After the war, London is in chaos.
Packs are battling it out for dominance in the streets, lycans are killing each other in illegal fight dens. The Royals are being murdered.
All Juliet wants to do is forget - forget Sebastien, forget the wa...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I woke up to the sound of bones cracking.
It took me a few seconds to figure out it wasn't my bones, although it felt like it. Pain pulsed indiscriminately through my body, like every inch of my skin had been pierced repeatedly by shards of glass, and it took an immense amount of effort just to peel my eyes open.
But I'm alive...
A weak burst of relief surged through me, though it quickly dissolved beneath the weight of my injuries. I squinted up at the ceiling, my eyes watering from the fluorescence, and tried to catch my bearings. But it was like the walls were starting to close in on me; suddenly shadows were clouding my vision, my ears ringing, and I could hear an echo of my final opponent's scream echoing in the back of my mind.
My breath started to come in shallow gasps, and I panicked.
"Hey!"
My head snapped to the side and a sharp pain stabbed my jaw. It hurt like a bitch, but it did the trick — the room shot back into focus, the screaming coming to an abrupt halt. I realised, then, that I was lying on a hard countertop in a small room not unlike the one I'd cleaned up in after my fights.
There were four other lycans in the room with me; one girl with a chunk taken out of her cheek and clothes drenched in blood, a guy with his arm in a sling, and another guy with his head wrapped in a bandage. The last guy was wearing a jacket with a crudely drawn red cross on the back. He was in the middle of stitching up the girl's cheek with a black needle, but his head was craned in my direction, his brows knitted in concern.
"You good?" the medic asked me.
I managed a quick nod. When he turned back to the girl, I started taking stock of my injuries, running through a mental inventory of my vitals. It wasn't too bad — I wasn't missing any limbs, no matter how shit I felt — and the arm that had sustained the most mutilation was criss-crossed with black stitches, stretching all the way to my elbow. They glowed with a faint, purple aura under the lights and I could feel the demonic energy radiating from the thread.
At least I knew they wouldn't scar. Purebloods rarely scarred — unless the injury was inflicted with silver — but half-breeds needed a little cosmetic boost in that department.
Bandages were strapped around my chest, under my tank top. My other arm was bandaged, too, and one side of my face was ice cold where someone had injected some kind of anti-inflammatory. I could taste residual blood in the back of my throat, but there didn't seem to be anything fresh coming back up.
All in all, it wasn't the worst shape I'd ever been in.
"They're calculating our scores now," the sling-armed guy told me. He looked pretty banged up, but happy. "Then the packs'll submit their offers."
