DOUBLE UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

WHAT?!?!?!? WHAT?!?!?!? I SAID A MOTHERFUCKING DOUBLE UPDATE!!!!

BAP! BAP! BAP!!!!!!!!!

I SPOIL YALL MOTHERFUCKERS! I MIGHT HURT YOU, BUT I ALSO SPOIL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ANYWAYS, ENJOY MY CHILDREN AND PLEASE PLEASE COMMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Hagen’s P.O.V

I leave the pack behind me as I tear through the lands with Zyair at the forefront, pushing us faster in pure desperation to be close to our mate again.

It’s a blind sort of hunger that replaces every other kind, making it almost easy to run faster than I ever have before.

Alpha’s child or not, I’d gone through the same training that everyone in the pack was required to at some point. The one that ensured that we maintained our innate ability to run days on end should the situation ever call for it.

This one did. By Dad’s calculations, the vampire leader’s castle was a six-day journey if I was fast enough, which I had every intention of being. He’d never done it, considering that magic had always been close by to cut it short, but I didn’t have that option.

Damon had been right. The witches in our pack weren’t going to help. They’d avoided even looking at me when I’d been leaving the pack, so it was on me to make it to this mythical castle and make it inside. And I would. Somehow.

Behind me, I hear the pounding steps of my family sticking close but I ignore them. There was no reality where they were letting me go this alone, so I hadn’t wasted any time trying to stop them, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to lose them on the way.

I wasn’t stupid. I knew I was heading into a death trap, a situation far beyond my capabilities and that I needed all the help I could get, but they’d only slow me down once I actually got there. I needed to convince whatever force was waiting for me to let in a single werewolf, not four or five or however many had followed me out here.

But those were things to worry about later. For now, I just had to get there.

Canines clenched, I push myself forward alongside Zyair so we’re both running, moving almost too fast for our legs, but we do it with eyes glued only on what lay straight ahead— Nikola.

—————————————————

Nikola hated running, with a visceral passion, but he did it routinely anyway.

When I’d asked him why he did it then, he’d said that as a hybrid, there were certain things he had to do to make sure he balanced both sides of himself, as well as his psyche. Running and meditation— that’s how he kept the balance.

I’d joined him for a few runs, by his demand, because as a werewolf, I apparently needed to nurture the former far more than he did.

Nikola had always ran ahead of me on those runs that were strictly for exercise. His wolf was large, like a warrior’s, covered in perfectly kept grey fur with a matching pair of sharp grey eyes that glanced back every other minute to check on me.

I picture that wolf now as the world changes around me. As I run through dense woodlands, open acres and hard rocky lands, under the blazing sun and the chill of the night, I picture him ahead of me.

It’s so clear that at some points, I believe he is actually there and then I end up running even faster in a belated effort to catch him. I never do, but I get a little closer each time.

Nikola.

Nikola.

Nikola.

It becomes a chant in my head, a memory, a plan, a prayer. It becomes my world— his name— and it’s what keeps me moving, even when my body screams with the effort of each step.

It’s not a journey, it’s a hunt, and one I don’t plan to stop until I catch my prey.

Other things try to scatter my mind, like voices in my head telling me to drink water, to rest, and slow down. Those are the voices of the ones behind me, the ones that I shake off somewhere along the way.

I do it when they’re distracted and shifted for sleep, thinking that I’ve done the same— that’s when I leave them behind. I’d sleep after, when this was all over and I’ve carefully put the pieces of Nik and I back together, but not before.

Somewhere in the haze of running and running and running, I find it.

I know I’m close by the scent. It’s not as prominent as other supernatural species that always naturally marked the land with their scents. The vampires actually didn’t smell like much of anything at all on their own, but when mixed with the blood they consumed, that muted scent awakened and filled the air with copper and vetiver.

It’s that scent, mapped over every inch of these unfamiliar lands, that I slow for the first time in days, dragging myself into a slower, careful trot as the grey wolf in front of me does the same. I follow behind them as they lead me deeper within lands outlined by tall, imposing trees beneath distant mountains.

There’s a buzzing city not too far away, which cars drive towards on the large highway, but I move in the opposite direction. Deeper into lands I would assume were claimed by humans, but ones that smelt of that same coppery nothingness.

My body sways as I move, growing heavier and slower with each step now that I’d slammed on the brakes for the first time since I’d left the pack.

