Alpha Magic (The New York Shade Book 4)

by D. N. Hoxa

  I put the beer on the table and went to the door as if somebody else was operating my body. I opened the door.

  I still hadn’t even seen him before I realized that it had been the wrong move. Screw pride—I couldn’t handle Damian Reed right now. Too late.

  He stood in front of me like a man who’d seen the suffering of mankind since the beginning of time. His shoulders were hunched, his face clean of blood and wounds now, but his eyes were heavy. They were too much.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” I heard myself say. What the hell else was there to say, anyway? I didn’t need to tell him how fast my heart was beating or that my fingers were slightly shaking. He could hear and see it perfectly himself.

  “You need to,” he said, and his foot rose just a bit, like he thought about stepping closer, but decided against it. Thank God.

  “What do you want, Damian?” I sounded like I’d just woken up from sleep.

  “The Uprising,” he said, his eyes moving lightning fast to my lips and my chest and my legs. I almost put my hands over my body, but I resisted. Unfortunately, I couldn’t control what my insides did when he looked at me like that.

  “I know about the Uprising.” Nothing new. Nothing he could tell me about them. But he could tell me about what that vampire Yutain had wanted. I was dying to ask but I clamped my mouth shut. Not my damn business.

  “They’re stronger than I thought, Sinea.” My name on his lips was a fucking sin. “They’ve got roots in the Guild, too. They’ll be coming for you.”

  My response was automatic. I didn’t even need to think about it. “I’ll handle it when they do.”

  He closed his eyes for a second, as if he’d expected me to say exactly that, and he didn’t like it. “Be reasonable, Sinea.”

  Sinea, Sinea. I was going to go change my name altogether.

  “I don’t care. I don’t want to talk to you. Don’t come back here. I can handle myself.”

  I slammed the door in his face.

  Yes, I’d failed miserably. I’d wanted to show him that I could handle him, and now I had showed him the opposite. It didn’t matter. It was done.

  I rested my back against the door and waited, sure that he’d knock again. That he’d say something. He didn’t. A minute later, I heard his footsteps as he moved away from the door. I went back and finished my beer.

  There were seven hellbeasts in my apartment.

  I know I’ve said it before, but….there were seven hellbeasts in my apartment. There wasn’t a manual about how to handle things like this, so I wasn’t exactly sure what the hell to do about it.

  When I woke up that morning, I found three of the tiny ones on the kitchen counter. One of them liked milk. I called him Milky because he had some grey fur on his back, too. The one with the blue-colored legs dove headfirst into a loaf of bread and I don’t even know how he ate it all that fast. From the inside. I called him Hungry, because Devourer of Bread was too hard to pronounce. The third liked beer. I found him licking the rim of the bottle I’d left on the counter the night before, and he kept licking his nonexistent lips every few seconds. I took the bottle away and offered him some milk, too. He didn’t like it, but he drank it all. I called him Bear because Beer didn’t really sound like a hellbeast name. Oh, well. I wasn’t very creative, but I could recognize them. When the last two small ones joined them, I could tell which ones they all were.

  And then Kit’s mate came to honor us with her presence. What had Kit called her? Dalia, I think. And Dalia was most definitely not a shapeshifter like Kit because she still looked like she had the night before, grey fur and three red eyes and four legs. Kit very eagerly showed her to the kitchen, how to open the cabinets and where I kept my snacks. I just watched, like a guest in my own damn home.

  “Can I have a second?” I asked Kit, nodding my head to my bedroom, while Milky chased after his mom, searching the cabinets.

  Kit followed me down the hallway with a weak squeak. I stole his magic again because we seriously needed to have a conversation about this. There were seven hellbeasts in my apartment, and I could only handle one.

  “We need to talk about this,” I told Kit when I shut the door, even though I didn’t really care if Dalia heard. If she even understood? I didn’t know shit.

  The process was quick—even faster than it had been the night before, or so it felt. I hadn’t thought to time it this time, either, but what the heck. I can’t believe it never occurred to me to do this all the damn time when Kit was home. Why hadn’t I taken his magic until now? We could have talked, especially the nights I felt the most miserable. Why the hell hadn’t I done that?

