SAMANTHA
I was gliding through the hallway, singing on my way to dinner, thinking about the irritating dick-sucking classes we had to take...when it hit me.
The mate scent.
It crashed into me like a wave—more violent than before. It filled my nose, my throat and my lungs. It pulled at something deep in my chest, something I had been trying to ignore for days.
Today's own was so vicious. It were as if the moon goddess were pushing for my mates to find me and mark me at the spot. I was confused. What changed?
My feet moved before my brain could catch up.
I followed the scent around a corner, down a corridor I had never seen before, past guards who barely glanced at me. I wonder why they didn't stop me. Was I in a fever dream?
The pull was impossible to resist. It was like gravity, like hunger, like drowning and needing air.
And then I saw him.
Jayce.
He had wings. Real Wings. Like the one shown on television.
Wings that were massive, golden, feathered. Wings that stretched from his shoulders and brushed the floor on either side of him. They shimmered in the torchlight, each feather edged with what looked like liquid sunlight. He stood in the center of the hallway, arms crossed, watching me with those cruel, beautiful eyes.
I froze.
Why did no one tell me about this part of the triplets? He looked so beautiful. So charming that I couldn't ignore. Was this part of the curse?
How was he able to fly? What were they? Hybrids? Angels? Fairies? My mind raced through possibilities, but none of them made sense. Werewolves didn't have wings. Werewolves didn't glow. Werewolves didn't look like they had stepped out of a painting of celestial beings.
I turned to run but it was yoo late.
Jayce moved faster than I could track. One moment he was twenty feet away. The next, he towered over me, his wings blocking out the light from the torches in the hallway. His shadow swallowed me whole.
He hovered on top of me like an eagle catching it's prey.
I opened my mouth to scream and his hand clamped over my mouth before any sound could escape.
"Not a sound," he murmured. His breath was warm against my ear. "Unless you want the entire palace to know I have you."
I bit down on his palm and he didn't even flinch. What did he want with me again?
He simply laughed—that low, dark laugh I had come to hate—and dragged me through a set of massive doors.
********
The throne room Jayce took me in was enormous.
This place looked like where Greek gods gathered for their meetings. It seemed we were in the interstellar. Above the clouds.
The ceiling soared so high I could not see where it ended. Columns of white marble lined the walls, each one carved with scenes of wolves and wings and stars. The floor was polished obsidian, so reflective that I could see my own terrified face staring back at me.
And at the far end of the room, raised on a platform of crystal and gold, stood three chairs.
No—not chairs. Thrones.
Each one was massive, carved from a single piece of what looked like white stone veined with gold. The backs of the thrones rose high above head level, and on each back, engraved in letters that seemed to glow, were names.
Darlington.
Jayce.
Finnian.
The thrones sat in a curved row, facing the center of the room. They were positioned so that anyone sitting in them would look down on whoever stood before them. Like judges. Like gods.
Jayce released me and I stumbled and fell to my knees. The obsidian floor was cold beneath my palms. I kept my head down. I did not look up.
I could not look up. If I dared to do, the light coming from their faces would blind my eyes.
The other triplets were already in their thrones. Darlington sat in the center. Finnian sat on his left. And Jayce—Jayce walked past me and climbed the steps to his throne on the right. His wings folded behind him as he sat, but they did not disappear. They simply... rested. Since when did they learn to co-operate like this? Was I dreaming?
Everywhere was so...peaceful.
I tried to look at their faces but I could not.
Their faces were too bright. Too shiny. Like the sun had decided to live inside their skin. I had to squint just to see their outlines but the light was too blinding.
Darlington laughed. "Careful, little wolf."
What are they? my mind screamed. What are they?
This explained so much. Their power. Their arrogance. The way the king spoke about them like they were weapons instead of sons. They were not just Lycan. They were something else. Something more.
Were they angel hybrids? Wolf and angel?
Or fairies? Creatures of light and magic?
Or something else entirely—something with no name, no category, no place in the world I understood?
I did not know. I could not ask. My throat was too tight, and my wolf was going insane inside me.
Rynn.
That was my wolf's name. Rynn. She had been quiet for weeks—battered, broken, hiding in the darkest corner of my mind. But now? Now she was thrashing. Snarling. Grunting.
"Let me out," she growled. "Let me out now."
"I cannot," I thought back.
"He is our mate. All three of them. I can scent it. I can feel it. Let me claim them."
"They do not want to be claimed."
"Then let me fight them. Let me challenge them. Let me....."
"Rynn, stop!"
She did not stop. She clawed at the walls of my mind, desperate to shift, desperate to run, desperate to throw herself at the thrones and beg for a touch, a glance, a single word.
I held her back.
The triplets did not move. They sat in their thrones like statues, glowing, watching, waiting. I kept my head down. I stared at the obsidian floor. I counted my breaths.
Rynn snarled. "They are our mates. They should be on their knees before us. Not the other way around."
"This is their palace. Their rules. Their game."
"Then we need to change the rules."
"How?"
Rynn was silent for a moment. " I do not know yet. But I will figure it out."
Was I dreaming?
The silence stretched.
The triplets did not speak. They simply sat in their glowing thrones, their bright faces turned toward me while I knelt on the cold floor with my head bowed.
I waited.
And finally—Jayce broke the silence.
"I know you are wondering why you were brought here."
I did not look up. I still kept my head down. My forehead nearly touched the obsidian floor.
Why was I brought here?
What do they want?
And why do they glow like the sun?
Rynn paced inside me. The triplets watched from above while I was on my knees, waiting for an answer I was terrified to hear.