Return Of The Hybrid Queen

While I Was Bleeding Out, He Lit Lanterns For Her

Katie Oettgen

As I lay on the floor of our manor, bleeding out from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, I used my last ounce of strength to call my husband, Cole. I begged him for help, my vision blurring. But the only thing I heard was the clinking of champagne glasses and his mistress's giggle in the background. "Stop the drama, June," Cole snapped, his voice cold. "We're about to go on stage. Don't call again." He hung up, leaving me to die alone on the Persian rug while he accepted an award with another woman on his arm. I woke up in the hospital days later. My baby was gone. They had removed my fallopian tube. Cole finally arrived, smelling of expensive scotch and his mistress's perfume. He didn't hug me. He didn't cry. Instead, he leaned over my hospital bed, pressing his knee into the mattress until my fresh stitches tore open and bled. "You embarrassed me by calling an ambulance," he hissed. "My mistress, Alycia, says you're faking it. Clean yourself up." He left me bleeding again to go announce a $10 million donation to Alycia's "groundbreaking" medical research. I stared at the TV screen, numb. The research Alycia was taking credit for? It was mine. I wrote that patent years ago under a pseudonym. They thought I was just a poor, orphan housewife who needed Cole's money to survive. They had no idea I was actually a billionaire scientist hiding my identity. I pulled the IV needle out of my arm. A drop of blood fell onto the divorce papers I had been hiding. I didn't wipe it off. I signed my name right over it. Then I walked into the bank, reactivated my dormant account with $128 million, and bought the penthouse directly overlooking Cole's house. The mourning widow is dead. The avenger is born.

Romance Crime Revenge Pregnancy Enemies to Lovers Pregnancy Personal Growth

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19th February - Present Day

Rosalie

The intense rush of sickness rose up my throat and spilled out onto the ground before me. It had been the one thing I had not remembered anything of, the moment I travelled to the past. Only that, one moment I was following the strange voices, and in the next, I was waking up freezing cold in the early morning due, on the worn alter stone that dominated the middle of the stone circle.

This time it was different. I was expecting it. I chose to travel. And this time I had more at stake. Something was coming after me. And I didn’t have time to wait around and wait for them to arrive.

Pulling myself up onto wobbly legs and pushing down the rising discomfort fighting its way up my oesophagus, I race through the undergrowth. The bare branches of the shrubs around me, snagging at my woollen skirts as I follow that now too familiar path that I knew would lead me in the direction of what was Castle Black.

I was already weary, and I could feel the blood dripping down my legs as I ran to get as far away from the time opening as I could. But there was no choice but to push forwards.

Once I was away from the stone circle, I could make my way to the village that was now the Eclipse pack.

But first I had to make sure that the darkness was off the scent of what I had done.

It didn’t take long for the confirmation that the darkness had indeed followed me.

The demonic roar of anguish sounded from behind me.

Ducking into a bush, I pull myself out of sight and peek through the spikey gorse around me.

“Arghh.” The cloaked figure rose up before me. Like me, he had landed on the central alter stone. Only he seemed a little more stable that I had felt. He seemed to look about himself in confusion. Which was not surprising seeing as he thought he was chasing his prize, my new-born daughter.

“I will find you Rosalie, and your daughter. Mark my words.” He stepped down from the stone and stalked the perimeter of the stone circle.

“I know you are there. So, listen well. I can feel that the place you have brought me is not the same as the one we have left. If we have travelled back in time, then I will simply finish the task I failed to do previously. If you have brought me forwards in time, I will seek out the last remaining walker bloodline and I will kill every last one of them. I will make sure that the price you have paid to save your daughters life will be felt tenfold.” He spoke with an air of otherworldly indifference. His words were promises not threats, and the implications reverberated through me with each syllable he spoke. “I hope the life of one was worth it wolf.”

With his last words spoken, he turned and disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

After six months of endlessly looking for an answer for how to escape history repeating itself, we had come to this plan not really knowing where else to look.

The old croan had been explicit. In order to kill the Tenebris, demon of darkness and shadows, we had to have three generations of walker witches to break the curse and stop Tenebris falling back into the shadowed lands.

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