  “We’ve settled just fine in Sonny’s room. It’s a bit small but it suits us,” Kit said, rubbing his ears with his small claws.

  I just watched him for a second. “Is it, now? It’s small? Sonny’s room is small?” I said incredulously. Sonny’s room was not small.

  “It’ll do just fine,” Kit said and pretended to be interested in his tail while he looked at the floor. I sat on the bed.

  “Look, Kit, I realize they’re your family, which, by the way, what the fuck?” I mean, a hellbeast family? “But I can’t live with all of you here under the same roof.”

  “Why not? We won’t bother you,” Kit said, climbing up the sheet to come to the bed. “Where else am I going to take them?” His black eyes were huge and glossy somehow. I knew exactly what he was doing.

  “Don’t even try that bullshit with me. It’s not going to work.” He wasn’t going to guilt trip me into this, damn it.

  “It’s my family, Sin. What would you do for yours? I’ve always helped you, haven’t I? I’ve been a good familiar.” He moved his claws, and it looked like he was rubbing them. His tail was on the bed, not moving like usual.

  “I am not falling for it!” I reminded him.

  “I don’t know where else to take them. If anybody sees them, you know what happens. If they go back to the Underworld, so will I. You don’t want me to leave you, do you?”

  Motherfucker. “C’mon, Kit! They’re hellbeasts!”

  “So am I.” He crossed his arms in front of him and puffed his chest. For God’s sake.

  “But you’re different. We’ve been together since I was nine.”

  “They’re part of me, too. It’s just until I figure out what to do, that’s all. It’s not forever, Sin.” I knew bullshit when I heard it.

  “How long exactly? Be more specific.”

  “A month,” he said. “One to two months.” And he raised two claws at me. I didn’t even know he could do that.

  I sighed and covered my face with my hands. He was on my shoulder the next second. “We’ll be fine. I can keep them under control.”

  “I don’t think you can.” They were tiny. They could get into anything.

  “Well, Dalia can, and she’s already lectured them about good behavior.”

  Ugh. “How did it even happen? Is she like you, can she shapeshift? Can the little ones do it?”

  “No, she can’t shapeshift. She’s much younger than me, barely a millennia.”

  “Wait.” A millennia? “How old are you?”

  “Over two.” He touched my cheek with his claws, gently for once in his life.

  “This is… that’s…” Nope, no words.

  “It will be fine, I promise. You can trust me, Sin.”

  “I know I can trust you, silly.” He’d totally guilt tripped me into agreeing to this, and I couldn’t even say anything about it.

  “We’ll be fine. You won’t even notice we’re here! Plus I’ll stay home a lot more now. You’ve always wanted that.” Damn it, he was good.

  “Well, if they break something, I’m taking your chocolates.”

  “Don’t you dare touch my chocolates,” he warned, and just like that, he jumped off my shoulder.

  That was that. I was living with seven hellbeasts in my apartment. Bliss. The girls were going to flip the fuck out.

  I didn’t tell the
m, though. And by the end of the day, I’d wrapped my head around everything that had happened the night before, at least halfway. I was confident in my ability to make sane decisions again, so I picked up the phone and texted Carter.

  The Uprising was no joke. I knew that, and I was proven right the night before, too. I would be a fool to think I could take them on my own. Not the entire Uprising, just the snake’s head. Mason was already dead, and just the thought made my stomach turn. That left Amina, Boyle, and Faron—the Spring fae. Him I would enjoy killing very much.

  But I still couldn’t do it alone. Malin and Jamie were out of the question. Malin was incredible with spells, but she didn’t know how to fight and neither did Jamie.

  Carter Conti, on the other hand, knew exactly how to fight. He knew how to kill, both in his human form and his wolf form. He was a Prime wolf, the Alpha of his Pack, but he’d abandoned them for a reason I wasn’t sure about. All I knew was that it had something to do with the Uprising.

