by Kim Loraine
As the alpha of the pack, Rushton’s wolf is now the largest, but he doesn’t outweigh me by much. I’m not going to let him do this. I’ll rip his throat out if I have to, but these women aren’t dying today. Teeth bared, I welcome the deep growl that builds in my belly and works its way up my throat. I’m not afraid of him. He springs, landing on top of me before I can get away, his strength and dominance still winning out. I’ve never challenged an alpha before, but there’s too much at stake to avoid it now. Using every ounce of power in my limbs, I shove him off me. He goes flying, his body skidding across the concrete floor until he crashes into a metal cabinet.
I glance to my little witch and see she’s been surrounded by the wolves in the room. She and Tamiel stand back to back, both holding magic between their palms, Tamiel’s in the form of a glowing broadsword, Izzy a puttering ball of silver flame. She’s weakened from the amount of power it took to kill Tristan. But they’re ready to strike if need be. The large gray wolf I know to be Rushton springs forward, breaking the circle around Izzy and Tamiel. His jaw snaps as he tries to get a hold on any part of my woman he can, but she sends the flame straight at him. In a flash of light, all that remains of the shifter who’d turned me is a pile of ash. Her gaze finds mine, guilt swimming in her eyes, but I shake my head. She did what needed to be done. The other wolves back up, still ready to defend Lachlan, but there’s fear radiating from them now.
It’s then I return to my human form. I’ll need my hands for what comes next. I can’t get to the dagger Tristan used on Lachlan without Rushton catching up to me. But, while his wolf lies dazed in the corner, I run for the women, rucking up Helena’s skirt and sliding my hand up her leg. She gives a startled cry of annoyance and tries to squirm away from my touch, but I growl, “Hold still, woman. Izzy told me you keep a knife on you at all times.”
She calms and nods as I find the sheath strapped to her thigh. Pulling the silver dirk free, I turn at the same time she gives a muffled scream. It’s too damn late. Rushton takes me down, his teeth tearing into my throat even as I plunge the silver deep into his chest. He gives a jerk and shifts over me, his human gaze holding shock and betrayal before he collapses. I shove him off me, working to get to my feet. I have to see to my mate.
Blood runs freely from the wound in my throat, and my left arm is numb, but I’m alive, which is more than I can say for Rushton. He’s eerily still and the pull of his alpha dominance is gone. In fact, I feel nothing other than concern for Izzy.
“Izzy,” I manage through the pain in my shoulder and neck.
The wolves are still circling, closer than before with their hackles raised and teeth bared. This is bad. Even with the magic they both have, Tamiel and Izzy won’t be able to take them all down.
I stand tall, unable to shift back into my wolf form until I fully heal, and shout, “Stop!”
The room goes silent, each wolf falling to their bellies, ears back, heads down. They’re accepting my command. I hold up a hand and call, “Come to me.”
Each of them, strong shifters in their own rights, do as I say. They come to me and offer their obedience. While I control the pack, Izzy and Tamiel rush to the bound women and make quick work of untying them. None of the wolves even glance their way. The focus is on me, their new alpha.
24
Izzy
Grant stands before his pack with the confidence of a true leader. It doesn’t seem to matter that he’s naked and still bleeding from the wound Rushton dealt him, each of the wolves follow his command. My wolf begs to be set free so she can join the rest, but my witch won’t allow it. I have to take care of Helena and Gwen. They don’t look good. While I untied Gwen, Tamiel saw to Helena, and now that we have them both standing on solid ground, it’s obvious they’re suffering.
“Gwen, what’s wrong?” I ask, running my hand over her cheek. Her skin is clammy and pale, eyes glassy as though she’s sick.
“I…I’m not sure. Something is draining my magic.”
It doesn’t make sense. There’s no one here who could possibly be enacting a spell, and I should be feeling the same effects if they’re being drained. I’m part of their coven—at least, I was. “Where is it? How do I stop it?”
