I groaned as harsh sunlight streamed through the bay windows and woke me up. The first thing I noticed—the pint of ice cream lying empty across my pillow.
The second thing I noticed—five other females were piled across my arms and legs.
On my one side, Lucinda was wrapped around me in a bear hug.
On the other, Aran was resting her hand across my head like she was trying to comfort me.
Jinx was sprawled in the middle of the bed, lying across Jess, and Jala was lying beside them with her arms linked with Jess’s.
I decided not to dwell on the fact that Jinx’s eyes were wide open and she was muttering something under her breath.
She was the only person not sleeping.
Even Noodle was spread out on his back in her arms, snoring softly.
I squinted and realized I wasn’t imagining it: the ferret was wearing fake eyelashes, and his dark fur glinted like he’d been dipped in sparkles. Pretty.
Abruptly, I remembered the events of last night, and emotions crushed my chest to the bed.
The men.
I’d done what I had to do, but holy shit, that didn’t mean it hurt any less.
I was wanted for being a half-breed, and the don had threatened all our lives if I dared to bond with them.
He didn’t even know about my fae heritage, and he still forbade it because I was an alpha.
Logically, I was happy with my decision because I’d kept the men safe.
Illogically, I wanted to cry like a little baby while they held me and told me everything was going to be all right.
Maybe that was what growing up was?
Recognizing that it wouldn’t be all right unless you made it so. That sometimes you couldn’t do what you wanted to, only what you had to.
Sometimes, the only person who could save you was yourself.
And if you couldn’t save yourself, all you could save were those you cared about. I’d protected the men by making the only choice any of us could make.
And how had they rewarded me?
Ascher telling me to fuck off, Jax turning his back to me, Xerxes sneering that I should find someone to dominate, and Cobra cutting off his connection to the little snake on my flesh.
The moment he’d severed the connection, the little snake had screamed into my mind like it was dying.
By some miracle, it hadn’t disappeared completely. It was a lighter gray, no longer a dark, shadowy black, but it still moved across my flesh.
Which was weird, because if it was a part of Cobra’s consciousness, it shouldn’t exist after he’d removed his connection from it.
My little miracle snake.
I reached down and kissed it, and it twirled across my fingers and sent me images of comfort.
The ache in my chest persisted.
Cobra was over me.
My emotions boomeranged back and forth between righteous anger and overwhelming pain.
There was no in-between.
A part of me wished to go back in time and tell the men I wanted them to be mine.
It wouldn’t have been hard to give in to my desire and beg them to take me, beg them to fight impossible odds for me and protect me from life’s horror.
But I hadn’t grown up being beaten within an inch of my life to wimp out when it mattered.
I didn’t need any man to fight for me.
I could do it myself.
The don had been clear, and I agreed with Jala that everything happened for a reason.
The men’s reaction to me asking to just be friends was the confirmation I needed that I’d made the right choice.
They still didn’t respect me as a person.
They just wanted to own me sexually, order me around, and treat me like a simpering princess that needed saving, and when I’d refused, they’d turned nasty.
I scoffed as indignation burned through me.
How dare they treat me like this when I was putting aside my own wants so they could be safe and happy?
“Fuck men. I hope I die a virgin. That will show them.” I threw myself out of bed, unable to lie still and wallow for a second longer.
“Virginity rocks. Kill them all,” Aran chanted sleepily, patting the pillow while wrapping her other elbow around Jala’s neck and squeezing.
Before she could asphyxiate the pink-haired teen, I punched Aran in the gut and wrestled Jala out of her grip.
Both of them were still asleep, but Aran grinned widely, like she enjoyed trying to kill someone while unconscious.
Back in the shifter realm, at mandatory therapy with Auntie, I’d thought Aran was being dramatic when she’d said she wanted to kill everyone at all times.
Now that I knew her better, I 100 percent believed her.
A lifetime ago, I’d explained that the numb made me feel nothing, and Aran had said something about rage consuming her until she was burning alive.
Goose bumps made me shiver.
