Painawakened
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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Thank you so much. I loved writing Aaron and Nathaniel’s story. I'm glad it resonated with you
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Thank you
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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
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THREE YEARS LATER Aaron POV "I'm ready." Nathaniel stood in the doorway, fresh from the shower, a towel slung low on his hips. Water still clung to his skin, catching the last of the sunset, and he looked so young it made my chest ache. "You don't have to decide tonight," I said carefully. "We can wait. Another month. Another year. However long you need." "I don't need more time." He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. "I've made my choice."
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Nathaniel POV The bedside lamp cast a warm glow across the room. Aaron's arm was draped across my chest. The sheets tangled around our legs. We'd been lying here talking for hours. He was quiet for a moment, his thumb tracing patterns on my skin. "What if one day you realize I took something from you that you can never get back?" I turned my head to look at him. "That would never happen." "A century from now. Two centuries. What if you wake up one day and realize
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THREE MONTHS LATER Nathaniel POV My dorm bed was barely big enough for one person, let alone two. But somehow we'd made it work, limbs tangled, his weight pressing me into the narrow mattress. His mouth was on mine, hungry and unrestrained in a way I hadn't felt from him in months. Every careful coffee date, every chaste goodnight kiss, it all dissolved as his hips rolled against me. He broke away suddenly, breathing hard. "We don't have to—" he started, but I fis
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ONE YEAR LATER Nathaniel POV The Friday night rush at The Iron Foundry was a sensory assault. The scent of craft malt and hops mingled with cologne, the roar of the after-work crowd from the Financial District, and the sticky humidity of a Boston summer clinging to everything. "Here you go. Macallan 18," I said, setting the heavy crystal glass down in front of a man in his mid-thirties. He was a regular here and was the kind of guy who spent more on his watch than I made in
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Nathaniel is the one who says “I love you” in that scene. Aaron never does. 😣I’ve revised the line slightly to make that clearer.
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Aaron POV My vision swam, blood loss and exhaustion dragging at my limbs, but I kept my eyes on the shapes closing in. They formed a ring around us like a noose—some still human, lean and feral; most shifted to wolves. Nathaniel sagged against me, his pulse a faint stutter I clung to like a lifeline. A man stepped forward. Broad shoulders. A scar splitting his cheek like a fault line. His amber gaze stripped me bare, cold and appraising. "Turn around," he said calmly.
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Aaron POV I couldn't save my family then. I couldn't save him now. I watched Nathaniel's chest barely rise. "Stop! You're draining him too much!" I growled. He finally pulled back. Blood trickled down Nathaniel's neck, a thin red line that didn't stop. Antonio hadn't sealed the wounds. The smile he gave me held a hint of amusement in his blood-smeared lips. Then his hand went to his mouth. He coughed—once, sharp and wet. Blue-black blood spatt
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Nathaniel POV The Uber driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror. "You sure about this? There's nothing out here." Every rational part of my brain was screaming at me to tell the driver to turn around. To go back to the ferry terminal. To my mom. To safety. But Aaron was up there. And Sade. "I'm sure." My voice sounded thin even to me. My hands were sweating. I wiped them on my jeans. It didn't help. "Actually—" My voice cracked. "Can you drop m
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Austin POV I stared at my face on my phone screen, taking inventory. A dark purple bruise on my cheek, yellowing at the edges. Split lip. And those fucking finger marks on my throat—five of them, green-brown now, like rot under my skin. "Fuck," I muttered. I closed the camera and opened my messages. Nathaniel's name sat near the top. No new texts, just the last one he'd sent four days ago. im so excited for tonight!! i'll meet you by the north parking lot aft
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A third for a few minutes, before I assumed he gave up because I wasn't doing much for him. 😕 Sex can be so awkward and mismatched sometimes and it's never just one person's fault and any failure to connect isn't on you alone. Especially when bottoming, it can come from a place of real vulnerability and it often takes a partner who's patient, attentive and good at communicating to make it feel safe and good for both (or more) people involved.
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Nathaniel's POV I dropped to my knees. Aaron went rigid. I reached up, my fingers gripping the rough terrycloth, and pulled. "Don't." He stepped back, voice breaking. "You don't know what you're starting." But his hips shifted forward. His dick strained against the towel. I ignored the words and leaned forward, my mouth closing around him. He groaned deep. I set the pace slow, letting him feel every stroke of my tongue. I pulled back just enough to
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Aaron’s POV I was awake, staring at the ceiling, feeling the cold, dark tide of self-loathing rise in my chest. Nathaniel was heavy in my arms, deep in sleep. I had fed from him twice tonight. The first time had been necessary for sustenance; the fight with Antonio’s vermin and the emotional toll of seeing him break down had left me drained. The second time had been a desperate grab for connection an hour ago, a quiet, possessive reassurance that he was safe while I prepare
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Nathaniel’s POV “Aaron,” I said, forcing my voice to stay level, “no one’s coming for me. You’re just—hurt. Something happened to your family, something terrible, and it’s… it’s messed with your head. We need to get you help.” He rose from the couch slowly. The air shifted around him—denser, charged. He seemed taller somehow. “Let’s just call the cops,” I went on, words tripping over themselves. “If it was self-defense… look, my mom knows lawyers. They can help.” He di
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Thank you. Its almost complete. Maybe 4 or 5 chapter left.
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Nathaniel’s POV Mom’s breaths were too fast. The nasal cannula hissed softly with each inhale, and the pulse-ox on her finger blinked red. Her lips looked pale. “Go home,” she whispered, brushing my wrist with her thumb. “You look exhausted.” I couldn’t. My panic attack earlier had scared her into this flare-up. Her being here was all my fault. Her fingers squeezed mine, weak but sure. “I’m okay, angel. They gave me a steroid. My lungs just… tightened. I’ll stabili
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INTERLUDE (Tuscany, Italy) The room smelled of smoke long before the fire began. Antonio Veraldi sat in his high-backed chair of blackened oak, fingers draped over the armrest in a lazy sort of elegance, as though boredom itself had taken human form and lounged there. His eyes pale, ancient, inhuman tracked the trembling figure chained in the corner. The mortal man’s breath stuttered, fogging the air with shallow little clouds of terror. Antonio enjoyed the anticipatio
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Nathaniel POV (Present day) The night felt alive. The last notes sang by Hozier still rang in my head as Austin and I walked through the parking lot, the cold Boston air brushing our faces, our ears still buzzing from the stadium’s roar. My cheeks actually hurt from smiling—an unfamiliar, strange kind of ache. “God, I missed that,” Austin said beside me, a real laugh in his voice. “Look at you. Actually smiling. Dimples and everything. I huffed a tiny laugh.
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The ending is so sweet...🤣🤣. I totally relate. I literally can’t watch any romantic movies with my husband. He always laughs and I end up kicking him out of the room. Every hopeless romantic is married to a bare-minimum realist. It’s a law of nature 😭
