Soren
Snow falls in heaps that stick to hanging neon signs coated in ice. Street lights flicker as I move through the shadows, keeping my head down and my eyes covered by a thin strip of black fabric. A group of drunk patrons stumble out of a bar in front of me, tumbling into the ice covered street, carrying music and the scent of beer in their wake, but no one looks in my direction.
It’s easy to go unseen in a city this size.
In the distance, between the gaps between old apartment buildings and shops, shadows rise over the icy river. There used to be a city there. Now it’s a wasteland, nothing but ash.
Twin Rivers has a sordid history. I hate coming here. It’s noisy and dirty but constantly bustling. It reminds me of some of the bigger cities in Crescent Falls that fell out of the influence of the royal family. Crime runs rampant here, practically unchecked. I know this city is on Maeve’s radar. It’s the largest city in the Roguelands, with twelve packs claiming territory in the city boundary alone, and over a dozen more spread out in the nearby neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city.
This used to be my home. I came here as a kid, lived in a shitty one-bedroom apartment with a brother I didn’t know existed until I ended up on his doorstep.
I’m never coming back when this is said and done.
The file I left tucked between my bed frame and the mattress at my safe house a hundred miles south of here flares in my mind. I can’t act on the Architect’s desires today. I’m not here to kill the woman responsible for ruining my life and Patton’s life, but I am here to try to tie off loose ends before I start making plans.
I pass a tea shop and pause as the scent of chamomile drifts through the air. I brace a hand on the cold stone wall of the building, closing my eyes for a moment.
It’s been months. Eight months to the day, to be exact, since I jumped on that train and kissed Maeve for the last time. Her memory burns through my body like wildfire, uncontrolled and scorching through every wall I’ve built around her memory.
I’ve stopped watching the news. I don’t have a phone with access to social media, so I’ve been able to stay out of the loop. I thought not seeing her and not hearing her name would help, but I find constant reminders of her everywhere I go like my body seeks them out without my permission. The smell of chamomile tea. A woman passing me in the street with perfume scented like magnolia blossoms. A couple lovingly bickering a few rows ahead of me on the train while the man brushes his fingers through her hair, etc.
I can’t sit by a fire without imagining the fireworks she sent over Moonrise all those months ago.
I assume this is just what I’ll feel like for the rest of my life–empty.
So be it.
Wherever she is, she’s safe.
That’s all I have to keep me going.
I cross a street, weaving between a group of wolves out on a midnight stroll. Solstice lights still decorate the windows of shops shuttered for the night, a month and a half after the holiday. Patton cooked a feast for Solstice and brought out his best plates and glasses.
I barely tasted it.
A building of stone comes into view at the very end of the street where the lights have long burned out, casting an entire block in cold shadows. A single corner store is open and two people linger near its lit entrance. I pass through their cloud of cigarette smoke and into the darkness, my boots crunching through the snowy street no one bothered to clear and reach the five-story, otherwise abandoned, building casting its shadow on nearby apartment buildings and boarded up storefronts.
I cross into the center of the street when the main doors open, and a tall man steps outside, holding the door open like he’s expecting me.
“Well, well,” he drawls, his face covered in scars, “long time no see, Soren.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I grumble, brushing past him into the darkened foyer of what used to be a hotel. Music drifts through vents along the baseboards as I pass through a shadowed archway and take a set of stairs into more darkness. The music grows louder, vibrating through the floorboards. Two more men appear–bouncers tasked with guarding the gates to this tunnel to hell.
Neither stop me. They know who I am, and their shared expression of surprise warns me that they’re actively sounding the alarm about my arrival.
I’ll be in and out of here in twenty minutes. That’s as long as I’m willing to stand in her presence and do what needs to be done.
A nightclub expands around me. Strobing lights dance across walls of red velvet. Dancers twist on a low stage wearing nothing but string, but my eyes are on the black double doors on the far end of the bar where people swarm the counter for refills.
I feel the curious glances of onlookers as I wade through the crowd. A young woman presses her hand to my chest, drunkenly asking if I want to dance. I shove her away, and her yelp fades into the music.
I burst through the doors, and the music falls into a sucking kind of silence that makes my skin tingle with unease. She knows I’m here based on the four burly men standing outside her office door, their arms crossed and eyes honed on my every move.
I pass them, open the door wide, and step inside the Viper’s den.
Andrea lifts her head from her phone screen with a bright red, seductive smile, her chin-length black hair rippling with the movement. “Soren. I’ve been wondering when you’d come back here. You and I have unfinished business.”
She’s beautiful. Graceful and thin, she leans back in her chair and swivels from side to side, her long, pointed fingernails painted a blood red as she toys with the pendent of a snake she wears on a long, pure silver chain.
But her skin isn’t marred by scars. It’s flawless, as pale as snow. Her sharp, unnerving green eyes follow my progress to the center of her office where I sink into a chair in front of her desk and pull a large bank bag out of the inner pocket of my jacket, tossing it on her desk.
“That’s everything. Enough to cover Tom’s debt, my debt, and Patton’s.”
She licks her lips, tilting her head ever so slightly to drink me in. I resist the urge to bristle as her fingers drift down the seam of her impossibly low cut blouse. “That’s all you came here for? I don’t even get a hello? How are you? How have you been?”
“I don’t give a shit how you’ve been.”
