The Mating Rules

Jamie-Lee’s POV

Ugh, someone get the numberplate of that truck that ran me over because I want to sue their a*s for leaving me feeling like this.

I roll my head around on my neck lazily, Goddess my brain feels so heavy, like my head wants to fall right off my shoulders and roll around on the ground.

I slowly force open my eyes, blinking a few times to bring my surroundings into focus, but my eyes don’t seem to be on the same page, everything is still dark.

Opening my mouth, I stick out my tongue to rub across my parched lips, freezing when the tip rubs against something rough. My senses come back online with a zap as I realise that my head is covered.

Panic careens through me as I instinctively struggle, but my hands are restrained, my arms resting on what must be the arms of the chair I am currently sat in.

I try to move my feet, by they are also secure, I can’t even rock the chair, what the hell?

‘Get me out of here!’ I yell loudly, wrenching my wrists upward to try and get the restraints holding me to give a little, but they don’t budge, just cut into the tender flesh on my body.

‘HEY!’ I yell louder, ‘whoever you are! Let me go!’

The click of heels against a stone floor has me stiffening, someone is here with me. Even with all my bravado, deep down, I assumed I was alone.

‘Now now Jamie-Lee’ comes a soft voice that sounds distorted to my ears, muffled no doubt by the thick covering over my head. ‘Or would you prefer Spirit Wolf?’ the voice queries as I shiver involuntarily.

‘Why would you call me that?’ I demand back sassily, I’m not confirming to this guy anything he thinks might be true.

The voice chuckles, ‘lets not play games little girl, we both know that your wolf is special, why she was created by the Goddess herself, it’s rude not to acknowledge her.’

I shake my head under the covering, ‘I’m a beta wolf’ I reply stubbornly, ‘if you know my name then you must know my rank as well.’

The voice sighs, ‘I really hoped that you would make this easier for me Jamie-Lee’ he murmurs reproachfully. ‘I thought maybe, just maybe, you might be more amenable than your predecessors. They refused to listen to my offer, wouldn’t allow me to even speak of what I could offer them, left me no choice but to take what I needed by force.’

I can feel the man walking around me, a finger runs across my shoulder making me shiver with disgust. ‘I don’t want to hurt you Jamie-Lee’ the voice continues soothingly, ‘I want to help you. Together we could rid the world of the disease that rots it from the inside out.’

I growl angrily, shifting my body away as the finger that traced my shoulder moves into my hair, caressing my soft strands.

‘We can save this world Jamie-lee’ the voice murmurs reverently, ‘together, we could bring about a new era, a utopia even! My strength and your wolf combined, we could rule over everyone.’

‘I don’t want to rule over everyone’ I snap back, ‘everyone on this Earth was given freedom of choice, no one is meant to rule all, the Entities decided that when the first species were created.’

The man sighs heavily at my words, a soft tongue clicking, vebalising his disappointment in me. ‘But what if the Entities were wrong?’ he asks softly, ‘what if their original plan wasn’t the right one?’

‘That isn’t our decision to make’ I retort stubbornly.

‘Ahh but that is where I disagree’ the voice replies evenly. ‘I think we have every right to question these so called Gods and Goddesses that created the beings that walk this world. Think about it, they create us without thought to what we will be like or need, they watch us idly mill around, killing each other and destroying the planet we inhabit. Then they get together and think, “oh, maybe we need to have some sort of kill switch for these things we’ve created.” Not any thought to altering us into better versions of their original plans, nope! They design ways for others to keep us in check. Vampires feed on others until they die, let’s not do something to curtail their b***d l**t, no, what we’ll do is keep them in the darkness so they can only murder those that walk the streets at night. Human’s are violent and hateful, should we try and make them into good people? Why bother when we can just make them forget that supernatural creatures exist so all they are murdering is each other.’

The voice snorts derisively, ‘and when their ideas to fix us don’t work quite they way they thought they would, where did the Entities go? Did they try to figure out another way? Why of course not, they washed their hands of us and moved on to other things.’

‘The Moon Goddess didn’t abandon her children’ I mutter defensively, keeping my nervousness out of my voice.

‘Ahh yes, Mother.’ The cold voice replies, ‘our dear creator, the woman who loves all her children.’ I flinch as his breath tickles my neck, I can smell whisky on his breath as he leans close to my ear. ‘Sorry to tell you this Spirit Wolf, but the Moon Goddess is the worst of them all. She pretends to care about us, but really every decision she has ever made has been to weaken us.’

‘What do you mean’ I ask, unable to bite down on my tongue before the words are out of my mouth.

‘Werewolves, Witches and Warlocks, the three strongest species to ever walk this planet. We were infinitely powerful, us with our magic, you with your unyielding strength and amazing healing abilities. We were born to rule over the others, everything about us screamed leader! Yet, our Mother weakened us, instead of encouraging us like a Mother is supposed to do, helping us reach our full potential, she clipped our wings.

