by H Q Kingsley
My mouth hung open as I still tried to process everything the doctor had just told me. I was pregnant. That had been the ultimate goal, but I hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.
“So, he’s okay?” Elspeth asked, his voice tight and full of emotion.
“Yes. 100%. You’re looking at a perfectly healthy pregnancy. Of course, as with any pregnancy, you’ll want to take it easy and not cause yourself unnecessary stress. But keep doing what you’re doing. Everything looks great.” He moved to my side to give my shoulder a squeeze. “Do you have any questions for me?”
I had a million questions, but for some reason, only one kept circling in my head, and it wasn’t for Doctor Kendrick.
I cautiously sat up, looking at Elspeth for any protest, but he still sat in stunned silence.
I placed his hands in my lap and turned toward him. “Elspeth?”
He blinked as he looked back at me, his mouth still hanging open.
“What do you think?” I tucked my hair behind my ear. “I mean… are you happy?”
That seemed to snap him out of his trance and he reached up to cup my face. “Of course, Sefa.” He leaned in and kissed me, a sloppy, sweet emotional kiss.
“I’ll give you two a minute.” Doctor Kendrick said as he let himself out of the room.
“I’m going to be a father,” Elspeth breathed as he rested his forehead against mine.
I grinned and reached out to place my hands over his as they cupped my face. “Yeah,” I said. “We’re going to be parents.”
“Elspeth, I’m fine,” I said as he carried me up the stairs to our room. “Doctor Kendrick said to take it easy, but this is overkill.”
“You’re carrying out child, Sefa. You’ll be lucky if I ever let you walk again.”
I rolled my eyes but leaned into him. “You are so dramatic,” I said, but couldn’t deny how much I loved being in his arms.
As he placed me into bed, I whined when he pulled away. “No, don’t go. Stay.”
“I’m not going anywhere, sweet wolf,” he said, leaning back in to kiss me. “I’m just going to change.”
I sat up and pulled at his shirt. “I can help with that,” I said eagerly, rolling the shirt up his taut torso to help him pull it over his head.
He tossed the shirt to the floor and dipped his head to give me a long, slow kiss.
“Mmm, Sefa,” he said as he pulled back. “We shouldn’t do this right now.”
I pursed my lips in a pout. “Well, I think that we should. What’s good for the oven is good for the bun, right?” I climbed onto my knees to reach up and wrap my arms around his neck. “Well, this oven could use a good fuck.”
Elspeth let out a low growl. “You know what it does to me when you talk like that,” Elspeth warned.
I leaned forward and took the lobe of his ear between my teeth. “I don’t think I do,” I teased. “You should probably show me.”
17
Dimitri Isakov
I opened my eyes, wondering where the fuck I was. I looked around, confused by the tiny cell I was in. The heavy chains on my wrists and ankles weighed me down, making me even more confused before I remembered. We’d been taken hostage. I couldn’t remember much after the ambush, but I knew we were fucked.
I tried to see through the darkness, desperate to find anything that might un-fuck us, but my shifter vision wasn’t helping—probably from the blow to the head.
“Good, you’re awake.” The sound of a deep but familiar voice made me squint as I tried to look through the bars of my cell. “I was getting tired of waiting.”
I snorted. “Well, come undo these chains and I’ll be sure to give you a proper greeting.”
Alpha Adrian stepped from out of the shadows, his vibrant green eyes glowing despite the darkness.
He stepped up to the bars of my cell and grinned at me as he ran a hand through his slicked back, jet-black hair.
His long, black trench coat scraped across the ground as he moved. “Long time no see, Dimitri. You must be losing your touch for my men to sneak up on you so easily.”
“Yebat' Tebya,” I harshly cursed at him, yanking against my chains. “You know I’m going to shred you the moment I’m out of here.”
“Now, now, Dimi. Watch your tongue. There’s no need for hostility.” He cackled obnoxiously. “Well, not from you anyway.”
“What the hell do you want from us, Adrian? ” I asked.