As I stood dwelling on the past and unfortunate circumstances that were our lives, suddenly the familiar voice of the numb echoed clearly in my head.
I’m ice; he’s fire. You need to complete it.
My blood froze.
The numb wasn’t activated, but the familiar voice had just spoken to me.
“What?” I whispered out loud. “How are you in my head?”
Silence.
My heart beat erratically. “How did you speak to me?”
Still nothing.
If the numb were a normal phenomenon that spoke to the half warriors in battle, why was it whispering riddles to me?
The numb always gave emotionless directions in battle.
It instructed me on how to punch; it didn’t whisper ambiguous directions about completing something.
“What do you mean, ice and fire? Do you mean Aran is fire? Who the fuck are you? Is the song of the hunt somehow ice?” I said as I looked around for an invisible intruder.
“Um, sis?” Lucinda asked with concern.
No voice responded.
“She’s hearing voices. Either she’s some type of cursed parasitic host, or her mind has deteriorated from too many concussions,” Jinx said with a “duh” tone like my theatrics were boring her. “Probably the latter.”
I made a face at her. “Go to sleep. Oh, wait, you can’t.”
“Real mature.” Jinx stroked Noodle.
Embarrassment streaked through me as I realized I’d just mocked a twelve-year-old for suffering from insomnia.
“Are you sure you’re okay, sis?” Lucinda narrowed her too-familiar ruby eyes at me.
“No, I’m not okay. Creepy voices love to talk to me, and apparently instead of being maternal, I instinctively want to bully small children.”
Aran groaned as she opened her eyes and stretched. “You’re being dramatic, Sadie.”
I glared at her. “A female voice in my head just said, ‘I’m ice; he’s fire,’ and, ‘You need to complete it,’ most likely referring to me and you, since you’re the only guy here. Well, kind of. I don’t know.”
I pressed my palms into my eyes. “It was the numb’s voice, but I hadn’t activated it, so theoretically it should be impossible to speak to me. Why do voices always talk about us? What does any of it mean?”
The room went silent.
At least now everyone would panic with me, and Aran would finally realize how serious the situation was.
“Oh no,” Aran said as I grabbed a small paper bag from the en suite bathroom and breathed into it rapidly.
I rasped, “I know, right,” and continued huffing into the bag.
Aran pulled her sleeping mask back over her eyes. “The sun god probably realizes I’m an absolute dynamite of a man and wants to tell me how sexy I am. You probably need to complete your life’s purpose by telling me that.”
It was official.
I was about to murder my best friend.
Jinx choked on a laugh, and Lucinda cracked a smile. Jala and Jess woke up and looked around, confused by what was going on.
“Jinx, hold the glam ferret,” I said.
She scooped Noodle up protectively, and I let out a war cry, throwing myself on Aran, elbow pointed down for maximum impact.
Even with a blindfold over Aran’s eyes, it wasn’t a fair fight.
“Fight, fight, fight,” the teenage girls squealed with glee as we tussled across elegant silk sheets and I tried to stuff the paper bag down Aran’s throat.
The match ended quickly.
Aran pinned me beneath her with her forearm across my windpipe, and my left arm twisted behind my body at an awful angle.
She grinned down at me, still blindfolded by her sleeping mask, perfect white teeth flashing. “Admit I’m sexy.”
“Something serious is going on here,’’ I whined. “I can feel it in my bones. Maybe I’m ice, and you’re fire. We probably have to do something together. The creepy poems said something similar to us. Also, you only pinned me because your male enchantment makes you wider and stronger.”
Aran shook her head, eye mask still on. “Oh, dumb, innocent Sadie. The enchantment is a mirage. It makes me appear wider with a more masculine build, but doesn’t actually change my physical form at all. Just what you perceive.”
My jaw dropped.
The hands pinning me to the bed were strong as shit, and I’d lost circulation where they pressed against me.
Then I remembered what she’d said. “I am not innocent.”
“So you finally admit you’re dumb?” Jinx asked lazily as she petted Noodle.
For what happened next, I blamed the terror that still shook through my veins from the voice speaking to me.