  A month ago, when we were stuck in the fae game at the Fortune Fire Casino, he’d come rushing there with Malin because he’d thought we were up against the Uprising. I’d been meaning to talk to him about it, to ask him what the hell the deal was, but we were never alone. We were co-workers, we hunted maneaters together, and we saw each other at least three times a week, but that wasn’t exactly a conversation I wanted to have in front of our other coworkers, Lucas and Kyle.

  So I called him over to my apartment for a beer. And to chat. It was time I found out how much he knew, how much it meant to him to have the Uprising gone, and hopefully we could go at it together. That he was a werewolf, and a Prime one, was only a plus. I hated to think about it that way, but I had no choice. With my Talent, my allies were just as much my weapons as the daggers around my hips and the magic in my chest. I’d taken Carter’s essence before, in Estird, and it had worked perfectly. If it came to it, I could do it again.

  Carter came not half an hour after I texted him. It was already dark outside. Kit and his family were in Sonny’s room with instructions not to open the door no matter what happened. Nobody was going to find out.

  “Before we go any further, I just want you to know that I’m not that kind of a guy, Sin,” Carter said when I opened the door, a hand to his chest. “You can’t just invite me over to your apartment and take advantage of me. I’ve got standards.”

  Trying to stifle a laugh made me make sounds that made me laugh harder in turn. He was a dickhead.

  “Oh, well. It was worth a shot,” I said and pretended to close the door, but he stopped it with his foot.

  “Wait. Maybe I am that kind of a guy,” he said with a grin. “Fuck standards. Who needs those, right?” And he walked inside my apartment.

  Carter was a great guy to hang out with. He made jokes all the time, with the guys, but also with me. He was always teasing me, and in the beginning it had made me feel a bit uncomfortable, but then I realized it was just the way he was. And once I stopped taking it so personally, I could actually laugh at his stupid jokes.

  “Wow, so this is where you live,” he said, stopping in the middle of my living room, hands on his hips, nodding. “This is where you breathe. Where you eat. Where you sleep. Mmm.” He ended every sentence so goddamn passionately.

  “This is also where I drink beer. Go ahead and take a seat, Carter. We need to talk.” I waved at the counter because the couch wasn’t big enough to fit us comfortably. I got two beers from the fridge then sat at the corner of the kitchen counter, while he sat on the other side. He touched the countertop, analyzed it, pretended to be amazed by it, making those faces. It was impossible not to laugh.

  “So how are we going to do this? Because I’m not going to strip for you,” he said, taking a swig of his beer. “Unless you ask me to, that is.”

  I shook my head, smiling. “Actually, this is a very professional call.”

  He raised his thick brow. His amber eyes seemed to have hidden lights behind them. He was a handsome bastard. “Oh?”

  “Yes. Remember when we were stuck in the fae game at Fortune Fire?” He nodded. “You came because you thought we were after the Uprising.”

  He grinned. “And you wanna know why.”

  “Exactly.” I raised the bottle of beer to him before taking a sip.

  Carter took another look at my living room. “Hmm. Well, I’m not just going to share all my secrets with you, either,” he said. “Unless you share yours with me.”

  “You already know my secret.” He knew I was a Marauder. He just didn’t know…the rest.

  “I only know one,” he said with that all-knowing grin. He just loved to pretend to be the guy who didn’t get anything, didn’t see anything, didn’t understand shit, but the truth was he saw it all. His eyes never stopped in one place for too long. He was always searching.

  “I only have one.”

  He wasn’t buying it. “Let’s play a game. What do you say? A little Truth or Dare never hurt anybody.”

  Truth or Dare? That was exactly the game I wanted to play with him. It was perfect for the occasion, actually.

  I cleared my throat. “Truth or Dare, Carter?”

  He grinned widely. “Truth.”

  “Can I trust you?”

  He didn’t miss a beat. “Yes.” He clinked his bottle to mine. “Truth or Dare?”

  “Truth,” I said with a flinch. I knew exactly what he was going to ask me. Here it goes…

  “Why Kit?”

  I looked up at him. “What?”

  “Why Kit? Why did you name that squirrel Kit?”