Adrian smirked. “Why, revenge, of course,” he said with the flick of his hand. “I plan to take everything from that vile Alpha of yours. His clan, his beta, his mate, his life.”
I bared my teeth, a low growl rumbling in my throat. My wolf had already grown tired of listening to Adrian and just wanted to come out and tear him to shreds.
“Oh, calm yourself, Dimitri. Don’t be so dramatic.”
I rolled my eyes. If anyone had a taste for theatrics, it was Adrian.
“Now,” Adrian said and leaned his head against the cell bars. “There’s just a few more things I need to know. And you are going to tell them to me. Be a dear, and do it without a fight, yes?”
I spat toward him. “I’m not telling you shit.”
Adrian sucked on his teeth, but there was a wicked smile on his face as he leaned his arm on the bar and stared at me. “Maybe you haven’t lost your gusto, after all.”
He moved to the door of the cell and pulled it open.
“I’m so pleased to see you’re still the same Russian brute I remember.” He walked toward me, whipping out a knife from his coat, and his eyes gleamed with a maniacal sort of glint. “I do so love a challenge.”
I hissed and coughed as warm spats of blood spurted from my lips. The coppery taste stung my taste buds.
Adrian seemed completely amused with torturing me. He’d always been a bit unhinged, but this was a whole new level.
Sweat and blood dripped off me in tiny streams as I flopped my head forward. My chest burned where he’d cut my Shadow Moon tattoos from my skin. My head was pounding and blackness came and went in waves. I wasn’t sure how much longer I was going to last before death embraced me.
“Are you going to talk, Dimitri?” Adrian asked, holding his silver blade in his hands.
My swollen eye only let me see him through a blurry distorted view, but I could still make out the wicked smile on his lips. I could hear it in his voice. He was going to kill me. No matter which way things went, I was a dead man.
A pang of sadness tugged at me. I was not afraid of death, especially a death with honor. A death in service to my Alpha, but the thought of what I was leaving behind burdened me.
I love you, Mishel. I’m sorry.
I knew he was too far away and I was too weak for him to ever hear me, but it made me feel a little better to try.
“You know, Dimi,” Adrian said, and I cringed. Why did all of the people I hated call me that?
“I have to applaud you for your resolve.” He paced in front of me, waving his blade around. “You are one tough beta. I only hope that Rami will one day be as fierce and loyal as you.”
“I won’t sell out my Alpha. You’ll have to find someone else to get your secrets,” I said, barely able to get the words out through my sore and swollen mouth.
Adrian laughed. “You make a stellar point, Dimi.” He crouched down to meet my eyes. “Which is why I’ve done the same to your council members as I’ve done to you.”
My heart raced in my chest. Alfred. Jonah. Mark. Mark may have held up under torture, but Jonah was soft and Alfred was old. If they weren’t dead, they’d undoubtedly told Adrian everything he needed to know.
“You’ll be unsurprised to learn they didn’t hold up so well.” Adrian patted my shoulder. “The old one practically keeled over the second we touched him. And the little one pissed himself in the first five minutes before spilling his guts.”
My chest tightened. Alfred. Alfred was dead.
I’d never much cared for him in the grand scheme of things, but he
was my clan, my council, my family. And now, he was… gone. Brutally ripped away.
“What have you done?” I said weakly, my voice hoarse.
“Oh, nothing much. Just learned a little about how the great Alpha Elspeth has gone soft. All do to his sweet little mate from, hmmm…” Adrian put a finger to his chin as he pretended to think. “What was it now? Maehelio? A little island with no defenses and ripe for the taking.”
I grimaced. No. Iosefa!
Rami stepped from the shadows into view. “Alpha, I’ve extracted as much information as I could from the council. What do you want me to do now?”
Adrian turned to him. “We continue with our plan. Draw out the Alpha. You know what to do next. Hit him where it hurts.”
“Leave them alone, Adrian!” I said, finding some reserve strength. I flinched as pain erupted in my chest.
