by May Dawson
Then when she was gone again, Dani held her hands out, palms up. “Are you sure you want to hear the truth?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “I’m worried Maddie’s in trouble.”
“Well,” she said. “Always, am I right?”
She wasn’t wrong. I rested my fingertips on her palms, and she closed her hands around mine.
Her eyes drifted shut. I studied her face, waiting for any hint, and her lips compressed suddenly, as if she were angry.
When she opened her eyes, she leaned against the back of the booth.
“Is there any time someone might have put a spell on you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You haven’t left campus?”
“Not since last weekend’s liberty. And I just went to Chase’s house off-campus. Why? What did you sense?”
“Someone used a spell on you,” she said. “Have you felt strange?”
I glanced away out the window. I hated to admit it, but I had to be honest with Dani—and myself—if we were going to figure it out.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve felt… angry.”
“That’s not exactly unheard of for a shifter male,” she said dryly.
“Really angry. I… felt like I hated Maddie.”
“But you don’t now?”
“I… I feel like I wasted my time with her. All the drama.” I felt one corner of my mouth turn up ruefully. “All those fights, the sex, the yelling at each other… it all just seems…stupid now. Overwrought. And the good stuff… I can barely remember any of that.”
“So why did that make you think there was a spell?”
“Because I remember remembering the good stuff. I remember missing it.” I hesitated. “She and I have a really fucked-up relationship. I know that. When she came to the academy, I missed her so much even though she was right there. And even though I don’t understand anymore how I felt that way—”
I broke off and shrugged.
“So you still feel like you hate her,” she said, frowning, “but you also remember enough to know that’s not how you normally feel about her.”
“Exactly.”
“You are an unusually smart shifter, aren’t you?”
That was the most insulting compliment I’d ever received. Dani had such a gift with words. “You’d be the only one who would think that.”
“Why?”
“Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter.” Her voice came out sharp. “You’re my friend, Lex. I want to help. Talk to me.”
“You are helping me. You’re on academy territory—”
“On the border,” she disagreed. “And don’t worry, we’ll come back to Maddie. Goddess knows we always do.”
Her voice was amused. “Right now, I want to talk about what else is troubling you.”
I leaned back, throwing my arm over the back of the booth. “I don’t know why you’re such a good friend to me. Shifters haven’t exactly been good to you.”
“You’re not a shifter to me. You’re Jacob Alexander.”
The waitress set out milkshakes down between us. Dani took a long sip through the pink-and-white straw, then looked up at me and quirked an eyebrow. “Well? Spill.”
“Council’s Own selection is coming up, and I’m not going to be on the list,” I said.
“You know that?”
I nodded. “Clearborn doesn’t like me.”
“Who wouldn’t like you?”
“Oh, you might be surprised. I’ve got a wide array of people who think I’m an annoying pain-in-the-ass.”
“I’ll fight ’em.” She propped her elbow on the table, her chin on the heel of her hand.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m worried about what Rafe will do.”
“You think your darker, scarier twin is going to tell the Council’s Own to fuck off if they don’t take you too?”
The way she put that made me smile. “Ah, I wouldn’t put it that way. But basically.”
“Because that’s what you’d do for him?”
I nodded.
“This is why people shouldn’t think you’re a pain-in-the-ass, Lex,” she said, her voice kind. “You deserve good things. You know that, right? You deserve the Council’s Own.”
I pursed my lips, because I didn’t know what to say to that and it made me uncomfortable, and then she added, “I’m not so sure the Council’s Own deserves you. There are other options, you know. You could come over to the Hunter side.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m kind of…built to be with a pack. Even if I left mine behind.”
“You already have a pack.” She tilted her head to one side. “What are you going to do about that pack, by the way? Since Maddie is… of course…at its very center. As usual.”
“I guess I need to find whoever cursed me to hate her and rip their throat out.”
“There’s one problem with that plan, Lex. Well, several, really, starting with that wolfish appetite for violence…” She took a long sip from her straw, looking at me as severely as anyone can while slurping a chocolate shake and wearing hot pink lipstick.
“What’s that?”
“I think Maddie is the one who cursed you.”
I frowned. “No. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know the possibility that Maddie could do something with good intentions and terrible judgment is just mind-blowing,” she said. “I’d like to remind you that this is why no one should date until their thirties.”
I leaned across the table to whisper, “Why would Maddie curse me?”
“Does everyone else on the team feel the same way you do?”
I nodded tightly.
“She must have had a good reason.” She mashed her straw in her milkshake. “Not that I’m convinced there’s a good enough reason.”
She looked up at my face, and her expression softened. “I’m sure she thought she did, though. She must have been trying to protect you.”
“She stormed off campus,” I said. “She said a mouthful of ugly things—”
She nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll bet she was triggering the spell. You’d need something to justify the change in your feelings.”
“She didn’t go home to her pack at all, I bet,” I said. “She went off on her own, doing something stupid. Trying to protect her pack…”
“Both of her packs,” Dani added, nodding.
