by Liv Brywood
She turns to the sound. “Better answer that.”
I wouldn’t trade my pack for anything—but I’d trade the interruptions.
I brush my hand along the soft skin at the small of her back as I step past, toward the woods. “The restaurant’s five doors down. Timothy’s the head chef. He’s one of ours. Ask for him, tell him I’m on my way. He’ll treat you well.”
Her lips part a bit as I run my thumb down her spine. She pulls her shawl a bit closer around her. She mutters something about how I’m the one who’s supposed to treat her well.
I slide my hand to her hip and pull her back against me before I go. “His stew will make you moan, but I can make you scream.”
She sucks in a breath. I scent the warm spice of her as it rises from the side of her neck.
She pulls away, faking offense. “In frustration, maybe.”
“You can’t deny that we’re equals. There’s no reason to deny what’s burning between us.”
A blush rises in her cheeks. I catch a glimpse of how she’d look in my bed, before I dart into the woods, ears trained for Marcus. She pushes out an angry little sigh as I go.
She can deny the tension between us all she wants, but it’s still there. And one day she’ll come to me for more than just books.
Marcus isn’t far, a hundred feet past the tree line, already part way through his shift. I let him catch his breath before I demand a report.
“There’s been a murder.”
The trace of heat in me, the scent of my mate in my nose, drops, cold taking its place. “Who? Where?”
“Brinda. She didn’t check in after her patrol.”
“You sent out a tracker?”
He eyes me, a little insulted. “Of course.”
“She was—where? Northeast boundary last night?”
“Yeah. Sir, she was still shifted. There was no blood.”
The wolf growls inside me, hackles raised. Witchcraft.
Dead shifters always change back into their human form. It’s for our protection, to keep our secret. It’s something only powerful magic can overcome.
Azealia’s magic is that strong, that deep. And she’s been on the hunt for possession information. Could she have done this as some sort of twisted experiment?
“Are you saying she died without wounds?”
“No, sir. There were wounds. But no blood left in her—”
Both of our heads shoot up and swivel. Storm clouds gather over town, thunder crashes through the sky. A downpour starts out of nowhere.
The scent of magic, huge magic, lances through the air. Electric. Like Azealia had been.
I’ve smelled it before in the land wars. It’s Azealia’s magic, freed. And on the tail end of it, the smell of blood.
Her blood, my wolf says. Our mate’s blood.
My suspicion about her involvement is forgotten. I run. Marcus is hot on my heels. We make it to the edge of town in seconds.
There, two doors up from the restaurant, is Azealia. She clutches a nasty gash in her chest. A blood red stains mars the creamy shades of her full skirt. Blood spatters the thin top wrapped around her. Her shawl’s ripped.
She flings blades of magic, red as her own blood, at her attacker. I see her dip her fingers into the wound.
Blades of her own blood? Holy shit!
My wolf growls his approval. I take him off his chain and feel him under my skin. He’s ready to shift at a moment’s notice. I catch Marcus’ gaze and point her way. He corrects course and heads toward her.
Azealia’s practically immortal. If she can still move, still breath, and still fight, she’ll be fine, even without his help. But I’m not taking any chances.
The man in front of her, pale, mid-battle through her magic, won’t last once I sink my teeth into him.
I charge, snarling. Five steps later, I jump at him. He’s too focused on her with no awareness of his back. His mistake.
I pull a partial shift, call up my wolf’s claws, his snarl, and his teeth. I sink my claws into the attacker’s back and chest. With a sharp snap of my jaw, my teeth sink into his icy flesh. I lift him and throw him back twenty feet.
He’s cold to the touch. He smells wrong. Like he’s already dead.
He will be dead soon, my wolf assures me.
The attacker’s eyes dart to mine. The irises are bright red.
Never seen that before.
It doesn’t matter. I charge. The strange man struggles to get up. His face is spooked, but his motions are so fast they almost blur.
I swipe a razor-sharp claw at his face. He dodges. He’s almost too fast to see. My claws only graze him. The blood that comes out of him looks—old. Too dark, already a little clotted. The wounds heal almost immediately.