“Adrian, you have to stop this, please,” I said, hoping that maybe begging might appeal to him. Maybe humility was the way to go.
“Why would I do that, Dimitri? Elspeth has gotten away with far too much shit and now is the time for his reckoning.” His nostrils flared with anger. “Elspeth must pay penance.”
“It won’t bring your village back, Adrian. They’re gone, and Elspeth is not the same man who killed them.”
Adrian lunged at me, wrapping his hands around my throat. “You’ll stop speaking now if you know what’s good for you. Elspeth is a vile, wretched being who must be plucked from this earth. He has not and will never change.”
I got a good look at Adrian’s eyes. There would be no reasoning with him. He was off the deep end. On a righteous quest of revenge. My only hope was that Elsepth was prepared. Because he had a hell of a storm coming his way. And there was nothing I could do to help him.
18
Elspeth Callum
Something isn't right, I thought to myself.
I hadn’t heard from Dimitri in nearly a week. Mishel had given me a frantic call that he could feel in his gut something had happened to Dimitri, and now I was feeling guilty that I hadn’t listened.
“Damn it,” I grumbled as I barreled for the master bedroom. I couldn’t sit idle any longer. Something wasn’t right, and I had to take action. My council was at stake.
“What are you doing?” I asked Iosefa as I stepped into the room. He was sprawled across the floor with a circle of books around him, all opened as if he was reading them all at once.
“I’m studying.”
“Studying? Do you have a test coming up that I don’t know about?” I teased.
He rolled his eyes. “You’re hilarious,” he said flatly. “No, they’re baby books. Like, I’m so happy to be pregnant, and I’m going to love our pup when they’re here, but I’m kind of freaking out right now.” He frantically looked up at me. “Do you know how many ways there are to fuck up a pup? Like a lot. And I’m not even talking about just dropping it, which happens more often than you’d think. And—”
I held up my hands. “Okay, okay.” I moved to sit beside him in his circle of books. “So, what I’m hearing is that you’ve been sitting in this room for far too long obsessing over… how to kill our pup?”
He snorted. “I wasn’t researching how to kill them. Just the possible ways we could.”
“Right.” I nodded. “Because that’s less crazy.”
He pursed his lips in a pout. “I didn’t voice my concerns for you to make fun of me.”
I leaned in to kiss his pouting lips. “As cute as you are when you worry, how about you take a deep breath.” I gestured for him to take a deep breath, and he complied. “And trust me when I say we can do this. We can have a baby and keep it alive.”
“But what if—”
“Baby, I will line the floor with pillows if it’ll ease your mind. Then we can drop the pup all day long.”
Iosefa looked up at me for a moment before he burst into laughter. “Pillow floors. Okay. I like it,” he said with a grin.
I kissed the top of his head. “Speaking of the baby, I was thinking… maybe you should go home. Being back on the island might make you less stressed and being around family might help with all of the crazy right now.”
Iosefa blinked up at me. “You want to go to Maehelio?”
I cleared my throat. “Well, I was thinking maybe you’d go without me for a little while.”
His eyes went wide. “Excuse me? You want me to cross the ocean while carrying our baby without you?” He narrowed his gaze on me. “Elspeth, what’s really going on? What aren’t you telling me?”
I let out a breath. “I don’t want to worry you.”
I sucked in a shaky breath. “I’m just going to worry more if you don’t tell me. My imagination is so much worse than anything that could possibly be going on.”
He stared at me, his eyes watering over, and I reached out to rub his arms. “Okay, okay. Calm down. It’s nothing serious. I don’t know anything for sure. I just haven’t heard from Dimitri in a while.”
“W-What? What happened to him? Is he hurt? Oh my Goddess, Mishel!”
I could feel Iosefa’s fear and nervousness throughout my body.
“Baby, you’ve got to calm down,” I said, running my fingers through his hair. “I don’t know anything yet, but the clan and I are going to get him.”