“So you admit you’re annoying?” I mocked the twelve-year-old.
“So you admit you’re a nincompoop?”
“So you admit you’re the size of a garden gnome?”
Jinx’s dark eyes were cruel. “So you admit you’re probably going to die in this realm because you have no idea what you’re doing, abilities you can’t control, no idea how to maintain a relationship with men, and confusing circumstances surrounding your existence that probably indicate you won’t live to see your next birthday?”
Jala groaned and pressed a pillow over her face, fluffy pink hair sticking out.
Jess kicked Jinx. “We talked about this.”
Aran laughed and climbed off me, so she was no longer violently smushing me into the bed.
After a long, tense moment where I tried to regain a semblance of dignity after being emotionally assaulted by a child and thoroughly outwrestled by my best friend, who was blindfolded, I pointed out the obvious. “You don’t have many friends, do you?”
Jinx opened her mouth, probably to rip my last shard of self-esteem to shreds, but Jess slapped a hand over her sister’s face.
Before I could gloat, Aran slapped me on the top of the head. “Stop provoking the vicious, but entertaining, small child.”
“Ow, I was just speaking my truth.” I groaned, face burning as I realized my younger sister was lying next to me silently, ruby eyes wide.
So much for being a paragon of wisdom and maturity.
Aran harrumphed.
Still raring for a fight, I snapped at her, “At least I’m speaking my truth and trying to do something about our circumstances.”
Aran ripped the sleeping mask off and glared at me with steel-blue eyes. She had her mother’s gaze.
“Sadie, sweetie pie, you want my truth? You want to know how I ripped out my mother’s heart and ate it?”
“Um.” Suddenly, I was hyper aware that I’d been acting immature and there were four impressionable young girls, and one beautiful ferret staring at me. “Maybe another time?”
I tried to move my head to indicate to Aran that we had an audience.
Just because we needed therapy didn’t mean we needed to completely traumatize the next generation.
Aran’s expression was unfocused. “When I stared down at my seizing mother, an endless burning rage overwhelmed me, and I thought about all the ways she’d hurt me. Ice daggers erupted from my nails, and I shoved them through her back until her sternum cracked. I ripped her beating heart out through muscle and bone. Then guess what happened?”
“No?” This felt like a trap.
“What happened?” Lucinda asked quietly. The four girls stared at Aran, enraptured.
“After I consumed my mother’s raw, beating heart, it sounded like a male stood behind me and praised me. When he spoke, it was pure bliss.”
Aran paused, breath ragged, as her chest heaved. “It was euphoric.”
My heart rate spiked.
Suddenly, Aran blinked and shook her head.
“When I turned around, there was no one there. I don’t know what the voice in your head said, Sadie, but I can guarantee you that I’m not fire. It was ice that burst from me, and I knew in my bones that I could produce a shit ton more of it with the right motivation.”
Shuffling forward slowly on the bed, I wrapped my arms around her in an awkward hug and asked, “This is good, right? You’re a water fae?”
Aran laughed. “No, I’m not. As the princess, I learned our realm’s history three times over. No water fae has ever had ice claws. Plus, they manifest with more water abilities than ice. I’ve tried, and I still can’t manipulate water.”
“Well, there is good news,” I said.
Aran’s voice was uncharacteristically small. “What could possibly be good in our lives?”
“We’re both hearing voices. So we’re equally unwell.”
A light laugh burst from her throat, and she wrapped her longer arms around me tightly.
Her happiness was infectious, and soon we were both giggling and holding on to each other.
Jinx’s voice interrupted our revelry. “Lucinda, my respect for you has plummeted now that I’ve spent time with your sister.”
Lucinda replied, “I get that.”
Jess sighed. “I wish I were hearing voices. My life is so boring.”
“Remember when Jinx would just whisper stuff in our ears all night? That was basically like hearing voices,” Jala said, pink eyes wide.
“Good point.”
I pulled away from Aran and lightly punched myself in the forehead with my fist. “No one is going to hear any voices going forward. We are all normal, functioning females with bright, happy, not-concerning-at-all futures.”
