by Tasha Black
“Because they have equal but opposite energy,” Nina blurted out.
“Very scientific, dear, but next time raise your hand,” Professor Sora said.
Nina nodded and ducked her head down.
“She’s absolutely correct,” the tiny professor continued. “The energy in each spell is equal, so they cancel each other out. Just like a positive and negative electrical charge.”
Electrical charge…
That was what I’d felt when the golden eyed guardian laid eyes on me the other day. But I didn’t think there was any spell that could counter the way he made me feel.
My mind went to him, unbidden, and the classroom faded away once more.
6
Cori
The night air was cool and still as we lined up on the cobblestone courtyard.
I shivered, the wet curls hanging down my back practically freezing in place. It seemed unfair that they made us perform a so-called purification in the showers, knowing full well that we’d be sent out into the night immediately afterward for the ceremony.
I’d been at Primrose Academy through dozens of these full moon offerings. They felt like the stuffy ceremonies at the Episcopal church back home - the words repeated so often they became worn and lost their meaning. Until last month, it had never occurred to me that a guardian might actually show up to claim a mate.
I thought back to Bella’s pale, shocked face and the electricity in the air between my friend and her enormous shifter mate as they gazed at each other under the moonlight.
The breeze lifted, carrying the scent of pine needles. My eyes were drawn to the tree line, beyond the boxwood maze that separated the courtyard from the woods. There was a tingling in my blood, and I wished I could disappear into those trees.
I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the call and response chant that Headmistress Hart was leading.
“We gather together here in the sacred circle,” she said, her voice ringing out against the stones. “We perform a sacred duty.”
“We perform a sacred duty,” the students chanted back.
“The library shares her sacred knowledge with us,” she continued. “We protect her.”
“We protect her,” we echoed.
I was starting to feel almost faint, swirls of darkness dancing along edges of my vision.
“The library shares sacred knowledge, the witches give their gifts to protect the library,” she called out. “The guardians protect the castle.”
“The guardians protect the castle,” I repeated with the others.
“The guardians give their strength to protect the castle,” she went on. “We entrust our fates to the guardians.”
My heart was pounding now.
“We entrust our fates to the guardians,” I murmured, wondering what was wrong with me. There was no way that a guardian would show up for the ceremony two moons in a row.
Was there?
A brisk wind swirled in the courtyard suddenly, flapping our gowns against our legs. I gasped and searched the maze and tree line again. But there was no movement there.
As one, our group let out a sigh of collective relief and maybe just a little disappointment after the excitement of last month’s ceremony.
Headmistress Hart opened her mouth to dismiss us and I felt a tightening in my chest. I shouldn’t feel this way. I was looking forward to getting out of the cold for a nice midnight snack and my warm bed.
Before the headmistress could say a word, an earth-shattering roar split the air.
The women beside me all flinched. Nuria even let out a little cry.
My feet were planted to the ground like they had magma deep roots.
The huge wooden door back into the castle blasted off its hinges with a shriek of twisted wood and metal, crashing to the ground in a heap of debris.
Unbelievably, a massive bear stepped over the rubble and out into the courtyard. He lifted his snout to taste the air, searching for something.
I gulped down the cold night air. This wasn’t a ghost - this was what had really been in the tower. This was the guardian whose rasping breaths I heard from the other side of that door.
He stalked around the circle slowly as my classmates cowered and hid their faces.
But I felt no fear, only a sense of numbed wonder.
Me. He was here for me.
As if reading my thoughts, he caught sight of me and picked up the pace, inadvertently knocking into a stone statue with his hindquarters.
There were screams as it hit the cobblestones and shattered.
But he kept moving until he stood in front of me.
In the back of my mind, I noted that it was the same statue I had already broken once before, and wondered if it could be repaired again. Even mending spells had their limits.
I held perfectly still, waiting at the approach of the beast.
His breath misted in the air and I had never felt so aware in my life. I took in every hair on his shaggy body, every droplet of his breath on the cold air, and the dizzying warmth of those golden eyes.
He extended a massive paw toward me, his movement slow, but frightening nonetheless. The size of that paw, of those claws… he could kill me without meaning to, without even trying.
I closed my eyes and waited, frozen in place, thinking of the deep furrows I’d seen in the door at the top of the tower, and how my tender flesh was no match for that hard wood.
Something warm wrapped around my shoulder and I opened my eyes to see that he was human now, standing before me, studying me with those intense golden eyes.
I had just enough time to take in the huge, muscular form and the attendant gasps of the other women in the circle.
Then I was being ripped from the ground and thrown over his shoulder.
“Cori,” Lark cried out from her place beside me.
But we were moving fast, too fast for her to stop him, even if she’d had the strength.
And she didn’t. No one did. He was incredibly strong. No one had lifted me up since childhood. I was sensitive about my size.
