“Hand me a towel.”Cain stretches one through the door and I take it. I squeeze my hair and let it stick to my back. Cain has a small smile on his face when I come out and that awkward feeling settles in between us again.I look around for any special dress His Majesty the Lycan king must have set out but I find nothing.“Here.”Cain walks to the door and opens it. He bends to pick something and I admire firm round buttcheeks before he stands up and catches me staring.He smirks and hands me a package bound with a bit of green ribbon.I take it and untie the green ribbonI know it’s fabric. I can see its fabric, but I'm still surprised at the fact that I got a shirt and pants.“These too.”I look up but Cain is already mid-rise so I can’t admire anything to its fullest extent.He drops them on the bed and slumps onto it, looking at the ceiling.My heart soars at the sight of boots and I pick them up. I hesitate when the thought of going to the bathroom and changing there occurs to me

The large field stretches on for miles and miles and the trees are only a faint outline in the distance. There are a lot of people in these fields today and they don’t look… happy. My eyes go over the form of the group to our left and I see toned bodies with rigid looking faces. They don’t look like they smile often and they don’t look like they’re here to start smiling. There’s an atmosphere of seriousness in the air, one that I can't seem to ignore as we keep on walking. Lyros’s form catches my eye first. He’s a tall form in icy blue. He stands beside Rafie, who looks resplendent in white, and beside them is a man whose presence makes something at the back of my brain tickle. It isn’t a tickle that persists, my mind simply latches onto him for a second before recoiling and latching onto him again. The feeling I get from him is simple, he’s someone who deserves to be noticed. With blue hair cropped close to his skull and a face that’s round and pointy at the same time. He’s

I almost forgot how hard training with Cain is.His sword hits mine with unbridled force and sparks fly whenever we clash. Cain is relentless and unpredictable in the way he attacks and I barely keep myself from falling victim to the blade he wields.His fighting style is sleek, almost flud, and compared to him I'm like a baby on two left feet.My sword flies out of my hand again and a pit forms in my stomach as I hear it embed itself into the nearest tree. Cain’s sword is at my throat again, so close I feel a simple exhale would have my skin splitting open like butter under the attack of a knife.“Dead again Adelaide.”I bite my cheek to stop myself from screaming. Screaming will do nothing to salvage my situation.“You’re using too much force on me. How do you expect me to beat you?”The words come out of a place of frustration but they sound right when they’re out. Cain retracts his sword and cocks an eyebrow up in question so I let it out.“It’s unfair that I get to practice with

It takes some time for me to find Lyros but I do.I had to walk back to the spot where we met him on the fields and when I didn't find him there, I took myself down to the throne room. He’s also not there so I take myself down to the room we both share.The room he killed a woman for because I was absent from it.The urge to trash the room overcomes me. I always dreamt of doing that when I was back at the pack. My parents would make me arrange half the rooms in the packhouse and it sucked to do that when the wolves who slept in them didn’t show me the barest inkling of kindness. I fantasized about ripping pillows up and turning bed sheets into useless strips of fabric.I want to do that to this room, but fear stops me.Fear of Lyros and what he’ll do to Cain.I find him at the entrance to the flower maze, like he’s been waiting for me and as his eyes turn to meet mine, all the repressed violence I've been keeping under the surface rises in one violent burst.I lunge for him.I know it

“How bad is it?” There’s silence in my cell. An almost deafening silence that has remained constant for the past two days. My first day here, I could only hear the sound of my heart and the inhales and exhales I took, but now that silence has been broken, and I don't know if she’s asking me about herself or my current situation. Adelaide smells… provoking. The sort of scent that would send males for miles and miles into heat. There’s a tropicality to the scent that wafts off her, and my mind shouldn’t stray there but it does. I have to look away from her before I can regain some control of my thoughts and I regret the words the moment I say them. “Why are you here?” The temperature in my cold cell seems to drop a thousand degrees lower and the wall behind me feels chill down to the last brick. I hear Adelaide chuckle. I hear the hurt she hides within that chuckle and I feel her presence as she moves closer to grab the bars. There’s a calmness to her voice when she speaks. A