When Tables Turn

No one knows where the werewolves came from, one thing everyone knows, however, is that a single bite will turn you into one. Ten years after the original breakout, Lucy is amongst the last surviving humans, which is bad enough until she discovers she’s the destined mate of the ruthless lycan king. Escape is not an option and the alternatives chill her to the bone, but it’s not like there’s another way out…is there?

Age Rating: 18+ (Content Warning: Violence, Sexual Abuse)

Original Author: Ivana Vanessa Jameson

“We have to run!” I screamed at Catherine, but I knew she wouldn’t last another thirty minutes. I knew that I was going to suffer another loss, but that was life now. A life none of us chose; fate did it for us.

She looked at me with the same pitiful eyes my family gave me before they were shredded to death by the wild dogs we call werewolves. She cried and laughed bitterly looking at her broken leg that had gotten an infection.

“Go! They are here! They will find you. Where do you think I’m gonna go like this? I’m as good as dead!” she screamed at me and I ran. I was used to this, to running without looking back—to letting go of the people I cared about.

It’s funny how we are actually feeding ourselves so we can be nice and healthy when they feast on us. Our deaths were inevitable—it was only a matter of time before they got to us all.

“Where is she? Where is Catherine, Lucy?” he screamed in my face. He knew she was dead, he knew they ate her like hungry zombies, only they didn’t leave the bones.

Their gruesome orange eyes glowed in the dark forest surrounding us like demons—the eyes of death. I could hear Jake’s heartbeat before he started screaming for his life, then I watched as the first predator crunched on his bones.

It was like a gruesome horror movie only I couldn’t close my eyes. I waited for my turn; it was inevitable because I always knew my turn would come and all I had to do was scream.

Fear, darkness, and pain. Why was I still feeling all of these emotions? There could be only one horrific explanation for this: I was still alive and the reason behind my luck could only be the worst.

I tried opening my eyes and groaned at the stinging pain in my left eye. I brought my aching hand up and touched it softly. “Ah!” I cried out. They must have scratched me. I could feel the dried-up blood on the side of my face.

I stood up and almost tumbled down back on the ground because my legs felt numb, but the numbness faded away slowly the longer I kept standing.

The first thing I bumped into was a wall, then another wall. It wasn’t long before my hand brushed up against the cold metal bars. I was in some sort of prison cell.

They torture, abuse, and in time they kill them after making them suffer in the worst possible ways. Some rumors even say they eat their slaves slowly—a hand, a leg and the list goes on.

His voice sounded so dry, as if he hadn’t tasted water in a while. He also sounded like he was in another prison cell opposite mine.

He coughed a lot before responding. “My name is O’zaak. I’m a scientist and I have been locked up in here for…I don’t know how long. I haven’t seen daylight or any light in ages. We are in xxxx…,” he said, coughing again.

“Werewolves are nothing compared to that beast. A full-breed lycan is something you do not want to encounter. There are only a few of them left, but they rarely show themselves. Right now we are in one’s dungeon, where he keeps all his slaves.”

“I don’t know, but what I do know is that this lycan is of royalty. He is a king or something and he is going to kill us all. You are going to wish a werewolf had torn you apart instead,” he said with pity.

I didn’t need his pity. I crawled and hid myself in a dark corner. Why did this have to happen to me? I had a normal life once, then ten years ago exactly on my tenth birthday xxxx came crashing down on us.

Scientists and doctors said it was a virus gone wild while people like my parents, who were strongly religious, came up with some biblical reason, like the devil had come to wipe us all from the planet by using his demon wolves.

As for me, this was pure xxxx. The first time I encountered a werewolf was when one decided to gate-crash my birthday, sinking its teeth greedily into my parents’ flesh while I hid under a table like a coward.

I do not know how many hours or minutes were passing by in this dark place—not being able to tell time was more frustrating than I thought.

I needed something—anything—just to distract me. I was tired of visualizing a million possible ways the lycan would kill me. I crawled slowly and sat near the cold bars of my cell.

“Yes…I am still alive… You never told me your name, you know,” he said lazily. It was like talking to a man on his death bed. That’s how my grandfather sounded before he died painfully slowly in his room because he refused to leave his house.

I sighed. I did not see any point in telling him my name or life story if we were going to die anytime now. “My name is Lucy Jameson. Anyway, I wanted to ask you something.”

He laughed sarcastically. “I don’t know. If there are prisoners here they are probably lying lifelessly in their cells.”

I squinted my eyes at the sudden brightness. A large silhouette of a man came marching toward my cell and I backed away to the farthest corner of the tiny place—as if that would save me.

I had gotten used to surviving without food for a couple of days, living on the streets and then in the forest does that to a person—especially when the wolves hunt down all the meat humans survive on.

I heard the large man unlock my cell, so this was finally it for me. He slowly walked toward me and grabbed me harshly by my left arm. I screamed, “Please don’t hurt me!”

I was thrown up against something hard and metal. I quickly came tumbling back down until I hit the cold, hard concrete ground and I cried out in pain.

His hair was dirty blond, shoulder-length, and scruffy. He was in a lab coat, which was now brown with dirt, and he wore black trousers. He slowly lifted his head and his doe-brown eyes looked at me with pity before I was dragged away by my feet.

He dragged me out of the dungeon while I clawed the hard ground with my fingernails until they bled. Then suddenly I was met by pure sunlight and damp grass. I looked around frantically. I was outside!

The man who was dragging me spun me around and picked me up, carrying me over his broad shoulders. He had dark brown short curly hair, he was extremely tall, maybe six-five, and he was huge with muscles sticking out on every part of his body.

After about a fifteen-minute walk of silence in the forest, we finally arrived at a tall building, a huge white castle, and I spotted a few other smaller buildings in the area.

Nobody paid attention to me as I was carried into the large building—it was as if they knew of my untold fate.

The walls were painted a nice peach color, and the paintings on the walls were of beautiful artistic roses and some were of wolves. Everything in this room was distracting and screamed royalty.

He carefully placed me on the floor where I tried standing up straight on my shaky feet. I hoped not to lose my balance and fall facedown on the floor.

I suddenly felt self-conscious in my dirty ripped jeans, tattered black T-shirt, and white muddy torn-up tennis shoes I had picked up from the streets. My long wavy black hair was even itching with dirt and it was all over the place.

I placed most of my body weight on my left foot since my right foot hurt like xxxx. I think I had sprained my ankle somehow. The slight movement distracted the couple. “Another one?” the girl asked, looking at me curiously.

“Melissa,” the guy who I now knew went by the name Lewis said sternly, “she is not a pet. She is to serve as a servant until the alpha king returns and decides of her fate tomorrow.”