Wolf Tainted Union: The Complete Collection - 6-Book Bundle (Books 1-6) - A Paranormal Werewolf Shifter Romance

by Hart, Melissa F.

  The crowd whooped and cheered, eager for retribution as some way in the distance, hidden by the trees of the forest stood Caspian’s Uncle Theo, listening to events unfold with a grave look upon his face.

  “So war it is,” he concluded sadly before swiftly running in the direction of his village.

  TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK FOUR: A Brewing Storm - Volume 4

  ***

  A Brewing Storm

  ***

  Synopsis

  Following the attack on their coven, the witches prepare for war whilst Iris struggles to forgive Caspian for killing her mother. As tempers fray and the sound of war drums fill the air, can Allegra and Caspian’s young love continue to survive when their union is the cause of so much despair and destruction?

  ***

  The Vale of Glendora was usually a silent, serene place. But not this night. This night the leaves upon the trees shook with fear, the animals within the woods crept down into their dens and did not venture out. The whole world was poised and frightened as they heard the imminent whispers on the wind; war was coming.

  Agatha stood with several other witch and warlock elders around a giant cast iron cauldron painted as black as the night. A fire burned beneath the cauldron, the yellow flames occasionally spitting and lashing out, almost catching the long flurry of the witches’ gray hair.

  With their withered hands and long, bony fingers, they stirred the contents of the cauldron and uttered an ancient enchantment. With each stir of the pot, unearthly screams were released from within.

  “Stir it right, stir it good, stir the souls of the misunderstood. Soon it burns, soon it tears, soon the wolves will know despair,” the witches sung together in an eerie, high-pitched tone.

  Agatha gripped the stirring spoon tightly and ensured that each circulation of the pot was accurate and precise. This was a very specific incantation, and she wasn’t prepared to get it wrong.

  “Know our pain, know our plight, to the wolves’ front door we bright this fight!”

  Some of the elders began to cackle with glee. There was nothing they loved more than a good enchantment.

  Dark clouds of smoke began to billow from the cauldron, filling the air in the town hall so that it became dense and thick. Soon Agatha couldn’t even see the elders standing beside her. The cloud moved around them as though it were a living entity. It didn’t choke their lungs or burn their eyes, instead it swarmed around them, gathering in mass.

  “Witches together, warlocks as one, once blood has been spilled, it cannot be undone.”

  The group of elders continued to chant as the black smoke intensified. Agatha watched it grow with delight. It had been so long since she’d seen this spell be performed, and it brought joy to her aged heart to see that she still held the necessary power to resurrect the shadow lord.

  The cauldron kept being stirred and the room was filled with dark smoke, which began to coil and form itself in to a giant, shapeless beast that had fire-red eyes. Its shifting mass prevented it from having any form. The smoke ebbed and flowed around it but kept circulating back to the central being, remaining around those blood red eyes.

  “Shadow Lord be our knife, Shadow Lord strike them down, Shadow Lord brings the terror to them that they dared to bring to our town.”

  Suddenly an ear-splitting roar echoed out from the Shadow Lord. The elders didn’t even flinch when they heard the blood-curdling sound. Instead they ceased stirring the cauldron and wore satisfied smiles upon their old withered faces.

  The Shadow Lord roared again, louder this time and the doors to the town hall suddenly shot open, revealing the night beyond and the endless, starry sky. The Shadow Lord darted out of the hall and into the world with surprising grace. Within a second, he was completely gone.

  Smiling, Agatha turned and faced her fellow elders. “I’d say that went well,” she announced happily.

  “As well as it could,” another objected sourly.

  “Marion, have you something to say?” Agatha snapped.

  “So many witches lie dead! Must we use our power only to resurrect the Shadow Lord? Can we not resurrect those we have lost?” Marion demanded, her eyes now black as coal.

