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September 21 - September 25, 2025
Dante banked hard, plunging from the sky and I braced on instinct, my body knowing how to move with him as he flew even while my heart broke apart within my chest and threatened to fall out of me piece by piece.
Same
Leon still held me close, though the kids’ arms had grown slack around my waist, their little bodies becoming soft with sleep during the long flight. I’d stolen strength from the love in their embraces, but I hadn’t been able to look at any of them either, the weight of my failure ripping through me, the guilt grinding away my core. They’d never seen their uncle Roary in the flesh and had come all this way because they’d believed in me and my foolhardy plans.
"You left without him,” I hissed, my body tight with tension, rage eating me alive and fury making me toss blame out in every direction I could. Dante shifted suddenly, causing Ethan to curse loudly as he was dropped to the jungle floor in the process. I was forced to tilt my head back to glare up at my cousin who towered over me in his Fae form. “We’ll fix it, Rosa,” he swore. “You know we will.”
“Take that pain and forge it into something fierce, something powerful, something real, Rosa. Make it drive you or it will break you.”
“I need to return these convicts to custody,” Cain snarled from my left and I whirled on him, happy to have a real target for my rage as I bared my teeth and advanced on him. “Try it, stronzo,” I said in a vicious tone. “See how far you get.”
“Looks like you’re fresh out of friends,” I hissed, taking a step closer to him and peering into his grey eyes with nothing but threat in my expression. “And you also seem to be in need of a dose of reality, so I’m going to lay it out for you. You’re not Officer anything anymore, Mason. You aided in our escape, ran with us across that fucking minefield and leapt onto the back of the Storm Dragon just like the convicts you so despise. You killed to get us out of there. You plucked me up into your arms and used your speed to ensure I escaped. You and Hastings aren’t going to be able to just swan
...more
“And let them watch you hunt me, lie for me, kill for me and fuck me before finally hurling me on to the back of my cousin and ensuring I escaped? Good luck explaining that to the FIB,” I taunted and Cain’s face paled. Dante chuckled darkly while Leon spluttered in surprise, pointing between me and the asshole guard like he couldn’t see it. But my poor, sweet choir boy stole the show by stumbling towards us and pointing his finger straight in Cain’s face.
“I’m not good enough for you, ragazzo del coro,” I told him softly. “I’m all sharp thorns stained in blood beneath these pretty petals. You deserve a far sweeter flower than me.”
He patted Hastings on the shoulder consolingly while looping his other arm over my shoulders. Hastings had turned beetroot and my cousin was shaking his head and making a show of covering his ears while Leon loudly announced that it clearly ran in the family.
“It wasn’t meant to happen. I just…” Cain looked at me and my throat thickened from the raw anguish in his eyes, then he tore his gaze from mine and shook his head at Hastings. “I’m sorry I’m not what you thought I was, kid.”
“You let Carson take on your appearance?” I asked my cousin, knowing already that it had to have been him. “Yes. Though I will admit that I’m concerned about what he will have done to my reputation while I was supposedly at that party,” Dante said.
Lmao please let ethan see him
Minutes crawled by as I watched the dawn rise and let myself feel the jagged truth of what had happened, my heart reaching out in a desperate cry for my Lion, my soul wanting to tear itself in two just so that some part of it could find its way back to him.
But as I stood there staring at the dawn which should have been such a beautiful sight with him right there watching it beside me, I swore that I would get him back. By the power of the moon, I would go to the ends of the world and beyond to return Roary Night to my side. My skin began to glimmer with the power of the moon as it bound my fate to that promise, an echo of the one I had made ten long years ago, and I tipped my head back as it imbued me, releasing a long, sorrowful howl to the sky and swearing on all that I was that I would fix this, or give my life trying.
I knew who he was. His face had followed me into the depths of the darkness when I had lost consciousness on that stars-forsaken operating table. Somewhere among the thick, impenetrable shadows of my mind, I had remembered him. The man with the scar through his left eye, an eye which was as black as death itself.
VARD YOU FUCK
A low growl rolled through my throat as I ran at Roland, the need for his death spilling through my flesh, clad in iron. A rush hissed through my limbs at the motion, some strange and unknown sensation tearing along my bloodstream and filling me with nameless power. The room around me blurred, my feet moving altogether too fast and I crashed into a clear pane of glass that I hadn’t seen, my nose close to breaking as I fell back onto my ass with a bellow of shocked agony.
God...
“You are fast becoming my favourite miracle, Nightroary,”
Why doss he name them like this
be my greatest achievement. You will change the world. No longer will the lesser Orders have to remain in the pitiful forms they were born with.
