by K. F. Breene
“Bear shifters.” Joe crossed his arms. “They cause the most bar fights out of anyone.”
I widened my eyes, straining to look, but the guy was already gone. Then I turned my surprised, bewildered, and possibly a little excited gaze to Joe. “Are you a shifter, too?”
He frowned at me. “Yeah. Why, what’d he tell you?” Joe jerked his head at Emery.
“She was living as a sheltered human until about a month ago,” Emery said. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible with someone like her, but… Well, you’d have to meet her mother.”
“Save yourself the headache.” I turned my wrist in Emery’s grasp, trying to loosen the hold. “What do you turn into?”
“A wolf.” There was that growl again, primal and wild, hinting of lush forest and the scent of a fresh kill.
I smiled, closing my eyes as the air around me sizzled. Spicy green and textured, that was what his magic said to me. In a spell form, I’d read it as protective and loyal, steadfast and trustworthy. Something to help, not hurt. Something to rely on.
I wondered if that changed with his moods, or if his intentions were perhaps different when he was in wolf form.
“Everyone is classifying this as a guild matter,” Joe said, and I could feel that he was ignoring Emery’s earlier request to keep the wolf at bay. At least the magical part of it. “Roger doesn’t have the power to take them down, so he has no choice but to steer clear of anything they’re after. Same with the MLE office. It’s just you and the guild on this one. But Emery…” Joe scratched his scruffy chin and shifted. Muscle rippled along his robust body. “The guild has gotten stronger since you left. More ruthless. No one engages them, because they rule this town. No one can go up against them. This is a battle you can’t win. Even with what’s going on, and even if Roger sent some shifters to help, you’re no match. I know you want closure for your brother, but it’s not worth your life. Or hers. Your brother was a good man. He’d tell you the same thing. You should take your pretty friend and get out of town.”
Emery stared down at me, and something I couldn’t identify moved in his eyes. “I can’t. They would follow.”
“You’d be surprised,” Joe said. “They haven’t had much luck spreading their influence to other towns, and certainly not other states. They rule Seattle, but they don’t have a good hold on other places. They’d probably let you go.”
Emery’s eyes dulled for a moment and his gaze slipped to nothingness. A moment later, he was blinking and back to life. He shook his head. “I appreciate the warning, and that is more tempting than you probably realize, but if I send her away, they’ll hunt her down with all their resources and she’ll be captured. Not killed, captured. Anyone who helps her will die in the process. I won’t leave her to that fate.”
Joe nodded. “Stay safe, and let me know if you need anything.” He put his hand over the bar for Emery to take. It took him a moment to realize Emery was busy holding my hands.
“Honestly, I’m fine,” I said, shaking my arms.
Emery didn’t comment, nor did he let go. I was starting to think the time he’d spent with my mother and I had irreversibly scarred him.
Joe dropped his hand and turned to leave, but stopped after a couple steps and turned back. “Just one more thing. I was around when you let loose with Conrad.” I could hear the song of the hunt in his tone. I laughed with the exciting and adventurous feel of it. “I’ve always found it a little jarring to be near naturals, dual-mages or not. The power’s almost too harsh. Nearly unbearable. But this…” He made a circle in the air with his finger. “This is more powerful than I remember, but…pleasant. It sings to my primal side. It’s almost like it’s calling to me, urging me to follow your lead. Is that what you’re intending?”
Emery looked down at me, waiting.
“Wait, are you asking me?” I tried to point at myself. Trapped hands were really distracting.
“She hasn’t had any training,” Emery said, stepping back and dragging me with him. “I don’t think she knows what she’s doing right now.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “You mean the—” I almost said magic. “The stuff near our hands? Because that isn’t me; that’s the electricity we keep feeling. Remember earlier today?”
Joe’s brow furrowed and he tilted his head at me. “Where did you find her?”
“She tried to run me over with her car.” Emery pulled me toward the door.
Booming laughter followed us out. “My kinda girl.”
“How’d you know I was trying to run you over?” I asked. Emery wrapped his arm around my shoulders and held my wrists in his other hand. “And what are you assuming I’ll do if I have my hands free? I realize the danger is gone. I’m not going to zap anyone.”
“You’re pulling elements from everything around you right now, whether you can see it or not. You’re collecting them together into an extremely organized mass the likes of which I’ve never seen before. All it would take is a thought for you to cobble them together and create something big. Something lovely, I have no doubt, since Joe was right about how pleasant this magic feels, but something aimed at the shifters in some way. That would affect ninety percent of that bar. You don’t need every shifter in town knowing how much power you have. We’ll have to find another use for it.”
“That was a shifter bar?” I glanced back over my shoulder. Or tried, anyway. “I’m still in total awe that shifters actually exist! It’s nuts. But I heard his wolf. I…felt it. The magic. It was a really awesome feeling.”
“What is this strange gift you have? I wonder if it’s unique or if others have it in some way.” He pushed me down a side street and into an alleyway. A light mist drifted down from the darkened sky, one of the more annoying weather patterns in this area of the world. Sunshine or rain, fine, but don’t tease us with this in-between annoyance.