  Agatha noticed the other woman’s eyes and gestured to her to shake away the darkness. When a witch practiced dark magic it consumed them, turning them as dark and wicked as the magic itself. But the elders had learnt spells to conceal the gathering darkness within them. Marion noticed the gesture and drew a hand across her eyes. When the hand fell away, the black of her irises had been replaced by a more human, steely gray.

  “We cannot bring back the dead,” Agatha announced decisively.

  “Why not?” Marion cried.

  “Because we cannot be seen to practice black magic, you know that. The Shadow Lord is different. He works away from the coven, away from us. We cannot bring back the fallen. The cost to our souls would be too great for any magic to conceal.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” Marion conceded.

  “We need to renew the memory spell,” an old warlock reminded the circle of elders. “Some of the older members of the coven remarked that they were having nightmares where the world was covered in blood.”

  “Very well.” Agatha nodded, drawing the witches and warlocks back around the cauldron. They began to chant a fresh incantation.

  “Forget what you know, forget what you saw, all is well in the Vale of Glendora for evermore,” they chanted in unison.

  More smoke began to billow out of the cauldron, only this time it wasn’t dense and dark. It was light, like a mist or fog. It crept out along the floor and out of the town hall. But unlike the Shadow Lord, it didn’t immediately leave the village. Instead it continued to creep along the ground like some menacing visitor. It crept up to each house and entered beneath the door. Then it crept along the floors, up the staircases and into the beds of each sleeping witch and warlock.

  The fog smothered them as they slept and robbed them of all memories of the attack upon the village. Those who had been slain had merely left the village, choosing the path of darkness. No one had been killed, there had been no violence. Their memory of Allegra upon the stake was also taken. All the negative memories were replaced with a harmonic sense of wellbeing.

  Satisfied that the spell had taken hold, Agatha ceased chanting and let her old brittle arms fall by her side. The other elders followed suit and smoke ceased to drift out of the cauldron.

  “We need to schedule another choosing ceremony,” Agatha told the gathered group.

  “And what of the wolves?” asked another witch.

  “The wolves will come, but not yet,” Agatha explained. “The Shadow Lord will see to that.”

  The elders began to move away from the cauldron, heading back toward their respective homes. Agatha lingered back for a moment, looking sadly down at the now still iron pot.

  “It couldn’t have been stopped,” an old warlock said quietly from the doorway to the town hall.

  “Couldn’t it?” Agatha replied dryly. She looked down at her hands, aged by time and hardships. She felt like they were just as covered in blood as the wolf’s hands.

  “We did everything we could to prohibit such a union,” the warlock continued.

  “Yet still it occurred,” Agatha sighed. Love always seemed to find a way to defeat even the most potent magic.

  “The path of the heart is a hard one to change,” the warlock told her kindly. “Even for beings as powerful as us.”

  “Indeed.” Agatha turned away from him and listened to his footsteps carry away into the night.

  Of all the magic she knew, she had yet to learn how to tame the heart. A heart’s desire was almost impossible to supersede. She should know. Weary from the night’s magic, Agatha stepped away from the town hall. Small swirls of mist still danced around the ground. Above her a thousand stars sparkled down over the Vale, making it seem even more magical a place than it was.

  Listening to the wind, Agatha tried to catch
where the Shadow Lord now was, but he was out of ear shot. His movements had been swift. She reasoned that he’d reach the wolves by daybreak. That would show them. They’d think twice about spilling witch blood then.

  Walking over to her own home, Agatha surveyed the ground of the town square, which was now pure dirt. There was no trace of blood or reminder of the carnage the town had recently seen. But in Agatha’s mind, the destruction remained fresh and horrific, its horror captured forever in her thoughts.

  She could still hear witches crying out in agony, pleading for their lives, pleading to be saved. Just one lone wolf had decimated the coven. It terrified her to imagine what an entire pack could do. She just hoped that the Shadow Lord would be retribution enough, an example of the power they held and how they would be prepared to wield it.

