by M. L. Briers
True enough, just as he was making his escape, he felt the hard sting of magic against his backside that made him jump in his stride, but he kept on walking.
Eliza bent at the waist and reached into the branches of the downed Christmas tree, catching fairy wings between her finger and thumb, she played pull and tug with a fairy that had a death grip around a branch.
“Let go, I don’t want to pull your wings off,” Eliza hissed as she scowled at the little demon.
“It’s our tree — you cut it down.” The fairy scowled back at her, eyebrows pinched together, and she flatly refused to let go of the branch.
“Well, I’m sure the alpha didn’t know that it was your tree,” Eliza berated her.
“Not the point, all trees are our trees,” the fairy berated her right back.
“Let go,” Eliza zapped her. The fairy released the branch and Eliza stood upright and inspected the fairy right in front of her nose.
“Our tree,” the fairy grumbled back.
“Call off the attack, and not only will we give you something bright and shiny, but I promise to plant twenty new trees in a circle at a place of your choosing.” Eliza wasn’t opposed to a bargain.
“You’re a witch – you’re lying.” The fairy folded her arms and snorted her contempt for Eliza.
“I’m a witch, and I should be zapping. Take what you can get, and you don’t even have to say thank you,” Eliza offered back.
“Thirty trees.”
“How exactly do you believe you have the upper hand here?”
“We know where you live.”
“And the power of three witches says we can find where you live in a heartbeat — think about it — just don’t take too long or the deals off.” Eliza didn’t mind a bargain, but she didn’t like to be taken advantage of.
“Something shiny — and twenty trees – sounds reasonable,” the fairy said before she put her fingers in her mouth and whistled so loudly that everybody stopped doing what they were doing and turned to look at Eliza.
“It wasn’t me,” Eliza said as all three shifter males grimaced at the sound.
“Faeries retreat!” The one between Eliza’s finger and thumb screeched.
The flutter of wings turned into a loud hum as the faeries retreated toward the window en masse.
“No more trouble from you,” Eliza warned the fairy before she released the fae from her grip.
“If you don’t deliver your end of the bargain…” The fairy left it there as she zipped toward the open window, and then she was gone.
Eliza stalked towards the window, reached out and yanked it closed. There was little snow-angel type fairy markings in the snow from where they’d hit, and Eliza couldn’t help but smile.
“Twenty trees – and – something shiny?” Nancy folded her arms, tipped her head to one side, and regarded her friend with raised eyebrows.
“It got the job done, didn’t it?” Eliza offered back with a scowl as she folded her arms in defiance.
“Nice work.” Nancy grinned.
Eliza placed her hands on her hips, blew her fringe out from her eyes, took a deep breath, and sighed it back out again.
“I need a drink,” she announced.
“That sounds like a damn good idea,” Drake said and chuckled when his mate looked surprised by his announcement.
“Finally, you’ve come around to my way of thinking.” Eliza chuckled and offered him a big, beaming grin.
“Now I just need you to come around to my way of thinking,” Drake grinned. It wasn’t just your average grin — it was a damn sexy, drop-dead gorgeous, suggestive grin of epic proportions that made her blush.
“It might just take more than one drink for that,” Eliza giggled.
“I’ll grab a bottle.”
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
~
“Did you notice what I noticed?” Ashley whispered as she stood beside Nancy and leaned in so that the others couldn’t overhear her.
“Tell me what you noticed and I’ll tell you if I noticed what you noticed.” Nancy offered her a smug grin.
“It stopped snowing.”
“Your point?”
“Escape.”
“To tell the truth, I’m too tired to escape right now,” Nancy said. But she grimaced inwardly at the lie.
She was tired, but not too tired. She’d voted to kill her mate, and that thought didn’t sit right with her anymore.
Ashley had voted to escape, but that thought didn’t sit right with Nancy either. She wasn’t sure if the mating pull was in full force within her, or if she was just warming to her mate’s charms. Whatever it was, she was also unsure if she liked that idea or not.
In the meantime, while she was figuring it out, she wasn’t about to do anything stupid like venturing out into the snow with Ashley. She also wasn’t about to let Ashley do anything stupid like going out alone.
“Too tired?” Ashley shot her a questioning look.
“Kind of — yeah.” She lied again.
“Tired?” Ashley offered her a look of pure disbelief.
“Yep.” Nancy offered back, but she couldn’t meet Ashley’s eyes as she lied again.
“As in…?”
“Tired.” Nancy shrugged her shoulders and immediately put one foot in front of the other and walked away from her friend before she had to explain herself anymore.
Heck, she needed to know her own mind before she could ever hope to try and tell someone else what she was thinking.
~
~
~
Eliza finished washing up her hands of fairy dust and magic, dried them off on the towel, and yanked open the bathroom door to find Drake standing in the middle of his bedroom with a bottle of wine in one hand, two glasses in the other, and a big grin that stretched from ear to ear on his face.
