"So, Elena..." My tired eyes looked up from the book I read for the past three hours.
She had tossed the thick, heavy paperweight at me, The Art of Seductive Persuasion, Vol 5. I couldn't imagine how awful the first four volumes must have been that this was an edited improvement.
The entire text was, essentially, how to be a slutty female werewolf one-oh-one.
My head tipped toward where her brown eyes gazed out the window from behind her curtain of brown curls. "Why do I need this?"
"Read it," she replied with a smile.
Secretly, I assumed that she was tired since I chatted her ears off. My eyes dropping to the utter crap sitting in my lap, I stifled a scoff that wanted to escape.
Females wanting to attract mates should draw as much attention to their lips and scent, drawing the hair back to expose the neckline. Males are naturally drawn to this area. Rubbing the female mating areas and using the sexual scent is highly effective.
Effective at what?
"Elena..." I glanced up from this particular passage in the book. "I'm not fingering myself for my own perfume."
'Mate perfume...'
Lumi rolled on her back, laughing.
"I don't think you need to take it literally." Elena reached over to her purse for something of interest. "Your mate will recognize your scent above all others, that's all. Once you enter a room, he will smell you before he sees you."
"Doesn't hurt to give your scent a boost." She tossed me a small, white plastic cylinder. "Here, use this."
I rolled the small item in my hands, frowning at the artificial, sweet, waxy scent I smelled with the cap still on.
Cherry-flavored chapstick?
At one whiff, my nostrils twitched with the magnified smell. I gagged and snapped the cap back on. "I'm not rubbing this on my neck."
She pushed her round glasses up her nose and winked. "Only on your lips. Trust me."
I shook my head and closed the book, but tucked the chapstick in my pocket anyways.
We rode in a motorcade north. The entourage my father's security team had organized was ridiculous. Elena and I were in the middle of five black Escalade SUVs, with a security escort of about thirty men from my father's pack in identical vehicles that sandwiched us.
I glanced at the two vehicles ahead of us through the front windshield, wondering out loud "What's with all the security?"
"Rogues," was her reply, in a bitter tone like the word left a bad taste.
I frowned at the word my father had also used, although he attached more colorful descriptions.
As if she'd forgotten that I know nothing, she added, "Packless wolves. They make their own decisions, quite reckless and unpredictable."
"Why would they want me?"
I could sympathize with the not having a pack aspect, at least.
My own father didn't want me in his.
While I didn't know what being in a pack meant, the rejection still stung days later. Whenever I thought about why he'd done that, it felt like a festering wound that I poked.
"Killing the future white Luna and disrupting our hierarchy would be the dream of any rogue," she cupped her chin in her palm and shifted her eyes to mine. "Your father -"
"Has made a lot of enemies." I didn't need a history book for that guess.
She nodded, turning her attention back to the scenery that blurred around us. Every few moments, her eyes darted back, to where Cole rode behind us, I assumed.
"What is the point of a pack?" I blurted out and her eyes widened as if I suggested blasphemy. "Can't we all be rogues?"
"A pack is everything!" She gasped, gaping at me like a pack was as integral to life as breathing. "A family, a community, our way of life. I miss mine already, it's..."
Her voice trailed off, her eyes filled with concern, and she sucked her bottom lip under her teeth.
"What?" My eyebrows drew together.
"I suppose given your upbringing, it'd be harder to understand," she whispered, pulling her glasses off and wiping her eyes. "You'll see once we get to the territory packs."
"I suppose." Shifting my eyes and gazing out the window, I wasn't convinced.
To be honest, I had no idea what to expect, even with Elena's prepping on the Northern territory. We left the rolling green acres of woods on my father's island and took a private plane to the mainland. Shockingly, the island was nowhere near my father's Central territory pack house but instead a few hundred miles off the coastline that the Northern and Western territories shared.
A safe house solely for keeping me away, a prison for a princess.
Once our private plane touched down on the runway, we boarded the Escalade brigade and started our eight-hour drive up the coastline to the Northern territory's main packhouse.
"Elena..." I glanced up to see her with stars in her eyes. She blinked away from her mindlink with Cole, at least I assume it was Cole, then focused on me.
"Am I a rogue?"
"No Zara." She smiled. "You are under the protection of the White Moon pack, your father's."
"But..." My eyes narrowed as my thoughts drifted to my canceled pack ceremony, and Elder Wiliam's disdain. "I'm not in the pack."
"No." Her smile faltered and a crease knitted the space between her eyebrows.
I pressed my palms together in my lap, hating how small and meek my voice sounded, "Why not?"
"Your father's decision." Her facial expression didn't change, not one twitch.