The magical beings became human! The dirty grubs that were only ever good enough to serve us, suddenly, we were just like them. We can be killed with mundane objects, we bleed and our bodies fail with age. Then the werewolves, she harnessed you with another soul, weighing every wolf down with the responsibility of a Mate. She has weakened your kind so badly that you can be killed just by losing your Mate, how is that helping you?’

‘She was trying to give us purpose’ I mutter uncertainly, my words met with a loud, mirthless laugh.

‘Oh little Wolf, you surely do not believe that’ the voice taunts, ‘have you not once, ever questioned why your beloved Goddess forced a Mate on to you? Did you not ever resent, even slightly, that your love was manufactured by someone else?’ I stay silent as the stranger sweeps around me, his voice further away as he speaks again.

‘I don’t know about you, but I want to choose my own path, yet I’m made out to be a bad guy because of it. Why am I the bad guy? What is so wrong with wanting to live my life my own way?’

I stiffen, hands curling into fists, ‘I don’t think that the Goddess has an issue with you living your life, she has a problem with you meddling in everyone else’s, that’s why she has to send this Spirit Wolf in the first place.’

The mocking laughter rolls around the room again at my brazen words, ‘oh, you do entertain me child’ the voice says in amusement. ‘The Goddess couldn’t give two hoots about me or anyone else on this rock! What she cares about is staying in control! This is a battle of wills, and you, little Spirit Wolf, you are merely a pawn in our game. Whether you live or die makes no odds to your Goddess, if it did, why would she give you such a dangerous role?’

‘Someone has to stop you, I’m strong, why not me?’ I mumble uncertainly. I actually have wondered the same thing, why me? Why am I carrying this supposed magical wolf, that only seems to appear when it damn feels like it. I can’t even call the thing forward, nor can Skarla, so it’s not even really our wolf at all.

‘Please, she didn’t pick you because you were strong! She picked you because you were dispensable! Surely if she wanted a strong she wolf, she would have picked an Alpha blooded woman? But in the entire history of the Spirit Wolf, there has never been an Alpha she wolf to carry her, isn’t that odd?’ I can hear the smirk in the guy’s voice as he speaks, his words drilling under my skin, infiltrating my thoughts and planting seeds of doubt about why I am really here.

‘So why don’t you just ignore me then?’ I counter, ‘if I’m so dispensable, why not leave me out of your fight?’

The voice sighs deeply, and I listen to his footfalls as he approaches me slowly, ‘oh I would love too’ he admits, ‘you are always just another pretty bird that I have to cut the song from. Unfortunately, despite your place on the Goddess’s chess board, you are in fact worth something to me. You see, by animating you with her own wolf, she gave you the one thing that I need to defeat her. You are merely a casualty of a war that you had no business being a part of.’

‘Why are you telling me all this?’ I demand, my head starting to hurt as what I’ve known forever clashes with the words that this man is spewing at me.

Two hands grab my wrists that are chained to the arms of the chair, holding them gently as he whispers, ‘because when the time comes my dear, and you face your mortality, I want you to know what put you here. Not me, not your wolf, not even your people, it was her! She sent you like a lamb to the s*******r into my lair and didn’t even give you a stick to defend yourself from the lions inside.’

‘Who are you?’ I ask thickly, the fight leaving me, as everything crashes on top of me. ‘If I’m only a pawn, and you really want me to blame the Goddess for this, tell me who you are.’

The man in front of me hesitates for a second before I feel the covering on my face lift upward, my eyes scrunching shut as lamplight seers my retinas. Inching my eyes open, I struggle to adjust to the brightness until the room swims into focus.

Looking around wildly, I realise I’m in some sort of stone room, the walls are stark, lit only by oil lamps. To the right of me, in the far corner are two men. I pinch my eyes together, fighting off the spots from the lights to focus on their faces.

My heart stops as I garbled wail crawls out of me as I find both my mates tied to chairs, their heads slumped to the side. The left side of Hadley’s hair is covered in crimson b***d that’s caked in the short strands. From the burn marks on their exposed skin, I’m pretty sure that their chairs and restraints are made of silver and I want to rip our captor apart for hurting them.

‘Caden! Hadley!’ I scream, yanking at my bonds as my instincts yell at me to get to my mates, and check that they are breathing at least. I wish I had Skarla to help me, and i desperately call out to her in my mind but I still can’t feel her.

‘Calm yourself’ the voice that’s been taunting me all this time, croons, ‘they are fine, just resting up. They’ll awaken soon enough and then the fun will really begin.’

Turning my gaze back in front of me, I feel my throat closes up as the face of my captor, the man who is supposed to destroy me comes into view.

‘Daddy?’ I whimper as my father straightens up, smiling widely down at me.