Darkness Unleashed

by McKenzie Hunter

  “They aren’t finding you inconvenient. It’s your clothing-optional take on life that bothers them. We put on clothes before we go to our car to unload groceries. We are clothes-type people—like the rest of society—while you believe they are optional.” I gave his boxers-only attire a disparaging look. If I thought he planned on dressing, it wouldn’t have bothered me as much, but I knew from experience he was perfectly fine going for a run around the neighborhood that way.

  “I don’t think they all mind.” I rolled my eyes. Humility, along with modesty, were things Ethan lacked.

  I forced myself to smile. It was stiff and mirthless as I tried to wrap my head around the idea of living with him. I moved my attention to the window behind him, focusing on the scenery: the trees I wouldn’t see anymore, David’s house, nosy Mrs. Rykes, who, for an elderly woman, hadn’t lost interest in the male form as evidenced by the attention she paid to Steven and now Ethan. This was my home.

  He seemed quietly concerned and asked, “What exactly did you think would happen after we mated, Sky?”

  I clearly hadn’t thought that far ahead and bit back my answer. Sex, dating, and occasionally spending the night together. I decided on a half-truth. “I hadn’t thought about it much.”

  His brow furrowed, and I tried not to buckle under the weight of his gaze. “That’s not the truth,” he said in a sobering, low voice. “I want the truth, Sky.”

  “That is the truth. Or at least part of it. I really haven’t thought about it. Part of me felt like things would just stay the same.”

  “But things aren’t the same. They’re different. Very different.” He leaned in closer and lightly trailed a finger along my arm. He looked concerned. “If you don’t tell me the problem, I can’t fix it.”

  “The problem is me, and I don’t need fixing. Ethan, this is a lot. You are a lot.” I sucked in a ragged breath, trying to keep my composure; it didn’t work. “Ethan, I love you, but—”

  His expression changed, and his gaze intensified.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. Something had changed, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. He seemed muted and perplexed, unsure. Nothing like the Ethan I’d grown accustomed to.

  “This is the first time you’ve said you love me.”

  Immediately, my thoughts went to the first time he’d said it to me. I’d been so thrown by it, shocked by his reluctant admission, that I’d never thought to say it back. I’d assumed he knew. I never considered that he’d actually want to hear it. I thought by becoming his mate it was implied. Now I imagined how he felt about things. There was Quell, and now I was resisting moving in with him. I wished conceding to the idea was easier.

  “I do, and you have to know that. But you also have to know this is all new to me, and Ethan, you are …” I paused, searching for the right word to describe Ethan, his very existence, his being. To convey that he was primal, sexy, and overwhelming; that the symbiotic relationship he had with his wolf always radiated an implied danger; that a person needed to proceed with caution around him. I couldn’t silence my instincts to do just that—proceed with caution. He was mine, but that didn’t make what and who he was any less intense. I finally continued with the only description that seemed apropos. “Intense. Ethan, you are intense, and it’s fine when I get you in small doses. But to live with you and be around you all the time would be hard. We’re still figuring out our relationship within the pack and your role as Beta. You don’t realize that your position as Beta shouldn’t extend to our relationship.”

  It wasn’t Ethan’s position as Beta that was suffocating me; it was Ethan. He was used to taking command in his relationships. He was arrant, powerfully alluring, and dominant.

  He looked away from me and asked, “Do you think you’ve made a mistake?”

  The conversation was going in a direction I hadn’t expected. Less than twenty minutes ago, we’d been discussing my employment prospects and enjoying the breakfast he’d prepared. Now we were discussing me moving in with him.

  “I’ll move in with you.”

  “That’s not the question I asked you, Sky. Do you think you made a mistake?” he asked, flat and even as if he were negotiating a business deal.

  I shook my head but couldn’t answer.

  He swallowed loud enough for me to hear. Or perhaps it wasn’t any louder than usual but just seemed that way because everything had reached a higher level. The connection between us had been pulled and tugged until it felt fragile and delicate—a tendril threatening to break. We were in a liminal state, and the wrong word or comment could break us apart. I hated everything about it.