“To find her father, or to take down the Day…” I ran my hand through my hair, agitation spiking through my chest. Why did she think she had to do anything alone?
We would always be there for her. Hell, every time I thought of her, I felt a spike of anger and regret now—thanks to that damn spell of hers—and yet, the urge to protect her was even stronger.
The bells above the door rang, pulling my gaze just for long enough to glimpse a half-dozen shifter students coming in.
“You should get out of here,” I said. “I’ll walk you out the back.”
She quirked an eyebrow. She couldn’t see the shifters behind her, who studied us as they took seats at a table. Hopefully, they’d mind their own business. She didn’t even sense them, and it was quite the reminder of how fragile humans were, how terrible their situational awareness with their limited senses.
“I haven’t even gotten my burger yet, Lex.”
“Doesn’t matter. Trust me. Time to go.”
She sighed and picked her coat up from beside her, already scooting across the booth.
“I like the way you listen to me,” I said. “It’s a refreshing change.”
Her lips quirked up in a smile. “You adore that girl. You still do, under the spell that’s clouding your judgment at the moment.”
“I guess,” I said. I caught her elbow to pull her with me through the service door so we wouldn’t go past the other shifters. “Or maybe I just don’t want my ex-girlfriends to die of prideful stupidity.”
“How many ex-girlfriends do you have, Lex?”
she asked as we wound through the kitchen, ignoring a surprised chef who yelled at us.
My lips pursed to one side. “Just the one.”
She patted my cheek as the two of us pushed through the door and stepped down into the lobby. “Oh, the power of first love.”
“You think that’s why I have a sense about the spell?” I frowned. “We have some kind of special bond?”
“Yes, of course you have a special bond with Maddie,” she said. She glanced over her shoulder, her smile arching her lips mischievously. “But you each have a special bond with Maddie. Yours is first love. You were the first time she ever fell for someone, and she’s the same for you.”
There was movement beyond her, at the end of the alley. Shifters. I took a step behind me, putting my back nearer the wall, and glanced toward the other end of the alley just as three more of the shifters from the diner arrived.
“I would like to talk about this more,” I told her. “Unfortunately, we have trouble.”.
“Yes, you do,” one of them said.
“You don’t want to do this,” I said, resting my hand on Dani’s shoulder to pull her toward me. “I’m cadre.”
“Not once anyone finds out you’re consorting with witches.”
“Consorting is an awfully big word coming from you.” I leaned forward to whisper into Dani’s ear, “I’ll keep them busy while you run.”
She shook her head, her long dark hair swaying over the shoulders of her pea coat. “I’m not leaving you.”
“I need you to,” I told her. “Please trust me.”
She looked up at me, her lips pursing. “Why do you have to phrase it that way, Lex? You know I do.”
“Try not to hurt them too much on your way out,” I told her.
“I won’t. That’s your department.”
She turned to them, sighing dramatically. “First of all, hating magic is stupid. Second of all, letting fear and hate push you into violence is even stupider.”
I didn’t think they were going to appreciate her lecture.
I picked a side and darted ahead of her, slamming into one shifter to knock him over.
While I tried to kick the asses of some of my fellow shifters, she ran toward one end of the alley. Her arms exploded out, and two shifters slammed into the brick walls to either side of her. Then she was gone, sprinting around the corner, and the two of them tumbled to the cement. That made it just three-to-one…until they got up again.
Then I was alone in the alley, throwing punches, until they brought me down to the ground.
Chapter Thirty
Maddie
It was a clear, sunny winter day when the witches gathered to murder my wolf.
I kept hoping that there would be some way to save my wolf, as had happened in the cell when Tyson and I faked being unable to shift. I still didn’t understand who had protected me.
In the same field where both Echo and I had been whipped half to insanity, Winter, Bennett, Echo, Alice and a dozen other witches from the coven gathered.
I lay on the frozen ground with them. “Seems like a good way to get frostbite,” I muttered to Echo as he reached out to take my hand.
Alice smiled at me past him as she reached for him. I smiled back, but her gaze was already flickering to his face, the way it always did. I hadn’t spent much time around them to realize that. She was always trying to read his face, always looking for his reaction.
The same way it had seemed she adored Winter when she first met, she seemed to adore Echo even more.
That was funny, because Echo seemed oblivious to her most of the time.
What was even funnier was that Echo should be nothing to me, and yet I still felt a thrill of possessiveness when she looked at him.
Winter began to incant as he lit a match and dropped it into a bowl, just as Alice had when she used her spell.
I released my angst for the time being to focus on the dark magic. Everyone else in the circle began to chant too, and after a few minutes, I memorized the Latin they were speaking and their cadence. I joined them.
I breathed in the acrid scent of the smoke, and my head grew heavy. My eyes closed, as if I were surrendering to sleep.
The next thing I knew, I opened my eyes again in the field.
