Layla's Lovers

Chapter One: Back to the Beginning

Jaxon dropped to his hands and knees; his vision blurring in and out as he struggled to stay conscious.  

He was covered in blood. Some his. Some, his fathers. 

Greyson’s lifeless body lay blood soaked and half shifted between wolf and human forms only a few feet from where Jaxon had fallen.

Jaxon tried to send out a mind link to Corey, but whatever Greyson had poisoned him with was still coursing through his veins enough to dull all his abilities. He tried and tried to push through the fog in his mind, but the more he tried to fight it, the worse it was getting. Jaxon felt his heart beat slowing and the corners of his vision began to darken as he slumped forward, face first onto the forest floor.

9 years earlier.

Jax woke up to the sound of metal on metal screeching apart. He sat up in his seat and looked out the front window of the SUV to see a heavy barbwire covered gate slowly opening up to allow the convoy through.

Guards stood at each side with military grade guns, no doubt filled with silver bullets.

They had arrived. This was home now. 

This was the pack Jaxon would someday rescue from the clutches of his father. 

“All of our packlands are secured with silver coated electric fencing so don’t get any ideas about escaping and running back to your mother, boy, do you understand?” Greyson spat out from the front seat of the SUV.

They had been driving nonstop through the night. Jaxon had slept through most of it, only waking to look back and check that Mr. Corey was still alive. He could feel the sadness rolling off Mr. Corey and Jax knew it was a sadness only his mother could fix.

Jaxon promised himself that he would not let anything happen to Mr. Corey, whatever it took. He would keep Greyson away from Mr. Corey at all costs.

The convoy pushed on, through a dense forest and into the residential areas of the packlands. Jaxon noticed immediately that the trees were nothing like the ones found in the forest around Elmswitch. These trees looked sick. Their trunks were dull and grey, their leaves crisp and patchy. Jaxon had never seen nature look so strangled for life.

The homes of the pack members were no better. Grey, rusted, falling apart- it was clear that the pack spent any and all money on keeping their defenses up and not investing any into the wellbeing of the pack members. Jaxon already knew he would have a lot to fix when he became Alpha, but this was far worse than he could have ever pictured. 

Eventually, they pulled up to a grey-painted mansion. It was smaller than Alpha Jamie’s pack house but it was as old, but nowhere near as well kept. Bushes and trees grew wild and ill all around the structure. As if they had tried to invade and eliminate the poison on their soil but had died in the fight. Windows were broken and boarded up and the moment Greyson stepped out of the SUV, any and all house staff scampered out of sight. 

Jaxon was let out of the SUV and ushered up the front stairs. He paused in the doorway as he heard a growl from behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see two warriors had cuffed and were dragging Mr. Corey roughly in the opposite direction of the pack house. Towards the woods.

“HEY! STOP! HE COMES WITH ME!!” Jaxon immediately shouted. Greyson spun around but was not fast enough to catch Jaxon as he dashed off the porch and sprinted towards Mr. Corey.

“Sorry pup, the Alpha wants this one in the cells,” replied one of the warriors.

The other one chuckled and shot Jaxon a cruel grin. Jaxon knew they were not taking Mr. Corey to any kind of cell. They were going to get rid of him.

“I said release him to me right now!” Jaxon growled out, his wolf pushing to the surface.

Obvious fear soon pailed over the faces of the two warriors. It seemed no one was prepared for the reality of what Jaxon was. Not just any pup, but an Alpha. An Alpha with a stronger bloodline than Greyson had.

“I SAID RELEASE HIM!” Jaxon roared again when the warriors didn’t move. 

This time he felt a pain surge through him from his toes up through every nerve ending in his body. In seconds that felt like years, Jaxon felt every bone in his body break and reform until his consciousness was sitting backseat to his wolf, who was now in his true form.

He was small given his age but massive compared to any other newly shifted young wolf. 

Jaxon’s wolf let out another vicious growl as he stalked low and predatory towards the warriors who still held Mr. Corey captive.

Mr. Corey, however, was grinning ear to ear.

Jaxon’s wolf growled one more time in warning.

“Release the warrior but put a silver collar on him. Until I'm certain he can be trusted, he will remain weak,” Greyson commanded from behind Jaxon.

The warriors didn’t hesitate to comply. They released their harsh grips on Mr. Corey and placed a thick silver band around his neck. It immediately burned into his skin and Jaxon could see the pain in Corey’s eyes even if he refused to let any show on his face.

“Take him into the house and get him set up in one of the omega’s quarters. He can sleep with them until I decide he is worth something better,” Greyson said with malice. 

“As for you boy, I suggest you shift back so we can talk about your place in this pack,” 

Jaxon’s wolf let out a low growl but complied non-the-less. Jaxon soon returned to his human form but couldn’t support his full weight. He sank to his hands and knees as the pain and exhaustion of his first shift hit him fully.

“JAXON! JAXON, BABY WAKE UP!” 

The sound was shrill and panicked, but it was familiar.

“Jax, baby wake up for us!” another, familiar voice said more calmly.

He could feel a warm sensation flowing through him as he slowly stirred awake.

His eyes cracked open just enough to see the bright lights of the pack infirmary.

Then it hit him all at once.

The voices. The scents. The warmth coursing through him.

“Mom? Aunt Charlie?!” Jaxon managed to choke out as he tried to push through the haze still lingering heavy in his mind. His wolf was still out cold from whatever Greyson had given him but he was fighting to wake up.

“Yes baby! It's me and Aunt Charlie! We are here now, its all going to be okay now!” Anna, his mother, said from his bedside. Her hands held one of his tightly and his Aunt Charlie held the other while she rubbed small circles on his arms. She was healing him with her magic, which told Jaxon he was more injured and ill than he had even realized.

