by Jayla Kane
I didn’t leave that light on, I thought, my body going rigid.
My claws slid out, slick and vicious, and the smell of my own blood filled my nose. That’s fucking inconvenient, I thought. Those dipshits in the Ashwood Coven couldn’t have meant to design me that way, assuming they thought it through at all. I waited a minute to get my bearings and studied the house; sure enough, there was someone inside. The Sheriff’s scent was on the doorstep, but it wasn’t fresh. I knew the scents of all his best fighters now, and although I could detect several out here under the treeline I hadn’t smelled anything by the house. I crouched down and waited, my eyes sweeping over the interior of the cabin, back and forth, until I crept down the ridge, towards the back. The place was so small I should’ve been able to see whoever was there, but they must have been hanging out in the bedroom.
Motherfuckers.
There was no stealth involved; it was stupid to leave a light on. They had to know I’d be back, and if they’d seen the show last night there was no way in hell they could have thought they’d live through this invasion of my privacy.
I stayed far back, then started climbing up the trunk of one of the thicker trees. I only needed a few feet of clearance. The windows were open to view above the partial curtains I used to cover the lower half of the glass, giving the house a brightness inside while the moon was full. I remembered Baby’s beautiful face, gazing out at it last night before I showered, and was filled with fury. Whoever the fuck this was, they better start counting their breaths.
And then I saw the bedroom, and almost fell out of the tree.
They were fucking.
I stared for a second, felt a swell of sheepishness and shook it off. What the hell? Did someone get snowed in and find the place empty, some confoundingly stupid tourists out hiking after they were all supposed to have emptied out of town before the fall came? The shock wore off and I started assessing them… And it was strange. The guy was big. Like, real fucking big—as big as me. He was working that girl over like he’d been waiting his whole life to—
Holy shit, I thought, my eyes honing in on her face.
It was perfect. Heart-shaped, her full lips open as she moaned in ecstasy, long, thick eyelashes fluttering as she gasped and held on… Honey colored eyes, flashing in the moonlight.
He had my tattoos.
Fuck. Fuck.
I clung to the branch, slowly sinking down to the ground, my head swimming.
It’s not possible, right? This is not possible.
I looked up at the full moon, the face of it complete and still, the surface pock-marked and familiar. In the silence between the movement of the trees, I could hear the wolves, back through the paths, down in the clearing. I could hear voices, howls, a sound that I was sure had to be that red-headed woman singing along to a fiddle. The wind changed, and I smelled fried chicken.
I stared back at the house and tried to get myself together.
Have you noticed anything different?
When I jump, I don’t go fast, like the characters in the movies seem to. Nothing slows down around me, I don’t get a cool montage. I’m just me, and I think about where I’m going, and I’m there—the world has holes in it, I feel like, and I just happen to be the only person I know who can find them. I walk into the hole and out the other side, and suddenly I’m holding Baby in my arms and all’s right with the world. It’s not a perfect explanation, but the real one—the one that relies on how I can sense the shape of the space, the magnitude of the pressure, the way my body carries the imprint of everything I pass through as I go… There’s no describing it, not really. Not with any accuracy. I just… Jump.
And now… I jumped to last night. The night before, the first night I spent inside Baby Keller, when my heart finally felt like it could rest. I was so scared and so fucking fulfilled and so…
I’d gone back in time. I jumped through time.
Yeah, Tris, I thought. That’s fucking different alright.
I wondered if I should try to jump back to the present. Would I end up in the right place? What if I somehow missed, and got lost? How did I do this?
I wandered closer to the cabin without realizing what I was doing, and held still, suddenly slammed with a thousand truly fucking strange possibilities.
A part of me felt curious; I could go see us, together, and it wouldn’t technically be too weird, right? But the thought of seeing me—not Baby, though, that I was totally fucking in to—going at it didn’t really appeal. I was turning into enough of a fucking mess without any new insecurities haunting my ass.
It would be nice to see her, though…
I shook off the idea, weirded out by the thought of it, and went back to the trees. I was slowly making my way down the ridge, towards the barn, the shadows black beneath the rigid edge of the moon’s rays where the trees grew thick and tall. And then I stopped moving, my whole body going rigid.
It took me a minute to find the place. I sniffed the air; no one was here. The wolves were all still down in the clearing, and it would be faster for them to cut through the forest higher up to get to the road, rather than head back to the cabin’s driveway. Not that any of them would be coming this way after watching that fight, I thought. None of them were that dumb.