Aran puckered her lips in disbelief, and I pinched her.
“I’m manifesting it.”
“Good luck with that. You’re no witch.”
Before I could launch a million questions at Aran about witches, because I was still shook that they existed, Jess climbed across the bed and gave me and Aran a hug.
Before I knew it, we were all hugging. Jala had even pulled Jinx into the pile.
Big touchy-feely morning for all of us.
You knew things weren’t well when everyone started embracing.
The shadow snake twirled around my fingers and projected images of love and support, and my heart hurt at the reminder that Cobra was no longer attached to it.
I sent it back an image of me hugging it, and it gave a little zing in return.
I gave it pets and whispered under my breath, “How did such a rude man make such a sweet snake?”
The snake twirled with glee as I dragged my fingers across it.
Jess interrupted my melancholy thoughts. “I know Jax is my brother, but don’t worry, girl. I will cut him.”
“I appreciate that and hope it won’t come to that,” I said honestly and smiled at her.
For the first time since the sacred lake had revealed I was an alpha, I was surrounded by females.
It was nice.
“So, what’s the plan for today?” Aran asked.
“Well, the don said we begin the second trial, so that should be fun.” I pretended to smoke an imaginary cigar and made a finger gun. “Gang life, am I right?”
Everyone looked at me with concern.
I pretended to blow a smoke ring with my cigar and pondered where I wanted to get “Loyalty” tattooed.
Definitely across my face like a badass.
“Sis, we should come with you,” Lucinda said eagerly. “I have…” she trailed off but didn’t finish her sentence.
“You have what?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Lucinda said quickly, but I got the sense she was hiding something.
I opened my eyes to ask more questions, but Jala cut me off, her pink eyes large with excitement. “Yeah, we can make sure the guys are nice to you. Plus, we have some skills that might be useful.”
I thought about Aran’s eyes going black, Jinx shrieking, Jess and Jala protecting Jinx, and Lucinda being a mini me.
For a second, I considered bringing them along.
Then I remembered they were still teens and Aran needed to keep a low profile.
Also, as the two semi-adults, it was our responsibility to keep them safe.
“No, I’ll figure out schooling for you guys in this realm.” I tried to speak with authority, like I was a leader they could look up to and not someone who’d just been screaming about hearing voices.
“School sucks,” Jess blurted. Jala pretended to cry, Lucinda flopped back with a moan, and Jinx showed her teeth. I couldn’t figure out if she was smiling or snarling.
“Love the passion. I’ll be sure to inquire about theater programs.”
Aran studied her fingernails. “At your guys’ age, I was being set on fire nightly and paraded around ballrooms with bloodthirsty fae. Grow up.”
Jinx turned to Aran, her dark eyes large and sharp on her pale face. “And now you’re hiding like a coward, disguised as an unattractive male, and sleeping in the same bed as your best friend because you’re afraid of the dark, flames, and blood.”
Aran gasped.
Jess chanted “fight” under her breath.
Aran arched her brow. “Excuse me. I will have you know that I am very sexy. The voice in Sadie’s head even told her so.”
“Um, it definitely didn’t.”
The tension dissipated as everyone realized Aran was not about to rip out one of Jinx’s organs and eat it. Although, weirdly, my gut told me Jinx would put up more of a fight than the fae queen.
I pursed my lips and debated giving some type of inspirational speech about how we all had each other and we would be all right. Even though the men were mad at me and it low-key felt like the world was ending.
Aran farted. Loudly.
The girls screamed.
I left the room.
We were all fucked.
Dead.
Aran could handle the four teenage girls. She clearly needed to practice leadership if she was ever going to run an entire realm, because I hated to say it, but I was getting big “reign of terror” energy from her.
My mood soured further when I walked into the foyer.
All four men stood at the front door.
Instantly, the scent of sugary cinnamon made my mouth water.
“You’re late,” Cobra snarled with menace.
“And you’re ugly.” I still needed to work on comebacks.
Ascher’s tattooed jaw clenched tight. “So, Princess, you decided to show up?”