Eliza’s heart hit her ribs hard and made a concerted attempt to escape toward him. Somewhere in the back of her mind warning bells were ringing — Eliza wanted to smack that little Quasimodo upside the head and silence those bells.
She’d been the one who had voted to stay. She’d been the one that had stopped running first when her mate was chasing her. She was the first of her friends to realize that fate had given her the opportunity to be happy, loved, and to be a part of another kind of family for the rest of her life.
And he did have wine.
“You think you can bribe me into being your mate?” She tried to keep her voice even and a blank look on her face. She didn’t know if she was pulling that look off, but still.
“Yes.” Drake couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear even if he tried. He wasn’t about to try.
“Huh?” Eliza looked confused; she didn’t have to fake that look.
“No.” Drake chuckled at the look on his mate’s face.
Eliza folded her arms under her ample breasts and watched as his eyes flicked down to take them in, but snapped right back to her eyes once more.
“See, now I don’t know if you’re just trying to play me and backpedal,” she lied.
“I…” Drake’s grin dropped like a stone. His dark eyebrows pinched together as he considered her words.
“Because what’s good for you is good, but did you ever consider at all that what’s good for you might not be what’s good for me?” She had him on the run, and she was going to make the most of it.
“Well, I…” Drake thought about it long and hard. If he was actually following her chain of thought, then she was right, being his mate might not have been what was best for her.
Or was it? Fate seemed to think so. Hell, he liked to think so.
“Didn’t think so,” she tipped her chin up in defiance.
The look on his face was priceless — confusion, constipation, and uncertainty. All good as far as she was concerned.
She wanted to chuckle, but she couldn’t. It would have given the game away, and she wasn’t done with making him squirm just a little bit more just yet.
“Ok
ay, now hold on a minute and let’s back this up.” Drake was confused, and he’d rather try to move heaven and hell that rush his mate into anything, but obviously, she didn’t know that.
“Back up? Like — against the wall?” Eliza raised her eyebrows in expectation.
“Huh?”
Now Drake was really confused. He had to wonder if his brain had farted and he’d missed something along the way somewhere.
“Like — back me up, cage me in,” Eliza did just that. She walked backward until her heel hit the wood, her backside hit the wall, and she questioned him with a look, but, unless he was mistaken, that look was very naughty indeed.
Boy, did he not want to get ahead of himself and grab the wrong end of a stick that she could use to beat him with. Not that she’d need to – he’d be beating himself with it.
“And have your wicked way with me?” Eliza flashed him a damn wicked smile.
Drake made a strange gurgling noise in the back of his throat before he swallowed down hard. His mouth was moving but the only sound that was coming from him was a low, deep, hungry growl that rumbled in his chest and got stuck in his throat.
“That’s…” Drake managed to push out just the one word before his brain gave up trying to make more.
It was true to say that his little brain had taken over from his big brain, and she had painted a very erotic and damn tempting picture within his very dirty mind.
“Do you need me to draw you a picture?” Eliza asked, and when the corners of her lips turned upwards, her eyes sparkled with mischief and humor.
“You just did,” Drake growled.
He wasn’t quite sure how he made his legs move, but he did.
He practically tossed the bottle of wine and glasses onto the top of the chest of drawers, uncaring when one glass fell over, because he only had eyes, and a brain, that was fully focused on her.
Eliza felt the rush of heat and excitement that shot through her body. She didn’t know whether to burst out giggling or shriek that she’d changed her mind and run for the hills.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t sure of her mate, she was, but that hungry look in his eyes and the sheer overwhelming size of the man as he closed in on her – just like a predator hunting its prey, did give her a moment’s pause for thought.
That moment ended when Drake palmed the wall on either side of her body and took her lips with a kiss that made her head spin and her knees weak. Her stomach flipped and then flopped, and her womb was shocked to life by a bolt of pure excitement.
Eliza’s hands palmed the wall behind her. Her fingers curled in much the same way as her toes did.
She had the urge to touch him — feel those hard muscles beneath her fingertips — skin to skin, and she knew that feeling was not going to go away anytime soon.
She was the fish caught on the hook, and he was the fisherman that was reeling her in.
Caught.
Funny thing was that Eliza knew that she was right where she wanted to be.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
~
Nancy might just have figured out her mind after all. She was almost certain that she wanted to kill her mate.
There he stood; right in front of her with a look on his face that practically begged her to put him out of his earthly misery and kill him. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have the means – just one little flick of her wrist with a little magic behind it and … snap.
What annoyed her more than anything else was that she just couldn’t do it. But, ooohhh, how she wished that she could.
The man is more than annoying, he’s … I don’t know what he is, but it’s damn well way more than bloody annoying. She thought, seething inwardly just as the sight of him.
Jerk.
Moron.
Butthead of epic proportions with an ego to match and an attitude to die for.
That’s him die – literally.
If only I didn’t have a guilty gene inside my body.
Better yet, if I had a guilty gene that I could just switch off.
Then … snap … no more problems.
No more guilt.