  “I’ve never heard of it before, but I’m sure our situation isn’t that abnormal. I’m sure the bond can be broken,” he suggested quietly as if he didn’t want me to hear him. I searched his face, waiting for him to look at me, but he didn’t.

  “I don’t want that.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked doubtfully, as if he’d heard the change in my voice, a hesitation, or maybe even detected my lack of confidence.

  “Of course,” I said firmly.

  He nodded, but his expression didn’t change. He forced out, “Okay. You stay here as long as you feel comfortable and then move in when you’re ready.”

  He rose and started to clear away the dishes. Heavy silence remained even after he’d left under the pretense of needing to speak with Quinn and Sebastian. I wasn’t foolish or naïve enough to believe that was the case.

  I sat next to Steven on the sofa, and we slipped into our comfortable routine. He crunched on hot-sauce-covered dill pickle chips while I crinkled my nose at the smell and frowned each time he offered me his concoction. With the growing changes in my life, Steven was the constant I needed.

  “This is awful,” he said, lowering the volume on the television before facing me. “Are we going to talk about it, or am I going to have to ignore your pounding heartbeat for the rest of the movie? If it’s the latter, I need to turn the volume up because it’s distracting.”

  It was approaching ten in the evening. Ethan had called earlier to tell me he was going to be late. It had sounded like talking to me was obligatory, a remnant of our uncomfortable conversation. As I sat next to Steven, I attempted to push it aside, to focus on the movie and allow it to be a much-needed distraction.

  “I miss this,” I said because it was simpler to talk about than what had transpired that morning.

  Steven’s brows arched, and his lips twisted in thought. “So, your breathing is ragged, you’re distracted, and you look like you just witnessed a puppy being abused because you miss watching bad movies with me?” he asked in disbelief.

  I nodded. “I miss the simplicity of us. Our relationship isn’t complicated.”

  “What? We are the most complicated thing in this pack. Do you know how many meetings and ‘counsels’”—he put air quotes on “counsels”—“I’ve endured because of us? Ethan wasn’t particularly happy with me moving in here in the first place, and this was before you two were mated or romantically involved. No one really understood it. It might have been easy for us, but for the pack, Ethan, and Sebastian, it was anything but simple.”

  “Why am I just hearing about this?”

  He shrugged. “It wouldn’t have changed anything. I wanted to be here, and you didn’t mind it.”

  “Is it terrible that I still want you here?”

  “I wouldn’t say it’s terrible, but it’s pretty damn weird. What’s the problem? What are you running from?”

  “Nothing. Ethan wants me to move in with him.”

  He made a face and shook his head. His voice barely masked his incredulity when he demanded, “What did you expect would happen once you and Ethan mated? You’d live separately, have date nights, have the occasional conjugal visit, and resume your lives as if you were just buddies?”

  I met his mocking gaze. His eyes widened and flashed with amusement. Well, when you put it that way, it sounds stupid. I opened my mouth to say that, only to
let out a bloodcurdling scream. My arm was on fire; it felt like someone was stripping the flesh off it. Pain caused tears to well in my eyes. I fell to the floor, grabbing my aching arm and trying to soothe it. The pain intensified and concentrated in the mark the witches had placed there to restrict the Faerie magic—to stop Maya, the spirit shade I hosted.

  “Sky!” Steven shouted, but my howls of pain nearly drowned him out. “Change!” he instructed.

  I rolled onto my hands and knees, willing my body to accept its wolf form, but I couldn’t do it. Steven pressed his hands against me. He was trying to help me to change. My phone buzzed and then Steven’s. Reluctant to answer it, he craned his neck to see the number and then quickly grabbed it.

  “Ethan. Something—”

  I clenched my teeth together, biting back another scream, the burning and ripping feeling persisting.

  “I can’t change her. How close are you? Okay. Hurry.”

