Torn between Wolves & Myths (Book 2)

“Why did you come after me alone?” Liv asked after a long silent walk. They had been walking for at least two or three hours and she couldn’t take the silence anymore. Every time her thoughts wandered to what happened to her and what she did. She couldn’t take the questions that came with it anymore and she needed something else to focus on. Too bad that it had to be him, but even the asshole Alpha was better than her own thoughts right now.

“Because I am the only one who knows how to handle myself when a Moonblood uses her power on me.” Caden didn’t look back at her as he kept walking.

The sound of streaming water filled her ears. They must be close to a waterfall or something.

“Really? That is the only reason?” If it truly was, she still wasn’t going to believe him.

“No.” Caden said as he looked at her over his shoulder, before looking back.

An irritated sigh left her as she sped up and started to walk next to him. “Are you going to tell me the other reason?” A small smile ghosted over his face. He didn’t need to look at her for her to see it. “Of course, you’re not.” She said with irritation lacing her words. “Why would you tell me anything? You have told me repeatedly not to trust you and yet here I am with you in some forest, walking to a place I don’t know, with only your explanation that I should have learned about this mysterious place a long time ago.”

“That sounds like it’s your problem and not mine, Moonblood.”

A low growl left her throat as her hands started to itch to strangle the guy. “Screw this.” She said as she turned around and wanted to walk away before she was grabbed around her waist and tossed away. A startled breath left her as she kept falling, against her expectation, before she hit water and went under. Coughing, Liv resurfaced before she was sprayed with water as Caden landed in the water next to her.

“Asshole!” She yelled as she moved to hit him. He grabbed her wrist with a smirk as he pulled her close against him. A breath left her as their chests met and Caden wrapped his arm around her waist to keep her there. Her body instantly reacted to his touch and she was glad that she was in the water right now, or else her aroused scent would be all over the place.

“Relax, Moonblood. Look at the waterfall.” He said before he gently released her wrist. She did as he asked and saw the beautiful waterfall that was covering a cave. As soon as her eyes landed on it, a strange pull woke up in her chest. Beckoning her to come closer. Caden removed his other arm from her waist as she moved away from him and started to swim closer to the waterfall. The pull only got stronger as she reached the waterfall. Gulping she crossed underneath it and followed the pitch-black cave until it became a large circular one. That was lit up by a small opening in the roof that allowed the sun into the cave. In the middle of the cave was some kind of natural stone island, which held stones she hadn’t seen in a long time. She swam towards the island and ran a finger over the smooth white stone which had a rainbow glow. Moonstones. There were more of them scattered through the cave.

Liv moved around the island as she swam to the edge and pulled herself out of the water. The markings that were all over the cave caught her eyes and her breath was taken away.

This couldn’t be...

It were the same markings she had seen etched on the stones on the island in her lake in Greenland. She could recognize these markings anywhere.

“What is this place?” She asked with a whisper.

“The birthplace of the first female Ulfhednars.” Caden answered from behind her. She turned a little to look at him. He was sitting on the edge with one of his legs still in the water and the other pulled up as he rested his arm on it. “What you were told about the female Lycanthropes is true. There weren’t any before Artemis made Psophis the first Moonblood, but for the Ulfhednars, the story goes a bit differently.”

“Will you tell me?” He gave her a small nod. “If you want to know, I will.”

“I do.” It wasn’t a hard decision. Of course, she wanted to know about this and why she felt the pull towards this place so intensely.

“Before Artemis was even thinking about creating the Moonblood race, Freya had seen what would happen once Artemis would succeed in transforming Psophis. She consulted with Odin about what was going to happen. With Odin’s permission, Freya started to search for bloodlines of female wolves that would be able to hold the gift of human skin. She found six of them and offered them the same thing Odin had offered the male bloodlines. The gift of the human skin- to be allowed to shift between skins and become a supernatural. They all agreed, but something went wrong. The female wolves saw the human skin they were gifted with as a weakness instead of a strength and devoured it, before it could become a part of them.”

“They killed their own human skin inside of themselves?” Liv asked as she stopped walking along the wall and looked back at him. “They did.”

“That must have been painful.”

“It was. The wolves died from the action, much to Freya’s regret. But not all of them made the same decision. Two sisters didn’t see the human skin as a weakness, but as a strength they would need in the future. They accepted the skin and with their first shift, they became more powerful, beautiful and stronger than any male Ulfhednar. There was a strength in the female’s blood that Freya hadn’t even foreseen to evolve like it did with the shift, but they didn’t have any power. The male Ulfhednars were mesmerized by the females and during the council of the Alphas they made the sisters royalty among the Ulfhednars.”

“They didn’t feel threatened?” She asked as she started to walk back.