Helena’s legs give out and she crumples toward the cement floor. Before she hits the ground, Tamiel scoops her into his arms and tucks her against his chest. “Not again,” he mutters. “I’m not losing you again.”
A weak scoff leaves her. “You can’t lose what you don’t have.”
After helping Gwen to one of the few chairs in the space, I rush to Grant, desperate for him to help me find some way to stop what’s happening.
He’s pulled on a pair of joggers and most of the pack has shifted back to their human forms. It’s obvious Grant is none the wiser about my sisters’ conditions because he greets me with a broad smile and love shining in his eyes. “You’re all right.” It’s a statement, and I don’t miss the relief in his tone. “I’m their alpha now. They won’t harm any of you.”
“I know,” I say, threading my fingers with his. “I can feel it. My wolf sees you as her alpha.”
He gives a low growl that sends a shiver of anticipation down my spine. “You can’t know the effect that has on me.”
I want him to show me, but not until we figure out what’s draining Helena and Gwen. “Later,” I whisper it in his ear. “Helena and Gwen are sick. Something is stealing their magic. Did Tristan or Lachlan offer any information? Was there a spell or something?”
He frowns, jaw going tight. Rushing away from me, he goes to the pile of ash that are all that remain of Tristan’s body and pulls a black stone amulet from the ashes. “This. He said their souls—your souls—were supposed to be imprisoned in this. It can’t be working though. He didn’t do anything. Aren’t there…incantations or something? Candles? You know, witchy sort of things?”
Pursing my lips, I stare at the stone in his hand. Something about it makes me uncomfortable. Perhaps it’s the thought of that thing being a prison for me.
“It’s not the stone,” Tamiel announces, still holding Helena in his arms. “You’re not bonded with them any longer, Izzy. I can feel the distance between you. They have no power without you and it’s draining them to try and compensate.”
It hits me like a punch to the gut. I’m doing this to them. “How did the bond break?” But I understand before he says another word. “I broke the curse.” A smile spreads across my face. “I broke the bloody curse!”
Tamiel growls, “And you broke your coven bond. They’re still cursed. I can feel it hovering over them. You’re safe from its effects, but they’re suffering and it’s going to kill them.”
No. I can’t lose them again. This time I won’t go with them, we won’t be able to find each other again for at least eighteen years when the reborn versions of them regain their memories. “What needs to be done?”
He sighs. “I’m not sure. I just know what I feel.”
Gwen’s words echo in my head. The moon will be your end. She was right. I changed completely because of the full moon, because of Grant. She’d also seen that they’d lose me. Again she was correct, but I’d interpreted it wrong. They lost me as a coven member. I catch sight of Helena’s dirk on the ground next to Rushton’s body. With a flare of magic, I burn away the drying blood until the silver gleams in the overhead lighting. Taking the blade to my palm, I slice a line into my flesh and watch dark blood rush to the surface.
“What the bloody hell are you doing, Izzy?” Grant asks, grabbing my elbow in an attempt to pull me to him.
I shrug out of his grip and throw him a glare over my shoulder. “Saving my coven.”
With determined steps, I make my way to both of my sisters and cut each of their palms as well as my other hand. The three of us link hands and mix our blood as I recite the ancient words we’d once said when we joined Calista’s coven. The air crackles with magic and sends the small hairs across my body standing on end. Powerful blood magic is so m
uch different from nearly everything else. Calista may have thought she had us when she laid the curse over us. That was then. Now, I’m stronger than ever, and there’s no way she’s going to win this. She’s not involved in this magic. This time it is only we three.
Sisters.
Witches.
Sirens.
From now on, we are the siren coven. And we won’t be stopped.
Grant
I don’t think Izzy knows how terrifyingly beautiful she is right now. Her blond hair is flying around in the wind she’s created, and it’s changed from the color of wheat and honey to a nearly white shade. Everything around her and her sister witches is glowing as the magic weaves around them. I can see the spell, tendrils of an eerie luminescent blue color wrapping around their joined hands before it snakes to the center of their circle. Once it joins together, all three of the women throw their heads back and bright light flashes from their eyes as the blue mist shoots up, creating a beam of light. In the blink of an eye, it’s gone and the three of them fall to the floor, hands still joined.