  “I wish we could cast a fog over our own memories,” Marion noted sadly as she stood by the well, peering down into it. Her loose gray hair danced in the evening breeze, circling her like spider webs.

  “But we cannot,” Agatha sighed. “The burden of what happened is ours alone.”

  “Yet it is for the greater good, for the protection of the coven.” Marion smiled slightly.

  “If they remembered, they’d want vengeance and they’d set out into the woods alone. You saw what that one wolf did. Our young witches and warlocks would be no match for them.”

  “But we are,” Marion said confidently. “If all the wolves came biting at her heels, we could unite and destroy them.”

  “And shift the balance?” Agatha quipped. “The balance of magic in the Vale is already so delicate. Each spell we cast risks tipping it in the wrong direction.”

  “What if they do come? What if the Shadow Lord serves to only encourage their volatile temper?” Marion fretted.

  “Then so be it,” Agatha said with a dark look upon her old face. “If the wolves want war, we shall give it to them. I’ll die before I see another witch pulled apart by those brutes of the moon. They should be grateful we don’t cast a spell that prohibits them turning to their human form!”

  “That would be delightful!” Marion cackled.

  “And dangerous,” Agatha warned. “It is the human form that keeps the wolves in line, a connection to their humanity. Without it, they are merely beasts. Wild and savage.”

  “It will soon be dawn.” Marion glanced up and saw that the sky was becoming gray and that the stars were starting to dissolve.

  “Indeed.” Agatha looked to the east, to the direction of the wolf village and the direction her summoned Shadow Lord had taken when he fled from the coven.

  “The wolves have something quite exciting to wake up to!” Marion smirked as her eyes lit up mischievously.

  “Indeed they do,” Agatha agreed as her own eyes darkened with malice. “Let us see how they enjoy being attacked, having their own kind pulled apart limb from limb and left to bleed and die. Let us see then how bold and brave these wolves are. Will they keep harboring that fugitive? That harlot who brought war to our doorstep?”

  “They might cast her out!” Marion suggested hopefully.

  “And without the protection of her precious lycans, she will be vulnerable. Like a little lamb to the slaughter. We will reclaim her and finish what we started.”

  “So we’ll still burn her?”

  “Yes, Allegra must burn for her crimes against her kind. I’ll stop at nothing to see it done.”

  A rogue wind brushed between the two women, causing dirt to fly up and swirl around them.

  “Do you see that?” Agatha cackled and pointed a long finger in the direction of the wind.

  “The wind?” Marion questioned.

  “Yes, the wind,” Agatha clarified. “A storm is brewing in the vale, and it’s going to be glorious!”

  Both women leaned back and cackled wickedly as the wind continued to stir up around them, creating dust clouds that danced in the breeze and pulled through their long gray hair.

  ***

  Theo kept a constant, watchful eye on the forest that bordered his village. As the rest of the pack slept, he kept guard. A nervous energy kept his senses keen.

  He turned sharply before Caspian was in view, sensing his approach.

  “Uncle?” Caspian approached him, walking confidently despite the dense darkness. All werewolves had impeccable night vision.

  “What are you doing out here?” Caspian asked as he came and stood beside his uncle. Both men were impressively tall but Theo had the edge over his nephew by a few inches.

  “Keeping watch,” Theo explained solemnly.

  “Watching for what?”

  “The witches,” Theo said coldly. “They will retaliate, and it will be brutal and swift.”

  “You don’t know that.” Caspian began to sweat nervously. It was all his fault. He’d been the one to attack the witch’s coven. Any retaliation on their part, any wolf blood spilled, would be on his hands.

  “I know witches of old,” Theo continued dryly. “They will not stand by and let this pass. They will seek revenge.”

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Caspian declared desperately.

  “Is that why you can’t sleep?” Theo asked sharply. “Does your guilt prevent you from lying with your prize and savoring your conquest?”

  Caspian glared at his uncle, and his eyes briefly turned yellow but he managed to suppress the feeling.

