After ditching Maddox I headed down into Shadowlands. I have secret little rucksacks of clothes stashed everywhere. I basically bought around twenty sets of leather jackets, underwear, black pants and vest tops and deposited them all over the place over the past few weeks. You won’t catch me running about in someone else's hideous old clothes. Being a little bit naughty, I charged the cost of my kits to Shadowlands alongside all the other bits I bought for Cillian and Matilda’s packhouse renovations, wardrobe and Luna Ceremony clothes. It could be called a service fee for all the running about I did sorting them out with such a beautiful start together. Cillian now should have fresh thoughts of Wodness Brook in his head, enough to make sure when Freya gets there tonight he knows exactly where to send her. There are clear rules about just how much one can reveal about an upcoming choice in the road. Sometimes I stray and say more than I should, but not for much longer. My last few d

A couple of weeks after my near miss with Zena, I found myself standing at the war front with Alpha Cillian and Zeke. My fellow Beta has been acting differently since he took Luna Freya to the safe house. Even I’m not trusted with its location. We stand together, looking at the maps, the huge collection of paperwork and letters that threaten to engulf Cillian. I wonder if it is worth telling him that he should just follow his own instincts. He is trying to micro-manage a war via stationary. He has the authority, the training, and the men willing to fight for him. But then I don’t have that kind of relationship with him. Zeke could probably tell him that, but he’s too wrapped up in his own world. At least he doesn’t look as angry as usual. His dark eyes haven’t had a sparkle of life in them in the whole time I’ve known him. Apparently, he was the life and soul of the party once upon a time. That sounds a hell of a long time ago looking at the way he stalks around like the Grim Reaper

Over three weeks on the bloody sidelines. Abandoned. Doing nothing more interesting than watching Luna Genevieve mope around arm in arm with Luna Helena. Alpha Alexander keeps to his library. He holds constant meetings, getting me to ferry paperwork around Silver City as he tries to arrange support for NIkolai at the front.So it is a demotion. I’m reduced to an onlooker. Beta Shane, the leader of the home guard detachment, clearly doesn’t want me on the roster. So at night whilst the guards pace and keep an eye out for wolfsbane toting assassins I’m struggling to sleep.All the while, there isn’t a trace of Zena. Nearly all of our encounters happened at this castle. I keep expecting to catch her jasmine scent and see a flash of black hair vanishing around a corner, but nothing happens.She’s probably gone back up to the North. Hiding among her own kind whilst blood is shed. She never elaborated on what that really meant. She'll tell me one day, I'm sure. Stop being vague and let her

In the melee of people leaving, the lights vanishing from the fighting venue, I lost track of Finn, Zeke, Freya and their bikes. It seemed they got separated at some point, or at least didn’t travel the same way. By the time I finally caught up with them, forced to painstakingly follow bike tracks in the mud like a damn boy scout, pure carnage was breaking loose. A large log cabin, every window blazing was under attack. A window suddenly smashed as wolves, possibly even hybrids, tore towards Finn. He snapped the neck of one whilst stamping down the throat of another. Turns out Finn is wasted down here, he should be at the front.I lingered, masked in the dark of the tree line. There was no sign of Freya, unless she’d been given the equivalent of wolf-steroids and was one of those attacking FInn. Nothing except the metallic tang of blood and howls of pain filled the air. Because somehow Finn, the giant lump was still taking on these wolves in human form. /He doesn’t have time to sh

Would she have even believed I only asked for my Fate in order for her to see that I am a decent man? It was meant to prove to her I am more than the idiot who grabbed her, kissed her, promising just one night.I’ve found this strange, surprising happiness and then gone and blowtorched it with my own foolish stupidity. We had something. Sat together, my hands on her perfect slinky body, drowning in those grey eyes. Why did I have to ask? Why couldn’t I trust my own feelings?I don’t even care about my future. Well, it would be good to know I don’t die in the war, obviously. What I was hoping, in a stupid, foolish plan was that maybe she might see us together. I imagine she’s terrified of how strong the sensations between us are. I am too.I could barely breathe when she stripped off my shirt in front of me. I had to either kiss her or have a heart attack. Same when she reappeared this morning. Another few seconds and she’d have seen me drop to my knees. All the strength was fleeing m