“Izzy,” I say, rushing to her side just as Tamiel calls out Helena’s name and gathers her in his arms.
My little witch blinks up at me, her soft smile one that eases my worry as I help her to her feet. “I’m okay, Grant.”
I run my hands over her, searching for any evidence she’s wrong. “Are you sure?”
She nods and cups my jaw before leaving my arms and taking Gwen’s hands. “We’re our own coven now.”
“Ugh, get off me, you wanker,” Helena grumbles as she extricates herself from Tamiel’s grasp. “Lord, you’re handsy.”
“Forgive me for not wanting you to hurt yourself on the damn concrete floor.” Tamiel is frustrated with the woman, and I understand fully. Both Izzy and Helena are feisty. If he’s got his sights set on her, he’s in for one hell of a challenge.
Getting to her feet, Helena brushes her skirt down and fluffs her long hair. “Well, now. I feel much better. What the hell did you do, Izzy?”
“I shifted you from Calista’s coven to mine. Ours.”
“But the curse,” she says.
“Broken. It happened while I was with Grant, before I came to find you.”
“No.” Helena shakes her head. “I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true. Didn’t you hear Lachlan earlier? He said it himself. Izzy broke the curse.”
Izzy’s brow furrows and she returns to me. “Their eyes aren’t different.”
I hadn’t noticed. The only eyes I want to look at are hers. Following her gaze, I see the copper shade mirrored in both Helena’s and Gwen’s irises. “Why? If you broke the curse—”
“She broke her curse. Not theirs.” Tamiel is standing with his arms crossed over his chest. “Each one must be cursed individually.”
“That fucking cunt,” Helena says, rage turning her expression hard.
“But now we know how to break it.” Gwen steps forward and takes my hand and Izzy’s. “Something must’ve happened between you two that was the key.”
A fuck of a lot happened between us. But I know exactly what it was. The thing that breaks curses in every fairy tale. True love.
“Izzy—” I begin, but she stops me.
“He’s my soul mate.”
Helena shakes her head. “If that were all you needed, you would’ve broken it that first night.”
“No, it wouldn’t. I wasn’t willing to admit it to myself, to say the words out loud. But…I told him I loved him. Then everything changed.”
My heart swells, the deep reach of her love for me giving me more than I ever thought possible. We may not have our mating bond to keep us together, but we have this. Love beyond the magic of our supernatural beginning. I don’t need my beast’s primal connection to her when I have the truth between us. She loves me and I her, nothing will break that. Not a spell, or a curse. She’s mine, but more than that. I’m hers.
Forever.
Epilogue
Izzy
I’m warm and cozy, snuggled against the man I love, and it’s my birthday. I’m twenty-seven. Right now. And I’m alive.
Grant’s hard cock is pressing on the small of my back, the feel of him, so ready for me makes me squirm to offer him some friction—and hopefully wake him up. He gives a low groan and his big hand snakes up my torso until he finds my breast and cups the weight in his palm. God, I love this beast of mine.
“Morning, Beauty,” he rumbles in my ear. “Someone’s awake early.”
I don’t say anything. Instead, I reach down between my legs and part my thighs enough to give him access to my slick pussy. He needs to be inside me. Now.
Pure pleasure races through me as he breaches my entrance, increased by the harsh intake of breath he offers when he sheathes himself to the hilt.
“Fuck, I love the way you feel,” he groans.
“Keep going.” It’s a plea, but I want nothing more than to get lost in him.
He grips my hips and holds me in place while rolling on his back, bringing me with him until I’m straddling his thighs, riding him backward. The feel of his thick length driving as deep inside me as possible makes me cry out atop him. His fingers trail over my ass, up my back, into my hair, and I begin to move. I know I won’t last long like this before I’m pulsing around him, milking him and begging for his climax with only my body. When he sits up and sinks his teeth into my shoulder, right over the place he’d marked me, I lose all control and come with a ragged moan. He follows, filling me with his pleasure as he holds me tight.