Fuck off
My tongue weighed heavily in my mouth and the burn in my throat grew deeper as wicked, hungry thoughts flitted through my head.
Oh no
I caught the falling woman as she spluttered and choked, but as I looked down in a bid to help her, something switched in me. The burn in my throat grew to a roaring command and I felt my canines lengthen in my mouth. All at once, the blood spilling from her became such an irresistible desire that it stole every ounce of my focus. The need to help her subsided and instead, a far more terrible urge took over.
Fuck
“Vampire,” he laughed, then he crowed it, celebrating his victory in me. “Vampire! You are a Lion Shifter no more.”
I hate him
My mate, my beautiful, courageous mate who had never learned the meaning of fear, never knew when to back down, would be out there now looking for me. And I never wanted her to get close to this place. To that monster who knew how to do the unspeakable to Fae-kind “Rosa,” I whispered thickly into the icy air. “Don’t come for me,” I ordered, repeating the words I had said to her in our parting moment, hoping the stars would guide her away from me now. “Don’t search for me anymore, little pup.”
“Let it out, lupa,” she encouraged, her fingers stroking through my hair, and I cracked apart just like that. A sob shook my chest and tears spilled once more. She didn’t ask anything of me. Didn’t need to. In this house news spread like wildfire and I was certain that by now every detail of our escape and our failure to rescue Roary would have circulated three times already, the facts mixing with fiction, embellishments at every turn but the truth of it immovable all the same.
“A morte e ritorno, lupa,” Bianca said firmly. “You have work to do yet.”
“You know that one, Andre,” Maria drawled, all seven-year-old sass. “It’s the same as Zio Carson’s – the one Zio Leon calls ‘his great shame’ when he has his short hair face on.”
Gabriel stepped into view outside it, catching the vase before it could fall and offering me a knowing smile which said he’d seen that coming. “You’ve brought chaos into the future of this family by bringing that one to our door,” he said, gazing after Sin who was now racing along the edge of the pool laughing maniacally as the pack of pups chased him. “Oh I know,” I agreed.
“I’ve secured the perimeter,” I said with a shrug, my song falling dead in the middle. I couldn’t remember most of the lyrics anyway – which was weird considering I’d been making them up on the spot.
Crafty, cunning and cool – I was great at cunnilingus too, which wasn’t all that relevant to the game, but was always worth noting when the C words came to dance inside my mind.
Crying
“You see, I’m a man of many boxes. All of them stored inside me, some full of clowns and others stuffed with knives. But this one here that you’ve broken open just now, that one’s my darkest dealing, wild girl. I only open that one when I’m about to kill, you understand? I will bleed them out for you, cut down each enemy that stands along the path to your Lion. Because I will wage wars and raze hell to see you smile again.”
“Kiss me now, pretty one,” I urged. “Let me scatter them seeds to the breeze. At least for a moment.” “I think sometimes you see me like no one else quite does,” she whispered. “You see the lesions on my heart, Sin Wilder.” “That’s where I love you deepest, Rosa,” I growled and she leaned into me at last.
“Thinking is for top hats and cats with monocles,” I reminded him. “It isn’t my thinker that fell for her – it’s my thumper.” I put my hand over my heart in demonstration, its violent pounding a testament to that truth.
“You say one more vile word about my man and I’ll rip that festering tongue from your mouth before choking you with it, bastardo,” Rosalie hissed with a venom that made my heart stall then race then do a triple flip, tuck, curl, whirly-loo-ha and flamble. Did she just call me hers??
“Show him, Sin,” she purred, and I purred too, inside and out as I took her hand and looked straight at Jerome as I shifted into her perfect desire – and nothing happened.
Jerome straightened, a smile breaking across his dark features at long last as he saw it. “She wants you as…you.” “Only me,” I agreed. “And she has me.” “And there was me thinking you don’t have a heart,” Jerome said, a little sting in his tail because he was obviously upset that I’d found new places to be. “So he stays with me,” Rosalie reiterated, and I shrugged, a pawn to her dominion. Jerome nodded slowly. “I suppose I’ll see you soon then, brother.” I nodded. “As soon as a spoon in a lagoon.”
Pudding gave me a slow smile, setting aside his demolished plate of pie and getting to his feet so he towered over me. He ignored my hand and drew me into an embrace instead, enveloping me in his huge body and patting me roughly on the head. “You’re a good hound,” he said, drawing a smile to my lips. “I will not forget this boon you have granted me. And I will be your loyal friend if ever you are in need of one.”
