ceiling. I am thinking about Gage. About how the Goddess, through me, healed him. “I kissed a lad once who was not Brandon.”
Hazel gasps in shock. When I giggle at her outrage, she laughs too.
“So, Brandon is not your only love?” she asks.
Brandon is older than me by a few years. I am only just of age. Perhaps it seems strange that I have kissed another lad, although plenty of lasses get up to mischief and kissing before they are of age.
It was not even a proper kiss. I wish it had been a proper kiss.
“I have found lads handsome before,” I say. Handsome does not seem adequate to describe a fearsome Alpha like Gage. Brandon is handsome. Brandon is the most handsome lad I have ever met. It still makes my tummy flutter whenever I remember the things that we have done. My fantasies have gotten worse of late. The kissing and touching have awakened me to the pleasures of laying with a man. Deep in the night, I still dream about Gage.
Not only Gage. I dream of them both, of them sharing me in the way some women are shared when they wed or are claimed by two mates.
I wish I could stop dreaming about Gage, that I could settle with Brandon, as I must, and put this madness from my mind. We are at war with the Lyon clan, and my heart aches at the thought of the two men fighting.
“But he is from another clan,” I add sadly, hearing the wistfulness in my own voice. I don’t confess that the lad I speak of is a man and an Alpha of the Lyon clan. Such details must remain forever private. “Their clan and ours do not mix so well. But I love Brandon with all my heart, and I had all but forgotten about it until you made mention of Fen.”
I want to scoff at my own determination that the kiss and Gage are forgotten. If I live to be a hundred, it will be forever carved into my soul. We share a secret, Gage and I, one that hardly seems real. I am, as we all are, here by the Goddess’ will. It seems cruel fate indeed that I should have these feelings and hunger for something that can never be.
“Do you know where the house for you will be built?” Hazel asks.
I’m happy for the change of subject.
“On the eastern side, next to my parents’ home,” I say. “Mama says she will be able to help me when I get with a child. But I also think she is anticipating me helping with all my brothers and sisters.”
I will not miss the nonsense between Greta and William this morning. But when I popped over to tell Mama I was staying with Hazel, the pair of them were scoffing cookies with a grin on their faces. I love my siblings dearly. It terrifies me to think of war coming here, and of my innocent siblings being at risk.
I want Brandon to come home.
I want him to purr for me and tell me that this is over, and that we can all sleep safely now.
Only he doesn’t come.
The candle has long since gone out, and we are deep into the night.
“They are very late,” Hazel says softly, for we have fallen quiet.
“Aye,” I agree.
A hand over my mouth stifles my scream. I struggle, but I am small for a Beta, and they have me tight. Through the haze of panic, I see Hazel being subdued.
The hand over my mouth shifts, and I sink my teeth into the flesh.
My captor grunts before forcing a wad of cloth between my teeth. Another person has my wrists, swiftly binding them together. Too quickly, I am subdued, too.
I stand beside the bed, shaking, mouth gagged and hands bound, I am helpless. Mind scrambling, I try to work out what is happening. It does not seem like an attack. There is no noise or sense of anarchy. They would not need to gag and bind us were that the case.
The room is darkened, but as one shape stalks toward Hazel, the moonlight illuminates her face.
Nola.
Her arm swings, and the slap rings loud in the still night.
Goddess, she has struck Hazel.
“Leave off, bitch,” a male voice says. “You can have your fun with her once we’re out of Ralston.”
Arm fisted by an Alpha, I’m shoved roughly toward the window.
We are driven through the forest like beasts. I start every time I hear