After being blinded by those sworn to protect her, Artemis trades her vision for her ability to have a mate. Only things are not as they seem when she's taken in by a pack where everybody already seems to know her face and the brooding Alpha keeps a...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
His tanned olive skin was smooth beneath my fingertips. My hands exploded the contours of his muscled shoulders, his hard chest. He was warm and solid, like an unprecedented mountain of man.
The air left my lungs as I met his eyes, swirling pools of amber gold stared back at me, no emotion or feeling behind them.
It was almost like an animal would watch its prey, a kind of morbid curiosity.
He was the predator, and I the prey. Yet he didn't move a muscle, instead he was tense and still.
I bit my lip as my finger traced the strong line of his jaw, I felt breathless, weightless. Like I was floating.
I was high on the thought of him.
My hands roamed his warm body, desperate to explore every inch of his skin.
The pad of my thumb swiped his high cheekbone, a small smile tugging at the corners of my lips.
He was a work of art, so perfectly and beautifully sculpted. With every touch the flame inside only grew brighter, I wanted to see all of him, to feel it.
My hand unconsciously began to trail down his abdomen, over every plane, every hollow and ever contour of him.
He was a mountain of tightly bound muscle.
I stopped at the waistband of his pants, staring up at him with wide eyes, looking for permission to feel all of him.
His eyes were hard and cold, what were once warm pools of liquid gold had frozen over, an icy sheen taking control.
His hand rested on my cheek and I leaned into his warm touch. My eyes were trained on his full lips as he spoke, his sonorous voice made my thighs clench uncontrollably.
"Wake up."
***
I sat up with a jolt.
Chest heaving and hands clammy I wiped the last traces of rest from my eyes. A thin sheen of sweat had settled on my skin, but it was the creeping cold that had my body yearning for the thought of him.
"Finally." Astoria snorted, bursting into my small bedroom and throwing open the curtains. "Thought you'd died in your sleep."
I shielded my eyes from the bright amber light."-Hoped, more like." I muttered under my breath as I climbed out of the makeshift bed.
I showered and dressed quickly as Astoria gathered roots from the wood for her latest mixture.
"It's a potion to make someone sleep like the dead." She said as she threw four drops of yellow liquid into the Milton amber potion.
"What would anyone need that for?" I grimaced. "And when you say sleep like the dead... You don't mean you actually die, do you?"
"Try some and find out.." She sneered, offering a small vile of the thick yellow liquid. "No thanks.." I said quickly, backing off from the slender female.
She only laughed.
"Astoria.." I questioned, fiddling nervously with the hem of my shirt.
"What."
"Tell me about him..." I kept my eyes down, almost ashamed of my childish curiosity. "-About Theos."
She sighed, wiping her brow with the back of her hand and pulling herself up so that she was sitting on the wooden counter. "What do you want to know?"
Anything. Everything.
"Tell me about her."
She was silent for a pregnant moment, a cool breeze floated through the air, full of the scent of the outside world. "She was his mate, she was the only woman he has ever loved, other than his sister Liliana."
A strange feeling came over me, an almost numbness, the all consuming nothingness that left me bare. Deep down I hated the fact he had loved another, the revelation left a strange weight in the pit of my stomach.
I had no right. I had no right to be jealous, or any other feeling.
I hated him.
"What was her name?" I couldn't look her in the eyes, tho I felt her bright orbs burning holes in the side of my face.
"Mare."
I felt weak, my mind drew back to the pine that stood tall and alone before the cliff face. Staring out over the frozen lake, to the vast horizon of trees beyond. The two letters surrounded by a heart, engraved into the bark were what caught my attention.
M+T
Mare and Theos.
He had taken me there, to the place that they shared. Maybe they had sat there together, as the winter evening soared overhead and the bronze baked clouds grew grey and weary. Maybe they had laid there, fucked there.
Then why did I feel so comfortable there, so at home? Was it just his presence. I should've felt out of place, and I wished I did, but I didn't.
He had shared with me the most raw and primal parts of himself, he had shown me his weaknesses without me even knowing.
He had left his neck wide open, all I had to do was bite.