“Some males did, but the sisters never pushed their superiority on the males and never acted as the leaders. They just wanted to learn. That’s how they earned the respect of the males, even the ones who were threatened in the past. Females have a high standing among wolves and even though we were gifted with a human skin and the ability to shift, that fact hasn’t changed. We don’t see females as weak; we see them as equals. Or we acknowledge the power they have like they did with the sisters.” A strange feeling came over her that this part of the story was a vital part to her.

“Why did they have a council of the Alphas? Why make the sisters royals?”

“Because the hierarchy between the Alphas was becoming tainted. Where the Lycanthropes had Lycaon as king, they had none. They had no rules or laws and it was becoming a problem, so when the time came to decide if they were going to have a war amongst themselves as well as with the Lycanthropes, they voted to name a bloodline royal. Since the sisters were superior and they trusted them, they were the natural choice.” No other questions came to her mind at that point and Caden took it as an invitation to continue the story.

“Freya was pleased with this decision. The sisters fitted the role perfectly, but the threat of the creations of Artemis was still present and getting closer. She feared that they wouldn’t be strong enough to withstand the power of the female Lycanthropes and so she started searching deeper into their bloodline to find a way to make them even more powerful.”

“Wasn’t she scared that even more power would either kill the sisters or make them power-hungry and basically evil?”

Caden nodded as Liv sat down next to him with her legs in the water as she looked around the beautiful cave.

“That’s why she was also looking for something to temper the temptations that came with the power and a way not to kill them. She succeeded. Freya found an aspect in their blood that allowed them to get more power and share it with the soul that was matching theirs.”

“Soulmates.” Liv said as she met Caden’s gaze.

“Every being has a soulmate, but most cannot find them without the help of someone who can release the aspect buried inside of each of us. Freya didn’t create the mate bond. She merely released it inside of the Ulfhednar bloodlines. Once it was free, the sisters would recognize their soulmate as soon as their eyes would meet.” Which was still the case with mates, but since there are too few female wolves and too many males the mate bond became something that was rare. “The sisters found their mate within a year and completed the bond almost instantly. Their power spiked and the males got the same power as the sisters shared, but where the females were more than capable of carrying that kind of power, their males weren’t. Five years after they completed the bond, the males died from the power that had started to kill them slowly from the inside.”

“What about the sisters?”

“The youngest was the first one who gave into her pain and followed her mate a year later. The eldest didn’t want to give up even though everything inside of her wanted to. She took another mate, but it was not the same for her and she eventually died as well. Both of them leaving behind their pups.”

“Wait-” Liv said as she turned towards him so she was sitting with only one leg in the water as well. “Their pups? They had children?” Caden nodded.

“The youngest had a son, called Ulf, who got the name Kveldulf as he grew up.”

“Kveldulf?”

“Evening or night wolf.” Liv nodded in understanding.

“He was strong and a true Prince of the Ulfhednar, up until he disappeared at the hands of Lycaon.” Caden continued. “The eldest had two sons. One from her true mate and one from the mate she had taken after her soulmate died.” He stopped talking as he gave her an intense look. She gulped as she had a feeling what he was going to say.

“What were their names?” She asked with a soft voice. He clenched his hands as his eyes didn’t leave hers.

“You already know.” A strangled breath left her as she averted her gaze and looked in front of her at the cave. She really did know them. Augo had told her she was the last royal of the Ulfhednar. From the moment Caden told her that the two sisters became royals, she already knew. It wasn’t that hard to connect the dots. A tear rolled down her cheek as she spoke, “Leif and Rafe.”

Caden moved a little closer to her and wiped her tear away, making her look at him as he rested his hand against her cheek. “You want me to go on?” She swallowed the lump in her throat away as she nodded. She needed to know. Caden removed his hand, but didn’t move away from her.

“Leif was the child she got with her soulmate and she got Rafe with the other male. Making your father the true royal of the brothers. Something Rafe hates to this day.” That was something she could have guessed. “Leif became King as soon as his mother died and he had carried that burden through his entire childhood and a part of his adulthood, when he couldn’t take it anymore. His whole life he had been shackled to the life of being King in a war and he never even got to be free, but he also didn’t want to let down his kind, so he named Rafe Regent and allowed him to rule the Ulfhednars while he took a step back. He traveled the Scandinavian and Nordic countries when he found your Lycanthrope mother.”

“But-” She stopped him in his story. “What about Freya? She made the females because of the threat of Artemis making the Moonbloods, my dad meeting my mother means that they already existed.”

“Freya had the gift of using a powerful kind of magic that allowed her to see the future. When your grandmother died, she used it to see what will happen, and she saw something that made her take a step back.”