Tears slipped down Iosefa’s cheeks. “You’re going to fight a war.” He shook his head. “I’ll go with you. I can fight too.”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“You’re pregnant, untrained, and I can’t put you at risk like that.”
Iosefa pulled out of my grasp. “That’s not your choice to make.”
I straightened. “As your Alpha, yes it is. You’ll go home. End of discussion,” I said my wolf rising to the surface as even the thought of Iosefa on the battlefield shook me to my core.
Iosefa shrunk back, and I could feel my wolf exerting power over his, forcing him to obey me.
“Elspeth,” Iosefa squaked, tears streaming down his face. A sob fell from his lips and guilt immediately struck me. It gutted me to see him in pain, especially when I was the one inflicting it. But what choice did I have? I couldn’t really let him go to war with me. I couldn’t let him walk into something that even Dimitri, the fiercest of warriors, possibly hadn’t survived.
“You don’t understand,” Iosefa cried through sobs. “I don’t know what it is, if it’s the mark or the hormones, but I can’t be away from you. The thought of it… It—”
“Makes you sick to your stomach?” I finished for him. “Makes you feel like your heart is being ripped out of your chest?” I blinked back the burn at the back of my eyes and slowly reached out for him. “Iosefa, everything you feel, I feel it tenfold.”
“Then let me come with you,” he said, his voice so small and helpless that it gutted me.
I shook my head. “I can’t do that. I can’t focus the way I need to if you’re there. And if something happened to you…” I cleared away the tightness in my throat. “It is better to have my heart ripped out momentarily until I return to you than have it crushed permanently.” I met his eyes, seeing a flash of understanding in them. “You have to go home, sweet wolf.”
I stroked his cheek with the back of my hand, wiping away some of the tears.
“Okay,” he said with a nod.
“I promise to come back for you the minute the situation is dealt with.”
“You better.” Iosefa smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
I pulled him closer to me and kissed him gently on the lips. “I’ll make a call to the boatman. Pack what you need. You’ll be leaving today.”
Iosefa’s eyes welled but he did his best to blink back his tears. My strong, sweet wolf. He put on the bravest face.
“I promise to come for you the minute that this is finished,” I said as I stroked his cheek at the edge of the dock.
He nodded, reaching out to hold my face in his hands. “Do whatever you have to do to c
ome back to me, okay?”
I nodded. “I promise.”
I pulled him in, cupping the back of his head to give him a long, slow kiss. I licked into his mouth, savoring the taste of him as if it were the last time. For all I knew, it could be. I’d greatly wronged Adrian, and we were two cruel and merciless Alphas. He was likely going to come at me with everything he had. No mercy. He would fight until his last breath. I knew because it would have been exactly what I’d done.
“I love you, Sefa,” I said, my voice shaking as I pressed my forehead again his. “So, so much.”
Iosefa closed his eyes and took a deep breath before he pulled me in for another long kiss.
“I love you too,” he said as our lips parted.
I pulled his hands from the sides of my face. “You have to go,” I told him, my mouth going dry when he nodded and turned away.
My chest ached as I watched him climb aboard his boat.
I resisted the nearly overwhelming need to chase after him. My wolf wanted to swim the ocean to catch up to him as he parted from the docks, but I knew better. I knew that I had to do this. I had to right this wrong and end this feud with Adrian for good, one way or another.
I couldn’t let it continue on, infecting my clan and my mate...and my child. All of this ended now.
If it’s a fight you want Adrian, it’s a fight you will get. . .
It only took a day in wolf form to reach Adrian’s territories.
“Keep your guard up, the enemy can be planning anything,” I commanded my wolves.
They stuck close behind me, craning their necks and sniffing the area for any signs of danger or Dimitri.
A low rumble of growls echoed from the clan and tensed as I smelled it too. Astro Shade wolves.
I braced myself, watching the perimeter of the woods as six wolves encroached on us.
I flashed my teeth, recognizing Rami’s wolf as their leader.