I turned to him slowly.
It was one thing for Cobra to act like an annoying psycho, but it was something else coming from the great betrayer.
I stared Ascher down until a light pink stained the tops of his cheekbones, and his scowl fell. Like he was thinking about our history and knew he’d just fucked up.
Before I could say anything, Ascher pulled the door open and guided me through with a light touch on my lower back. His cheekbones were still pink, and he avoided eye contact.
I let him lead me outside.
The day was overcast, everything shadowed in gray, and a dreary drizzle soaked my skin and saturated the mansion’s perfectly manicured green lawn.
Xerxes twirled his blades in his hands and pushed past me as he stalked down his walkway.
The intoxicating scent trailed behind him like a cloud of ambrosia.
Jax didn’t speak.
“Opening doors for her now, are we?” Cobra sneered from somewhere behind us.
I didn’t bother to respond, and Ascher kept his hand on my lower back.
On the street, a beta in a suit was leaning against a red supercar, waiting for us.
Tall skyscrapers rose in the distance, the tops still hidden in the clouds. I wasn’t sure the realm even had a sun.
When I got to the car, Ascher opened the door, and I squeezed myself into the back row so I wouldn’t have to sit near the men.
The car jumped forward, and the force of the acceleration pinned me to my seat.
My hair whipped around my face, even though none of the windows were open.
Outside the window, the world passed by in a blur of dreary colors.
When we finally came to a stop, the driver simply said, “The don is waiting for you inside.”
The pit in my stomach returned.
Ascher held open the door for me, and I stumbled trying to climb out.
Jax’s warm hand wrapped around my bicep. “Be careful.” He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something else, but Cobra sneered and grabbed his arm.
He tugged him forward. “Come on, don’t waste energy on her. She’s made her decision.”
I made a point of walking forward and elbowing past Cobra. “You’re being childish.”
He elbowed me back in the arm. Hard.
I slammed my foot into his shin.
Cobra whipped his gorgeous face around and hissed at me like a wild animal.
I stuck my tongue out at him.
His emerald eyes flashed with fire, pure fury rolled off him, and his jewels writhed across his flesh.
My lips curled into a smirk. If he wanted to act like a little bitch, then I’d treat him like one. No way was I just going to roll over and let him walk all over me because he didn’t get his way.
He stepped toward me threateningly.
I flipped him off.
Cobra hissed.
“Really?” Ascher growled.
His back pin straight as he walked up, his face was back to a cold mask of indifference, but something unnamed sparked in his eyes as he watched Cobra and I tussle.
I turned around to huff past him and almost walked into a tall man in a business suit. Mumbling apologies, I took in my surroundings.
For a second, I forgot to breathe.
Serpentine City in the daytime was breathtaking.
The sidewalks were full of men and women clad in expensive-looking business suits and dresses.
Every woman wore heels and had her hair in an elaborate updo.
I turned in a circle and took it all in.
While all the fae were tall and willowy with similar graceful features, this realm was a different story.
Shifters of all sizes, with vastly different features and skin tones, walked briskly across the wide sidewalks, funneling in and out of the massive buildings.
I unfocused my eyes until the world blurred around me in streaks of color.
It wasn’t hard to picture all the people shifting into various animals. Even though betas and nulls didn’t shift, the animal influence was still present in their pheromones and postures.
The burnt scent of betas overwhelmed my nose. A few musky whiffs indicated there were other alphas nearby, and there were faint sweet notes of omegas in the air.
I’d never felt so alive.
It was like waking up from a nightmare and realizing none of it had been real.
A sense of belonging settled through my bones.
A man and woman held hands and hurried down the street, rich, earthy alpha scents trailing behind them. Enchanted blue jewelry dripped from their wrists and necks, matching their impeccably tailored clothes. Both had dark-golden skin and white hair similar to my own.
Two saber-toothed tigers?
I opened my mouth to ask, but they quickly disappeared into the bustling crowd.
A short older woman sidestepped a puddle and looked up, her wide bright-green eyes instantly bringing to mind a small woodland creature.
