by Ivy Asher
“Fine, you want me in all of my glory, and the runes mean nothing to you?” I challenge. “Then don’t you want to win me the right way? By proving yourself to my Chosen, by earning their unwavering trust and loyalty? If you had that, then why would they object to us fucking for answers. If you had that, and it turned out you were right all along about being Chosen, they would welcome you with open arms. You’d have earned a place as one of them, instead of stealing it in the night, behind their backs, knowing how they would feel about it.”
He watches me for a moment and then nods his head.
“Okay, I’ll earn you then, Vinna.”
And with that, he pushes off the fallen tree and disappears back into the night.
15
I take a deep breath. “Okay, but what if I turn into a wolf?” I ask again for the tenth time, and Torrez shakes his head.
“Would that really be the worst thing?” Torrez asks.
“No, it would probably be amazing, but I just don’t think I can deal with that on top of everything else going on right now,” I tell him, my tone a little more hysterical than I mean for it to be. After my talk with Enoch, I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I blame that for my current state of panic.
“Listen, Witch, the only thing you need to fear turning into right now is a chicken. So stop clucking, and let’s see what your new runes do.”
“You suck at pep talks,” I snark.
Valen grabs the back of my neck and pulls me toward him. “Sentinel up, or none of us will be sucking on anything for the next week.” He lets go of my neck, and I lean back to glare at him.
“Fine, be that way!” I growl and then stomp away from all of them. Have lots of mates, they say. It’ll be so much fun, they say. Yeah, until the fuckers gang up against you, and you never win an argument again, I grumble.
“You’re right; sex, or the lack thereof, really motivates her,” Valen observes, and then he proceeds to fist bump Torrez.
I point an aggressive finger in their direction. “There will be no bro-ing out. And consider yourself warned—if I wolf out, I’m biting both of you.”
“Ooh, your kinky is showing again, Bruiser,” Bastien announces as he joins Valen and Torrez. “Why is she all riled?” he asks casually.
“We threatened her with no sex for a week,” Valen fills his twin in.
“Yup, that’ll do it,” Bastien chuckles.
“I can fucking hear you,” I shout at them.
“None of us care,” Bastien shouts back.
I glare at each of them in turn as I pull magic from my core and feed it into the new runes I now have from Torrez’s mating mark. I feed the magic into the new runes slowly and from one blink to the next, everything changes.
My vision sharpens and alters. I’m assaulted by what feels like a billion different smells. I can see so much more in my periphery than I could before, and I can’t seem to decide where I want to focus.
“Whoa,” Torrez comments offhandedly, and I don’t know if that freaks me out or makes me excited.
“Am I a wolf?” I ask, unsure. I look down at my hands, and all I see are my hands, although now I feel like I could count every hair on my arm. When did I get so hairy? Does Torrez see himself as a wolf when he’s in wolf form, or is this what his body looks like to him even though he looks like a wolf to everyone else? Man, this is trippy. I wonder what color my coat is. Black maybe?
“You’re not a wolf,” Torrez tells me, stepping closer. “Well, not a fully shifted one anyway.”
“Uh, what the hell does that mean?”
“Your eyes have shifted. They’re still the same green, but they’re wolf eyes right now, not your regular eyes.”
“Oh, well that explains this change in my vision then. Am I hairier?”
The three of them laugh.
“No, but you can probably make out the details of your body much better than you could before,” Torrez tells me, and I breathe out a sigh of relief.
Time to magically shave again.
“Anything else different?” Valen asks. He bends over to get a better look at my new wolf eyes, and I snap at him for shits and giggles. He doesn’t even so much as flinch or make a noise of surprise. Lame.
“You don’t scare me, love,” he teases, and I don’t miss his use of that word again. It slipped out a few times when we were getting it on in the barn. I chalked it up to an in-the-moment term of endearment, but it seems I was wrong. I’ve got Chosen dropping L bombs like I drop F bombs, and I’m not sure what to think about all of that. Or maybe I do know what I think about all of that, and I just need to work on the logistics of what I want to do about it.
“What I smell has changed,” I tell them. “It’s more overwhelming than the eyes. I can pick up a ton of things I couldn’t before, but I’m not sure what everything is.”
