by Holley Trent
Ms. Minnie wagged a finger at him. “Ah, I got something for you.” She handed over a little paper bowl of grilled meat. “Unseasoned for the seniors who pretend they ain’t got ulcers.”
Willa giggled and felt lighter for it. “How much do I owe you?”
Ms. Minnie waved her away. “Puh. I do what I want.” She shut the window.
Apparently, that was that.
• • •
Willa was almost late getting back to the school because the woodland friends who frolicked in the shade under her Jeep didn’t want to get out as usual. The threat of the water hose being turned on them finally got them to go away.
She was breathless when she got back to the school and hurried to unlock the band room before the kids showed up.
The light was on. She thought she’d turned it off before stepping out.
“Huh.” She walked across the room—the chairs and stands emptied out by band moms and carried to the gym—to organize her stack of scores.
She stopped in the middle upon seeing she wasn’t alone.
There was a woman perched atop the cubbies on the back wall. So still and quiet. Her simple white sundress blending into the wall was probably why Willa hadn’t immediately caught her in her periphery.
“I didn’t realize anyone was in here,” Willa said.
The woman must have gotten in through the art or music room. Willa didn’t recognize her as one of the band parents.
But the longer she stared, the more she realized she wouldn’t have.
That woman wasn’t a band parent. She wasn’t a “woman” at all, or at least not human.
“You always have your head in the clouds,” her aunt Artemis said softly. “I suppose you are not completely to blame.”
Willa’s mouth hung open as the goddess eased herself off the shelf and glided across the room.
Willa hadn’t seen her since she was a young woman, spirited away from the pyre to Italy, but she was definitely, distinctively Artemis. The same dark curly hair worn in a simple braid down her back. The headband she wore to keep the curly frizz at her temples from falling forward was modern, though. Cloth-covered and printed with little moons.
Same pale gray eyes.
Same voice, silken and soothing most of the time. Assertive and impossible to ignore when she needed to get things done.
Willa had just needed a moment to remember it. She’d tried to block out so much of those years of her life, even the good parts.
“I should have done more for you,” Artemis said just as softly. “Perhaps you would remember me better.”
“I don’t know what you could have done. I wasn’t your concern. I know how it is. You try not to step on any toes, and he’s . . . your brother. Your twin.”
Artemis nodded slowly and looked out the window. “Your students will come soon.”
“Yeah. Gotta warm up.”
And get out there in front of what Willa hoped wouldn’t be the usual sparse crowd. Those kids worked so hard. She wanted her eighth-graders to have an audience reflecting that before they moved on to football fields and marching band competitions where no one but the most devoted watchers could tell them apart.
Artemis turned back to her. “Are you happy, Safya?”
Willa let out a long breath and fiddled the top button of her polo shirt. “That’s a loaded question.”
“I suppose it is.” Artemis’s eyes narrowed in consideration. “Specifically, I mean are you happy with no power? No magic?”
“Oh.” That was easy. That was one of the sure things in her life. “Absolutely. What good is it if I’m out of my head when I’m using it?”
“And if that were to change?”
Willa shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never been jealous of my brothers for having magic, only that they were able to keep their packs in order. Sometimes, I thought about walking away from everything and letting the Coyotes fend for themselves, but I’ve been here too long. I’ve watched too many of them be born and start families. I wish I could do more for them.”
“You would give dominion of them away if they were to thrive from it?”
“Yes.” Shame rippled through Willa, but she couldn’t run from the truth. She would quit. She’d give them away if she knew without an iota of doubt that she’d made the right choice. “I’d detach myself completely, if whatever magic that’s currently in place, wiring them to me, fell away.”
“So give them away. Have one less burden.”
“Who would I give them to?”
“Did you not have someone?”
“Blue? Are you talking about Blue?”
She couldn’t find a handkerchief in her pockets for the tears. She wiped her eyes on the hem of her shirt. It didn’t matter if Artemis saw her scars on her torso. She’d already seen them, as well as the wounds that had caused them.
“Blue’s gone. He’s probably in Sparks right now, married and well on the way to forgetting about me.”
Willa didn’t really want to know. They didn’t call. Didn’t text. He’d been ordered to stay away, and she was just . . . chickenshit. She didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole of information only to find that snakes lived inside.
“You believe a Coyote would forget about his mate?” Artemis asked, one dark brow creeping upward.
“I hope not,” Willa whispered mournfully. “I don’t want to be forgotten.”
“So give him the pack, if you want. You are his mate. There is nothing preventing you from transferring it.”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.” The idea had potential, but Willa couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Blue had left because Apollo had made him, and he was going to get pawned off to placate another alpha. He wasn’t hers anymore.
“I think you do,” Artemis said. “Emotions make some dilemmas seem insurmountable when in fact, they’re easy enough.”
Willa scoffed. “Easy would be if I could make Sheena Esposito call off the wedding. Bruno would have to get his repayment in some other way, and maybe that’d buy the folks in Sparks some time to get out if they want to.”
Artemis’s lips kicked up at one corner.
“What?”