My breath caught as I realized she sported small, almost imperceptible horns that curled slightly at her temples.
Like Ascher’s, but different.
No one had jewels in their skin like Cobra, but a woman hurried by, and the shimmering around her eyes was incandescent scales.
On closer inspection, the business attire was constructed of different fabrics and colors with unique markings and symbols.
What appeared to be a crush of similarly dressed people at first glance was actually a bustling crowd of unique individuals.
Some people stalked through the crowd like predators, alphas blending in like wolves in sheep’s clothing.
The crowd instinctually parted around us. Heads down, high-heeled and dress shoes hurrying by, everyone gave us a wide berth, like they could smell the danger from our pheromones.
From what I could deduce, nulls jogged past in huddles of five people or more. No scent clung to them as they walked together in protective groups.
Even though they didn’t shift like alphas and omegas, betas stood taller and stronger than any fae.
Like their beast counterparts, their features differed widely, with the history of animals apparent in the slants of their eyes or the striped tiger markings of their hair.
Predators stalked the street.
Suddenly, Xerxes’s name was gasped, and people stumbled to a stop.
The whispers grew until there was a small semicircle formed around us as more people called his name.
On instinct, we shifted to form a circle around Xerxes, and he hunched low to hide his face.
But ABOs raised their noses in the air and whispered his name as they squinted at us, cinnamon on their tongues.
An alpha woman stalked by in impossibly high heels and a black coat made of massive feathers. Her nose lifted and eyes glowed as she inhaled cinnamon, head turned toward us.
“Come on,” Xerxes said, startling me out of my shock as he pushed our protective blockade forward into the building.
He was the only person not looking around and gaping.
As he pushed us into the building, I craned my neck around and searched the crowd for the woman in the coat.
She walked past, massive feathers trailing behind her.
Shock stiffened my muscles.
She wasn’t wearing a coat—she had wings.
Suddenly, the rain didn’t seem dreary.
The soft patter of raindrops was the magical song for a unique, vibrant world. Everyone was an ABO, and they were everywhere. Unique. It was overwhelming, and it was everything.
Xerxes shoved us through a revolving glass door.
“Welcome,” the don greeted us in an empty, nondescript waiting room.
Technically, he was the reason all the men were now in a pack without me.
I tried not to let my annoyance show on my face and focused on radiating “I am the perfect gang member” vibes.
From the way he stared down at me with boredom, I did not impress him.
His white snake was once again wrapped around his neck like a small necklace, and it raised its little head to hiss at us every few seconds.
Since the don and the snake were connected, did that mean he was hissing at us?
Rude.
The don shifted his attention to Cobra. “How are you adjusting to pack life?” His emerald eyes glowed more the longer he stared at his son.
Cobra said nothing.
The don didn’t look concerned. “Today, you will begin your second initiation challenge. The basement of this building is an alpha fight club. No one may join the Mafia and shift into their alpha forms until they prove they have complete control over their mind and body. Only the strong survive in Serpentine City. Understood?”
“Um, what do we have to do, exactly?” I blurted nervously.
The “Loyalty” tattoo on the don’s neck bobbed as he swallowed thickly, and his snake stared at me.
I sputtered awkwardly, “Um, only if you feel like explaining. Your Highness. Royal, sir.”
Jax shifted closer so he was partially blocking the don’s view of me.
Finally, after taking a long drag of his cigarette, the don said, “You will each train for one week to prepare your body for your fights, and you will take a test to show you’ve learned the rules.”
He blew out smoke.
“You will fight matches in your unshifted forms. You must learn to be strongest in your weakest form, since enchantments that counteract shifting are common on the black market. If you survive your matches and maintain consciousness, you pass the second trial.”
I narrowed my eyes. “How many matches do we have to survive?”
The don blew another cloud of smoke. “A few.”
My shoulders relaxed. I was a good fighter, not a great fighter, but with the numb, I could hold my own.
The don took another long drag of his cigarette. “Just one hundred fights.”
Sun god kill me now.
