Painawakened

@dboggs9700 Thank you so much

Xavier POV The chessboard was a slaughter. Sade had taken my queen three moves ago and was now quietly dismantling my remaining pawns. Across the living room, Austin sat on the couch, one arm draped along the back, pretending to look at his phone. He wasn't. I could feel his eyes on me every few seconds. I couldn't quite read him. Not yet. Sade moved his knight and took another pawn. "You're distracted," he said mildly. "I need to see Aaron," I muttered.

Sorry for the late reply. Work has been crazy. Just for clarity the ferry runs on Wednesday and Friday Both Wednesday and Friday's have one inbound and one outbound ferry. I haven't re read the book yet. But once I edit this chapter, I will make the ferry schedule clearer.

AUSTIN POV Waking up hurt. My shoulders burned. My throat felt scraped raw. My body hurt all over. For a few seconds I didn't open my eyes. I listened. Wind against glass somewhere. The distant steady pulse of surf. A house on the coast then. I was not in a hospital. Something tugged lightly at the back of my hand. IV line. I opened my eyes. The room was dim. A lamp in the corner throwing warm light across wood floors and dark walls.

AUSTIN POV The last camera was at the northeast corner of the property line. Xavier climbed down from the tree with the empty battery casing in one hand and crossed it off the clipboard without looking. "That's it," he said. Four days. A hundred and twelve cameras. Coastal New England in late October which meant mud and low light and branches that found every gap in your jacket. I had enjoyed every single day of it. I didn't examine that too closely. We

Xavier POV I stepped inside my mother's office. She crossed the space before I reached her and pulled me in before I could say anything. Her hug was tight. Fierce. I let myself sink into it for a second, face against her shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of her perfume. "I'm sorry we woke you early," she murmured. "How are you feeling?" "Okay," I said against her shoulder. It wasn't a lie. It wasn't the truth either. She pulled back just enough t

AUSTIN POV The knocking came at 0602. I knew because I checked my watch before I moved. Old habit. I swung my legs off the bed and walked to the door, running a hand through my hair before pulling it open. Nathaniel stood there. For a second, I didn't process anything else. Just him. The same face I remembered, untouched by time. If anything, sharper. More defined. Like the years had refined him instead of aging him. Aaron stood one step behind

AUSTIN POV "If he dies," the man said quietly, "you will too." Years of training told me the threat was real. Everything about him — posture, stare, grip — said he'd follow through. "I didn't shoot him," I said. "Then lower the gun." I lowered it slowly. He released the barrel. Before I could ask him who he was, two more figures dropped beside the wolf. My brain registered the speed, the silence, and filed it under What The Fuck. I was dru

Xavier POV “I don’t understand.” My voice came out steadier than I expected. Good. I was aware of my hands. The specific effort it took to keep them still at my sides. My mother sat across from me at the table where we’d eaten breakfast every morning of my life. The same place she’d helped me with schoolwork. Where she’d told me stories about her own ascension. Where she’d told me how proud she was of how hard I worked. She looked at me the way she looked a

Xavier POV The field had emptied twenty minutes ago. Dinner was on the table somewhere inside the pack hall. I could smell it from here. Roasted meat and woodsmoke drifting across the tree line. The kid - Marcus, barely fourteen, the newest shift in the pack - was still out there alone in wolf form, stubbornly running the same sequence Jon had used to drop him while the pack laughed every time he hit the dirt. He lunged. His back leg dragged. He hit the groun

Xavier Reid has always known exactly what his life would be. Heir to a powerful family, raised for leadership, with a future as the next Alpha of the Greyhaven pack. Surrounded by loyal allies — including the vampires Aaron, Sade, and Nathaniel — he has never questioned the world he is set to inherit. But as Xavier steps into adulthood, cracks begin to form in the future he was raised for. Book 2 of the Awakened series. Can be read as a standalone. Updates: 1–2 chapters per week. Approx. 25–30 chapters planned.

Austin POV I hadn’t been back in years. The ferry horn echoed across the harbor as Boston disappeared behind me. The city shrank into gray shapes through the fog, the skyline dissolving until only the water remained. Wind scraped across the deck and shoved against my coat. I stayed at the railing anyway. The island appeared slowly out of the mist — dark trees rising behind a strip of docks and weathered buildings that looked like they’d been standing there since b

Thank you so much. I loved writing Aaron and Nathaniel’s story. I'm glad it resonated with you

Thank you

BONUS CHAPTER: 1915 The war had a way of swallowing names. On the outskirts of Amiens, in a canvas field hospital pitched on mud thick as gravewater, a young man lay half-conscious on a narrow cot, his chest wrapped in dressings stiff with blood. Rain hammered the canvas overhead. The air stank of gangrene and smoke. He drifted in and out like a man already dying. A shape moved near his bed—a woman. Thick-waisted, with a face broad and shapeless as cooling wax. Her hai