But it was different.
The sky above was dark, heavy. The clouds felt as if they were pressing down on me, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
The witches’ circle surrounded me.
Sitting across from me was a sleek, blue-eyed wolf with mischievous eyes and gray markings. My heart caught in my chest. She was even more beautiful than I remembered.
On the ground between us was a knife.
She looked at me and whined.
They’d told me that I’d have to hunt her down and catch her, but she didn’t try to run.
Not when I wiped away the sudden tears that streaked down my cheeks.
Not when I picked up the blade.
Not when I stood and walked toward her.
Chapter Thirty-One
“After we get you cleaned up, we’ll celebrate,” Alice said. She wrapped me in a tight hug. “Welcome to the family.”
After a second, I managed to hug her back, because I should. I had to keep moving, to play the part, or the sacrifices were for nothing. My arms felt heavy, as if it took all my energy to force myself to hug Alice back.
“I’ll take her back,” Echo said. He took my upper arm, dragging me away from Alice, who looked after me with an expression that seemed worried. I stared back for a second, trying to figure out why Alice was scared for me now.
Echo’s fingers were tight around my bicep as he yanked me away from the crowd. It woke me from my miserable reverie.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.
Echo didn’t respond. “Alice and some of the other female witches want to bathe you and do your hair for your initiation ceremony. Do you want them to plait your hair and crown you with flowers right now?”
My jaw tightened. I didn’t want to answer Echo.
“No, you don’t,” he answered for me. “I convinced them I would get you ready.”
“What I want is to be left alone,” I shot back.
“Then you came to the wrong place,” he said. “As much as Winter wants to trust you, he knows he can’t. You’re not going to be left alone for a long time.”
He led me into the bathroom attached to his bedroom. An old-fashioned bathtub with feet shaped like dragon’s claws stood at one end of the room, under an uncurtained window that looked out over the barren fields beyond.
He perched on the edge of the tub and leaned over to start the water running.
Part of me wondered if I could push him under the water’s surface and hold him there as he drowned.
Another part of me wondered if there was something familiar about his posture, when I didn’t have the distraction of his cold, beautiful face and those glittering, dark eyes.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the sink. I’d thought I was only killing in my dreams, inside my own head, but there was blood splattered across my face. My lips parted in horror, and I walked toward the mirror, studying myself.
Sometime during the past few days, I’d blown the blood vessels around my eyes in one of those fights. Bright red spots marked my skin. I was filthy, having been abandoned so long in that room, but my eyes kept going back to the freckles of blood that marked my skin.
He rose from the side of the tub and stuck one hand in his pocket, his posture graceful. “Ready?”
My hands shook as I pulled off the remnants of my academy blazer. My trembling fingers could barely get the buttons through the holes of my blouse. I wasn’t sure when I’d turned so weak.
I couldn’t stop seeing the wolf’s eyes as she watched me walk toward her.
Echo stepped in front of me. Without discussion, he began to unbutton my blouse with long, agile fingers. His movements were quick, brusque, and that made it le
ss humiliating to have him draw my blouse from my shoulders. I reminded myself that he wasn’t being kind. He’d hurt me before.
Had there been another way for him to save my life when the witches wanted to kill me?
“Why were you the only one I saw?” I asked, raising my gaze to his. “All those days I was locked away?”
His face was stern, disinterested. He didn’t answer my question. “Can you finish undressing yourself?”
“Yes,” I said, but my fingers were trembling so badly they were clumsy. I glanced away from him, trying to hide the emotions that felt like they must be obvious across my face. “I know I had to give up the wolf to be a part of the Day. But it feels… it feels like I killed a friend. I wish there had been another way.”
“There wasn’t,” he said. “You can’t be two things at once. You can’t be a witch and a wolf.”
“Then why did they try… why did they make people like me? Like Tyson?”
“It was a mistake,” he said. “One they’re going to undo.”
That was why I was here. I was going to keep them from murdering all our wolves, and I closed my eyes, reminding myself that saving the packs, protecting my sister and my niece and nephew and my men, was worth the sacrifice.
Protecting them was worth my life and my wolf. But when I closed my eyes, my head swam, and I opened my eyes in a hurry, only to find the room still tilting dizzyingly around me.
I was shaking, my thighs trembling, and it felt as if my knees were weak underneath me. I frowned, trying to understand what was happening to me. My body had never felt so rebellious in my life. “Is this… is this part of the change? Is this magic?”
Winter had mentioned, when Ty and I were in the cage, that Alice’s transition had been painful when she lost her wolf.
“No.” Echo frowned as he studied me. “This is being human. You went a week without much in the way of food and with little water.”
He ran his hand across my shoulder, rubbing his thumb across my sharp clavicle. “You were weak to begin with, and now you have trauma to contend with. A physical reaction to your level of psychological distress is a natural reaction.”
His voice was matter-of-fact. Anger washed hot over my cheeks at his cold tone.
