Hey guys! So I've been incredibly busy over the past few weeks (Uni/college has started up again for me) and I'm also in the process of moving house!
Moving house is exciting for me (it's my 5th house, and this one is being bought not rented! That's always fun) but it means I won't have internet for a few days... because the kettle is always unpacked first rather than the modem!
So, if you're already thinking it then have a cookie, this chapter will be a cliff-hanger for a few weeks unless I can squeeze time in where I can finish the next part for you all.

9 chapters to go!

Hope you enjoy this chapter, let me know what you think :)
Libby xx

~ = next memory

The trio all but crawled out of the vampire compound ruins. Elijah heaved a majority of Thalia's weight onto him, and Raven dragged her feet behind the two. Her white-grey eyes were filled with pain, corner to corner, and Thalia feared for the young pup's life. The Princess had used her mind-breaking power to push Raven's wolf back and give the girl control. But she hadn't expected to have any retaliation. 

                                                                                                                                                '

Her wolf had its own mind; two separate beings in one body. She didn't know how Raven was still standing.

                                                                                                             '

As the Princess was contemplating how to help Raven, a bloody brown wolf emerged from the tree-line. Thalia raised her head as she acknowledged Lara's approach, and the doctor she was dragging. His clothes were lodged between the Warrior wolf's teeth and he suddenly woke.

"NO!" The doctor screamed, ripping into Lara's hide with long deep scratches, but the wolf didn't even flinch. She just strutted with a warrior's grace towards her Princess, dumping the vampire at her feet as though she was a cat and delivering a mouse to its owner.

Thalia eased herself off her mate and stood tall as the vampire looked up at her. She knew her eyes were dark and hair light, but at the moment she was in immense pain... and he was the perfect thing to take it out on.

The doctor's blood-stained clothes, no doubt curtesy of Lara, ruffled as he shivered at Thalia's low snarl. Thalia looked back at Raven, who was still holding her arms in some desperate attempt to cling to her body, and not leap into the body of the beast. "What did he do?" She asked, her tone that of a vengeful Royal.

Raven flinched as the vampire doctor looked pleadingly at her. "H-He monitored me... Injections..." Her voice wobbled with her lips, eyes shining at the unshed tears - the beast within her wouldn't let them fall for the doctor.

The Princess of the Wolves turned with a monstrous gleam in her eyes. The vampire opened his mouth to plead his case against Raven but it was no use. Lara snarled as he crawled away from Thalia, but the Princess only kept stepping closer to him.

"It was all him!" He blabbered. "Him; Buchannan! He wants vengeance against the Queen after she killed his daughter!"

"We know that." Elijah answered, Thalia not stopping her stalk. Lara was still snarling as she circled around behind the doctor, stopping his somewhat escape.

"D-Did you know that he is going to use the Ray of the Moon?!" The doctor tried. "A dagger fatal to the Priestesses - he is going to use it on the new-born heir?!"

"Already tried." Elijah yawned, bored of his attempts. "Failed."

The doctor looked between the four of them, his quick breaths enough to suggest he was still hiding something. The panic look in his eyes, but the loyalty beneath as well, was enough for Thalia's to penetrate his mind.

The vampire screamed as the Wolf Princess pried his memories apart, searching for where Buchannan could be. Thalia slammed into memory after memory in rage.

~

The red-haired wolf screamed as Master Buchannan ran the tip of a machete into the inner sides of her arms. The porcelain flesh ruptured red at the motion and he couldn't help but lick his lips. Buchannan was grinning at the blood running down the wolf's arms, even daring to stick his finger into the ever-growing pool, slowly licking it.

He frowned, looking at the clipboard in his hands. There was a diagram of a woman's anatomy, circles around the torso, arms and legs, and the back; the only pieces of information in regards to Beck Hunt's operation. Buchannan had hacked all he could in regards to her procedure to remove her wolf, but vague locations was all they had to work on.

~

Red-Eyes, Buchannan's beloved protégée, stalked into the room and froze as he beheld Buchannan leaning away from the Reaper's neck. Ruby droplets fluttered against her ebony skin, staining the innocent girl. It was the first time the doctor saw a speck of hesitance in the loyal vampire's ruby eyes...

~

His impeccable master was laughing in victory as he knocked out the Reaper after seeing the black smoke haze across her vision. The Doctor grinned too as he jotted down the change in her, his documentation on the red-haired girl increasing his value to Buchannan Blood, and his Master's pride in him.

Red-Eyes smacked him against a wall, fury and confusion in his blood-red irises.

"How could you do this to someone so young?!" He exclaimed. "She's an innocent wolf, not a toy!"

The Doctor was gob-smacked as he stared into his future master's eyes, never seeing anything quite like it... anything quite so human, despite the unnatural Vampire strength that pinned him against the wall like a dart.

~

Buchannan pounded his fists against his desk as a roar escaped his throat. The doctor flinched under his envious-green gaze, imagining the cracks in the oak desk-top the same ones as the cracks in the Reaper's bones... Red-Eye's words were wedged into his loyal mind.

"She's still fighting back!" His Master roared. "It's impossible, Reaper isn't meant to be that strong, she needs to be emotionless! This...ugh!" Buchannan waved his arms around like he wasn't an immortal Vampire leader who could crush a wolf's arm with a pinch. The doctor was shocked and terrified as he realised just what his boss was asking.

