CAPTIVEEN

1368 A.D.The girl opened her eyes slowly, trying to understand where she was and what had happened, and the first thing she saw were the pure silver shackles locked around her wrists and ankles. Then all the memories came to her at once: she had been captured.After more than a year of fierce pursuit, it had finally been impossible for her to evade her enemies, and now the die was cast. As soon as they reached the palace they would kill her.She looked around and saw the entire detachment of royal guards sitting by the fire, a little more than fifteen feet away. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to give her she-wolf a chance to escape.She closed her eyes again, calling to her, and felt her awaken inside her.“Raksha, you have to go now,” her thoughts whispered to her.“Never! I'm not leaving you!” her she-wolf whispered back in kind.“You have to! The general is going to murder me as soon as he sees me, just like he did with the rest of my family!” the girl insisted.“Then I will di

Present dayAidan touched his right bicep above his designer shirt, as he looked out over New York City from his office on the 94th floor of One World Trade Center. It was a few days before his “mark” showed up, and that always made him extremely irritable. He didn't want to be disturbed, but the knocking on the door was evidence that he rarely got what he wanted.“Sir, your wife is here,” his secretary announced, poking her head through the half-open door.“Send her in, please.”Aidan took a deep breath and turned to meet Myra's gentle, smiling, soft face.“Do you need anything?” he asked her dryly, and regretted it a few seconds later when he saw her pout. Myra was a very good wife: a quiet, obedient and willing Omega; and as if that wasn't enough, she was General Nader's daughter, so he had excellent ties of loyalty to her family. But after ten years, her submission was driving Aidan out of his mind. “Forgive me. How can I help you?”Myra seemed to think long and hard before she da

Aidan Chastiel's Royal Guard numbered no more than twenty lycans. Not a single one of them was known or important, but they all had an unbreakable bond with their Alpha. They lived by the ancient law of the highest predator, and followed whoever they considered the strongest. The Silent Guard, they were called, for not a snarl sounded over the trails of blood they left in their wake.“Aidan! To your right!”Normally, that shout from Brennan would have been unnecessary, but they both knew Aidan was unfocused because of the mark.The Alpha spun in the midst of a partial transformation, fangs and claws bared, a superior strength and a size that would impress even a lycan; he caught the rebel who was trying to attack him and before he knew it he had snapped his neck between his fangs.Two other bodies were entangled in his claws, he felt the bite on one of his thighs and that only provoked him even more. He tore a throat, feeling the warm blood bathing his neck, and in mere seconds he had

“I was right!” Aidan hissed angrily as he helped his beta into the passenger seat. “It was too easy to quell the riots, because they were just a distraction.”“So the real target was the Watchtower?” Brennan muttered.“Exactly!” Aidan turned the van around and took the road south toward Wales.They would have gotten there a lot faster if they had moved like wolves, but Brennan was in no shape to transform with that injured leg, he had to give it at least a couple of hours to heal.“I don't understand. The Watchtower is supposed to be impregnable,” said his Beta. “How did they get in?”“I have no idea.” And it was the honest truth, Aidan didn't even know it.The Watchtower was a fortress of ancient magic, said to have been the royal palace of Isrion's lineage, and precisely for that reason, in over six hundred and fifty years, Aidan had refused to lay a claw there, but now he felt it calling to him. It was a strange attraction, as if they were two pieces of a magnet seeking each other

It was her! She was the one who was dying! She was the one who was calling him! Aidan felt that his whole body was about to explode with rage, with fear, with feelings that he had never experienced before and that, therefore, he was not able to identify at that moment.With each passing second, that feeling that he was going to die grew... but it was not him who was dying, and yet he felt that if that girl disappeared, he would disappear with her.She was a lycan, that was obvious from the way the silver affected her. What was inexplicable was the attraction he felt for her, and above all, why she was cursed just like him.“Could she be another victim of Isrion's lineage?” he thought aloud, but that didn't make sense. If she had been, her father would have protected her instead of locking her up.She didn't look a day over nineteen or twenty. She was very dirty and her breathing was becoming more and more irregular, as if at any moment she was going to breathe her last breath.“How lo