I leaned against the tree and waited.
It took about two hours, maybe a little more. And then I saw the curtain move aside, the slightest shift in the fabric telling me someone inside was peering out. I hunkered down on my knees and waited, trying to remember what I’d seen, and then a flash of violet in the dark brought it all back. The wolf inside the cabin stared out at me, the phosphorescent lining of its eyes—my eyes—glinting violet beneath the moon.
And that’s what I was seeing, I remembered. Violet eyes. An animal’s eyes.
I took a step back, further into the trees. Then another. The curtain moved again after a long moment, and I remembered laying down next to her, knowing we were safe, that someone had our backs.
And I did.
I leaned against the trees, waiting until the moon dropped below the horizon to try again. I wasn’t sure I could do it; wandering through time had no appeal for me. In fact, the idea of leaving my girl behind made it fucking daunting to try, but the idea of constantly chasing my own self so I could somehow see her seemed much fucking worse. In the end, I realized that was probably how I ended up here: I was looking for her.
Like always.
Lead me home, sugar, I thought, closing my eyes just as the first rays of light touched down on the hard crust of snow, and when I opened them again the air around me was whistling and then it smelled like rain, fire, sex… And Baby.
“Did you forget something sugar? You okay?” She sat up in the bed and rubbed her eyes with her knuckle, long nails glittering in the slowly shrinking moon that had just announced itself above the rim of the horizon. I stared at her, my heart going a million miles an hour.
“What day is it?”
“What?”
“Baby, what day is it?” I rushed over to her desk and picked up her phone; I heard her swing her legs over the edge of the bed, the swish of satin on her skin as she stood up and padded over to where I stood and stared down at the screen.
I’d left her at quarter after six. I’d been gone for eight hours, give or take; her phone told me it was just past eight the same night I’d left.
“Hunter?” Baby thought I was at the cabin for about an hour and a half or so, the same night I left, when in actuality I’d traveled back in time to the night before and spent hours there watching the cabin in the woods. Time travel. I was now teleporting through time. When I put her phone down, my hands were shaking so hard it rattled when it hit the wood. She grabbed them, pulled them tightly against her chest. “You’re scaring me, you bastard,” she said, her eyes wide. “What the hell is going on—”
“Get dressed, sugar,” I said. My voice was shaking too. “We need to talk to Tristan. Now.”
CURSE ME, the sixth book
in the LEGENDS OF THE ASHWOOD INSTITUTE SERIES, is coming out later this month! Join my newsletter for updates and extras!
The first volume of the Legends of the Ashwood Institute series is LIVE and available on KINDLE UNLIMITED
DARE ME, DENY ME, ENSLAVE ME… Start from the beginning and find out how the mystery unfolds in the lives of a cast of brutally entwined young witches, shifters, and more
Click the link to find out...
Author Bio
I have a newsletter! Sign-up for new release dates, freebies, deleted scenes and cupcake trivia! It’ll be fun, I promise: Jayla's Newsletter
I also hang out on Goodreads; you can follow me there and on Amazon for updates on new releases if cupcake misadventures are not your thing… Although, I think you will miss the deleted scenes I’m super excited to share with you. So think about it. Just sayin’.
The short:
I'm a life-long reader, fantasy addict, cupcake hoarder and mom, which somehow hasn't ameliorated any of the previously mentioned questionable habits.
The long:
I started writing dark paranormal romance after getting addicted to a couple bully romances in a row and realizing I'd been in love with the trope since I met good old Logan Echolls (I'm a devout marshmallow as well). It took me a while to find the right recipe to explore all of my bad habits in one twisty plot, but I dedicated my waist line (please see above, re: cupcakes) and my extremely limited down time (please see above, re: mom) to it, and have created the Legends of the Ashwood Institute series. It has everything I love: hotness, sweetness, ANGST, a good bully, a bad girl (or twelve), witches, mysteries, small town drama, MAGIC, secret societies, loads of smexyness of the darkest kind and that hurt/comfort dynamic that makes me waaay too invested in fictional characters.
The Legends of the Ashwood Institute Series
DARE ME
“…so dark and gripping, I couldn’t put it down…”
DENY ME
“…fabulous dark romance…beautifully written…”
ENSLAVE ME
“…You won’t want to stop reading…”
DEFY ME
ENCHANT ME
CURSE ME