“Just let the warmth take over Jaxon. You’re going to be just fine,” Charlie said in her most soothing Luna tone. 

Jaxon could cry at the sound of it. Something he never realized he had been missing so much until he was reminded of its effect. 

“Mr. Corey?” Jaxon whispered.

“He is just fine as well. He is working with Alpha Jamie now to get things settled with your pack while you recover,” Anna replied. 

“Can I sleep some more?” Jaxon asked.

His eyes were heavy and hard to keep open but he caught a glimpse of his mother's true smile as she laughed and nodded her head at his request.

‘Yes baby, go back to sleep,” said Anna as she leaned in and kissed her son on the forehead.

Jaxon let his eyes fall shut with her words and soon he drifted back into the warmth of Charlie’s magic. 

He had done it. What he promised to do the moment he met his birth father, Greyson. He swore he would be the one to kill Greyson and he had finally made good on that promise.

When Greyson announced his big week of father-son bonding time just days before Jaxon’s 18th birthday, Corey immediately knew it was trouble. He warned Jaxon to stay alert and to be vigilant at all times and made Jaxon promise to check in via mind link every hour. 

Deep down, Jaxon knew Corey was right. He sensed the same danger that Corey did, but his wanting to avoid this fight with his father clouded his judgement. He wanted to wait until he was a little older and had just a little more fighting experience under his belt before he challenged his father as Alpha.

Everyone knew the day would come. As each year passed, Jaxon felt the tension between him and his father growing stronger and stronger until it became almost suffocating for them to be anywhere near each other. By the time Jaxon turned 17, the whole pack could feel it too. That year had been the most stressful year of his life as his Alpha senses went into overdrive with the mounting fears of all his pack members. 

Greyson was every bit as awful as Anna had explained and then some. The loss of his mate drove him to insanity slowly, but violently. Each year he grew more and more agitated at every little thing. There was seemingly nothing that could please him, no matter how hard his pack tried. He ruled with an iron fist that drove many members to flee for their lives, driving the pack numbers down by half between the year Jaxon arrived and the present. 

Corey and Jaxon tried to identify those about to flee and aided them as best they could in guiding them to safe locations near by where Alpha Jamie had warriors were waiting to help. It took three years to get the effort going with the strict restraints on communications from Jaxon to Anna. Greyson insisted on reading every letter that Jaxon sent to Anna. It was only with the help of the fairies who had followed Jaxon the day Greyson came to collect him, that he was able to conceal messages to his mother in order to set up the operation at all. Still, it was a risk. Greyson had thick wards all over his packlands, alerting him to any possible magical activity on or near the pack, and then there was all the video surveillance and the silver-coated fencing that surrounded the whole pack. Greyson was paranoid of Charlie’s magic and what she would do to him if given the chance.

It thrilled both Jaxon and Corey to know their true Luna had left such a deep fear imprinted on Greyson.

Jaxon spent the next few days in and out of consciousness. His mother assured him that things were being handled with his pack and Charlie continued to work on his wounds a little more each day. 

The poison in him made his progress incredibly slow, but still, there was progress. 

Jaxon couldn’t wait to wake up fully. To really see his mother and Aunt. To talk to Alpha Jamie directly again. He heard Charlie talking on the phone to her other mate, Beta Julien, so he must have stayed behind to mind their pack while Charlie and Jamie helped Jaxon regain control of his. 

Days turned into weeks and Jaxon’s 18th birthday came and went with him still hardly able to open his eyes. His few friends in the pack came by to wish him well and to meet his mother, but for the most part the pack stayed away from the packhouse while Alpha Jamie was in it.

Greyson had really done a number on those he was sworn to protect. The pack had dwindled down to only 600 members, most of whom were simply too weak and broken down to survive the journey to escape.

Just a few miles out from the packlands was a small town which used to thrive in relationship with the pack, but Greyson had severed all ties. This marked the beginning of the end for both the pack and the town. Without the town, the pack was entirely closed off from the rest of the world and the town lost 80% of its businesses and workers. Now, it was not much more than a desperate traveler's one-night stop on their routes to bigger, better towns. The only round the clock inhabitants were criminals and other magical creatures seeking refuge from humans.

In the years following the return of magic, things between humans and creatures were still rocky. 

When Charlie broke the spells and set free the creatures in the caverns, she unknowingly broke boundary spells across the world. Some of them released good and caring creatures while others had been locked away for good reason.

As creatures flooded back into society, issues that hadn’t been faced in decades started to pop up everywhere.

Who could vampires feed on? When are wolves legally allowed to shift for protection? How much magic can a druid use in spells pertaining to humans?

Then there was the fae sickness.

Charlie knew the threat of the devolved fae in the caverns and had acted appropriately to protect the world from those who could not be saved, but no one was ready for the devolving to continue once the spells had been lifted.

Beta Kennedy worked day and night with his son Julien to find a cure, but the best they were able to obtain was an elixir to slow the sickness. As fae continued to devolve, the humans grew more and more weary of them. Soon, it was common for a vampire to be more welcomed by a human than a fae as there was no way for humans to sense when a fae could snap and shift into the dangerous creatures within. 

The town outside Jaxon’s pack was now home to many of the fae who were chased out of the larger cities and towns farther out from the packlands. This was both a threat and sadness that was high on Jaxon’s priority list to handle when he finally became Alpha. 

But for now, all Jaxon could do was sleep and wait for the poison inside him to work its way out so he could make good on his promises to fix what his father had broken.