Torrez brushes my cheek with the back of his hand, and I lean into it. “Yeah, that makes sense. It will take time for you to catalogue different scents in order to identify them later.”
“Does this mean I’ll be able to smell lies and emotions, too?” I ask, excited.
“Yup,” Torrez admits, and I can’t tell if he thinks that’s a good thing or bad thing.
“We’ll have to start introducing smells to you right away so you can learn. Your wolf eyes will be most useful at night. Our night vision is incredible, so that will definitely be a handy tool. What about your hearing, any changes there?”
“I already had runes for that,” I confess, and I hear Bastien and Valen both sputter out, “What?”
“Where are your runes for that?” they ask in unison.
I point to the helix of my ear. They both grow quiet with concentration, and I know they’re testing those tiny runes out. They’re easy to forget about, and I’ve been purposely not pointing them out to any of them.
“Holy shit,” Bastien blurts, his tone filled with awe. “I can hear Aydin and Evrin all the way in the house.”
I tap into the runes on the helix of my ear and focus on the main house where Silva, Evrin and Aydin are staying. I hear someone in the kitchen working and figure that’s who’s responsible for our tasty meals, even though I’ve never seen them. The table just seems to always be filled with food.
“That group that kept visiting that house just out of town has stopped. I’m not sure if they got what they wanted from there, or if somehow they spotted me, but we should probably check out what it is now that there’s less of a risk of getting caught and we’ve lost the trail of the lamia who were visiting there regularly,” Aydin announces.
“When do you want to go in? Tonight?” Evrin asks.
“It’s better to check it out sooner rather than later. It’s probably our best lead at this point. Is Silva back yet from his assignment? We’ll need him on this one for sure,” Aydin tells him, and then the room fills with the rustling of papers.
“He was here when I got back last night,” Evrin tells him. “I haven’t seen him yet this morning. I think he’s in the barn again.”
“Are the spells ready yet?” Aydin queries as he messes with more papers.
“I told him to have Knox look at them since that’s his area of expertise, but I don’t know if he has or not.”
Evrin and Aydin’s words niggle at the back of my mind. I thought they were surveilling with Silva, but it’s clear Aydin and Evrin were off on their own. Why would they separate?
“Earth to Vinna,” rings in my ears and pulls my focus, and Bastien steps into my line of sight. I let go of the magic in all of the runes I currently have activated. My regular vision snaps back into place. I’m no longer bombarded by different smells, and I realize that it’s easier for me to focus when my sense of smell isn’t so heightened.
“So, Bruiser, how often did you use this little skill to spy on us?” Bastien asks me, a naughty glint in his eyes.
I laugh. “Only a couple of times, and usually you guys weren’t saying anything interesting. I mostly use it to track where people are,” I admit.
“So that’s how you kept avoiding us,” Valen exclaims, and pieces of something that must have been bugging him come together.
I shrug.
Shouting kicks off behind the guys, and we all move to see what’s going on.
“You fucking cut me, you asshole,” Knox roars at Nash.
“It was an accident, you baby. Give me your arm, and I’ll heal it,” Nash offers, disdain dripping from his tone.
“Fuck you, we have our own healer. But you should get the hell away from me before Ryker is done, or I’ll fuck you up so bad it’ll take a healer days to fix you,” Knox threatens, and I start walking toward them ready, yet again, to break up their drama.
Knox extends his arm to Ryker, and I watch as blood drips freely from his arm and lands on the packed dirt below him. I don’t know why, in that moment, everything clicks together, but it does. All the uneasiness and warnings that my instincts have been hammering me with since before we got here fall into place, and I see a horrifyingly clear picture. Maybe it was Aydin and Evrin talking about how Silva came home before them, and the lights I noticed were on in the barn late last night. Or maybe it’s the color of the dirt as it soaks up Knox’s blood, creating a mottled splotch that looks eerily familiar, but I suddenly know where Lachlan and the others have been getting their leads. And I’m fucking pissed.
I take off for the tree line behind us, sprinting hard and pumping magic into my runes so I can move even faster. I hear shouts behind me, but I don’t have a second to lose to stop and explain what I just realized. I flash through the trees until I see the barrier and the barn. I wrap my hands in Defensive magic, and they glow from the orange-yellow magical casing. I lace that with Sentinel magic and run at the barrier full out. I punch out at the barrier when I’m close enough, and I feel it shatter beneath my fist. I run through the shards of magic as they crumble into nothing, and I ready myself for what I know I’m about to find.