  “Your emotions run too close to the surface,” Theo noted. “You are not yet mature enough to be able to deal with them.”

  “Allegra is more than a prize!” Caspian cried. “She’s everything to me!”

  “I sincerely hope that is true,” Theo sighed. “For you risk everything bringing her here. I hope for your sake it is worth it.”

  “She’s worth it, Uncle. You must believe me. I’d never endanger the pack for anything less than true love.”

  Theo rolled his eyes. As a young man, he’d also spoken about love and all its great virtues. But age had made him bitter, and he no longer idolized the essence that is love.

  “You will be forced to fight,” Theo warned. “We all will.”

  “I’m ready!” Caspian announced confidently, sticking out his chest.

  “It is not time yet. You should return to your home and rest. You’ll need all your strength when the witches strike.”

  Caspian turned to leave but paused. There was something sad about seeing his uncle standing alone, the alpha of the pack, cut off from the others in his quest to protect them all.

  “Can’t you also come and rest? Or let me take the watch for a while?” he suggested gently.

  “As alpha, this is my burden to bear and mine alone. The safety of the pack is my responsibility. Go rest. Go lie with the woman you are so willing to fight for.”

  “Uncle…” Caspian wanted to reiterate how truly sorry he was but he couldn’t find the words. Everything he said seemed so insincere in light of what they might be up against.

  “I know.” Theo knew what he was trying to convey. “But what’s done is done. Go rest now, I’ll call upon you if you are needed.”

  Caspian retreated back in to the night and headed back toward his home where Allegra was sleeping soundly, safe whilst she remained beyond the witches’ reach.

  ***

  Light broke on the horizon, turning the sky a deep, blood red. Theo watched the advancing dawn and felt a shiver shoot down his spine. Tilting his head to the east, he inhaled. Something strange carried on the wind and piqued his senses. He inhaled again, deeper this time, relying on his canine instincts to decipher the scent.

  Smoke.

  He could smell smoke carrying on the air. But not smoke from a fire, this was different. Denser and more pungent. This smoke carried magic.

  Theo instantly knew that the witches’ retribution would soon be upon his village. Throwing his head back, he released a high-pitched howl, designed to alert the rest of his pack to the imminent danger.

  In less than five minutes, men and women wer
e leaving their homes, glancing expectantly at Theo, who had hurried down to the center of town.

  “The witches are coming!” he told his pack. “We must mobilize and attack!”

  “What’s that smell?” Leon, another mature werewolf, asked as he caught the scent of smoke as it danced across his nostrils.

  “Smoke,” Theo replied bluntly. “Magic smoke. Sent by the witches.”

  “But that means?” Leon paled slightly in realization.

  “Yes,” Theo concluded for him. “It means they’ve sent the Shadow Lord to end us.”

  Caspian was amongst the gathered wolves. He’d left Allegra and Iris in his home with strict instructions not to leave until his return.

  He’d been awoken from a dreamless sleep by Theo’s piercing howl. He intuitively knew what it meant; the pack was in danger. He sprung from his bed, kissed Allegra goodbye and congregated with the others in the center of town.

  “What’s the Shadow Lord?” he asked a nearby friend, Roth.

  “An ancient creature,” Roth whispered fearfully. “Of terrible power. It is made of black smoke and it sweeps across the land, leaving devastation in its wake.”

  “How do we stop it?”

  “We fight!” Theo roared and the wolves of his pack began to growl in anticipation. “The Shadow Lord may be made of smoke but if you break him apart enough he cannot reform. We’ve defeated him once before, we can defeat him again.”

  The sound of trees cracking stunned everyone in to silence. They glanced toward the forest where a hulking black cloud was swiftly advancing through the trees toward them.

  “There is no time!” Theo cried. “We must defend the pack!”

  Men and women dropped to their knees and began to force themselves to transform. The adrenalin coursing through their veins ensured that the process was as swift as possible.