I unrealistically expected that she had an answer, but still asked, "Why?"
"He doesn't inform us on that side of his decisions," she admitted with a sigh, tugging a stray curl behind her ear. "But if I had to guess, then it was for your own protection."
"Wouldn't it be better protection if I were connected to the pack?"
"For mindlinks, yes." Her smile lifted no higher than her mouth. "But I suspect that your father canceled your pack ceremony because the White Moon males were having... issues."
"Issues?" I squirmed in my seat at the word, not liking the idea of causing dissension within my father's pack.
At least, not intentionally. What did I do this time?
"Zara," Elena sighed out my name, offering a smile. "You're quite beautiful. A female white wolf has a natural pull over males. Your father thought it best that you did not have direct access to his warriors' thoughts, particularly the unmated ones. They were a bit... distracted by you. From the mindlinks Cole picked up while in your presence, at least."
"But I wouldn't have -" The idea that I sabotaged my father's pack was foreign to me, unlike the sense of belonging dangled in front of me then snatched back because of lack of trust.
"It's nothing you did. I'd guess your father didn't want you having access to their thoughts." She held her smile, her eyes softening.
My chest heaved with a sigh since I felt like this conversation went nowhere. Making one more attempt, that maybe she would give in to desperate pleading, I chose a more direct, "Elena, please tell me."
"Zara..." She surprised me with her indignant huff, as if I was a child refusing to take no for an answer. "They saw you naked."
"Naked?" I squeaked out then racked my brain for... "Oh."
My first morning run, when I didn't have any clothes to put back on after.
"Yeah, that oh." She looked down her nose at me.
"I wasn't thinking the first time." I mumbled as my cheeks warmed, one degree of embarrassment higher until my entire face flamed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean -"
"I'm sure you didn't." She released a small giggle that absorbed some of my awkwardness. "But they couldn't look at you the same after. Your father didn't share any insight with me, but I assumed he canceled the pack ceremony so none of their thoughts influenced your decision."
"Wait." I looked at the back of our driver's head, then whispered to her, "They're not... any of these guys, right?"
"No." Her shoulders bounced lightly as her giggle opened up into a laugh. "Your father made sure of that detail."
"He did, Miss Zara," the driver shot me a wink in the rearview mirror, which increased my molten-level face. "You're not my type, promise."
I blinked a few times, absorbing his response. He flashed me a grin, which released a gasp from my lips and I covered my mouth with one hand. Suppressed giggles twitched my shoulders.
"Good." As I sat back in my chair, a sigh drew out my relief. Still, my cheeks stayed warm at the idea that some of the security team had checked me out. The mental image flashed me back to the last romance novels I read.
'Not mates.'
Lumi seemed to agree with my father's decision.
You're jealous about sharing my headspace, Lumi.
Then she ignored me, if turning around and flashing her ass up was ignoring me. I discovered that teasing her was one way to get her to shut up. She took the most interest in every conversation that concerned mating, and I got annoyed. Being a werewolf for six weeks, the changes were still new, fresh, and unfamiliar.
And we're world-exploring first.
A thrill trickled down my spine at the thought.
Maybe she's as much of a horny teenager as, well, any horny teenager.
"So, how exactly does it start?" I asked Elena. "Mating?"
"You'll feel it, your wolf will feel it, like an instant attraction, an unspeakable pull to each other." Her cheeks flushed pink but a warm smile tugged on her lips.
If vibrations on the brain was such a thing, I felt them now. Lumi purred, not in a cat-like way, at Elena's words.
"It's kind of hard not to notice, it consumes you, Zara." Elena's palm cupped her cheek.
"Is that what happened with Cole?"
She nodded, her smile spreading. "Then he'll approach you, and his wolf will say 'mate'. You can acknowledge him to start the mating process."
I blinked a few times, processing the simplicity of her words.
Wolf check, consent, good to go?
"That's it?"
A loud laugh escaped her lips as her head shook back and forth. "No, soul merging takes time to forge the bond. There are many steps, I'll help you through them once we get to that point."
"Can I ask what part are you at?" Her cheeks and neck flushed from pink to red, so I added, "Sorry if that's too personal."
"It's okay..." The deep color in her cheeks said otherwise. "We're in between the mark and sealing the mate bond."
"Mark?"
"Once you both fully accept your mate, with all of yourself, he will mark you." Again, my thoughts shifted back to the idea that I ended up being someone else's property.
As her eyes dragged up to my frown, she pulled back the collar of her shirt and revealed two small, circular red marks on her shoulder in the center of yellow and purple-gray bruises. My eyes widened as I realized the abstract splotches of color on the fair skin canvas of her neck were from puncture marks.
