by Elena Lawson
I didn’t want to be a familiar. I didn’t want to be an alpha. I just wanted to live and let live. In fucking peace.
I followed Adrian to the showers and washed away the mud and sweat from our earlier run and sparring match. The grounds were coming to life around us, fires popping up all around, the smell of roasting meat filling the spaces between the houses. Most pack members chose to spend full moon nights in their wolf forms because it was easier than fighting the energy it filled us with, that forced the younger and recently changed pack members to shift until they got control as well. By the time the darkness was complete, the camp was brightly lit and the only ones left in their human forms were the ones cooking.
Adrian shot me a grin and shifted, shaking the shower water from his silver fur. I rolled my eyes and laughed, following his lead. The echoing voices of the pack filtered through the pack bond. I usually blocked them out unless they addressed me directly, which they normally didn’t. More often than not, I felt like an outsider in the pack anyway, Adrian and Stella being the only ones who talked to me on a regular basis. I’d grown up in their house ever since my parents died when I was young. Adrian became my brother and Stella and Pete had basically raised me.
Shaking my straying thoughts loose, I ran after Adrian to grab dinner. The pull of the moon felt stronger than it had in years as it slowly crawled into the night sky. There was also the incessant ache between my eyes that, I was sure, meant more than what Adrian had said out loud. I just didn’t know what it meant or what we could do about it. We’d already been out today and asking for another shift would only give Atlas more reason to watch us.
Tomorrow was close enough. We could check on her then.
Are you thinking about her again? Adrian asked, keeping his thoughts directed at me instead of sharing them out with the rabble of the pack conversation.
I bared my teeth in warning. Adrian blinked at me in surprise and I dropped the expression instantly, wondering why that had been my first reaction. He didn’t push again and I was grateful. We got our fill and I let my attention wander over the wolves I’d grown up around, varying shades of black and brown and grey.
Adrian and I, though our markings were different, had the shiniest silver pelts that were the envy of most of the females. Even with his temper, he got along better with the rest than I did, yet he always stuck fast to my side. Unless he got a mind to fuck something, then he’d vanish for a few hours, but only that.
Do you smell that?
I looked up to see the pack watching the sky over the mountains. The smell of rain wafted through on a breeze, and just over the treetops, black clouds were forming. Adrian whimpered beside me and I picked up his thoughts without him thinking it.
That storm was coming down the mountain, headed straight in the direction of Harper’s witch school. There was a strange quality to it. Too clustered. The clouds too thick and dark. Electricity sparked in the air around us and I jerked my head back and forth, a low whine coming from my canine lips.
How had no one else noticed it?
The other wolves started moved carelessly about the camp, dousing fires and heading indoors to wait out the rain.
As one, Adrian and I yelped, a scorching pain like lightning shooting through our heads, nearly putting us both on our asses. Black spots bloomed in my eyes and I shook my head, trying to get rid of them.
Something’s wrong with her.
Without making the conscious decision to do so, I bolted for the forest. Adria right on my heels. This time, we didn’t take the circuitous route around the second ring—we made a beeline for the school. Something was happening, someone was hurting her.
Thunder cracked and rain followed, dense sheets that limited our vision, but we kept running. Cold rain seeped down through to my undercoat, making me shiver from the sudden chill.
Another bolt of searing pain speared through our heads and I howled in pain, Adrian’s syncing with mine to form a broken melody. Up ahead, lights were coming to life inside the school.
We skidded to a halt at the edge of the treeline, following the pull around the building, getting as close as we dared. In a window above us, a pale face framed by blonde hair peeked out a foggy window and we ducked back into the shadows.
Who’s hurting her? Adrian demanded. I’ll tear the motherfucker apart.
Careful, Adrian, I said, trying for something like amusement. Someone might think you give a shit.
His golden eyes cut to me and he snarled. If someone kills her, then she—
Then we won’t be her familiars anymore.
Lightning struck the building and over the explosion of ancient plaster and brick, we heard screaming inside. Adrian’s ears pressed flat against his head and he bared his teeth at the school.
The tug in our chests told us that she was moving again, and we howled at the pain as we followed, trying to stay as close to her as we could, slinking low through the shadows in the brush.
* * *
Atlas was waiting for us when we got back to camp, orange eyes glowing like embers against his inky black fur. He lifted his head imperiously and looked down on us as we approached slowly.
What was that all about?
I glanced back toward the forest we’d just stepped out of. Some commotion at that school in the mountains. We were just curious and wanted to see what was happening.
You could’ve been spotted on their territory, he growled.
No one saw us, Adrian assured him, though that wasn’t entirely sure. They may not have seen us, but I was damn sure someone likely heard us. Our howls of anguish at her pain couldn’t be stopped
With all the commotion going on inside they never would have noticed we were there. We wanted to make sure there was no threat. It’s closer to our territory than I’d like.
And?
Adrian and I shared a glance. Just someone losing control of their power, we think. They handled it.
They’d better. Atlas studied us for a moment longer, then turned his back and padded toward the big house. The threat clear in his tone.
