us on a train, driving through lands of ruins and human remains, and feeling sorry for ourselves. We have a lot to be thankful for, Mai. We have each other; even if you hate my guts, you’re stuck with me.”
I chuckle. “You’re not that bad.”
“I’m the best, thank you very much,” she corrects me. “I’ve never been in doubt of that.”
“I wish I could have saved you too,” I quietly tell her. “I wish I knew you’d risked so much for me. For years.”
“But you were broken. I’ve been there once,” she admits, her voice hazy. “That’s how I knew to be on that balcony, to stop you from making a big mistake. I’ve been there. My heart still paused for you when that white-haired, old beta walked you out.”
Cenwyn wasn’t old or white-haired?
“Cen—”
“I spent those days killing any male that came near your room and paying the whorehouse to bring females to the alpha’s door to distract him. I never left your side, and you weren’t alone there. Even as you screamed and cried and begged for someone to help you. I was there...I just couldn’t,” she says, her voice breaking.
I pick up her hand and squeeze it tightly. “I hated you in that moment for stopping me. I was so tired of fighting, and you’re right, I was broken. I had been broken for a long time, and what that monster did was like adding another rock to a sinking ship. But you stopped me and you saved me. Thank you, Phim. Thank you for saving me then, for every single time I don’t know about, and for every time in the future when I no doubt get in trouble.”
“If you try to hug me, I’m going to—”
“Shut up,” I say, pulling her into a hug. Gods damn me. “You’re my sister, and I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for everything.”