“Ah, you see what happens when your head is out of the clouds?”
“No.” Willa still had no idea what her aunt was getting at. “I was hyperbolizing.”
“No, you let common sense shine through without trying to analyze it first. Listen to it.”
“It can’t be that easy.”
“What if it were? Would you do it?”
“Of course I would! I’d be happy to turn over everything to him if it’ll get him back here, but Lola said he can’t come near me.”
Absently, Artemis fidgeted the tiny golden arrow pinned near her collar. “I should have educated you more about curses. I will correct that one day, if you allow me.”
Willa nodded for her to go on. Of course she wanted to see more of her aunt, as long as the Grecian family reunion didn’t extend beyond her.
“It is true that Blue cannot come to you. The moment he tries, my brother would know. He enforces his curses scrupulously, and he will allow no slack. So.” Artemis turned her hands over in a now you say something gesture.
Willa didn’t know what to do but to continue in her previous line of reasoning, even if it was outlandish. “If Blue can’t come to me, could I go to him?”
It was a ridiculous idea. Willa had never in her life chased after a man, and she wouldn’t even know how to. Was she supposed to just show up? Express her undying love and plead for him to return to Maria where he belonged?
Well, why not?
She’d be artless. Graceless. Stammering and inarticulate.
But he already knew that about her, and he’d said he loved her, anyway.
“If he returns because you’ve pulled him back,” Artemis said conclusively, “the curse will lose its legs.”
“Why is that?”
“Because Apollo, in spite of ho
w capricious he may seem, will not escalate this if you defy him. He has no foresight on the matter—no prophecy is driving him now—but I know my brother. He will not expect defiance from you. You must show him here and now that you are not a pawn in his game, but a player. If you make yourself his equal, he will have no choice but to respect you. That was your mother’s mistake. Not knowing her power over him.”
“I’m not his equal.”
“Only because you believe you are not. You have extraordinary power over him. He fears reminders of his deficiencies.”
“Oh,” Willa whispered, pondering if her aunt was right.
Willa didn’t have magic or the ability to force people to do her bidding, but she had value as a person. She meant something to someone. Having someone believe in her meant she did have a little power, and she was going to use it for a change.
“Trust me,” Artemis said, stroking Willa’s cheeks. “You have to take care of you. Your needs are important, and you must at times be aggressive to fill them, even if that is difficult for you. He will not ever coddle you. He cannot give you the affection you need and deserve. He simply cannot be that father to you. After watching so many of his children perish, I believe he has lost the ability. Most of our kind do.”
Artemis had never had children. Willa wondered if that was one of the reasons why.
Artemis let her hands fall from Willa’s face and twined her fingers in front of her belly. “Can I give you some advice?”
“I wish you would.”
“Leave for Sparks as soon as you are able. You will not have much time to spare. Find a friend and go as soon as the concert concludes.”
“Why? What’s happening?”
Artemis didn’t answer her. She was already gone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“If you think rationally about it, this is a good choice, Blue. It’s the right choice. Just give it time.”
Blue violently recoiled at the press of his father’s hand to his shoulder and knocked the unwanted touch away. Rude, perhaps. He didn’t care. The reaction was half disgust and half reflex. The part of him that was coyote didn’t trust or respect the man with him in the country club’s library, either as an alpha or as a father.
Good fathers tried hard not to ruin their children, and after having been conned so royally by Apollo, Blue’s tolerance for powerful narcissists was at an all-time low.
“You don’t have to be in here. Go schmooze or something. Just go.” Blue shoved his hands into his pockets and paced in front of a case of maps and atlases. They didn’t need to talk. OG had said enough. He’d gotten his way, and no further conversation was necessary.
“I want you to go out there with a smile on your face like you want to be here. Do you understand me?”
“That’s funny. I studied ancient cultures, and you said that discipline was bullshit. Now you want me to become an actor as well as a scholar of useless facts?”
“You’re not going to embarrass me today, Blue.”
“Or else what?” Blue turned on the heels of his dress shoes and raised his eyebrows at the gray-haired figure glowering at him from the doorway. “Huh? What’s gonna happen?”
“You know what happens to packs when people don’t get in line.”
“No, you don’t mean packs, you mean me. I’m here. Nothing’s going to happen to the pack members because I showed up for this damn sham. Congratulations. You sold your son away. I want to hear you say it, though. How’s it gonna play out? You gonna wait until after the reception to try to take me down a peg, or are you going to show up at the farce of a honeymoon to throw your weight around?”
“There is something seriously wrong with you. Some kind of infection in your head, just like your mother. If her parents had been worth anything, they should have taken her out to the wilderness and left her there when she was a child.”
Fuck you.
Blue hastily shoved his fists into his pockets in a bid to keep them from flying toward the man.
OG was trying to incite him, and Blue knew that. His father wanted a fight. He wanted Blue to lose control so he’d have an excuse to have put Blue in his place—to use whatever magic he had at his disposal to eliminate the spark of resistance Blue had inside him.
And maybe he could do it.