"Cole did that?" She nodded. "With-"
"It's a bite." My eyes were now stretched to their edges. "His physical claim to me, it's a signal to everyone that I'm his."
"So... My mate is going to brand me? Like I'm some bush to be peed on?" Any appeal in this relationship had long escaped me. The corners of my mouth turned down.
"No, it creates the bond, the start of the soul intertwining process." The tenderness in how her voice caressed these words made the neck-gnawing process almost seem romantic.
Almost.
"Soul?" Before finding out I was one, I wouldn't have thought of werewolves as having souls. More like smelly, hairy, uncontrollable animals.
More like smelly, hairy, uncontrollable animals.
Her brown curls pitched forward as she nodded. "Yes, mate is short for soulmate. Once you're mated, part of his soul will be placed within you, and part of you within his body."
"So anyone can come up, bite me, and give me their soul?"
Elena's head tipped back at my words and she laughed. "Technically yes, but if it's not your mate or you're not ready to accept him then your body will reject it."
"Great," My eyes slid half closed as my voice level dropped down to a disgruntled mumble. None of what she'd described sounded like a romantic, soul-connecting experience.
"You can only be marked while in human form, so that's another reason for your father's stress of protection -" Her head and gaze turned in the direction of the vehicles ahead, then behind us like she watched an odd tennis match. "- and training."
"Did it hurt?" I opened my half-closed eyes and stared at her shoulder mark. The bruises looked a few days old and the puncture marks had faded to pink but the puncture wounds were still quite prominent against her fair skin.
Her spine stiffened and she sat up straighter, pulling the corner of her shirt over her neck, "Initially a little, but you instantly feel the bond strengthening. Your body will also reassure you that you're ready to proceed through the mating process."
"And how does it end?"
"By mating," she replied like the answer was a matter-of-fact. "Sex."
"Oh..." I glanced away at a subject I knew nothing about.
That. I've never even met a boy my age, let alone talked to, gone on a date...
The uncertainty of the situation I was headed into started to weigh on me.
I hope they don't expect me to -
"Don't worry. Once you get to that point, you'll want to," was all she said, with a knowing smile. "It'll be all-consuming, the longer you wait the worse it gets."
"You're thinking about him now, aren't you?" I whispered.
Cole rode in the car behind us. She'd looked back there at what seemed like seven hundred times in three hours.
"Yes," she replied. "Always."
"Great." My eyelids drooped, heavy from this long conversation, and my mouth stifled a yawn. Being five hours into the eight hour drive, the initial excitement of going anywhere started to wear on me.
"You should rest, Zara. You'll need your strength," were the last words my ears registered before I slipped into sleep.
I slid into a deep dream, where I shifted into Lumi's form and ran through the Northern territory. The scenery was stoic yet beautiful, dotted with sharp rocky cliffs, wide open grassy fields, and dense evergreen forests. The wind blew cold and sharp against my face but the chilling rush invigorated me. The forest was dense and full of smells and activity, like the birds who fluttered away from bushes and squirrels jabbering up trees from my disruption.
Suddenly, a presence arose behind me. A growl, low as thunder vibrated into my ear drums. I spun around and pressed my paws into the soft earth to stop. A giant, black wolf with gleaming blue eyes, glinting with highlights, faced me. Saliva pooled in his mouth, dripping from his bared canines.
All movements in the forest stilled. I shrank down into a submissive posture as he towered over me, his paws twice the size engulfing mine, and his growl increasing to a warning. Then with a snap, he lunged, sank his canines deep into my neck. Searing pain shot through my shoulder and radiated through my entire body.
'Mate.'
My body jolted, eyes flipped open, and I woke up with a start.
Well, that's not creepy.
Lumi whined in the back of my mind, making me wonder if the dream affected her too.
The fine wisps of hair on the back of my neck raised, right before a loud crash erupted in front of us. Our car lurched, pinching my seat belt into my chest and releasing a low grunt. Elena's body sprung forward, restrained, and her eyes flipped open.
Once the car stopped rocking, I saw our motorcade had stopped.
"What happened?" I sat up then craned my neck out the window. I didn't see anything other than a dense patch of woods about ten meters from the street. And by street, we parked on a dirt trail.
"Rogues," Elena whispered as her wide eyes looked out the front dashboard window.
My eyes moved where she looked right in time to see the first car in our line sprung up in the air and overturned like an invisible hand scooped it up. The firecracker pop of gunshots fired, and giant brown and gray wolves jumped onto the first car. They ripped the doors completely off the hinges, grabbed the guards out with their teeth sunk into their sleeves, then dragged them out of my line of vision.