“What did she see?”

“Your birth.” The answer made her body lock up.

“She saw what would come from the union that was never meant to happen and she did everything in her power to make sure it would come to pass as the future she saw wasn’t set in stone. Your parents meeting was a possible future and it was both tried to be stopped by the Greek gods, as it was tried to come to pass, by the Norse gods. No one knows if them meeting had anything to do with the actions of the gods, but it happened and it changed everything.”

“Why?” She asked. “Why do I have a target on my back?” Repeating the question, she had also asked Rafe.

“Because you are the first and the only Ulfhednar Moonblood. The first female wolf with both Ulfhednar and Lycanthrope blood inside of you.” Caden answered her question.

“But you are also born from a Moonblood.” She asked as another tear rolled down her cheek.

“I am, but I’m not born as a Moonblood. You are.”

“What does this mean?”

Caden sighed as he clenched his jaw. “All I know is that you are something that shouldn’t exist and that you are vital in us winning or losing this war.”

“What do you mean, all you know?” She asked as another tear rolled down her cheek.

“There is a reason why Freya wanted you to be born and why Artemis and the others tried to stop it, but only Lycaon and Rafe know that reason.” Only Lycaon and Rafe knew? What did that mean for her?

Liv wiped her tears away as she looked at the cave again. It felt like a stone had been laid on her chest as a memory filled her head once more.

“Do you want to know a secret?” Her mother whispered. Liv quickly nodded.

Her mother chuckled. “Our home is more special than you think, my love.”

“It is?”

“Oh, it is.” Her mother leaned in a little more and whispered, “And so are you.” Liv chuckled at the breath that tickled her ear. “I am?” Her mother briefly glanced at her father behind her, before she met Liv’s eyes again. “You are, in more ways than one. You have the luxury to choose who you want to be. Where you want to belong.” Her mother brushed Liv’s hair behind her ear.

“How will I choose?” Liv asked as she looked at the valley before she met her mother’s gaze once again. “When the time comes, you will know.”

This was what she meant. In her whole life she hadn’t known what her mother meant that day, until now, but what did she mean when she said that Liv had the luxury to choose who she wants to be?

Where she wants to belong?

It was clear that she was an Ulfhednar Moonblood, which meant that she belonged with them right? But why would her mother tell her that she did have a choice if she always knew who Liv was?

Her head started to hurt once more. She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them as she rested her chin on her knees. The exhaustion became apparent in her body once more and she had no energy left to think about more questions she had no answer to.

Liv’s gaze was snared by a moonstone that caught some of the sunlight and started to shine a beautiful rainbow of colors.

“Why did you bring me here?” She asked after a long silence.

“Because you needed to know this and because Rafe didn’t want you to know yet.” That made her look at him. “He has nothing to say about me.” A crooked smirk ghosted over his face as he shook his head. “He doesn’t, but as long as he is Regent, he will act like he does. That will only stop if you step up and take your father’s crown.” A cold shiver ran down her spine. Taking her father’s crown- becoming queen... The thought only made her want to hide in the cave for the rest of her life. Being an Alpha is one thing, but being a queen of an entire race was a whole other story. She didn’t even know everything about them and yet here was an Ulfhednar telling her that she was going to have to take up her father’s crown. Hell, she didn’t even know how to be queen!

No, this was something she just couldn’t do.

“Liv, calm down.” Caden broke her thought stream as he laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed a little. “There is still time for you to get all the answers you need and make a decision.”

“How sure are you about that? Lycaon clearly wants me dead and you even warned me that I need to watch my back.” Caden didn’t answer her, which forced another question out of her mouth. “What kind of game are you even playing? Why tell me this when you made it very clear on which side you are.”

“Oh, have I now?” Liv slapped his hand away as she got up from the edge and took a few steps away from him. She took a few calming breaths, before she would do something she was probably going to regret a little bit, like pulling his intestines out of his body through his mouth. She looked around the cave and decided another question and a change of conversation. “You knew that I would be pulled to this place, didn’t you?” She asked as she turned back towards him.

“I did. This is the place where the sisters came into their power. That’s why the markings line the walls of the cave. The same markings that you found at the island in your lake.”

Her body went rigid. “How do you know that?” Her voice was dangerously calm again. Caden got up from the edge as well and walked towards her. “Because that is the place where you were born, Moonblood. That is why you were always attracted to it and to this place. The memory of the power that was unleashed in both places is still present and you can feel it.” He walked past her to the edge and looked back one more time.

“You are more powerful than you know, Liv. I may not know the true range of your power, but these markings have only appeared on places where a force that matched the power of the gods was unleashed. I figured you should know that.” He said before he dove into the water and disappeared.