I’m going to pass out. I don’t want to. I will myself not to, but I know I will any moment now. I keep my eyes stubbornly open and my legs moving for as long as I can. At the very least, I needed to lay eyes on the castle before a week’s worth of hunger and exhaustion got the best of me.

I needed to know for sure that I’d made it. That I was close to him.

I notice too late the unearthly quiet and the fact that it had been quiet for a while now.

There were no tiny critters scampering through the underbrush or distant squeaking of some territorial creature. There was nothing but the weight of my own breaths and racing heart. That wasn’t right.

“You are not welcome here.”

I turn, swivelling to protect my back from the sudden predator. I expected multiple, but there was only one, and they stood far closer than their voice had seemed to be.

My straining eyes track them quickly, wondering if this small vampire with cold red eyes and a pastel yellow blouse was a scout, or Lincoln himself. I doubted it was the latter, but the air around this vampire didn’t give a measly scout, or anything measly at all.

I know I should shift to speak, but the thought of making myself so vulnerable to this unknown figure makes Zyair’s hackles rise.

“You need to leave,” he says without a single movement.

Knowing Jasper, I had seen how still vampires could be despite reminding themselves to act human. But even like that, I’d never seen Jasper look like this— stood as still as a concrete, unblinking, and utterly terrifying.

I step back but keep my eyes vigilant for any sudden movements or others silently watching from afar.

“Leave.” This time, the vampire snaps the word, and on it, I can taste the threat that makes the space around us drop several degrees colder.

It’s a clear message of what was coming if I didn’t listen, only there was no other option other than not to listen. I couldn’t outrun a vampire, not in my current state where I was barely standing and so tired that the image of him doubled and swayed.

I shake my head, both to clear it and make it clear that I wasn’t going to leave.

Somehow, the vampire’s already impossibly hateful expression deepens, and his lip curls over his fang. I shudder, but hold my ground, even while fatigue makes it a wobbled stance.

The vampire speaks but it becomes lost within the clouded haze that wraps itself around my mind. It settles over me like a weighted blanket, one that forces me down at the very feet of this unknown threat.

Through slitted eyes, I think I spot something like confusion on the vampire’s face as he moves for the first time, and then it’s like he’s scared shitless. The guy squirms on his toes, looking all around for help, but that’s the last of the obscure picture I get before it all turns off.

—————————————————

I’m on my paws the moment my eyes open, returning me to the world with more clarity than I’d left it, except it’s not the same world.

The eerily quiet landscape is replaced by an unfamiliar chasm of a room, naturally darkened by its black interior walls despite the lights lit up all around. I move back a little, trying to get a better look, only that alerts me to the silk that tears beneath my talons.

I stare at the burgundy sleek fabric in confusion as it dangles from my claws.

A bedroom. I was in a medieval-looking bedroom that’s three times the size of mine and unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. The only reason I even class this colosseum as a bedroom is because of the bed I’m on, because I wasn’t used to bedrooms having chandeliers and an entire breakfast table beneath its gigantic window.

Zyair — I call with a prodding touch.

Zyair and I hadn’t truly spoken about where we’d ended up… because of me, but the moment I’d decided to look for our mate, he’d been back in full force to make sure that once we found him, we kept him forever.

I tried to stay conscious for us, but I only saw the vampire rushing towards us before I was out too — he replies with a snarl I know is directed at himself — He must’ve moved us.

The question is, to where?

I hoped to Goddess and all the other Gods that it wasn’t somewhere farther than where I’d started. If I had to, I’d start the journey all over again, but it’d be infuriating beyond belief to know I had to because that creepy little vampire had moved me when I was so close.

Speaking of which…..

He’s nowhere to be seen, but I don’t believe for a moment that he isn’t close. If he was just dumping me away, then it wouldn’t have been somewhere this nice. No, he was close, which meant I had to be on the alert.

I jump off the bed and move carefully to the closest door. I sniff underneath and find nothing, which makes alarms sound in my head, because as I tried to smell anything else, all results returned much the same. That wasn’t right.

There was always something for the scenes, and if there wasn’t, then something was hindering that.

I step away from the first door, heading for the next, where beside it, a pile of clothes sits folded on top. I ignore it, but not the plate of fruits and cut meats that make me drool. I stuff my face into the plate, gnashing desperately at the food even as the plate falls to the ground. I eat it all and allow myself only that recess before I refix my mind to the strange situation I was in.

Easing away from the plate, I sniff beneath that door’s sill, which only reveals more of nothing. I frown, contemplating against shifting, but I wasn’t about to get out of here by scratching at the knob with my paw, so I bite the bullet and shift.