Awwww
“No,” Hastings said, more firmly than I had ever heard him address me. “I’m not who I was before. I’m…I think I’m a criminal now. My soul has been darkened and it won’t ever turn pure again.” I glanced at Cain who rolled his eyes unhelpfully. “You haven’t broken any laws,” I said slowly. “You aren’t a criminal-” “It’s in my soul,” Hastings replied, running his hands through his blonde hair and tugging on his fringe so that it fell forward to shadow his eyes. “Look at me. I’m a completely different man now.”
Lmao
But Sin…he was fair game. If I managed to chain him and return him to the FIB, I might just be pardoned and escape Cyclops interrogation for the act of clear loyalty.
fuck off
“Old long Johnson had a farm,” Sin whisper-sung under this breath. “E-I-E-I-O. And on that farm he had a Cain.” He tossed a glance over his shoulder at me, a wicked glint in his eyes. “E-I-E-I-O. With a bitch-bitch here, and a bitch-bitch there. Here a bitch, there a bitch, everywhere a little bitch.”
Lolololol
All I wanted to do was grab her and pull her against me, tell her I wanted her in any way I could have her. But my pride wouldn’t let the words out, and they were a fool’s hope anyway.
You are so stupid
But as Rosalie met my gaze, a dark kind of protectiveness wrapped around my soul and I found I wanted to be seen here with her. Insane as that thought was, it stayed my hand from concealing myself and I stepped close to her instead in a show of unity.
“What did she do to you?” he murmured. “Not me,” I said quietly. “But others.” “You’ve got an actual heart under that iron exterior, haven’t you Cain?” he said, a slight taunt to his voice, but it seemed to be in friendly jest instead of a nasty jibe. “Not much of one.” “I think it’s the kind layered in scars. That’s what makes you fit in with us. We’re all broken on the inside.”
As he swung his leg over the sill and started climbing down the ladder, I found my feet tracking back towards the bedroom where Sin had murdered Warden Pike. I glimpsed in at the carnage, her body torn to pieces and her head sitting snuggly in a plant pot, the fern dug out to make room for it. He had done this in less than a minute, and the thought made adrenaline puncture my veins. But as I stared at the horrified look in Pike’s lifeless eyes, I felt something toward the rogue Incubus that I never thought I’d feel. Gratitude.
Ooooooo
the rulers of our kingdom
Oops
“Has Jerome pulled through on any intel?” I asked Sin who shook his head. “Nothing. All he said was that he has the full layout of the compound, the entrance points to the island and the movements of around sixty boats which have recently docked at the island – along with a count of how many Fae departed them. It’s as if he didn’t even try.” I arched a brow, exchanging a look with Ethan who rolled his eyes. “Any chance you have those figures written down?” I asked. Sin sighed. “Your little Wolfy was listening and scribbled a thing or two down,”
I came to a stumbling halt as the creature snarled at me, preparing to take it on and fight my way to the Fae I despised more than any other in this world. The beast was tall, layered with hair over thick muscles, almost ape-like in its gait, but its face…I knew that face, though his tattoos were now missing and his eyes were like two vacant strips of earth. “Gustard?” I rasped, the horror of seeing him like this freezing me for too long. Whatever Roland had done to him had transformed him into a monster.
Damn kinda feel bad nah i dont
“That motherfucker is supposed to be dead,” I growled in a low tone, my eyes on the door where Vard had now disappeared. Roary was being yanked along by the collar on his neck, drawn through a door to the other side of the stage and panic gripped me as I lost sight of him. “I fought in the war. They found his body. He – Drav – Vard. He tortured Tory Vega, he-”
honestly why did noone guess this?
“He’ll see us coming. He has The Sight. If we plan anything directly against him then the stars will warn him and-” “Who needs the stars when we have the moon on our side?” Cain demanded, his gaze iron, tone unflinching.
hopefully the moon likes you all better than the stars like the vegas there for a bit
“Did you take these bombs from Rosalie?” he snarled. “I didn’t not take them. But don’t worry, sugar, I left her something better in their place. She’ll thank me for it later. Now let’s get inside and blow this shit hole to kingdom bum.” “Come,” he corrected me. “Later baked potata, I can’t just go blowing my load right now, I’m saving it for the after party.”
LOL! My chaos maker
I hesitated for a moment but my team were relying on me and I knew now that it was time for me to step up and embrace the call of the dark. I had to keep on this path.
yeah they are Hastings... just dont die
I tripped over some loose rubble and went sprawling onto my back, something sharp cracking in my back pocket and jabbing me in the ass cheek.
His potion right? Oh babe....
I blinked and the room turned purple. That wasn’t right. I blinked again and it was green. The pain in my ass cheek sharpened as I scrambled back across the ground and I shoved my hand into my pocket, yanking out a syringe, the needle wet with my blood, the potion inside it gone.
Yep