Her smile is bright and deadly. She chuckles low, her voice a deep, sultry hum that licks up my spine and explodes through my mind like a death knell. “I’ve missed you, Soren. You’ve always been my favorite.”
I rise, motioning to the bank bag. “There’s enough to cover everything and then some. Consider it interest–”
“Your debt to me has tripled.”
I blink then slowly meet her eyes. “What?”
She leans forward, tapping her nails on her desk. “You owe three times what you did a year ago, Soren. That’s an impressive sum. An impossible sum, actually.”
“We’re done, Andrea. I’m not longer under your control–”
“Because you broke free of your band?” Her answering laugh reverberates through the room. “Soren, my love, no amount of money will help you out of the mess you’ve made, and over what? Rumor has it you fell in love with some pretty little witch, and now you’re throwing it all away.” She rises and sways around her desk. Her tight, black dress shows off what could be considered curves if she wasn’t so desperately thin. She’s tall. Taller than Maeve. Taller than any woman I’ve ever met.
She perches in front of me, leaning her hip against her desk, and reaches out to draw a line along my jaw.
“You’ll never leave me, Soren. You belong to me.”
I lean out of her touch, and she snickers, reaching to the side for a pack of thin cigarettes. “Got a light?”
“Fuck you.”
“I’d love that. It’d be like old times.”
My answering growl only makes her smile widen. She puffs her cigarette, sighing around the pull of smoke before releasing it. “You thought I wouldn’t find out about Duke, huh? He was one of my best runners. His debt to me had grown substantially, you know, after all that gambling he was doing up north. I had to bail him out more than once.”
“I’m not taking on his debt. Find someone else.”
“But you killed him, right? Or was that someone else?” Her eyes flare as her smile fades into a knowing smile.
“We’re done here. Duke’s debt isn’t my responsibility.”
“Do you realize the mess you made killing the Hounds?” she snarls, teeth bared and pointed. “I had to answer to Hannibal for that, Soren. You’d be dead by now had it not been for my intervention. I had to convince Hannibal of your worth–”
“Fuck Hannibal,” I say calmly, leaning in to brush the words against her temple, “and fuck you. I’m done. We’re even.”
“I know you have more money than this,” she hisses, grinning around the words. “Do you think we don’t know that you’ve been busy again, Soren? Or should I call you the Blade? Hannibal is impressed by you. He always has been. But your abilities as an assassin aren’t enough to keep active and alive in his eyes. I had to grovel for your life–”
“We’re done,” I repeat sharply. “If more money is what you want, take it–” I reach into my jacket, but she grabs my wrist, and her men move into the room.
She steps into me, tucking her hair behind a pointed ear, and says, “Hannibal has a job for you. One more mark, Soren, and it’s over, and his grand plan can finally come to fruition.”
“No–”
“Do you think I didn’t know about her?” she whispers against my cheek, brushing the words to my ear. “Your precious little princess?”
Dread hollows out my stomach as I feel the presence of her guards behind me, boxing me in. Andrea takes another drag of her cigarette, her mouth tilting over mine, and exhales. “You’re mine, Soren. I don’t like to share.”
Her guards shove me down into the seat. I try to kick out, my wolf powers prickling to the surface of my skin, but it’s too late. They hold me down, one of them yanking my arm free and slamming it on her desk. She chuckles, walking to the side of her desk as she puffs her cigarette one more time before pressing the cherry to my skin.
I grunt in pain, my eyes watering, but I hold her gaze through it.
Until she absolutely shatters my world and says, “Queen Maeve is pregnant and due any day now, from what I’ve been told. Hannibal wants that dealt with.”
I can’t breathe. My chest convulses as her men bear down on my back, forcing me to stay seated. No. No, no, no!
Andrea drags the tip of her nail over the old scar left from the original band. My skin flays open at her touch as her powers drag into existence like a heated blade, leaving molten silver in its wake.
“He wants that baby dead. Immediately. Make it messy, Soren. Paint the castle with its blood.”
I grit my teeth, biting back a scream of pain I can’t contain as she creates a new band. Blood rushes down my wrist, pooling on her desk.
“He wants the queen alive for now. He has business with her,” she continues as the band expands and her powers fade. “But… do it in front of her. Make her watch.”
The edges of the silver band meet in a perfect, seamless circle around my forearm.
The second her men ease up, I move, stumbling out of her office at what feels like the speed of light. I can’t breathe. It’s not even from the pain.
She’s pregnant?
The second I pass the corner store I dip into an alley and spill the contents of my stomach, blood gushing from the band and turning the snow at my feet a deep, dark crimson.
I scream into the night before tearing myself from the city, jumping on the last train and slumping to the ground as it speeds away from Twin Rivers.
It’s morning when I stumble up the steps to the safe house, covered in blood, my mind in shambles and heart tearing out of my chest.
This can’t happen to her. To them. How could I have been so stupid to leave her?
Patton’s sitting at the kitchen table pouring a cup of coffee when I explode into the room, crashing through a side table and knocking over two chairs before rushing him, grabbing him by the shoulders.
“Goddess, Soren, what the fuck?” he shouts, his eyes wide with panic, but I’m beyond rationality. He notices the band and pants, “No, Soren–Fuck! What–”
“She’s my mate,” I shout, then slump to the ground, dragging him with me by his shirt. “She’s my fucking mate–”
“Soren–”
“Maeve is my mate!”