I turn around until I’m facing him, still keeping him inside me until we absolutely have to part. The look of pure satisfaction on his face makes my heart hurt because it’s so full of joy. I get to stay. Here. With him.
“You can wake me up like that any time you like.” His words are lazy and soft.
I drape myself across his chest, sighing with deep contentment when he slides his arms around me and presses a kiss to the crown of my head. We fall asleep like that, still joined. I wake after only about thirty minutes to the sound of my phone ringing, and I pull myself off him in order to reach the blasted device.
“Hello?” I say, my voice sleep muffled.
“You’re still alive.” Helena sounds shocked but relieved.
I can’t fight my smile or the hint of hysteria creeping up my chest. “I am.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Me either. I thought for sure she’d have somehow cursed me again.”
“She still can.”
That information hits me like a bucket of ice water poured over my head. She’s right, of course. Calista knows my curse is broken, she knows we’re after her now. But we have something she doesn’t. The black moonstone. “We’re not going to give her the chance.”
“There’s one more thing,” she says, adding to the worry gripping my chest. “Gabriel paid me a visit.”
“What? What did he say?”
“The curse, our curse…it’s not completely broken.”
No. I’m not letting anything take me from Grant. “How?”
“He says you’ll not die at twenty-seven, but that when you do eventually pass on from this world, you’ll be damned to purgatory because of the remnants of the curse. We have to kill her. Falling in love is all well and good, but it’s not going to stop us from eternal damnation.”
Heaving a sigh, I look at my beast. I’ll have near immortality with him as a shifter. But my sisters won’t be so lucky. “Then we kill her. Simple as that.”
“Yes. We will.” She sounds resolute and strong and my worry eases a little. “All right. Back to bed with you. I just had to see for myself if you were still with us. Enjoy your birthday. Tomorrow we’ve got an evil witch to find.”
Helena hangs up before I can respond, and after placing my phone back on the bedside table, I roll toward my love. Grant’s dark gaze is worried and tense. “What was all that about?” he asks.
“It’s my birthday.
” I can’t tell him the rest. I don’t want to spoil this moment between us with doom and gloom.
He presses a kiss to my mark, making a shiver of pleasure run over me. “Happy birthday.”
“I’m twenty-seven.”
Everything stops, speech, movements, breaths. We’re completely still. And then he says, “The curse.”
“I’m still here.” Tears, stupid fucking tears, well in my eyes. But this is more than I ever hoped for. “I know the curse was broken, but there was still part of me that thought I wouldn’t wake up today.”
He wraps me in his arms and holds me to him. “You’re not going anywhere. Not ever. Now that you’re a shifter, you’ll live forever if you’re careful.”
Something in my chest loosens. “That’s good, because I’ve died enough times. I never want to do it again.”
“You never have to.”
“Good.” I snuggle closer to him. “And I get to keep you.”
“You do.”
His words are clouded with loss, and I know why. “I’m sorry our mate bond hasn’t returned.”
“You can feel that?”
“The absence of it.”
“We don’t need it. We’re committed to one another, we know we’re mates.”
“I know, but…I want to fix it. I’m sure I can find a way.”
He leaves kisses on my forehead, eyelids, nose, lips, before whispering, “Marry me.”
I pull back and stare at him, not sure I heard him right. “What?”
“Marry me. Be my wife. What better way to seal our bond than promising to love each other until the end of time?”
“Yes.” My answer comes without a second thought. Excitement builds in my chest at the thought of being married. The last time I’d been a bride, I’d been sent off to marry a king I didn’t know. This…loving Grant, is so different. This is the life I’ve always wanted. For the first time, I have an undefined future. We can do all the things I want, and I can give him everything he deserves. Love, devotion, a home, and children.