I swallowed hard, chest tightening. Atlas wouldn’t hesitate long before he killed Harper if he found out. Just long enough to figure out how to do it in a way so that the blame wouldn’t fall on this pack. My stomach turned at the thought, wondering if I could let Atlas do what he needed to, or if the new bond forged with this witch ran deeper than the bond of this family.
15
Harper
When I awoke Saturday morning, peeling my eyelids back slowly in preparation for the pain, I was pleasantly surprised to find there wasn’t any. I blinked into the bright lights in the wide room, getting my bearings.
Bianca was asleep in a chair at the end of the bed where I was laying. I was covered in a thin white sheet and still dressed in my smelly night clothes. A grinding sound pulled my attention and I found Ms. Granger standing at a countertop to my right, grinding herbs with a mortar and pestle.
From the array of jars and bottles, and the bunches of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, I would have to assume this was the academy’s infirmary.
And then I remembered.
The storm. The lightning. The other girls in the dorm watching as Ms. Granger carried me out through the hallways as I writhed in pain and moaned and shouted. Crap.
Kendra’s voice came back the clearest. The new girl’s finally lost it.
She might not have been wrong. For a while, I thought I had.
“Oh, good,” Granger said, turning at the sound of my whining groan. “You’re awake. How do you feel?”
“Better,” I replied, pushing the hair away from my face. My hands came away oily. My hair felt like it’d been drenched in hot soup and then left to dry. “Ugh.” I groaned again. I needed a shower. Bad.
Ms. Granger tipped the fine powder from the mortar into a small bowl of steaming water, swirling the contents. The scents of lavender and frankincense wafted over to me, along with something bitter and tangy that made me want to
plug my nose.
“Here,” she said. “Drink this. It will help renew your strength.” Her voice was whisper soft as she handed it to me, glancing at Bianca where she slept with her head tilted back against the high backed chair, mouth agape, and one eye half-open to expose the whites.
I took the bowl, clasping it between my palms. The warmth seeped into my skin, and I sighed at the release of tension.
Now that she’d said it, I found I did feel weakened. My bones felt heavy, and my mind was already tired to the point of wanting a nap even though I’d only just woken up. But it was always like this with my migraines. I thought this shit was over, I thought to myself, putting the bowl to my lips to take a small sip.
Granger sat on the edge of the narrow bed, leveling a motherly stare at me. “Are these migraines of yours chronic? Do they happen often?”
I took another swallow of the warm potion mixture, making a face at the bitter aftertaste. “No,” I began, but then amended. “Well, they don’t anymore. I used to get them all the time, but they stopped a few years ago.”
“When you came into your powers?”
My brows furrowed, and I thought back to the last time I’d had a migraine like that. She was right, it’d been only days before I first came into my powers.
“Yeah.”
She offered me a warm smile and told me not to worry, taking the now empty bowl from my hands and rising to place it back on the counter.
“I’ve got to go check on something,” she said. She turned back to me for a moment before making for the hall, pausing in the doorway again to give me a look that managed to be reassuring at the same time as it was puzzled. “Try to rest. The revival potion should take effect
quickly.”
I nodded, and she was gone.
“You look better.” Bianca’s voice nearly made me jump out of my skin, my hand flying to my chest to contain the wild pitter patter of my pulse. “Whoa, didn’t mean to scare you,” she said, holding her hands up in an I’m-not-gonna-eat-you gesture.
“Aren’t you supposed to be visiting with your brothers?” I asked her after I’d caught my breath, trying to stretch out a kink in my neck.
Bianca waved off the question with an eye-roll and a tiny smirk. “They can wait a bit. They’ll understand when I tell them my roomie had a catatonic fit and nearly blew up the academy.”
“What—”
“Oh,” she said, her brows rising as she leaned in. “And your—um—familiars were outside our
window last night, howling and whining like mad. It was super annoying.”
So, I hadn’t been dreaming that. But... “Wait, back up. I didn’t start that storm. People can’t honestly think I caused that.”
Bianca clucked her tongue and gave a slow, exaggerated shrug. “All I know is that the moment you passed out, the storm stopped. The thunder, the lightning, the rain—all of it. Like it was never even there.”
It had to be a coincidence. There were only a handful of witches in recorded history who could affect the weather, and those bloodlines were long dead. Even Bianca didn’t look like she fully believed it, and she was the one telling me it’d happened.
I gulped past a large lump in my throat, ready to refute what she’d said when a figure appeared in the doorway and stole the words from my mouth.
“So, what’s all this fuss about?” Headmaster Sterling asked in his deep baritone, looking from Bianca to me and back again. His deep gray suit brought out the silver running through the black in his beard and hair, and the fluorescent lights made his dark eyes gleam as they
pierced through me, impatiently waiting for a response.
“Just a migraine,” I said simply.
“Is that all?” he replied with a fabricated smile, his tone far from relieved and more toward condescending.
“I’m—” I began, but he turned to his niece, who was smiling up at him guiltily, as though she were caught playing with something she shouldn’t have.