  Well, fuck. That was not what I thought he was going to ask me at all. I laughed. “It’s a nickname, short for Kitten.” The next bit was going to be a bit tricky, but what the hell. “I wanted a cat, and I wanted to call it Kitten, but the fucker that he is, he refused to become a cat. He decided on a squirrel instead, so I called him Kitten anyway, just to spite him.” And Kit hadn’t liked that one bit. He still didn’t.

  Oh, the look on Carter’s face was priceless. “So…um, he became a squirrel from what now?”

  I laughed. “Wait your turn, man. Truth or Dare?”

  “Truth,” he said and he almost sounded breathless. Totally worth keeping that secret.

  “Why did you come here to work as a mercenary?” Because Carter was the Alpha of his Pack. He could have stayed and led his people, but instead, he came here and took orders from Lucas, which was beyond me.

  “Straight to the hard questions, Sin. That’s not how you play this game,” he said, shaking his index finger at me.

  “Answer the question, Carter.”

  “Because of the Uprising.” Just like I suspected.

  “But why?”

  “Wait your turn, woman.” He laughed. “Truth or Dare?”

  “Truth.” This time I did know what he was going to ask.

  Except… “What’s that noise coming from the hallway? What’s in that room?” Wrong again.

  I grinned. “Hellbeasts.”

  He took a good long second to think that over. I thought his eyes were going to come out of his sockets. “Goddamn it, woman.”

  “Truth or Dare, Carter?”

  “Truth.”

  “Why are you after the Uprising?” Ah, the good question.

  His smile faltered for a second, but I saw it. “Because of my father.”

  Oh. “But—”

  “A-a!” He raised his finger at me. “Wait your turn. Truth or Dare?” Damn it.

  “Truth,” I mumbled and drank my beer. I didn’t even try to guess what he’d ask next, and I was right not to.

  “Tell me a truth about you that nobody else knows. Not even…you know.” He wrinkled his nose as if he’d tasted something sour.

  You know was probably Damian. I sighed. There were a dozen things that crossed my mind—Alpha Prime, Kit, Sonny, my friends, but Damian knew all of them. What could I tell him, what could I tell him…

  “I love rap.”

  It re
ally wasn’t funny, was it? Yet Carter laughed so hard, his beer came out of his nostrils. He rushed to the sink to clean his face and hands, but he never stopped laughing.

  “You’re joking. Please tell me you’re joking,” he said when he came back to the counter.

  “Why would I be joking? There’s nothing wrong with rap. It’s good music.” I really didn’t see why he found that so funny. “Why the hell are you laughing?!”

  Another two seconds, and he managed to speak. “You just don’t look like the type to idolize rappers, that’s all.” His shoulders were still shaking.

  “Why the hell not? They’re very good artists. Some of them really are.”

  “So if you saw a rapper walking by, you’d run after them, and ask them for an autograph?” He was completely red in the face now. I still didn’t get why.

  “No!”

  “Oh, you would, wouldn’t you?” he insisted.

  “Well, I would totally fangirl, but on the inside—like a winner.” He practically lay down on the countertop, laughing. “But I would not ask them for autographs. I have the music. I don’t need their names written on a piece of paper.”

  “Oh, this is so good. Who’s your favorite? C’mon, tell me,” he said, his eyes full of unshed tears. Asshole.

  “Wait your turn,” I said, raising my brows. I’d already told him a lot more than the question required. “Truth or Dare?”

  Finally, he stopped laughing. “Truth.”

  “What happened to your father?” I had to ask. I didn’t want to get personal, but that was kind of the whole point of him being here.

  His face changed instantly. This time his smile didn’t falter, but his eyes darkened and the skin around his jaws seemed to get tighter. I knew him well enough by now to know when he didn’t like something, and he definitely didn’t like to talk about this.

  He did anyway.

  “He was killed when I was nineteen,” Carter said. “Every report, every expert of the Guild will tell you that he committed suicide. Stabbed himself in the throat and bled out, but it’s bullshit. My father was not that kind of a man.”