Baron's silhouette climbed out of the moon roof of the car ahead of us, shifted into a large, dark brown wolf, then lunged off the left of the SUV. Snarls and growls muffled through the glass windows.
"Stay here." Our driver and security detail, Ronan I think his name was, pulled a gun out of his holster. My breath hitched at the gleam of concern I saw in his eye.
"Ronan, what -"
Elena unbuckled her seatbelt and rushed to the front seat, but he was faster and pushed a button on the dashboard. A large metal divider closed the gap between her and him, along with metal sections that slid down the windows and clicked into place.
Oh no.
My heart pounded louder than the staccato, successive pops of gunfire and sounds of struggle around us, muffled through the security seals. Prickles of goosebumps raised on my forearms and my breath shortened.
Elena's fingers curled inward off the divider window and she sank down, sitting on her heels. Turning back, she looked at me with wide, frozen eyes and her lower lip trembling. I'm sure I shared the same expression since we were trapped.
"Zara," Elena turned back to me, gripping my upper arms in her hands.
The same fear that chilled my body like ice was written all over her face. Enlarged by her glasses, her pupils shrunk and lips trembled.
We screamed at another crash explosion, behind us, and our car shook with vibrations from the rear.
"Cole." My eyes widened and I clenched her arms. With the security shutters deployed, the vehicle's interior was nearly pitch black.
Her eyes glassed over and her shoulders sagged. "He's... okay," she rushed out with a warm breath. "They're under attack from rogues. He said stay here, he'll come for us."
"How can we go anywhere -" I started to ask when we turned upside down. The entire vehicle, me, Elena, and all the contents inside were rolled three times. A few suitcases opened and the contents rained down on us.
We screamed as Elena's arms slipped out of my grasp. Internally, my muscles locked up, my throat closed in, and scream tore out my mouth.
My body suspended off the seat I was strapped into, weightless but moving in silent slow motion. Her back flung into the ceiling, where she pressed with gravity's weight as the car rolled.
"Shit, we're falling!"
My mind raced as my hands reached out and clawed at nothing in the air. A ringing sound pierced my ears, drowning out Elena's screams. Every second of time froze, every blink of my eyes fluttered over an eternity. With a jarred impact that slammed Elena stomach-down on the floor, the car smashed loudly. The sound of twisted metal shuddered as if we'd hit something hard.
"Elena," I gasped, my fingers trembling as they fought with the seatbelt. Each time I got close, my finger jolted away from the latch.
"I'm..." she groaned, pushing herself up to her knees. "Fine. I think we should shift, it's safer."
With slow, trembling movements, we steadied ourselves. Her fingers ripped at her clothes, tearing them off in shreds. My shaky fingers unclipped and removed my seat belt, pulling it off with a snap and rubbing the constriction marks it left across my chest.
The quietness around us filled with our short, shallow breaths, as loud as if we both sprinted a marathon, and Elena's clothing rips. The car moved in a swaying, rocking sensation, pausing us from gathering ourselves.
After an initial rush of relief and verification that we were both unharmed, we then both shared the same horrifying realization.
"Water!" Elena's voice quaked. "We must have hit water, the gas tank didn't explode!"
Water... the cliffs.
My mind and body both froze as a waves of panic gripped me like a corpse. Unable to move, my eyes blinked and my mouth gaped around wordless forms. My muscles and bones locked up, rendering me useless.
We're going to sink.
But then, a stronger voice in the back of my mind contradicted that thought.
No, we're not.
"Elena! We have to get out of here!" A shrill scream tore from my lips and I pushed through my locked up state, moving my body's heavy limbs.
Every second mattered before we sunk.
'Out.'
Lumi pleaded as my eyes shifted around the car for a viable exit. My eyes darted from one metal caged window to another. Ronan ensured that every window and access point were now blocked but the ceiling and floor of the car were intact.
How?
'Floor. Let me.'
"Elena!" I screamed as my fingers grabbed her shoulders. "Shift."
"Zara -" Her ghostly pale face showed she wasn't past the initial shock stage.
"Do it!" She knelt down and a few seconds and bone crunching sounds later, Sand's blue eyes stared at me. A whine passed through her. I patted her head, squeezed my eyes shut, and screamed.
Lumi, help!!
I shifted into her form, but this time was different. My conscience was sucked out of my chest, and I sat, quiet and alone in the darkness of the back of my mind. My eyes moved, my body moved, but not under my own control. Numb and formless, I witnessed movements like I was trapped in a vessel.
In flashes of white fur, Lumi's white paws moved, one lashed out swipe of her claws after another. Like a silent observer, I watched with the chilling sense of being trapped in a nightmare.