  An aura of magic added to the pain. It coated my tongue and weighed on me like a shawl Then coolness wrapped around me, and the pain subsided. Fatigued, I felt like I’d engaged in a battle and lost. Before I gave in to the darkness that came over me, I glanced at my arm. It no longer bore the witches’ mark. I slipped into my wolf form, finding comfort in it. I felt Maya’s presence but not the magic.

  I closed my eyes and drifted to sleep.

  I awoke with Ethan sitting next to me, his hands gently gliding across my fur. Feeling exhausted, I considered staying in my wolf form.

  “Sky, can you change?” he asked in a steady voice. There was a hint of something else there: worry.

  It took longer than usual, but I shifted and sat up. He handed me a blanket. I wrapped it around me as I looked around at the people in the room: Ariel, Josh, Sebastian, and Steven. Everyone looked concerned except for Ariel, whose eyes remained fixed on the place on my arm where the mark had been. I inhaled magic-drenched air—Ariel’s, Josh’s, and mine. Ariel continued to scrutinize me, and the look she gave me was filled with tightly woven cynicism and distrust. I understood where it was coming from. Unexplained things happened in this pack, and this had been added to the list.

  Ariel’s demeanor and dress reminded me of Claudia’s. She had a preference for white; I suspected she liked the dramatic appeal since the other members of the Creed were often uniformed in black. Now she had on all black. A simple, fitted black shirt, black slacks, and black heeled boots. The only jewelry she wore was a ring that looked like the oddly shaped medallion Josh had tossed at Marcia’s feet when he’d denounced her and her followers. Her dark brown hair was tucked behind her ears, giving a full view of her sharp, assessing brown eyes. The slight glow of her tawny skin dulled the intensity of her resting scowl. When she finally spoke, her voice was heavy with skepticism and wariness. She moved toward me and examined my wrist. “Can you do magic?”

  I gave a little magical push and erected a protective field around me, which I quickly dropped. She studied me for a moment and then shifted her gaze to Josh. “To answer your question from earlier, no, we had nothing to do with this.”

  She moved back. Her subsequent silence revealed her apprehension about the pack, and about me, although she seemed to make a great effort to mask it. I suspected she’d operated under the belief that the rumors about the Midwest Pack were exaggerated tales. We were cloaked in secrecy and often the center of unusual things. The pragmatist in her wanted to maintain the alliance with us, it shone in her eyes, but an intrinsic need to run from danger made it difficult for her.

  “I appreciate you calling me about this.” The former gentle cadence and soft lilt of her voice were gone, replaced by something flat and professionally breezy. She turned to face Sebastian, easing the scowl off her face and replacing it with a gentle smile. “I guess this is just another one of those unique things that seem to happen to your pack and your pack only.” She reluctantly accepted that Sebastian probably wouldn’t elaborate.

  Sebastian was stolid before giving a small smile that matched hers. “We have our share of oddities. Rest assured, if one affects the witches, you will be the first to know.”

  Their smiles couldn’t have been any faker if they’d been on mannequins. “Of course,” she said quietly and then leaned into him, her voice dropping even lower but not enough to be inaudible. “Unless it will affect your pack. Then it will go into the vault of secrets like most things.”

  She didn’t bother to wait for a refutation because anyone who knew Sebastian or anything about him knew he wouldn’t give one. There was truth to her statement. Sebastian’s eyes displayed a combination of amusement and interest as they followed her to the door.

  “Ariel, I am committed to this alliance. I will protect my pack, but I will also make sure no harm befalls the witches,” he offered.

  She nodded but didn’t respond because she knew the former was the most important. She gave Sebastian another look over her shoulder before leaving.

  “Josh?” Ethan focused on his brother but stayed at my side. He was having difficulty hiding his uneasiness, and Josh didn’t put any effort into masking his. Gnawing at his nail bed, something he did when he was nervous, Josh paced.

  “Did you feel anything?” he asked me.