The fuck?
He hisses, bares his teeth. He chucks a dagger toward me before turning to run. I dodge to the side before giving chase.
Damn, he’s fast. Too fast for two feet. I call my wolf and force a change mid-step. It hurts like a bitch, but between one step and the next, I go from two feet to four.
I’d trade the interruptions of my pack in a second, but not the power. There are perks for Alphas, always.
My wolf’s a huge beast with yellow eyes and dark fur that fades to a grey on the base of his legs and his muzzle. He stands about as tall as my shoulder, when he’s on all fours. Bigger than even me.
He growls and lunges for our prey’s leg. He locks his jaw into the cold meat of it and shakes. A snap of bone tears through the air. The attacker screams.
My wolf’s meaner than me, too. He refuses to let up. Instead, he jerks the man like a rag doll.
The man’s scream rises to a screech, high and painful. It gets louder, louder, until it slices into my wolf’s ears. We drop him and stumble back.
What the fuck? Are our ears bleeding?
The attacker drops. He drags his legs for a few steps before it snaps into the proper angle again. He runs at full tilt toward the fountain in the center of town.
We make a break for him, sprinting at top speed. He still manages to put distance between us. I push my wolf. The ringing and the pain in our ears fade. My wolf ramps up the speed, paws light on the ground.
One of Azealia’s blood blades slams into the attacker’s side. It throws him bodily into the fountain. I see a flash of rib and a spray of blood before he falls under the water.
We charge harder. We jump the side of the fountain and plunge our muzzle into the water. Snapping, and snapping again, we try to get him, but he dodges and blurs away. He reappears ten feet away, right at the edge of the fountain. His eyes track back to Azealia, almost like he’s forgotten me.
Mine track back to her as well. We’re maybe a thousand feet away now. I snap back to the attacker. He’s coiled. His thighs tense to move forward.
Fuck you.
We lunge and manage to get our teeth sunk into his arm this time. We shake him until we hear the bone in our mouth crunch and his shoulder snap. We toss him back toward the center of the fountain, away from our mate.
He hits the streams of water that spray from the top of the central post, and there’s a sound like a collision. The water stops for a second, waves of impact ripple away from him. Then he slides down the path of the streams like they’re bars on a cage.
What the fuck is going on here?
Doesn’t matter, my wolf growls. We stalk in front of him, putting us between the prey and our mate. Our hackles rise; our teeth are bared. The attacker stands, hisses. His teeth lengthen in his mouth, fanged and sharp. His red eyes start to glow, and his nails sharpen into claws.
Is that a fuckin’ vampire?
He steps forward, blurs left, right, left again, and too fast to see, he stabs his claws into our chest, lifting us off all four feet.
The pain is sharp. Red. It’s been a long time since someone landed a good hit on me. He’s clearly not practiced with wolves my size, because he’s off a few inches from where my heart is. Either that, or he’s not in this to kill me. An
d that’s his fucking mistake.
We snarl, swipe at his face and catch him in the side of the head. One of his nails caught a lung, I can feel it when I suck in a breath. His head snaps to the side, nasty blood darkens his pale complexion. I swipe again, kicking at him with my hind feet. He stumbles back and lets me fall to the ground.
Those nails hurt more on the way out than they did on the way in. There’s a burn to the wounds, a nasty, radiant heat.
Poison?
I step forward, and my legs already feel weaker.
Fuck.
My wolf snarls, pushing my consciousness down. He’s all instinct now. All rage. He raises his muzzle, and the vibrations rise in his throat, coiling around him.
He howls a call, a command. Six, seven, ten, then more howls answer, scattered across the mountainside.
My pack. The strength of wolves has always been in numbers.
The attacker’s eyes dart around. He seems to be counting the number of howling wolves. A grimace overcomes him. With a nasty snarl, he blurs left. My wolf charges.
It’s a fucking trap, don’t!
He’s to the right and past us before my wolf can change course. Size isn’t on his side in this instance. The water blurs out of the attacker’s path. He’s up and over the wall of the fountain, almost back to Azealia, before my eyes catch him.