But the guardian moved with me as if I were an afterthought.
In the span of a breath, we were inside again, paintings and doorways flashing past. Even upside down, over his shoulder, I knew where I was and where he was taking me.
The tower.
7
Reed
I took the stairs to the tower two at a time, the girl’s satisfying weight over my shoulder, her curvy bottom so close to my face that it was hard to put one foot in front of the other.
All I wanted was to pull her down and claim her here on the stairs, making the whole tower echo with her cries.
But I buttoned my lip and kept moving, finally pushing open the heavy wooden door and closing it behind us.
We were alone in my room at the top of the tower. I eased her gently to the ground, hoping I hadn’t frightened her too much.
She clung to my upper arms instinctively and something broke open in my chest. She knew. She knew I would protect her and keep her safe.
Her scent was so luscious that it was almost addictive.
“Cori,” I murmured, mesmerized.
“You know my name,” she said softly, looking up at me.
Her eyes were wide and frightened. She let go of me and looked back at the ground, hands by her side, as if she were trying not to take up space.
“You have nothing to be afraid of,” I said a little too loudly.
She flinched and took an involuntary step back.
Mates weren’t supposed to do that. She was supposed to feel my devotion across the bond. I knew she sensed it, but she probably had no idea what it really meant.
“I’m the one who is supposed to protect you,” I said, pacing away from her so she wouldn’t see my frustration. “You have nothing to worry about from me. I just had to get you out of there before all those witches started prattling.”
She made a small, strangled sound and I spun on my heel to look at her, praying that she wasn’t
crying. Brute as I was, surely I couldn’t screw this up that badly. She had been my mate for all of three minutes and I hadn’t even claimed her fully yet.
“Those are my friends and my teachers,” she protested. But her eyes were twinkling. That sound she had made was a giggle.
Relief washed over me, and I grinned at her like an idiot.
“You’re right, though,” she went on. “They’ll be talking about this for weeks. So do you want to tell me what this is all about?”
I stared at her stupidly.
“Is this something to do with Bella and Luke?” she asked. “Did they find a clue about the Order and the missing page?”
“You know what the Choosing Ceremony is about, right?” I asked her, choosing my words carefully.
Luke’s mate, Bella, hadn’t known what she was getting into when Luke claimed her. But Bella had arrived at school the day of the ceremony. This girl had been here long enough to know.
She blinked at me, opening her mouth and closing it again.
“Are you… are you claiming me?” she asked at last.
“Not if you don’t want me to,” I assured her, as the beast roared in my chest in protest.
I paced away from her again, trying to soothe it and myself. Everything about being alone in this room with her was driving me wild. Didn’t she feel it too?
“Why did you choose me?” she asked. “How did you know you wanted me?”
I stopped pacing and turned to her.
“Of course I knew I wanted you,” I growled. “I knew it the minute I saw you.”
Her eyes widened and I stalked closer, unable to help myself.
“It’s been hell waiting for the moon to come,” I told her. “I know you feel it too. You came to me last night. I almost broke down the door to get to you.”
Her eyes moved to the door and then back to mine.
Every instinct told me to stop this strange conversation by taking her. But I locked down my desires. No matter how desperate I was to claim her, I knew it was best to be patient and gentle.
Her eyes softened and I prayed for strength.
8
Cori
My heart pounded as I lost myself in those warm golden eyes.
There was something intense and broken about the big shifter. I wasn’t wrong to be afraid. He was different from Bella’s Luke. There was something more… feral about him.
But he wouldn’t harm me. I was sure of it.
He wanted me to be his mate.
I closed my eyes against the images that flashed in my mind of what it would be like to be pinned under that big, gorgeous body. My insides clenched and I felt like a band was tightening between us, pulling me closer to him.
I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself.
“You’re cold,” he said. “I’m so sorry. And you must be hungry. Let’s get you warm and fed.”
He moved away from me before I could answer, so I followed him to the kitchenette on the far side of the big round room.
It was basically a very ancient, very charming, studio apartment, with views out over the hills from every window. The stone walls were exposed, which made it chilly, but otherwise it was a pleasant space.
Though it was nearly empty.
A big mattress on a rag rug next to the kitchenette was covered in furs and pillows and there were a couple of worn paperbacks and a duffel bag on the floor next to it.
Otherwise, the tower was bare. I wondered how long he had been here, prowling around, reading and sleeping.
Waiting for me.
It was clean at least. I had to give him that much.
He grabbed a fur from his humble bed and came close to wrap it around my shoulders. It smelled like him, like the forest, with undertones of something spicy.
As I cuddled with the warm fur, he began banging around in the tiny kitchen, coming up with a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, and a pan.
“Grilled cheese?” he offered.
“Sounds great,” I told him. “My mom used to make that every time I had a snow day.”
“What’s a snow day?” he asked, throwing a bit of butter into the pan.