My clothes underneath aren’t the best considering I haven’t cleaned myself up in Goddess knows how long, but I don’t take the offered replacements. I didn’t know what strings those came attached with, and I wasn’t going to cave before I had to.

Bones crack as I straighten, adjusting to my natural form and out of the comfort of my fur. A cold shudder follows, but I ignore it as I settle myself, blinking to adjust to my eyesight; only in between those blinks, one moment, there’s only the room’s vast interior and the next, there’s the vampire.

I startle back, fists rising to defend myself from the unnerving creature, but he looks nothing like he had earlier.

Instead of cold and hateful, he looks slightly anxious and unsure as his eyes dart between mine and he rings his fingers out in front of him.

“You’re awake,” he whispers, sounding happy about that fact, which just adds to the now never-ending list of ‘strange’ going on here. “I thought—” he shudders and shakes his head, “you’re awake.”

“Where am I?”

“Keep your voice down!” The vampire hisses as he looks over his shoulder as if someone might burst in at any second. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

That makes awareness ping in my mind, slotting together why this place was so strange.

“I’m inside the castle,” I breathe out as relief and adrenaline flood me all at once.

“Quiet!” The vampire hisses again, but I barely hear him.

I was inside the castle. Never mind that I’d never actually seen it, somehow, this guy had snuck me inside, and that meant, I was closer to Nikola than I’d been in almost two months, but then…

I tap warily at our bond, at the tattered string between our hearts that should’ve been pinging nonstop with awareness to tell me that we were close.

It’s deadly quiet.

My legs threaten to give out beneath me, along with the hope that had carried me this far, as a familiar fear trickles back in to remind me of Aunty Kat’s last words.

‘I won’t let you hurt him again.’

Had she done it? Had she done something already to break us apart?

No. I would’ve felt it. I would know if we weren’t bonded, which meant it was something else. Magic, most likely. The same magic that kept me from sensing anything outside of these four walls.

I settle my gaze on the vampire again, and eye him a little closer. He was hiding me, but maybe he was getting help from some witch friend. I thought vampires hated witches, but that must’ve been wrong, considering their leader classed the Amorenia family, and I’d never known.

“I’m happy you’re not dead, but that doesn’t mean I like you,” the vampire says as he narrows his eyes on me. “You still have to leave.”

“Like hell I will,” I reply with a step back. “I’m not going anywhere without my mate.”

The vampire doesn’t deny it, or pretend that he doesn’t know, which means he somehow knows exactly who I am, but he doesn’t seem concerned either.

“He doesn’t want to see you,” he replies impassively, as if those aren’t the very words that threaten to take me down again.

I swallow past their burn, “Well, I’ll hear that from him myself then.”

The vampire’s eye twitches with something like annoyance, and I know I’m running on a dying clock here. It was great that he’d inadvertently helped me this far, but it was clear this was as far as the line went with him.

Talking wasn’t getting me anywhere, which was just fine because I was tired of talking to everyone other than Nikola about our relationship. Their opinions didn’t matter, and I didn’t give a damn how much they would hate me if it meant I could make Nik love me again.

Flexing my fingers, I quietly test what’s left inside of my tank. Earlier, I knew I couldn’t outrun him, but now?

I shift my gaze, searching for a route, only the moment I do, the vampire reappears in my line of sight. It’s so quick that I stumble back, my eyes widening in disbelief. I’d seen vampires move, I knew they were quick, but that hadn’t just been quick.

The vampire had practically phased out of one spot and into the next in the same time it took me to look away.

I eye my opponent with new hesitance. This guy wasn’t much smaller than me, but he was likely old as fuck if he was able to move like that, which meant this wasn’t as simple as ‘pushing my way through’. But fuck it, I would if I had to.

I firm my stance, ready to run at him, screaming like a deranged linebacker, when a voice pierces whatever enchantment is surrounding this room.

“Kalem?” It calls curiously, but my mind does not focus on the hint of devotion or the name it assigns to the terrified face in front of me. My mind zeroes in on that voice.

It’s not normal. Not in any definition of the word I know.

It’s… lilted and deep, with cadences I’ve never heard that go beyond accents and age. It’s almost like an entirely different language, like a culture captured in this one voice that lives within it alone.

It’s also terrifying. In the manner that the moment I hear it, I know it belongs to him— Lincoln.

“What are you doing in there?” He asks, not angry; more confused and clearly seeking out this vampire who looks like he’s about to shit himself.