“Couldn’t you feel all that? I mean, the power was pumping between us. Right? That’s what it felt like.”
“Yes, it was,” he said roughly, but didn’t offer any more. Instead, he veered us to the side and stopped, facing the wall.
“Is this where you kill me?” I asked. “Because that won’t go well for you.” Unfounded threats—I was great at them.
“If we were in a field with nothing around us, I would simply step away and let you blow. But we’re in a city filled with dangerous magical people, and I can’t do that. So to control what you have brewing, I’ll have to be hands-on.”
“Hands on what?”
His smile barely registered in the dim lighting of the alley. “You, unfortunately. I’ll be holding your hands…or maybe you’ll hold my wrists? It’s been a long time since I was trained by a mentor. I forget the guidance portion of it. We’ll have to figure out what feels right. So I’m going to step behind you and reach forward for your hands, okay? I’ll give you as much space as I can. Only our hands, and maybe arms, need to touch. I’d do it another way, but I don’t know how.”
“So you’re going to expend a lot of effort and probably get the same result?”
His blown-out breath mussed my hair. He pulled my wrists toward his side and shifted, moving behind me. “That’s kind of how my life works, so probably.”
“Don’t worry—that’s how my life works, too. Misery loves company.”
He did as he said, moving behind me and clasping my wrists in front of my chest. His elbows grazed my upper arms, but his chest did not touch my back. Instead, he strained away, his head back and to the side, as though I had a horrible stink he could barely stand to smell.
I wrinkled my nose and wiggled within his arms. This felt wrong. Uncomfortable and off-putting. The low hum in his hands on mine seemed dangerous and ill at ease. The pulse in the air around us felt sporadic instead of rhythmic. Even the energy I’d grown so comfortable with pushed and pulled aggressively, not finding the peace and natural current I was used to.
It occurred to me that, even before I’d known I had magic, I’d always been in tune with
nature, more so than most people. I knew its currents and could feel them soaking peacefully into my soul. Most importantly, I knew what felt right, and what felt off.
This felt off.
“Okay, so first we’re going to—”
“No.” I closed my eyes and let my temperamental third eye guide me. Whatever felt wrong needed to be amended, and that didn’t require my brain power, it required my intuition.
I just hoped this wasn’t one of those times when, instead of helping me, my temperamental third eye created a much bigger problem.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“What’s the matter?” Emery asked with his feet spread apart and his body pulled away to give her as much room as humanly possible. As a kid, when Isaias had done this to help him learn, the size difference between pupil and mentor had been much larger. That, and they’d established trust and a parent-child sort of mentality. As much of a lie as it had been, at the time, proximity hadn’t been a problem.
But this was a grown woman. A beautiful, charismatic, witty grown woman with sexiness in spades. The situation was vastly different. Women in general didn’t like strange men pressing against them, and this one, with her naivety and overprotective mother, had probably had few encounters up until this point. She might react aggressively to the situation. Not that he would blame her, but with all the magic pumping around her, that would work out badly for him.
“You’re not doing this right,” she said, annoyance in her voice. She wiggled, and her shapely butt glanced across his groin.
“What—are you doing?” He jerked his lower half away. His jaw hit off her head and she flinched, their hands pushing and pulling at each other.
Magic pulled harder on their surroundings, the tone and mood changing drastically. The pleasant, delicate hum from before turned wild and unruly, the type of magic he’d always struggled with in his dual-mage pairing with Conrad.
“Stop!”
He froze at her whip-crack command.
“Just chill out for a second, would you?” she barked. “You’re too wound up. You’re messing everything up.”
“What are you talking about?” He felt her tug on his hands.
“You’re uncomfortable, which is making me uncomfortable, which is affecting everything else. Just…relax. Feel the world around you. It’s a pretty gross little alleyway you’ve pulled us into, but there is still beauty if you look for it. There is still balance.”
Her hands spread out within his, her fingers pushing outward. Following her lead, he threaded his fingers between hers, immediately feeling a soft hum vibrate up his forearms. She tugged again, and he grudgingly stepped forward, his front now glancing against her back.
“Let’s pause for a moment and see what we’ve got,” she said, her voice a soft, feminine hum. “Just breathe.”
He couldn’t help a smile, hearing his words in her firm tone. He breathed. In and out, rhythmically, slowly letting the world drop away. Even though a mistake would mean death or worse, he let his troubles and pain melt until they oozed out of him. He focused on the clean-smelling air, fragrant with her fabric softener and shampoo, filling and exiting his lungs. On the feel of her warm skin against his, so comforting and reassuring, like it had been in the car when she’d taken his hand. On the sparks of fire that ignited in his body each time her back brushed against his front, or her butt or legs slid against him.
He let his eyes droop, then close, listening to her soft breath, the speed and depth matching his own. Feeling the movement of her body. He laid his cheek against her head before pulling her in a little tighter, flush with her now. His hands curled around hers, the grip a little too tight, but the fear of her pulling away took control.
Still he focused, shutting out the world.
Heat unfurled within his body, but not the romantic kind. It wasn’t lust or even attraction. It was so much deeper. Raw energy shot up from his core, the source of his survival magic. The hum in his arms intensified until it was traveling his body, a live wire. Energy pulsed around them, comforting, peaceful, pleasurable. Sensual.
