Troy We finished our lunch and wandered out to the patio where we took a seat on one of the loungers. The pool house was still quiet, but the voices of the girls carried out of the mansion and through the open bedroom window. They were fighting over who had to clean the toilet. Quinn pretended she couldn’t hear them. The heat was stifling, wafting up from the baking pavement like a fist trying to strangle me. The umbrella I opened provided shade, but only trapped the heat and made it more difficult to breathe. “Fuck, no,” I said after a while, “let’s go to one of the gardens, it will be cooler there.” Quinn was pale, sweaty, and trembled a little as she got up. Part of it was the extended mind link I maintained while telling her about the long journey that eventually ended with me coming to Haverton, the other part was the heat and the stress. Being my mate had to be exhausting. “I don’t want to see the Lycans,” she said. “They are confined to the Omegas’ garden. The only Lycans

Quinn I stared at the massive, naked Lycan that took up the entire walkway between the rows of peach trees. He was almost comically large and unfortunate looking in appearance. Something was seriously wrong with him. He was completely hairless, with a perfectly round head, thin, narrow slits for eyes, a tiny nose, and barely-there mouth. His neck was so short that it looked as if his head rested directly on his shoulders. He had long, powerful arms that reached down to his knees, hands the size of hams, and massive, powerful legs that looked as if he could crush a man’s skull with his thighs. He was the caricature of a bodybuilder who took his steroid addiction too far. And he stank. Oh my God, he smelled awful. It wasn’t just the corruption that tainted his scent, which was bad enough, but also the stink of death. I smelled it before – when Troy almost died in the warehouse. Death was coming for him. Soon. I could sense its approach. “Magnus,” Troy said. “Meet my mate, Princess Q

Quinn For a long time, no one spoke. Glover came and went with the refreshments, which in this case was a variety of drinks, both hot and cold, and enough food to feed all the Lycans and have leftovers for the werewolves hiding out in the forest. My grandmother helped herself to tea and sandwiches, while my grandfather just kept staring at me as he sipped on a coffee. The atmosphere was thick and uncomfortable. After a while, even Raf started to squirm. When Jolene finally put her cup and plate down, I mustered the courage to ask, “Why did I never meet you? And who were those people I thought were my grandparents?” “Claude wouldn’t allow us anywhere near you. He feared that we’d draw too much attention to you. The two people you knew as your grandparents were my uncle and aunt. They are also wolfless. They practically raised Claude. He saw them as his parents and called them mother and father,” Jolene explained. “You…abandoned your son?” “No,” Dexter answered. “No. I knew when he

Troy The moment we crossed the bridge into the city, a man jumped out in front of the car, waving his arms around like a windmill. "Stop! For God's sake!" he screamed. I recognised him right away. It was the face of a man I had seen in countless articles. It was the same face as that of the twin Maree boys. The same boys that I hid in an elite human boarding school in a small human town called Suffering. I had known the inhabitants of Suffering for a long time. I built a strong alliance with them over the years. Living as they did, far removed from the modern world and all the modern scepticism, they were well aware of the existence of the supernatural. Werewolves weren’t usually allowed in their town, and they cast a powerful anti-werewolf charm around their village, but they let me in and they let the boys in. It was the only place where I felt they’d be completely safe, and it put Quinn’s mind at ease. Suffering lay mostly hidden in a valley in the shadow of a beautiful snow-ca

Troy My heart plummeted into my stomach when I saw Quinn sitting in the window. It was her favourite spot, and usually it didn’t bother me, but the window was open and she leaned far out, only holding onto the frame by her fingertips. For a moment, the memory of my mother running past me and jumping out of the highest tower’s window flashed before my eyes and I froze, my limbs heavy, unable to move my body forward. Quinn leaned over a little further, her fingertips sliding across the window frame as she started to lose her grip. I shook myself out of the memory and rushed to my mate. I wrapped my arms around her middle, and pulled her into the room, holding her firmly against me as I folded her arms across her chest, pinning her to me. “What are you doing?” “It’s just a game I like to play.” “You’re tempting The Fates.” “I don’t believe in them.” She squirmed against me, pushing against my forearms as she tried to get out of my grip. I let her go and just to be safe, closed the