"I shall up the doses." He said, writing down his task on his infamous clipboard, now thick with notes and diagrams of the Reaper's progress.

"NO!" Buchannan Blood screamed, throwing a table lamp off his desk, for it to shatter against the cold stone walls. Glass sprayed as the doctor obeyed, halting his pen movement. Buchannan heaved his breaths in slowly, like a bull prepared to charge. "Send Red-Eyes to Africa to get the Ray of the Moon, tell him to obliterate the Temple of the Goddess to get that weapon! That blade will crush the Priestess, even if the Reaper won't be ready in time... but she will."

~

Like the beast he was, Buchannan had shredded everything in his path. The walls were sliced with claw marks, splinters of wood from the tables he'd shattered littering the floor, not to mention the goose feathers that had been torn from the plush pillows lying on the sofa - a bull in a china shop, that's what the deadly Buchannan Blood was. Unpredictable. Ruthless. Merciless. Evil.

"I'm going to tear apart the Priestess." He whispered from the middle of the floor. His Master stood in the centre of the chaos, chin high as he beheld the damage he could cause. The Doctor shivered as he knew without a doubt that Buchannan was imagining that he was with Priestess Seraphina Moon and had caused this destruction in her heart. The vampire doctor was lucky he didn't see the monstrous grin that was embedded in the face of evil.

~

Thalia blinked. The doctor wept, his hands curled towards his head as he tried to hide his shame from the wolves around him, but Lara chuckled in her wolf form - taunting the rotten scum that the vampire below her was.

The Princess didn't move as she recalled the mind she'd seen. The vampire before her was there for all the experiments that Buchannan did on Raven, he had written them all down... they needed that clipboard.

"Elijah." She called, gazing into her mate's eyes. He saw his Adam's apple bob when he looked into her eyes, no doubt still sparking from her use of power. Thalia had used enough in the past few hours. "I need you to find the doctor's clipboard. It's in the cupboard-like-room next to Buchannan's office, it has everything Raven needs to know on it."

Elijah didn't hesitate as he waved the red-head to follow, Thalia couldn't help but see that Raven's hair was almost an identical shade to the colour of her blood, and watched as they ran back into the crumbling compound. Thalia slowly turned to the vampire, who trembled. Lara gleamed at the murderous look in her eyes.

"P-Please..." A dark part of the Princess enjoyed his pleading. "I-I didn't do anything wr-wrong... right?"

Lara snarled, spreading her feet and widening her jaw to emphasise the evil roar that echoed through her throat. The doctor's eyes shined as he looked between the vengeful brunette and the brown beast. He adjusted himself as he looked between the two of them. With a quivering lip, the doctor pleaded more.

"Please!" The doctor sobbed with a sandpaper throat. "I'm of more use!"

Thalia scoffed, looking down at the doctor. "No you're not." The vampire knew he was done for as the Princess of the Wolves crouched to his level; a wolf levelling before pouncing on its prey. With eyes that seemed to hold all the stars of the sky, the doctor stared deep into the abyss of starlight that was the Princess's soul. Looking at him, staring through the slobber and the shit that had stained his trousers, the vampire knew that he would die underneath the tree.

"You." Princess Thalia started. "You stood idly by as Buchannan butchered one of my wolves. You grinned as he slashed her, chopped her apart." Her voice was eerie and sent shivers down his moist spine. "You're guilty. You're a monster... doctor or not, you are dirt beneath my feet. I don't care if you were merely trying to reach for the stars, shoving others, no matter how different, under you is not how you do it."

Lara started to grow lowly and Thalia flashed her glaring eyes to her. The Knight wanted to make the kill but Thalia wasn't done. She stood, placing a foot on the doctor's bloody knee. The vampire shivered as he realised her foot was a pin - holding him still while the Warrior Wolf made the killing blow. "You made a game out of a young girl. The world will be happy that you're gone."

The dark wolf prowled around him and the vampire struggled against Thalia's stance, but could do nothing as Lara leapt for his throat. His last thought before the little red soldiers ran down his body, fleeing, was that it was ironic he died under a tree... he always wanted to touch the stars.

Thalia removed her foot from the vampire's carcass as Lara made the killing blow. Shaking off the cramp in her foot, she turned to the dark wolf by her side. The Princess was incredibly aware of the fact that Lara shouldn't be functioning - she just lost her mate, Dave was barely speaking let alone standing tall and fighting. Lara might be a Warrior Wolf but she wasn't emotionless.

"The doctor's memories contained a clipboard of all of Raven's procedures with Buchannan... they weren't pretty." Thalia explained. "I also didn't want Raven to see the doctor killed."

Lara was still. Her blood-soaked muzzle looked up at the Princess, the setting sun around them making the crown of Thalia's head glow, nature's own halo. She was a sentinel awaiting orders from her heir... a warrior awaiting orders from her general. Lara was as still as the waters on a new moon.

"Buchannan is gathering his army." Thalia recalled, seeing flecks of the Doctor's memories. She'd seen all he'd done since being with Buchannan. Everything. "That's why there were so few here. The rest, the thousands of them, they've all gathered for a battle."

Their brown-black eyes locked. "Buchannan's taking the fight to the Queen. He's fighting for her death." The Princess snarled as the new burns that criss-crossed her body thrummed with the dread and adrenaline of a war. Thalia knew that there would be death and brutal injuries, but it would be worth it.

It would be, when Buchannan's head rolled to her feet.