Page 19 of Forbidden Wolf

The last grain of sand in the timer teetered, ready to fall.

“Twenty years,” I said.

“Paris.” Levi gave me a shaky smile. “Remember to look up at the moon and remember me.”

We launched ourselves at each other, devouring and consuming every emotion, my kiss saying everything that I couldn’t. I tasted his anguish and pain, desperation and heartbreak. The sun was our enemy because it stole him from me. It burnt my hopes and dreams until there was nothing left but ash.

“Wait for me,” I whispered against his lips.

“Always.”

I stepped back, my shoulders slumped in defeat. One step at a time, I moved backward, never taking my eyes off him. The sun lightened the sky and prickled the skin at the back of my neck.

My gaze moved to the sky and with one last glance at Levi, I was gone.

Something inside me snapped, breaking my soul into a million pieces.

I wouldn’t last twenty years without him. He’d been my salvation and leaving him had been my ruination.

Every step back to the science facility broke my heart until my emotional pain outweighed my physical pain. A voice screamed a warning in my head that Sam’s body would be found and the uneasy ceasefire we existed in would be destroyed. My heart beat rapidly at the thought of our sins being discovered.

The shutters fell into position to protect us from the sunlight. Would wild creatures eat Sam’s remains? Would he burn to ash in the daylight as live vampires did? Or would his remains be discovered by a vampire patrol? How had the love Levi and I shared tonight turn into so much hate?

Terror churned in my stomach at all the unanswered questions about what was to come.

***

Tasha

– Five Years After Conscription

My feet were like lumps of ice dragging as I walked along on patrol with the rest of my battle-weary battalion. I was so tired that even my soul was weary. We’d been submerged in mud for so long that it had permeated into my body and I was sure it was in places that mud should never find. My stomach rolled at the smell radiating from me as we came into the heat of the base.

My life as a dreamer had ended five years ago when I walked away from a wolf in a forest and left my heart with him. Dad had told me after I left that Sam was missing, his body never found. They suspected he’d been caught outside in the sun. In my naivety I believed Sam’s death was the most horrendous sight I’d ever witnessed. Five years as a soldier changed my mind.

No one ever discovered the truth about Sam, so knowing he could never contradict me, I told my friends that we’d had an affair that summer, meaning Castus never came to claim my virginity. They believed my devastation had been caused by being parted from my lover, which was true, they just had the identity wrong. When he was reported as suspected dead, I used it as an excuse to hide in my room and grieve over the loss of Levi.

My uniform was ruined and stuck to my body. I had to use my knife to cut myself free from the impacted mud inside before stepping into the showers. The water swirled in diluted mud around my feet, my hair in a knotted mass from being tied so long in the one position. My left shoulder ached with the dull pain that never abated, biting deep into my soul.

To avoid frontline battle, I’d worked my way into the reconnaissance unit. We were away from base for months at a time, sometimes living in swamps or in trees as we studied the movements of our enemies. Our last assignment had turned us into swamp monsters with wrinkled fingers and toes. The silver lining was that I’d missed my last appointment for the breeding programme.

What a shame.

Kimber would be joining the military this year, and it terrified me to think what would happen to her in this hellhole of an existence.

“Tasha, you’re to report to coven leader Castus when you’re ready,” my commander Cooper shouted into the showers. Castus would prefer me to arrive in a towel and stand shivering as he interrogated me. Cooper had deliberately waited until I was in the shower and naked because he was as evil as Castus. I wished I was under one of the other commanders like Dean who genuinely cared for his troops.

Instead, I used my vamp speed to race through the base, grabbing a bag of blood on the way to retrieve a new uniform from stores. Better to be in a towel now than when I visited Castus. My hair was bundled on top of my head, but I was presentable as I knocked his door.

“Tasha,” he greeted me with his usual predatory smile that sent a shiver down my spine. “You have been gone so long that I barely remember your face.”

I wished the same could be said in return. He was the face that made me accept missions far from here in terrifying conditions. All I wanted after my return from that gruelling mission was to hide in the caves under the coven castle that I discovered a few years ago. They were my own secret place, far from prying eyes and wandering hands of my lecherous leader.

He stepped around me to study me from all angles, his eyes boring in under my black catsuit.

“I have a position available here in the base that would prevent you from being away so long,” he said, his fingers trailing across my back as he continued to circle me. “You would be safe here.”

“Is my unit being recalled?” I deliberately misunderstood him, repulsion pulsing in my core. The position being offered was in his bed.

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