Everything about that woman had become white and small, doll-like. The hands, the tiny fingernails, even the eyelashes. Her skin looked like polished porcelain and Aidan could almost swear he could see her glow, with that special opaque light the moon had. Or maybe it was simply because she was his.“You are my Moon...” he murmured caressing her face, and suddenly the man, the heir to the throne, the Alpha protector of Casthiel's lineage emerged in him.She looked helpless and innocent, but that was the operative word: “looked”. If she really had been, her father would have never locked her in that cell in the Watchtower. It was a disgrace that after so many centuries of solitude, the Alpha's destined mate was precisely an enemy of his crown.And yet he needed and desired her, his whole spirit insisted on claiming her, on possessing her. It was rightly said that the bond between two mates was the most powerful bond among the lycans, and now Aidan was experiencing it firsthand, because

“Aren’t you going to tell me I'm crazy? That my first duty is to the crown? That I should put her back in a cell?” Aidan asked once Rhiannon fell asleep in his arms.He had battled to get her into a car, he had battled to get her on the plane, and he had battled to keep her from trying to escape every two seconds. It seemed she knew nothing of the world and was afraid of everything, but finally exhaustion had taken its toll, and now he was carrying her asleep in his lap.“You are crazy. Your first duty is to the crown, and you should return her to a cell immediately,” Brennan replied with a seriousness that not even the Goddess would believe. “Happy now?”Aidan growled at him because he knew it was pure irony coming out of his mouth.“Fine, now you can tell me what you really think.”Brennan looked back, making sure the door separating his compartment from the rest of the Guard was securely closed.“She's your mate, isn't she?Aidan drew the stupidest grin he'd ever seen on his face.

Aidan recoiled, shocked by the depth of rage in that girl's voice, though his own was not any less. He had waited centuries for his mate, and now she would not accept his claim on her, and that was exactly like...“Are you rejecting me?” he growled.“I'm telling you I won't let you mark me until I've met your wolf,” Rhiannon replied. After all, she the last lycan in her bloodline, and regardless of how much Aidan was her destined mate, she wasn't willing to bond with a wolf she didn't know.“There's just nothing else to it!” roared the Alpha. “This is me, this is my wolf...!”Rhiannon's gaze softened, unable to believe for a moment what she was hearing. Of course there was more, much more, otherwise he would never have been able to make use of those abilities.“Every lycan has his wolf. Where do you think the powers you use come from?!” bellowed Rhiannon. “They're not yours, you just use them! They belong to your wolf!”The Alpha's eyes darkened in a second.“I don't know what you're

Fear, that was the right word to decribe what Rhiannon was feeling: fear. Perhaps, for the first time in so many years, she was afraid of something she couldn't control, something other than dying, and that was being locked up.She didn't know if she had been minutes, hours or days in that room, but all her instincts seemed to awaken when she heard the almost imperceptible click at the door. The spongy floor helped her crawl to it in complete silence, and with the tip of her index finger she pushed it open.She felt her heart might leap out of her chest when a small crack opened and she realized it was unlocked.“Raksha!” she called to her she-wolf and felt her stir in her tormented consciousness.“Are you all right?” she asked her.“I think we might have a friend here. Look.” She felt the she-wolf's eyes emerge into hers and then jump with happiness.“We're free...! Wait!” she paused and the two sniffed, synchronized. “Aidan's not around, I can't sense him.”“Me neither.”Rhiannon cr

King Caerbhall was not a man who particularly believed in the wiles of common sorceresses, but he was not so stupid as to deny that he lived in a world where real powers could change the lives of lycans; after all, his wife was living proof of that.As a priestess of the ancient religion, Erea had found a way to change the ties that bound humans to their wolves; a way to subdue the animal spirit and bind it indissolubly to man... but not even Erea had managed to break the curse on her son.“What do you mean ‘he will not be able to conceive’?” the queen asked raising her voice. “Finoa, I came here because the most important lycans of my court recommended you... you shame them all!”“I sincerely apologize, Your Majesty, but there is nothing I can do,” the woman replied regretfully. “A curse too powerful weighs on the prince, and I fear that my skills are not enough to remove it. But it is also true that they came to me too late, the mating period is almost over... perhaps if they come w