Accepting My Twin Mates
Chapter 92

Evgeniya

My stomach emptied into the toilet bowl, like clockwork, just as it had done each morning for the last two weeks. Sometimes my morning sickness crept into the afternoon, but for now, it was staying true to its name. Accompanying my nausea on the train of pregnancy symptoms, my skin was always coated in a sheen of perspiration, my stomach distended in bloating and my breasts ached constantly. The pup would be little bigger than the size of a bean and I was over being pregnant. Seven more months of this and all without my mates by my side...

Were they any closer to discovering where I was being kept?

Because I wasn't. I had lost count of the number of times I had studied the mountain landscape peeping over the top of the high wall. All those times in school when I thought “European geography’ would never come in handy and so didn't pay attention. How ironic.

I flushed the toilet and caught my breath from retching, rinsing out my mouth and nibbling on the dry crackers that stocked my cell. True to his word, Marceau had supplied my cell with everything I could need for my condition, whether I wanted it or not. Accepting any of it was like I was accepting my fate, accepting that I would carry my pup and prepare to give birth here. I didn't care if I had to hold the pup in my womb till he was a full-grown wolf, he was not being brought into this world in a prison.

“If it makes you feel any better, you look most radiant this morning,” Bastiaan flashed me a teasing grin from where he watched over me in his cell.

“Thanks,” I pushed myself up the wall, grabbing my crackers along the way. “It's sweat and hormones.”

“And you wear it so well”

“Wise a*s I chuckled, reaching for the small tray delivered earlier that contained mostly dry breakfast foods and ginger tea. Popping one of the prenatal vitamins, I chased it down with the lukewarm tea and contained my grimace as best I could. I hated the taste, but it was the only thing that settled my stomach after retching everything up.

The soft sounds of Diego's snores stemmed out from his cell, sleeping off his last bout of heavy matches; another result of his bluster. Why the guards and Marceau bothered trying to discipline the guy was beyond me. The “punishments’ provoked him further to misbehave.

The cell I fixated on was the one currently lying empty opposite and would remain that way till the late hours of the night. My father had been knocked out and taken to his fights for the day in the wee hours of this morning. What I had learnt about a fighters’ transport was; they were knocked out first with a dart, regardless of whether they cooperated or not. It was how the facility, wherever we were kept, had remained in its hidden location. They were woken up at their match by a shot of adrenaline and returned to this compound in a similar fashion, except they were deposited in their cell and left to come around naturally. If they had injuries that required medical attention, then they took a detour via the clinic that I dreaded ever returning to.

Each match cost my father a fragment of the light in his eyes. He wasn't a violent man, he was a protective one. The only reason he was doing any of this so willingly was for me, for my safety. Living so constrained was alien to him. He was used to the open landscape of the wilds in which he had lived most of his life. Hardships were nothing new for him, living without was the norm. But living without space, fresh air and the freedom to roam was becoming too much, straining a cord like a wild animal corralled into a cage.

And it was killing him each time I was forced to eat dinner with Marceau, alone.

The man hadn't touched me since that day, not that I trusted him to ever keep his hands to himself. Each time I was taken, flashes of that day screamed in my mind and a panic I had never experienced before drummed my pulse into the sky. But each of those times was an opportunity, a chance to memorise the layout, count the number of guards, rooms that would hold something of use and observe just who I shared these cells with.

There were thirty-four of us here in total, including myself, and four empty cells; all in a row next to mine. Twelve of those I knew would do me no harm; my father, obviously, Bastiaan and his nine vampires and Diego. Of the other twenty-one wolves, I didn't know which I could trust. Some were clearly untrustworthy, some were a little more ambivalent. It wasn't as though I was in any sort of position to have a conversation and ask “should I ever manage to devise an escape plan, who can I count on?"

The sounds from their cells were beginning to rouse and awaken as the soft morning sun began to fill our space. Like my father, many had been taken to their matches early while darkness still reigned outside. These quieter mornings were a rarity, one that made me close my eyes to take in the hushed air.

slipping to my mattress and using the wall to support my back, I fished for another poppy seed cracker to drive away the taste of the overpowering ginger from my tea, only to pull back in disappointment that the packet was already empty. It was. a silly thing to feel disappointed over, given my predicament, but I was finding it was the stupidest of things that set my emotions off on their offbeat tangents.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Whenever I felt my mood flicker in such a way or when Evva paced in my mind excessively, I would try meditating, just as Astennu and Badru had shown me. It was the only way I could curb the anxiety and quieten my wolf's presence. It wasn't in the pursuit of suppressing her, she was my support. But If I let her run free in my mind, I would lose it.

I tried to clear my head, only for it to fill with memories of my mates, of Astennu's syrupy sweet tree sap scent and Badru's freshly grated aroma of spices. If I focused enough, I could almost be sitting within an exotic forest, a sizzling heat, not of the air, sending a tingling spark up along my spine and two pairs of midnight sapphires swirling in their hues of blue.

Then I would open my eyes and realise I was living in a fantasy of memories and that they weren't here.

The me of two and a half months ago, who ran through the snow to escape my mates and who jumped through a window to doit, I could punch that woman squarely in the face. If I could escape through the window behind me, to run through the snow once more, it would be towards Astennu and Badru, running fully into their arms... if their arms were waiting for me. “Of course they are!’ Ewa snapped, her tension wound tightly. “Our goober is not gonna blush for anyone else and our nugget would never let another she-wolf dominate him. Those are our jobs!

I didn't want to believe anyone would take my place in their hearts, but the longer I remained here, the more my fears swam and festered.

What if they start to believe we left them?

The thought pinched my heart, a constriction pulsating my temples... and a faint sense of rage?

Were these my emotions and insecurities rearing their ugly head? Were they new pregnancy symptoms and random mood swings?

..Or something else?

Astennu

My grip on my mate's locket tightened, drawing blood from my palm. S~ᴇaʀᴄh the FindNʘᴠᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“You sold our mate... our pup?” My voice broke and my body launched forward, with my father's blood firmly in my sights.

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