“It’s when there’s so much snow that people can’t drive safely, so they cancel school and sometimes close some businesses, too,” I explained, thinking it was weird that he didn’t know this. The guardians clearly didn’t interact with the outside world much.
“That sounds inconvenient,” he guessed.
“For adults it is,” I told him. “But kids love it. They get to stay home and play all day instead of going to school.”
“I see,” he said, smiling. “Snow won’t get you out of school here, though.”
“No,” I agreed. “When you live at school, you don’t get snow days. Nothing interferes with Primrose Academy.”
“Your parents must be very proud of you,” he said.
“Actually,” I admitted, “they don’t know I’m here.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, thinking about my normal parents in their normal house. “I guess it just seems like it would be… too much for them. They’re super ordinary. They kind of revel in not standing out.”
He nodded, but his brow was still furrowed.
“Also, there were some weird incidents from my childhood that my magic might explain,” I said. “And they probably wouldn’t like it.”
“What incidents?” he asked.
“Just some things involving the weather,” I told him, not wanting to get into it.
“So it’s true?” he asked. “You have weather magic?”
“In theory,” I said, ducking my head down. “But all I can do with it is cause problems.”
“Don’t do that,” he said. His voice was closer than before, and deeper.
I looked up.
“Don’t be cruel to yourself,” he said gruffly. “The greater the power, the harder it is to wield.”
“That’s what they tell me,” I said, shrugging. “But it doesn’t change the fact that all I can seem to do is smash up the statues around here.”
“I smashed up a statue tonight,” he offered.
“That’s right, you did,” I said, feeling more cheerful. “I think it was the same one, actually. So we have that much going for us, at least.”
“So beautiful,” he murmured. “I love your smile.”
I melted a little. It sounded like a cheesy pick-up line, but he was being sincere. I could actually feel it.
Could this be it? Were we actually meant to be together?
An acrid scent filled the air.
“Shit,” he said, returning his attention to the stove.
I watched as he expertly flipped our sandwiches in the sizzling pan. They were slightly burnt on one side now, just like my mom used to make them.
“I can actually cook, I promise,” he grumbled.
“That makes one of us,” I told him. “My parents were more interested in getting me to do school activities.”
“That’s really nice,” he said, looking down at our sandwiches.
There was something melancholy about him for a moment, a flash of sadness in the midst of all that warmth and wildness.
“Did your parents teach you how to cook?” I asked instinctively.
He shook his head. “The guardians took me in when I was little. Every guardian has to be able to fend for himself.”
“So you can rough it in the wilderness and all that, too?” I asked, sensing that he didn’t want to talk about childhood, though he had definitely stoked my interest.
“Of course,” he said. “I wouldn’t be much of a guardian if I couldn’t go on patrol for weeks at a time.”
“You go on patrol for weeks?” I asked.
“We typically take shifts,” he said. “But in a pinch, yes. I can go on patrol for as long as it takes.”
He got a strange look in his eyes that reminded me of the bear.
He was the bear, I reminded myself. He was ac
tually a bear, not just a man. The idea of it was thrilling and elusive.
There was a clatter as he put a plate down in front of me that brought me back to the present.
“Eat up while it’s warm,” he advised me, eating half his sandwich in a single bite, as if to demonstrate.
I took a nibble. It was delicious, so I took a real bite, closing my eyes and savoring it. If this was what he could make with the odds and ends around here, he was probably a world class chef in a fully stocked kitchen.
When I opened my eyes again, he was staring at me, steamy intensity in his golden gaze.
Everything in me turned as gooey as the melted cheese, and I felt the bond tighten around us again, a delicious wanting so deep it was like pain filled the inches between us. I wanted to climb over the counter and wrap myself around him, anything to assuage the yawning ache.
“I want to see you in the moonlight,” he growled.
My sandwich hit the plate, forgotten.
He leaped effortlessly over the counter and took my hand, pulling me toward the nearest window.
Pale moonlight poured in, painting the floor in a luminous rectangle. I stepped into it, placing my hands on the stone sill to gaze out over the forest.
Then he was behind me, his hands on the sill, just outside of mine, arms around me, caging me in place.
Heat poured off him and the scent of pine needles and spice filled my senses. He nuzzled my hair and shivers went down my spine. Everything in me sang out for his touch.
One of his big hands wrapped around my hip now, pulling me to him, molding our desperate bodies together.
He was going to claim me and I wasn’t afraid. I craved it more than I had ever imagined wanting anything before.
My mind rebelled. I had just met him…
“I-I don’t even know your name,” I murmured, convincing my mouth to obey my brain somehow.
“Reed,” he growled into my hair.
The starry night sky over the trees was fading from me now, the world was narrowing to Reed and his hands and mouth.
“Fuck,” he groaned, dropping his hand from my hip and straightening. “What’s that?”