  “Besides the excruciating pain?” I shivered, remembering it. “No.” But I felt something at that moment. Magic, lots of it, rampaging through my body as if days’ worth of it were stored in me and needed a release. I extended my fingers and nudged the chair over, then easily lifted it and let it hover in midair. Then I eased it back down. A simple parlor trick that relieved the heaviness in me. I couldn’t deny what was happening: Maya had awakened and needed to feel her magic. It felt encumbered, fettered to her, and I was again forced to keep her at bay.

  “You need to find out what happened and who did this to me.”

  “I know.” Josh’s latent worry reflected how I felt. And despite their being better at hiding it, it was obvious Ethan and Sebastian were concerned as well. Who wanted Maya unrestricted and why? And the most pressing question: who had the type of magic to remove the mark from a distance?

  Several hours had passed since the mark was removed, and I found myself under Ethan’s and Steven’s heavy stares. I was the freak at the table again. The anomaly. The wolf they couldn’t figure out.

  Steven and I had long since stopped trying to watch our movie because Ethan’s excessive questioning kept interrupting it. On my third trip to the kitchen under their constant surveillance, I stopped and spun on my heel.

  “What?”

  “How do you feel?” Ethan asked.

  “Hungry. The same way I felt when you asked me a half an hour ago.” I was more than hungry; I was famished. I’d always had a healthy appetite, but now I had a hunger I couldn’t satisfy.

  He nodded. I wouldn’t get much out of him. As usual, his answers were terse and he provided information sparingly. Pulling it out of him was a task I didn’t want to deal with. I directed my attention to Steven. When our eyes met, I entreated, “What’s wrong?”

  Silence swelled, and Steven seemed reluctant to answer. I wasn’t sure if he’d been sworn to secrecy or didn’t feel it was his place to disclose whatever was going on, but his clenched jaw relaxed as he said, “No one could change you back to human. No one.” He might have been trying to look relaxed, but his voice was laden with concern as he evaluated me. He ushered the scowl off his face and replaced it with a placid smile.

  Included in “no one” were Sebastian and Ethan. I brushed it off with a shrug. “If it’s any consolation, I couldn’t change myself back, either.”

  My pettiness reared its head as Ethan leaned in, waiting for me to continue. I wanted so desperately to be miserly with my information and make him work for every morsel of it. It just wasn’t in me to keep it up—it was more exhausting to tap-dance around information and phrase things so they were nothing more than lies of omission. “I struggled to turn back.” Struggle didn’t seem like the appropriate word. An internal
battle had raged in me. Maya had desperately wanted to claim my body, and my wolf had fought to protect me and retain its form, where Maya had the least control. Just thinking about it made me want to slip into my wolf to give myself a reprieve from the magic pulsing through me. I considered performing magic, but fear lingered. She’d used me, my words, against my pack; I wouldn’t let her have an opportunity to do it again.

  “What do you mean ‘struggle’?” Ethan pried.

  “My wolf was trying to protect me and keep me in that form,” I admitted. “Now I feel like I have too much magic.” Sucking in a breath, I said, “I’m afraid to do strong magic because of what happened before with Maya and the curse.”

  Ethan frowned. “Are you losing control?”

  I blinked back tears and pushed the words through my teeth. “Yes.”

  Silence loomed for several minutes, and I found calm in Ethan’s steady heartbeat, his unwavering strength, his serene voice.

  “It will get easier. You have to master her. You’re her host, not the other way around. Continue to treat her as such—a spirit shade, a source of magic to be used when you need her. Tap into your wolf’s strength—it will help you.” I’d noticed that he used magic sparingly; he’d clearly figured out the problem early on. He fully gave in to his wolf so he’d have the resolve to control his spirit shade. I’d somehow known that would be my only choice. I’d kept my wolf at bay for so long I didn’t know how to be one with her—but I had to.

  “We can have the witches replace the mark, but I have a feeling it will be removed again. We need to find out who wants it gone and why.”

  “I don’t want it replaced,” I said with a lot more confidence than I felt. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and reconciled myself to what needed to be done for me to survive. “I’ve got this.”

  CHAPTER 6