"Jen," I let out a nervous laugh. "I'm... I'm not... This is not..." I try to pull my hands from hers, but she wouldn't let me go. The moment Lyall steps near me after sensing my discomfort through the bond, Jen and the werewolves in the assembly hall growl at him.

Instantly the lycans growl back. It's considered a threat to show fangs in someone else's territory.

Athena and Lyall shoot deadly gazes at the fae king and prince. "Argamon." Lyall's voice is low. It vibrates with a darkening sense of danger. Of threat.

Lyall's fists are clenched so hard that his veins bulge. There is a thunderstorm rumbling inside him, which I can feel through the bond. I caress our bond mentally, trying to calm him down. He might not care about angering Argamon, or the rogues. But I know Jen. She can be the most stubborn and relentless person when she has made her mind up to something. She scares me sometimes.

"Let go of my mate," Lyall puts emphasis on the last word. His eyes burn through Jen, and of course, Jen serves the right amount of heat back. She was always branded as someone with an ugly attitude in our old pack. Now that we are not part of the pack anymore, she is just someone who stands up for herself and for other women who couldn't.

It's funny how our old pack tends to label someone as difficult, or worse, hysteric, just because she speaks her mind.

I thought we were done for. There is no way these two hot-headed individuals can see eye to eye. But then, Lyall surprises me.

"Please," he adds softly. His eyes flick to Jen's hands on mine. "Let her choose on her own. Don't take her away out of her will." There is a sense of desperateness in his voice that makes everyone in the room widen their eyes in shock. The cold-blooded lycan king that everyone knows has spoken softly and with consideration... for me.

I can tell that Lyall's words take Jen aback a little. But she keeps her hands on mine. "I have seen many women so mentally abused that they never thought of leaving their horrible partner," Jen speaks in a low voice, "because they think they couldn't, because they think their partner would hurt them if they do, or worse, they think that's the kind of love they deserve."

Her words ring true to every werewolf female. And they ring true to me. I have seen women choose to be invisible for survival and I have seen women choose to endure the mental strain their partners put them through because of two reasons. One, because they think they deserve it. Two, because of their children.

The most sickening part is that some of the children these women have cared for, turn into the same males that treat their mothers horribly. It's a sickening hell cycle in our old pack.

But at this point, I need to step in. Because that's truly not what's happening to me.

"Jen," I call to the only mother figure I have known. My voice is calm. That's the only way to make Jen listen. I don't need to raise my voice, I just need to be more assertive.

She looks at me with her blue eyes. "You don't need to save me," I say, "I am already saved."

"Mars," she shakes my shoulders, "Wake up. You have us now. You don't need to settle–"

She stops when she sees me shaking my head. "I'm not settling. I'm choosing."

Besides, I actually doubt Jen's rogues can stand a chance against Lyall, especially in the Lycan Kingdom itself. Despite Jen having Argamon as an ally, it wouldn't be a sure victory. Unless perhaps... Jen has something else up her sleeve. Knowing her cunning and calculating brain, I wouldn't put it past Jen to know a trick or two that can take down an entire kingdom.

Jen catches my gaze with a disbelief look. Her pupils shake slightly as if she is trying to determine if I have been hypnotized. "Is it because of the baby?"

The moment she looks down at my belly, I use the opportunity to whisper in her ear with the lowest voice I can muster so no one else can hear other than Lyall through the bond. "It's Ed's."

I can see Jen's eyes wide open. She blinks a few times. Her mouth moves without sound. As someone who has been with her for years, I have learned to read her lips. She asks, "He lets you keep the baby?"

To answer her, I nod.

"It's not his?" Jen mouths the words, confirming the facts.

I lean in to whisper to her again. "The seed comes from Ed. But Lyall is the father now."

The words confuse Jen, which is obvious from the way she looks at me. But they also make Jen, for the first time, truly see my eyes. She sees the calmness and the serenity I feel through my gaze and it makes her body relax a bit. At the same time, the cherry blossoms have stopped falling out of nowhere. Their soft pink petals pool under our feet.

I don't know what made me let out those cherry blossoms and what then made me stop it. And to think that all this time, I had been led to believe by my mentor that my magic was just... female instinct.

"So," Athena's voice cuts through the tension in the room like a knife, "You faes are working together with rogues now?" She scoffs loudly as she throws a sharp look at Argamon and Helios. "Bold of you to come to our kingdom with werewolf rogues when you know rogues have been kidnapping our females."

"That's not us," Jen quickly responds to Athena, drawing everyone's attention to her.

"Rogues are rogues." Lyall's voice is deep. He speaks slowly while his burning gaze is stuck on Jen's hands on mine. He then turns to Argamon with an icy, penetrating gaze. "You better have a good enough reason for this Argamon. Or our partnership might end with unfavorable outcomes."