My wolf snarls and sprints toward our mate. He’s out for blood now, for a kill, and his speed increases until he’s almost a blur too.
I need him alive. I need information to protect her.
He doesn’t hear me. He’s too far gone.
There’s a blur of brown and white. A wolf, smaller than me, but fast, so fast, slams into the attacker’s side. It knocks him out of his headlong rush at my mate.
Marcus.
My wolf snarls, awash with rage. It’s his kill, and he feels challenged by the interference.
Don’t.
He growls, adjusts course again, and springs. He hasn’t decided if his target’s the prey or our packmate before he’s in the air.
I let him go too far. I gave him too much freedom and control.
Fuck, stop!
My wolf is pure heat, pure rage, with snapping teeth and a taste for vengeance. He lands on our prey and blood fills our mouth.
Chapter 5
Cobalt
Frustrated, I press my lips together in a terse line. “I don’t like it,” I say to my empty shop, hands on my hips. “I don’t like it, and I don’t know why I don’t like it.” Before me, an arrangement of scarves sits across a chair, a wholly uninspired cloth heap. They wait expectantly, eager for me to do something with them—but what is that something? Inspiration rests just out of reach, tantalizingly close, but I’m unable to grasp it.
Colors, rumbles a voice from inside me. My dragon flicks his tail, and I catch an image of him as he idly inspects a collection of attractive rocks. Rearrange them by color, perhaps. That will look nice.
I push up my sleeves. It’s worth a shot, I suppose.
It takes some time, but once the first few pieces are set, I understand what my dragon means. The arrangement goes swiftly after that, and before long I step back to admire our creation: A pinwheel of fabric, soft cotton scarves of every shade fanned out in a brilliant nova of color. And it feels right. Like everything is where it should be, now. Thank you for the suggestion.
It's good. My dragon growls approvingly, content at this display. It flows nicely, he says. I can’t help but agree with him. Autumn reds and oranges sweep softly into yellows and spring greens, while blues fade from a sky-hue to a deep, warm indigo. It’s beautiful.
“Glad to have that finished,” I say with a grunt as I scoot the chair across the floor towards the window, where it will sit on display for anyone who passes by.
I sense her a moment before she enters the shop, a blanket of light that rises like a wave above the shore. Her presence is like nothing I’ve known before—sunlight and silk, cherries and gold. With her nearby, I’m unstoppable. I can do no wrong. She inspires me like nothing else. She’s the song in every breath I weave into my fabrics. She’s the sun, the moon, and the stars. She’s—
She’s bleeding!
My dragon snaps to attention, eyes wide and wild. I’m at her side in an instant.
“Azealia? What happened?” She stumbles and I swing an arm across her midsection. “It’s okay, it’s all right. I’ve got you. I’m here.” Something soaks into my pressed linen sleeve, and my dragon rears his head, hisses in equal parts revulsion and alarm. I reach for a cloth reflexively and grab pieces of fabric from my new project to use as makeshift bandages around her wound.
Heal her, my dragon presses insistently. His claws score imaginary furrows beneath him. He savages the air in helpless frustration. Help her. Without her we are nothing.
I know!
Magic swells to life, eddies of light that swirl on my palms, not from my dragon, but from the blood of my half-witch lineage. The spells are already at my lips, ready to spring into life, eager to mend, and to heal.
“What happened?” I ask again before laying a gentle hand on her shoulder to direct her towards a comfortable seat. Her frame relaxes at my touch, but a shape outside the window catches her eye and suddenly her muscles tense beneath my palm. She surges upright and her fingers stretch towards the glass.
Magic pools at her fingertips. Fibers of gold and gray weave into a tight ball that hurts to look at.
A spell? She’s too weak.
There is already blood on her face, a trickle that traces a wet trail down her lips and chin. Whatever spell she has prepared, it’s sure to take a great amount of energy from her, energy that she can’t spare.
“Forgive me,” I breathe as I lift a gentle hand to her brow. “I’m doing this for you.”