No more mate.
Simple.
I wish it was.
“Well, don’t just stand there, say something,” Jeff demanded.
Oh boy, say something … is he for real?
I have a whole list of things to say that’ll put me on Santa’s naughty list with a lifetime membership.
“I mean why didn’t you just let the fairies do it — what — did you want just to do it yourself?” Jeff asked. “You could have done it and blamed it on the faeries.” He reached up and ran a hand through his hair.
Nancy folded her arms and just stared back at him.
“Would you really have killed me?” He asked.
“What do you think?”
“I have no idea.”
“Give it a shot.”
“You are a witch, but you also defended me against the faeries — was that just the mating pull kicking in?”
“Maybe I just don’t like fairies,” Nancy gave a small shrug of her shoulders. She wasn’t about to admit to anything.
When backed into a corner; she preferred to come out fighting. But somehow, she didn’t feel like fighting at the moment.
If anything, she felt kind of bad – bad for him.
“Maybe you just don’t like me.”
“Maybe I don’t.” Nancy shrugged once more. She didn’t know what to say to him, but it didn’t matter, she didn’t get another chance.
Jeff gave just one nod of his head and slowly backed away from her. Then he turned on his heels and left the room.
“Damn it,” Nancy muttered.
Maybe Ashley was right after all.
Maybe I should have just left.
What do I know about mates? I couldn’t even keep a goldfish alive when I was younger.
When a howl went up that rattled everything in the room, Nancy almost jumped out of her skin. She rolled her eyes at the ceiling and sighed, tossing up her hand and letting it fall back to her side.
“Of course you did – perfect.” She muttered to herself as she turned on her heels and started toward the nearest sofa. She was just about to toss her backside down onto one of the cushions when Ashley raced into the room and caught her attention.
“It wasn’t you?” Ashley looked confused.
“Why would you think it was me?” Nancy felt aggrieved at her friend’s assumption, especially, after the way things had gone with Jeff moments earlier.
“You didn’t want to leave with me,” Ashley shrugged.
“Yeah, maybe I got that one wrong,” Nancy muttered.
“You want to leave?” Ashley looked confused again.
“I don’t …” she tossed her hands up in frustration. She might have come out fighting when her back was against the wall — but, she never ran away from a flight either.
The trouble was she didn’t know whether this was a fight or not.
“What’s wrong with you?” Ashley had never seen Nancy so up in the air before.
“I’m … conflicted.” Nancy collapsed onto the seat behind her. She tipped her head back against the cushion and stared up at the ceiling as if it had all the answers that she needed.
“You’re conflicted — Eliza just mated — I’m … meh!”
“They grow on you, right?” Nancy said as she lifted her head and watched her friend stomp over to the sofa until she plonked down beside her.
“Right,” Ashley said as she stared at the poor, downed, sorrowful-looking Christmas tree on the floor.
“We’re doooomed!” Nancy groaned.
“Big time.” Ashley sighed.
They sat in silence for a long moment just staring at the sad looking Christmas tree.
“On the plus side…” Nancy started, and Ashley groaned.
“I’m not Eliza. I’m not falling for that one.”
“There really is a plus side,” Nancy offered back.
&nbs
p; “Really?” Ashley asked with a dry tone that said that her friend had better not be messing with her.
“On the plus side,” Nancy started again, and Ashley offered her a warning look. “Our mates are as sexy as all hell.” Nancy chuckled.
“I hear that.” Ashley sniggered.
“I heard that too,” Arthur offered from somewhere unseen.
“Ashley, are walking medicine chests supposed to talk?”
“I don’t think so, and perhaps we should spell that medicine chest to keep it quiet.”
“What a good idea.”
“Consider me as silent as a mouse,” Arthur offered back.
Heaven forbid that he should suffer the wrath of witch mates for the next sixty years or so. He knew which side his bread was buttered, and the two witches were already as good as mates in the pack. Getting on the wrong side of them now would just be counter-intuitive.
“Not even a squeak,” Nancy warned.
The sound of silence came back to them.
“That sounds good to me.” Ashley smile in victory at Nancy.
Then the sound of a mouse like squeak pierced the air and made both witches chuckle.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
~
“So,” the alpha announced as he walked into the room and startled his mate into turning around. Her hands were up in front of her in the blink of an eye, and she was ready to zap him. “It’s about time we finished our discussion.”
“Next time you feel like sneaking up on someone — do it to someone who doesn’t have magic — you almost got your furry little backside singed.” Ashley offered him the evil eye as she grumbled in annoyance and tried to get her heart to stop racing.
“Speaking of which — nice segment back into our discussion from earlier,” Kiel offered.
“That old chestnut again?” Ashley sighed as she turned back to her cup, palmed the sugar pot, and started to spoon copious amounts of the sweet stuff into it.
“Aren’t you supposed to be sweet enough without all that sugar?” The alpha asked as he walked over to where she was standing, rested his hip against the counter, and folded his large arms across his broad chest.