“Oh, shun!” The vampire— Kalem, whines as he looks between me and the door in a hushed panic.

He’s trying to make a plan, on how to get me out of here without Lincoln knowing, except that won’t work for me. I knew I was going to be facing my own deathbed once I met him, and there was a very slim chance I’d escape it, but getting through him meant getting to Nikola, and I wasn’t about to be ousted when I was this close.

I open my mouth, but any sound is cut off before it can be made as Kalem appears before me, clasping a tight hand over my mouth and clenching down so tight my jaw aches. I stare at him with bulging eyes as I try to shove him off, but despite his size, he’s an immovable brick.

“I’m just… cleaning!” He shouts back while he glares down at me.

“Cleaning? Now?” Lincoln probes from the other side with a great sigh. “Love, you’re the one who wanted to redecorate the throne room.”

My already wide eyes grow an inch at the warmth in his tone, and the use of ‘love’. Far too belatedly, I realise who this vampire holding me down and keeping me quiet is— Lincoln’s life partner.

“I’ll be right there!” Kalem shouts and then, we’re gone.

It’s not like teleportation. It’s far different.

This is like being phased from one location to the next, body first. My body is what arrives first, back in the woodlands I’d collapsed at, and through its senses, I see a kaleidoscopic version of the world before my soul arrives seconds later and slams into me.

My soul tries to settle itself back into its home, though it’s a shaky thing that leaves me muted as I look up at the vampire responsible.

He’s already backing away and looking somewhat apologetic. “You leave, okay? I won’t help you again.”

Kalem’s about to go, to do whatever the fuck he just did— which had felt nothing like Jaspar’s vampire speed when I’d begged him to show me what it was like— and I see my opportunity flash before my eyes.

I see Nik flash before my eyes.

By some desperation, the last sliver of my sanity, or sheer will, I lunge forward. I will my fingers to stretch further, to grow longer if they can, and maybe they do, because my open hand grabs onto the end of Kalem’s blouse a moment before he disappears again, only this time, he takes me with him.

For the second time in far too short a time, my body lands in a new space, falling to my knees within what I’m sure is the interior of the castle. I spot even higher walls than the room I’d been in, held up by monstrous columns that lead into an arching ceiling, and ahead, the shine of a silver throne.

Then, as my soul finds my body again, I spot the lone figure standing a distance ahead with fingers wrapped around the ends of drapes larger than any I’d ever seen.

The vampire, Lincoln, looks pleased at first when his eyes seem to naturally land on Kalem. The stiffness in his wide shoulders eases just a little and his lips seem to twitch up into a smile, but then, his gaze shifts to me.

Before he even registers who I am, his stare is suffocating.

Black eyes swallow the world whole, transporting me into the depths of hell that live within that frigid leer. He’s stereotypically pale, but not deathly so. I imagine that he was always this pale before he was even a vampire— if he was ever something before he was this vampire.

He doesn’t look it.

To me, he looks like all he’s ever been is this inhumane manifestation, this vessel of power stuffed inside a human body and playing pretend. He doesn’t breathe, I notice, and as those dark eyes shuffle around my face and sharp brows dip, recognition sparks, and he finally realises who I am, then, I truly understand the feeling of terror.

It’s not a feeling that makes your heart drop and instincts blare to run. It’s a cold, impassive chill that settles over the body and soul, forcing it to accept the very real and undeniable reality that death is upon you, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, and that is terrifying.

Following his gaze, Kalem looks over his shoulder and notices me for the first time. He jumps away with a little squeak before his eyes bulge, almost shimmering with gold as horror floods them.

“You—” he stammers, unable to finish as he looks between me and Lincoln who’s striding towards us. “Oh, no!”

Kalem tries to meet the approaching beacon of death halfway, while I step back, scrambling back in an effort to put space between us, but it’s in vain. One moment, he’s across the extensive room, and the next, he’s towering over me.

“You must be Hagen,” he says, his words like prickling spider legs on skin, and his black eyes like lethal blades that slice over my skin.

I recoil back, trying to make myself smaller, but there’s nowhere to go and moving an inch backwards seems ill-advised with the rageful monster watching me, as if he’s waiting for the moment I might run so that he can lunge.

“You came for him,” he states, sounding far calmer than Kalem had at our initial meeting, or Aunty Kat for that matter. But beneath his words I hear it— that roaring tornado waiting to slip free and tear me apart. “How surprising.”

I stay quiet until I realise that he’s waiting for a response.

“I-I’m not leaving without him.”