Heat and light bloom between my fingertips and her temple, and the fury in her eyes fizzles. Her body sags, but I catch her before she falls and set her onto a cushion.
Rest.
Some small part of me can’t help but be lost in the grace of it all. Fire flickers hot and fierce in her eyes; her fan of hair is a wild blaze in the wake of her spell. Teeth bared in a snarl of defiance. Even now, wounded and blood-soaked, she’s beautiful.
My muse, the song on my lips, the light of my—
The window behind us shatters as someone is tossed through it. Innumerable shards of glass shimmer and gleam as they scatter across my shop. It’s like a rain of diamonds, and in that split second, she looks like an angel of war. A thousand points of reflected light skim off her skin, highlight the bow of her lips, the curve of her cheek, and the curl in her hair.
My dragon surges to the forefront of my senses. He pulls me back to reality as the figure stands behind me, sending glass to the floor in soft, bright impacts.
A threat, my dragon roars. A threat to our muse.
We turn from Azealia as my dragon bursts forth. My skin ripples, turning into sheets of hard steel-blue scale. Bones and tendons pop and click. Clawed feet land heavily on broken glass, but dragon’s scales are more than enough protection. And even if the glass had bled us, our pain is meaningless next to Azealia’s.
The target of our ire scrambles out through the open window frame. My dragon’s gaze snaps to him. Several hundred pounds of scaled fury lumbers into the street in pursuit, a storm of claws and fangs. The distance closes between us. My dragon snakes out his neck, but the offender dodges to the side, barely evading the snap of steely jaws.
There’s a snarl, and a sudden blur of gray from the corner of our vision. Our target hits the ground. A wolf rests top on him, pinning him to the street.
The figure is still, then rises in a burst of action and shoves the huge beast away in an attempt at freedom. The wolf dashes forward before my dragon can react. There’s a scuffle, a flurry of tangled limbs, and then the target is flung farther into the street.
My dragon’s eyes sharpen. Sparks fly from between his teeth.
An opportunity.
He takes it.
Fire and fury climb from deep in his chest as he digs wicked sharp claws into the ground. Razor-pointed teeth part in an eager grin, and the air around us shimmers with heat.
The figure climbs to his feet and stares in captive horror as my dragon coils and strikes. He only has a moment to scream before blue-hot fire pours from behind my dragon’s fangs to devour the unlucky figure.
I’m furious.
How dare anyone harm her! My dragon snarls.
Our minds roar in tandem.
This man threatened her with mirror-knives of glass, and soaked the heathen ground with our angel’s blood? How. Dare. He.
There is only ash when our rage finally dies, a pile of dust where the threat had been. My dragon’s flames fade. The heat-shimmer around us disperses. In a huff of accomplishment, we clear smoke from our snout.
My thoughts turn back to Azealia.
Is she all right? We must return t—
Another snarl, and a burst of motion. A wolf slams into my shoulder. I stagger to regain my footing. A fire sparks within my dragon’s chest once more and he bares his fangs in challenge. We’re both more than prepared to crisp this threat as well. If they so much as breath of ill intention towards Azealia, we’ll burn this wolf to death.
Surprisingly, the wolf doesn’t advance. It only crouches and convulses.
A shifter, some part of me recognizes.
My dragon remains tense and ready to spring into action at the slightest provocation. We watch as fur recedes for skin, claws make way for fingers, and growls turn into—well, his words are still growls.
“What the fuck?” he yells at me, predatory in his approach. He turns away at the last second, then heads towards what remains of the intruder.
My dragon huffs, catching the wolf’s scent. It’s Kael, the Alpha of the local wolf pack. Neither my dragon nor I care much for him because he’s an egomaniac and far too aggressive for our taste.
“You killed him! What were you thinking? He could have answered questions!” Kael pauses his tirade and glances back at me. “Hey, are you even fucking listening to me?”
An irritated snarl bubbles from deep within my dragon’s chest. He lunges forward, a posture, a challenge, but I push his presence down and shift. The street is damp from earlier rain and unpleasant on my bare feet.