Lumi's paws thrashed and clawed at the floor of the SUV like she was rabid. They cut easily through the cloth interior, gouging into the metal frame underneath. Her chest expanded with hot, deep breaths, her heart pounding and surging blood through her veins.
Shards of metal pierced her skin but she ignored the stabs of pain. With a snap of her jaws, the chassie pricked her taste buds with the taste of cold metal. All four of her paws bore down, her muscles clenching and warming with strain.
With one backward yank, the entire car contorted and a hole opened up. Within a blink, the hole filled with rushing, ice-cold water. It surged up with a gushing sound, chilling the pads of her paws on contact.
The entire time, I sat back, paralyzed, defenseless, and screamed in panic until Lumi's voice flowed over me.
'Zara, not helping.'
Lumi moved her paws faster, clawing at the electrical wiring between the chassie and the frame. The water now pooled at our ankles, poking like tiny, icy needles. Despite the dark interior, I saw pink swirls from the cuts on Lumi's paws.
Elena's wolf Sand sat tucked into a corner, her ears flatt and whimpering whine after whine. Lumi let out a loud warning bark as the hole in the floor opened wider. Lumi growled at Sand and pointed at the hole in the floor with her snout. She shuffled out of the corner, so Lumi gave out a shrill bark and snapped at her heels.
With a push of her hindlegs, Sand submerged herself down into the water. Disappearing down the hole, Lumi was alone.
By the time Sand cleared the hole, the water surged up to our shoulders, closing upon our throat. Icy daggers stabbed into our skin, like a cold hand of death gripped our throat.
I cupped my hands into my face.
Save us Lumi!
She took a deep breath, expanding her lungs full of air, pressed her hind legs into the ceiling of the vehicle, and plunged straight into the hole. A sharp pain burst in our left thigh as it brushed against the hole, but Lumi dug her feet into the twisted metal frame and climbed out.
Weightlessness suspended us in a black, icy surrounding. The vehicle descended under us. She gave one more push against its exterior with her hind legs, erupting pain in her thigh, and looked up at a wobbly, wavering white light.
The surface.
Swim Lumi!
Our chest burned as a surge of adrenaline rushed through our body, kicking in the most primal survival instincts. Icy numbed her skin but Lumi's paws kicked against the cold water. I cursed myself for not giving her swimming lessons, but her legs were strong from our training and she pushed up, stroke after stroke.
Blackness closed in around her and a hot burn seared into her lungs. Compression threatened to pull her under but she pushed with each last effort in her fatiguing muscles. They screamed for relief but she surged all four limbs up, up, up.
With one last push, she broke through the surface. A cold gasp of air felt like our first breath of life. Her muscles relaxed seeing Sand treading water near us, panting but keeping her snout afloat.
Sand barked to our right, the shoreline. We paddled in that direction but, as the adrenaline rush subsided, our body now felt heavy with fatigue. Lulled by the waves, momentum plunged us underwater when they crashed into a fizzled rush of bubbles and roaring water. Salt water seared her tongue, making her gag.
What felt like hours later, our paws touched down on a rocky bottom floor, which Lumi pushed off. Breaking through the surface, she gasped, sputtering and catching the next wave's momentum. She rolled, lifeless until we hit another rock bottom.
Under her weakened state, I reach out mentally, pushing whatever reserve strength I held in my lifeless form. With shaking limbs, we hauled our weary, battered form onto the shore.
With hard contact, Lumi collapsed as she tried to pull herself out of the water. She relented control and I shifted back. Once my human skin felt the icy sting of the water, I crawled. Rocks bit into my elbows and knees and water numbed my skin with lick after lick from the waves, but I ignored them and crawled. My body ached with each rotation of my elbows, each press of my knees, and sharp pains shot down my left thigh.
Gasping, I moved slowly, until an inch of water coated my elbows and knees. I could push my fatigued body no further.
The cold, rocky sand grazed the soft skin on my left cheek as I collapsed on my side. The grounding contact felt like a relief and a curse at the same time. My heavy eyes closed until the sound of a body thud next to me cracked them open.
Elena gasped as she similarly flung herself down next to me. Coughing and drooling saliva, her voice sounded garbled and broken.
"Welcome to the North."
As I blinked my blurry eyes open, Lumi rested in the back of my mind.
Thank you ,Lumi.
'Not weak.'
Her snuff of indignance was her last contact before I took in our surroundings. The rocky sand and gravel beneath my cheek blurred along with my thoughts.
A pair of calloused hands tugged underneath me. A weightless sensation filled my spent limbs, followed by warmth wrapped over my naked body.
I slipped into darkness right after I heard the words, "Welcome to the Northern territory... Princess."