My Lycan Mate of Suicide Forest

Night began to fall, the sun slowly sinking and creating a pattern of linear shadows on the trees.

Finally. The time couldn't be going any slower for Andreas. He wanted to dart out of Magnolia's cottage right now with his dissolved concoction in hand and find the glowing Luna without further ado.

He was losing precious time. The drug would require a number of hours to work, and in order for it to be worth the trouble at all, she would need to lose her visible proof of the conception before any large numbers of pack members witnessed it.

Plus, this dark and dilapidated cottage gave him the creeps. He knew no one died here, but it felt like they did. There was a heavy feeling of loss and loneliness that seemed to hang like a mist in the air—close to the floor where in horror films an arm could be expected to grab onto ankles, yanking victims down and into the abyss of unknown horrors.

But he didn't fear death.

Maybe it was that he feared the past.

While he was waiting for the final rays of sun to flicker out of the forest, his eyes wandered to the burn marks on the floor that destroyed the wood and laid waste to everything it touched. And yet the structure was still standing. He could see the palimpsest of a happy life here, one that belonged to Magnolia and those she cherished.

Andreas had been here before. He was a memory living in the glow of that happy palimpsest under the char and the soot that was here now.

Magnolia was one person who had managed to slip through his defenses, like one of those waning rays of sunlight in the forest. Her smile and her overabundance of joy and knowledge lit up the dark wooden structures he had built around himself.

He thought that he had severed any ability to feel drawn to someone like he was drawn to her, but Maggie made him realize that it was only tenuous defenses he had erected to try to keep warmth and light out. And his defenses had cracks—cracks that let her light through.

When you have lived in self-isolation and darkness for so long, any light that manages to peek in is explosive. Unbeknownst to her, she shattered him. She shattered him wide open.

No, why had he chosen to come here of all places. Now the memories were coming alive in that low-lying mist around his ankles, climbing to burrow themselves under his skin.

Magnolia being such a close friend of Derek and Genevieve's meant that he often saw her at unexpected times. It was common for her to be in the pack house with the Luna or spending time with the Alpha and Luna in their home.

On one such occasion, Andreas came by to alert Derek about a disturbance that had been noted in an allied pack. Derek invited him in, and there sitting on the sofa with her flowing dress and hair was Magnolia.

She always had a smile on her face and exuded such generosity, he often found himself stunned into silence just being in her presence. It drove him mad at first. He was desperately grasping at the walls he had built around himself, trying to pull them back up. It would seem he was successful for a short time before he would find himself thinking about her again. Or he would run into her, once again blinded by her light.

Gradually, he had stopped fighting. He welcomed the way she could warm a room just by being in it. And he started purposely seeking her out, stopping by this very cottage on occasion to ask about what healing herbs she suggested or to bring her things from the market.

One day, he came by to bring Magnolia some of the new lobster that had arrived in the market. It was a beautiful summer day, the glaring sun penetrating through this denser part of the forest. He had the lobster wrapped in brown paper and tucked under his arm as he approached the bridge leading to her door.

The windows were open, a light breeze ruffling her curtains and pulling them out into the forest. And then he heard her crying out in distress. She sounded like she was being hurt, and so he sprinted across the bridge and through the quaint living room where she often received him, following the noises that alerted him to her location up around the staircase. He burst through her bedroom door and saw her in rapt ecstasy, sensuously dipping her hips back and forth on some other lycan's cock.

He remembered the scent of her room—so deliciously, richly her with the addition of an incense that curled smoke through the air. Magnolia was so enthralled in her love-making, her head thrown back with that lovely, shiny brown hair cascading behind her, that she didn't even hear him come in.

If he would have been a more dominant male, he would have fought the one she was riding and took her for himself. Instead, he slowly backed out of the doorway and traced his way down the steps, the sounds of her pleasure pursuing him as he went.

He left the lobster on her counter like a fucking coward and never allowed himself to be tempted by her light again. The walls around himself were boarded up really tight after that. No one would ever get in again.

Andreas groaned, the sickening knots in his stomach twisting tighter and tighter from the flood of emotions that sprang loose with those memories. He thought Magnolia was his mate, he really did. It wasn't until later that he discovered the alyko, those cursed fucking witches as Auden would say, did not experience mate pulls the way lycans did.

At least, that was the case until Graeme arrived with his alyko-like mate—the freakish experiment from Eliade who had at least enough of the alyko abilities to convince Zoe of her status and then to light up their map like a constellation.

Graeme had an alyko mate—one he had created an heir with, for fuck's sake. One who was glowing like the blessed Moon herself.. It was just one more reason to hate them both and whatever twisted fate the Moon Goddess had planned, including their heir.