It didn’t matter that Blue was physically stronger. There was still a magical hierarchy in a pack, and Blue might have to submit solely because he wasn’t the alpha there. Blue couldn’t overcome his father inside a pack that wasn’t his.
OG must have figured out that Blue wasn’t going to respond because he moved away from the door and picked up from the settee the stack of papers that had arrived by courier that morning. As soon as he was done playing god with Blue’s life, he had Diana’s to see to. As OG cleared away his debts and planned for the future merging of territories, he had to hold court with others who wanted to touch his power. There was a pack in Idaho with an alpha whose son was at the right age for marriage.
Blue knew his sister well, and suspected she was going to vanish before OG tried to lock her down, possibly even during the ceremony. She’d been squirrelly all morning. Distracted. Planning, probably. If she were thinking clearly, she’d go to her ex and stay there until the dust settled, but she wouldn’t. That was a door in her life she didn’t want to tease open again, even if it was the best thing for her.
If Diana did run, she’d have to take extra measures not to get followed. OG had probably learned his lesson with Blue—that the more slack his children had, the higher the risk of subversion. Blue didn’t have to see the proof with his eyes. He could sense the energy of at least three Coyotes standing outside the room. They weren’t there to protect OG. They were there to make sure Blue got down the aisle.
“Look on the bright side, eh?” OG said, shuffling the contents of the thick file. “After you have a couple of kids—a boy at the very least—you can do whatever you want. Maybe after we annex the pack down in that hellhole you were in, you can have it as your playground.”
Blue clamped his grip over the top of the straight-backed chair in front of him and closed his eyes.
Just kill him, the animal inside him said. Rip out his throat. We’ll all be happier.
His inner beast had been chanting that refrain since he’d arrived back in Nevada. He hadn’t had time to even get his business affairs caught up before he, Lance, and Kenny had been cornered in Vegas. They’d taken his phone, his tech, his fucking wallet, and his passport. He’d been under constant watch.
Lance was out there in the crowd somewhere, forced to renew his oath of allegiance to OG or else, but the threat hadn’t mattered, anyway, because OG didn’t always make good on his promises. Kenny was gone. No one knew where he went, but he’d been expelled from the pack as a punishment to Blue, to Lance, and to both of the cousins’ mothers.
Blue breathed through the violent urge, repeating in his head, It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it.
Not with all those guards outside.
He’d do everything he could to keep the Sparks dogs out of Maria. He didn’t care who he had to beg for help or what enemies he made in the process. He’d happily grovel to the Foyes if he had to. He’d figure something out as soon as the dust settled. He needed a plan. He wasn’t going to let anyone ruin Willa.
He wished he’d just stayed away. If some other alpha had taken the job—
No.
He wasn’t going to let that train of thought careen off the tracks.
Things had ended badly, but he wouldn’t change anything. He wouldn’t change having found someone he could love, even if he couldn’t keep her. Before her, he hadn’t truly understood the extents people went to hold on to it.
He wasn’t going to move on from Willa, no matter what his government paperwork said. His wife would never be his mate.
Up front, he needed to establish with his father that he was going to toe the line, but under no circumstances was he going to playact for him. His mouth was ope
n and he’d drawn in a breath, but the rap on the door stilled his tongue.
His father marched to it, and opened it a crack. “What?”
“Randall, we’ve got some issues out here.”
Blue recognized the voice as that of one of OG’s longtime lieutenants—one of the men acting as sentries in the hallway. He moved closer to the door quietly, tuning in to the intensifying murmurs from the corridor and beyond.
Something was happening out there. Perhaps Diana had taken her shot and bolted, and they’d noticed.
I hope she did run.
“What is it?” OG asked him.
“Not sure yet. Milton sent me a text. Said the caterers stopped working and are packing up.”
“What the hell for?” OG shouted. “I paid them good money to do this job on such short notice.”
Short notice so as to ensure Blue didn’t have a chance to chew through his leash.
“They said the wedding’s off and they got cut loose. So did the photographers.”
“I didn’t tell them any such thing.”
“Got another text,” the frantic Milton said. “Guests are leaving, and the bride-to-be is heading toward her limo now. She sent everyone home and said she’d pay off the damn debt herself, if she had to. Said it’s for the best, anyway. Shit, Randall, you’d best get out here. Her parents expected a wedding today.”
“Well, go get that bitch back in here!” OG yanked the door open. “Know what? Never mind. I’m on my way.” He left and slammed the door after him.
“What’s going on?” Blue hurried across the room, intending to find out for himself, but stopped short of the door at the “Pssst,” emanating from the bookcases.
Too loud and sharp to be air from the vents, and then the sound repeated.
“Pssst! Blue.”
The bookcase was, somehow, ajar. The left side of it had pivoted like a revolving door, and Diana poked her head into the room.
“You shittin’ me?” Blue asked, crossing the room again. “There are hidden passages in here?”
“Of course there are, you idiot. What do you expect for a venue that’s frequented by mobsters?” She opened the gap a bit wider and stepped into the room. Her makeup was smudged, and there was a bit of dust in her slicked-back hair and soot on her cocktail dress.