“Bianca,” he said. “Shouldn’t you be on your way? I know your brothers are eager to see you.”
It was the nicest sounding dismissal I’d ever heard.
Bianca gave me a sheepish grin before rising from her chair. “Yes, uncle. You’re right. Now that I’ve seen Harper is alright, I’ll go to them. May I portal myself?”
No, I wanted to say, don’t leave me with him!
“Mmm,” he said with a nod, and Bianca scurried from the room, calling back to me over her shoulder.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Harper.”
Headmaster Sterling knotted his weathered hands behind his back, and lifted his chin to take a long breath, his gaze never leaving me. I cowered under the pressure of his stare. Why
wasn’t he saying anything? After another beat of silence, he spoke, his voice booming after the momentary silence. “You gave my students and faculty quite a scare.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I hope these disturbances are not a regular occurrence,” he said, grimacing. “If they are, I may be forced to petition the council to have you placed somewhere they are better equipped to deal with those sorts of ailments.”
The thought of leaving Elias and Bianca, and even my familiars, left a sour taste in my mouth and a pit in my stomach.
Sterling really was the worst sort of asshole. It was just a migraine. It wasn’t as though I’d done anything on purpose.
What a dick.
“No, of course not. I—”
“Good,” he said, cutting me off again. “Glad to hear it.”
Granger returned to the room, scowling at the back of Sterling’s head. I wondered if she’d heard what he said.
“Ah, Granger,” he said by way of greeting.
She set a breakfast tray down on my bed and my stomach growled audibly. It was filled with fruits and nuts and buttery toast and coffee? I hadn’t smelled the beautiful aroma of coffee in
over a week. My mouth watered at the sight of it. All they had laid out for the students was herbal tea in the mornings. I wondered whose terrible idea it was to leave coffee out of the morning line-up. We were teenagers, not children.
I snagged it from the tray, chugging it down with barely a care that it was scalding my tongue. And she’d even put two sugars in! As if she’d known exactly how I liked it.
“I can take it from here,” she said brazenly to the headmaster with a close-lipped smile. “I’m sure you have more pressing matters to attend to.”
“Hmm. That I do.” He cast me one last sidelong glance before leaving without another word.
“Is he always like that?” I asked when I was certain he was out of hearing range.
“What? You mean a total ass?” she asked, one thin brow raised and a smirk playing at the corner of mouth.
Shocked, and pleasantly surprised someone else agreed with me, I burst out laughing. “Yeah. That.”
Ms. Granger chuckled, trying to keep her lips tightly closed to rein herself in. “Pretty much all the time, yes.”
I shook my head, relieved.
Granger popped a grape from my tray into her mouth, one hand on her hip. “Seriously, though, he’s always had a problem with women in power,” she mused, turning to face me once more. “And you, my dear, are very powerful.”
She couldn’t possibly think the storm was because of me, too, could she? And then a more dangerous thought crossed my mind—what if it was me?
“I haven’t seen an equal to your power in all the years I’ve taught here—in all my life, really, except maybe Alistair. But even he couldn’t draw lightning down from the sky.”
I didn’t want to think about what’d happened the night before anymore. It was scary and embarrassing, and I didn’t want to believe it was true. Sure, being powerful was great and all—who wouldn’t want to be a strong witch? But being that powerful was dangerous. I could hurt someone, or a lot of someones, especially with my inherent clumsiness.
It was impossible for witches like that to fly under t
he radar. I didn’t want to be noticed, or fought over, or asked to do things I didn’t want to do. I wanted to be left the hell alone.
But she reminded me of something. “Hey, did you ask Headmaster Sterling about my dad?”
“Yes,” she said, looking at me quizzically. “I inquired because Alistair—I mean, your father—had been quite a wealthy man. I wanted to know if anything remained to be transferred to you.”
“Oh.” He had been wealthy?
“And,” she continued, looking away with a slight roll of her eyes. “I had also requested to review any files Sterling might have access to in the academy’s files, or in the Arcane Council’s. I wanted to be able to give you more information about him—about what happened to him.” She huffed irritably. “But my request was denied.”
I sat up a little straighter, unable to stop the shiver from rolling up my back. “Why?”
She gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Something about confidentiality,” she said. “But, he did agree to look into your father’s holdings. You would need to submit to an origin test, of course, to be able to lay claim to Alistair’s properties and financial holdings.”
I was dumbfounded. Had she said properties? As in, plural? All this time, I could’ve been rich. I imagined a younger version of myself, growing up in a grand mansion, never having to want for anything. I wanted to want it. Who wouldn’t want to be rich and have nice things? But I didn’t. If I’d grown up like that, who was to say I wouldn’t have turned out like Kendra, or one of her minions?
I felt guilty just thinking it. Remembering Leo laughing as he pulled me along the ice-rink, telling me to push and glide, not stomp and scream. And Lara, gathering my hair into a smooth braid so it wouldn’t tangle while I slept.
“Ms. Granger, can I ask you a favor?”
“Diana,” she corrected, and I beamed. “Of course. Ask away.”
16