Wait. Didn't we plan to straighten out all the misunderstandings? Now it looks like both parties are ready to tear the other down. It's as if they both never wanted to negotiate in the first place. Well, at least the rogues and lycans are prepared for a battle. While the faes, and myself, seem to be stuck in the middle.

"Jen came to us as a skillful healer," Argamon says after sighing in a defeated manner, "She helped many of our females give birth. You know how hard it is for female faes to deliver babies. We owe her our alliance."

"Yes," Lyall says, "Lycan females giving birth are equally as hard as fae females giving birth. Which is why I find it insulting for our long history of partnership that you would be an ally to rogues–"

"I told you that it isn't us that has been kidnapping your females!" Jen cries out, cutting the lycan king before he finishes his words. As soon as she does that, the room quiets down. The air becomes heavy as every eye goes to Lyall. Everyone can feel the thick layer of aura coming off of him. No one dares to cut the Lycan King's words. Well, except Jen.

"If it isn't you rogues who have been wreaking our villages and kidnapping our people, then who is it?" Lyall speaks every syllable sharply. "You should know that the only thing preventing me from tearing you to shreds right now is because my mate considers you as a mother figure."

I give Lyall a look, then let him know his words have upset me through our bond. He will not touch even a strand of hair of Jen in front of me.

The moment Lyall senses me being upset, his facial feature softens just a bit. His fists clench tighter and his jaw twitches. I know he regrets saying those words in front of me, but through the bond, he also explains to me how he needs to uphold his authority as a king for his people. I am torn between wanting to help Lyall help his people and protecting the person that is like family to me.

'I am sure Jen isn't the one kidnapping those females,' I tell Lyall through our bond, 'Please hear her out first.'

'How can you be sure?' he asks.

'Because Jen knows what it's like to lose a daughter.' I pull out my memory of the girl I saw dying after giving birth. When my entire pack celebrated the birth of a baby after a long time, the mother was left to die alone in the operating room.

That was Jen's daughter.

We look at each other. Lyall's expression has changed completely. He looks at me so tenderly. 'I will never allow that to happen to you,' he promises.

For a moment, we both forget that there are other people in the room. For a moment, it feels like time has stopped and that nothing outside of us really matters anymore.

I take his promise to my heart. I believe it.

'Please, just listen to her first,' I beg him. 'There must be an explanation.'

Finally, Jen lets go of me and I look at her. But Jen's eyes are directed to Lyall. She tilts her head to the side slightly. Then she looks at me with squinted eyes. "Hmm," she muses before she looks back at Lyall.

I want to ask her what she's thinking, but she beats me with her words directed to Lyall. "There are different rogue packs in the forest," she explains. "I know it sounds absurd for rogues to make other packs than the ones that banished them. We were always taught that once werewolves become rogues, they lose the ability to build a pack."

Jen is amazing. She faces the lycan king with her chin held high and her piercing gaze. "But we have proved those teachings wrong. Rogues are just regular werewolves after all. We can build packs, though the sense of belonging might come slower than usual." Her voice is the only sound echoing in the room.

"At first, there was only one pack," she continues, this time with a sadder tone, "My pack. My skill in medicine made me able to bargain with the faes to give the rogues jobs, places to stay, and even mingle with the faes."

All the faes and the rogues suddenly look down at the floor, as if they are ashamed of something.

"Until one of my pack members did a job at the Dark Tower," I can hear the drumming beat of my heart. Fear pumps into my blood. Before long, I realize that some of the heartbeats I hear belong to Lyall. We both await Jen to finish her sentence with dread looming above us. "And Adina influenced him to build a pack of his own. I banished him from my pack, thinking that he wouldn't be able to make it on his own since most of the rogues were in the fae kingdom. But he found other rogues, young and with fresh wounds from being banned. It turned out that Adina told him that if he could gather enough fertile females, werewolves, lycans, faes, any fertile females..."

My palms are clammy. The hairs behind my neck have risen.

"...that he would be able to rule the world. Because 'fertile females are rare commodities,' that's the exact words he said to me. I tried to stop him, but his new pack has gone off the radar and none of us can find them or the females they have kidnapped."

I feel nauseous. Those words are disgusting.

"We also have bad news, Lyall," Argamon says with his eyebrows cinched together. He looks unsure and a bit afraid.

"What is it?"

The fae king gulps hard. "Before we crossed the bridge to your kingdom, we stopped by on the Dark Tower. When we came, the guards and security measures were all in place. No one has ever been able to escape the tower."

I can sense Lyall not breathing as he waits for Argamon to continue. Dread fills our entire body.

This isn't good. It's not good at all.

"So, we don't know how it happened. Or when. But... Adina Stronghold has escaped."

I hear the sound of shattering glass in my head. It's loud and painful. And broken.

And afraid.

But that sound does not come from me.

It comes to me through the bond from Lyall.

–to be continued–