The vampire’s red eyes gleam and a twisted smile stretches his lips apart, revealing a pair of long, too-sharp fangs that make my blood run cold. “Is that so?”

It’s not a real question, not truly, but his eyes dare me to respond, challenging me to admit to such a thing.

I swallow, twice to muster the courage, and once more to get the single word out, “Yes.”

A short sound slips past his lips. It’s almost like a laugh, if laughs were meant to terrorise others.

“We were supposed to meet on better terms,” he tells me in a near whisper as he leans closer, forcing me to shrink deeper. “Nikola spoke of it often. He was so very excited to introduce us once you accepted him as a mate. Only the years have continued to pass, and your resistance only seemed to grow, and then when it did ease some, you do this to him.”

Those last words are barely that. They’re more like snarls and living curses that feel like they’re about to rise up and take on a life of their own. They crawl over my skin, clenching onto flesh the way I can tell he’s itching to.

He wants to kill me. He wants to tear my arms from their sockets and watch me scream in agony, and that’s just for starters.

“You must’ve done something terrible.” This is something he expects an answer to, an admission, and I’m too terror-stricken not to give it to him.

“Awful,” I admit.

Fury torments his obsidian eyes, tinting them red as his teeth grind together. “And yet, you are here,” he sneers through his fangs.

I take a steady breath, “Yes.”

I try to be strong, to sound stronger than I am, but it’s an impossible task.

I’m petrified. I can see my fucking life flashing before my eyes, unimpressive and sad, and littered with Nikola even when I thought he wasn’t there, and I hate myself for dragging us this far into utter madness.

But we were here now, and all I could do was fix it.

“I-I’m here for Nik, a-a-and I’m not leaving,” I say, clenching my shaking fists at my side. “Y-You can throw me out o-or torture me, b-but I’ll k-keep coming back.”

The colour of my soon-to-be spilled blood encompasses the pair of eyes in front of me completely, making goosebumps raise over my flesh and my bones quiver in their shackles, but I don’t stop.

“I’m seeing him, o-one way or another.”

“Nerve. You have a great deal of it, Hagen,” Lincoln seethes with another one of his ghoulish laughs. He seems genuinely amused before it’s cast out and a blank nothing replaces it. “See him, then.”

My heart seems to stop as I blink at him in confusion.

“Master?” Kalem asks from behind, reminding me that he is here. I’d forgotten about him entirely.

“He wants to see him, let him,” Lincoln says blankly as he steps back, awarding me the space to breathe for the first time since he’d laid eyes on me. “Your presence will not be met kindly. You think you simply need to say the right words and you will bewitch him again, but that is not the case, so see so for yourself.”

He turns and walks towards his partner, but even with his back facing me, I still feel like cornered prey.

“And when it is done, and you are not accepted but rejected, and all ties between you severed, then I will kill you.”

My blood runs cold, truly. All warmth, all life tries to splinter from me as it will when his words are inflicted.

“What?” I manage to squeak out.

“I won’t, if you leave now,” he continues casually. “I will allow your trivial life to carry on undisturbed, but if you stay. If you go to him, and are rejected— because you will be— then I will kill you.

“Not solely because of what you did to Nikola,” he says as he slides his hands over Kalem’s shoulders and turns, letting me see his too-calm eyes, “but in the manner. The manner that made him broken, that stretched out for years, and that hurt not only him, but Katerina and Apollos as well. I will kill you, and I will deal with your fathers’ wrath after the fact. It will be worth it.”

I stand in stunned silence, staring barefaced at my very own grim reaper in waiting, and don’t even register him calling for someone to lead me to Nikola until they’re at my side.

They all watch me, plainly, expectantly.

Would I go to him, with my life in the balance when everyone thus far who stood in my path had met me with rage and hatred that no doubt dwarfed Nikola’s, or would I go home, and hide safely within the distance and space I’d begged for my entire life?

“Take me to him”

———————–

Hagen not backing down for this long, against all these people, is so hot to me. I DON’T CARE! I DON’T CARE!!!!

Thoughts???????

Thoughts on Hagen’s crazy running to find Nikola??? On him meeting Kalem???? On him meeting Lincoln???????

If you haven’t read Master, I can’t lie, I don’t think you’ll understand how insanely impressive it was for Hagen to hold his own against Lincoln. Like that guy ain’t nothing to play with, I’m so proud of him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, next chapter is already ready for you guys so please continue to comments, vote and enjoy!!!

if you can heheehe