Flutters rolled his belly. Tingles rode his skin. A deep, earnest pounding rose within him. A consuming drumbeat.
“Emery, look,” Penny said in an awed whisper.
He fluttered his eyes open, but those wonderful feelings stayed with him. His focus didn’t fracture. His thoughts didn’t scatter.
Holding on to her, he was perfectly grounded. Balanced. The way magic should be, and something he’d never experienced before, not even when he and Conrad had been in the zone.
“What are you, Penny Bristol?” he asked in barely more than a whisper. Bursts of light and color surged through the alleyway, rolling and flowering in the air, the texture highly detailed and intricate. But for all its beauty, it had nothing on her.
“A girl that has had to find peace in the quiet times between getting into trouble and causing havoc.” She let her head fall back, hitting his collarbone.
Not able to help it, he turned his head, letting his cheek slide against hers. “That was probably your magical side trying to break free.”
“This is beautiful.” She dropped her hands until he was holding her tightly around the waist.
“I’ve never created something like this,” he said, watching the magic play and frolic. It seemed like it had a life of its own.
“I haven’t either, if it makes you feel any better.”
He chuckled. “It does, actually.”
He thought she might turn her head a little more. Let her lips glide across his. Instead, she sighed and straightened up. “This is breaking a rule, right? Doing magic in the alleyway?”
Despite her attention shift, the feeling around them didn’t wobble. The magic rolling playfully through the air didn’t shift or change.
“Your focus is unreal,” he said, feeling his eyes go wide. “How can you keep this level of…balance? Does it come naturally to you?”
She shrugged as she glanced around. “Practice, probably. I love this feeling. I mean, it has never been this strong. The zing of electricity, the pulse of the energy, the sheer magnitude of oneness—none of that’s normal for me. But the basis of it is. It’s something I work toward all the time, like with my stones. It has helped with my temperamental third eye.”
“Your what?”
She shrugged again, and now things did falter. The bubble around them cracked, ready to break. Something tugged at his middle, attempting to distract him.
He rubbed his palms up her arms and then back down, refocusing on her. Not letting his attention wander.
Miracle of miracles, the magical pocket they’d created—their bubble of balance and peace in topsy-turvy surroundings—strengthened again.
“What happened just there?” he asked softly, finding her hands again and holding them.
“Nothing. It’s fine. Let’s—”
“It’s not nothing, Penny Bristol. Tell me.”
She looked away, and the magic in their surroundings wobbled again. “I have a lot of baggage when it comes to the weird little things I do. I realize that some of those things are magic, but clearly my third eye is just as strange as ever.”
“Strange? Somehow I’m helping with this, instead of tearing it down like I used to do when I worked certain spells with Conrad. I’m speaking and moving and having a conversation in the midst of all this.” He used one of her hands to gesture at the magic. “Because of you. You’re stabilizing me, I have no doubt, and the only way you could do that is by hours and hours of focus, trying to find balance your whole life. There is no other explanation. So cherish that third eye of yours, regardless of how temperamental it may be.” He laughed and pulled in a set of elements, weaving them through his fingers entwined with hers. Shadows draped over them, obscuring them from anyone passing by. He should’ve done it immediately, but he’d been too caught up.
“And don’t forget,” he said, feeling the other elements passing over and around them. “I have a third eye t
oo. It’s my Seer ability. It has kept me alive more times than I can count.”
“My third eye doesn’t keep me out of trouble. What was the spell you just did?”
“I didn’t say my Seer ability kept me out of trouble. I said it’s saved my life. Trust me, you have nothing on the amount of havoc I can create.” He paused to shift gears. “I created a light-concealing spell. Very little power and energy and focus needed. It’s a breeze in this bubble. Here, I’ll do it again.”
He weaved the spell again, moving slower this time. “This is as slow as I can mix things together without the elements of the spell frazzling.”
“Do you use the term ‘elements’ for everything?”
“Kind of, yes. It’s easier.” He got to the end and let the identical spell drift into the air around them. “Do you want to try—”
She shrugged off his hand and started weaving immediately. He chanced stepping around the side of her, wondering if the bubble would break. Amazingly, it held, even when his focus switched from the magic at her fingertips to her teeth chewing her plump bottom lip. Her brows dipped in concentration—or maybe frustration—before her eyes squeezed shut.
At once, the wobbly weave drifted into harmony. The spell came together perfectly, the weave not as tight as his, but the elements in all the right places.
She didn’t work with magic by seeing, like he did—she worked by feeling. Witches did that, for the most part. Was that because they didn’t have extensive spell training either? Was this the natural path found by someone who’d been given no map?
She flung her hand and the spell fell against the wall, not doing much to an already shadowed area.
“Did that work?” she asked, opening those large, luminous eyes. She caught him staring and a crease wormed between her brows. Fire sparked in her eyes, and it wasn’t the lustful kind. It was the explosive kind that promised pain. Whatever she’d seen on his face, she had not liked it.
“Great job.” He took a large step back and barely stopped himself from raising his hands in surrender. Or maybe an apology. “You got it on the first try.”