I blow the front door off its hinges with Elemental magic and run through, doing the same to the second door, before Silva emerges from the dirt room I knew he’d be in. Our eyes lock, and I see surprise there for a second before his gaze fills with indignation.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demands.
I take menacing steps toward him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Did you not fucking learn from the last time you did this? Did you really think I would just sit by and let you do it again?” I throw an arm out in the direction of the dirt room he just walked out of. “Move,” I order.
“I have every right to use all means at my disposal to find out—” Silva defends, but I cut off the bullshit justifications, and I slam him with air, forcing him to get out of my way. Silva has a protective barrier up around him in a blink, and he doesn’t budge.
“You don’t want to do this, little girl,” Silva warns me.
“Not true actually. You’ve fucking earned this fair and square.”
I push harder at him with air and then throw another barrier on top of the one he already has around him. I check for weak spots in his cast and compress my barrier around him. It seals under his feet, and I use the Elemental magic I’m already directing at him to start to lift him up and out of my way. Silva starts to chant something and then he claps his hands together and a white light shoots out from his palms, melting my barrier and dropping him back into place. A small sound of annoyance slips out of me, and Silva smirks in my direction at the sound of it.
I click my tongue at him with disappointment. “Silva, you didn’t think that was all I had, did you? I’ve been working hard while you’ve been away,” I tell him sweetly.
I infuse an Offensive cast with the air magic I’m calling on and then braid it all together with a Defensive cast. My magic flashes out like a whip and wraps around Silva’s barrier. His smug look turns worried when I pull back on my threads and his barrier crumbles around him. I tighten the cast around him and yank him out of my way.
Silva slams into the wall of maps and crashes down on the desk that Valen and I christened. I debate for a second which weapon I want to reach for, but I decide, for this asshole, we’ll go old school. I run at him as he pushes himself off the desk to stand, and I punch him in the stomach. Silva rallies and kicks out at my knee, but I twist, and he gets my lower thigh instead. He grabs the computer screen and throws it at me, but it ricochets off the barrier I just called on and slams to the ground.
Silva and I trade hits and misses, but he could learn a thing or two from his nephews, as they are way better at hand-to-hand than he is.
“Ten years ago, you tortured a lamia looking for my dad and the others who went missing,” I grind out as my fist lands on Silva’s ribs, and I spin to avoid another kick to my lower body. “You dumbasses let that lamia convince you that a baby killed Lachlan’s brother and was somehow responsible for all of your problems in life.”
I punctuate my statement with a knee to his thigh, a cuff on his ears, and another hit to his ribs. He reaches out, trying to land a jab, but I grab his forearm with one hand and thrust my other hand up at his elbow. Silva screams as I break his arm, but his pain doesn’t mean shit to me. I grab him by his pony tail and kick his feet out from under him.
“You want someone to blame for all your problems? Blame that fucker,” I seethe at him as I hold his face above the black, broken computer screen. Silva’s reflection stares up at him through the spidering cracks of the monitor.
“You’re fucking lucky your nephews are about to run through the front door and stop me from killing you. Maybe someday you can pull your head out of your ass long enough to realize how lucky you are to have them. Until then, you better stay the fuck away from me.” I smash Silva’s head against the desk, and he crumbles to the ground, out cold.
“What the hell, Vinna?” Bastien yells from the front of the barn.
Good. He and Valen can deal with their fucked up uncle. I’m already across the room and gripping the door knob that leads to the dirt room, whose purpose I couldn’t figure out until five minutes ago. I push the door open, and sure enough, exactly as I feared, there is a lamia that’s bruised, battered, dripping blood, and tied to a chair.
He looks up toward the doorway as I step through it, and I throw a hand over my mouth to stop the sound of a gasp from traveling too far. Brown hair, olive skin, and stunning crystal-blue eyes look up at me. I recognize him instantly. It’s the lamia that was with Sorik that day on Silas’s pack territory.
How the hell did he get here?
16
“What are you doing here?” hisses out of both of our mouths at exactly the same time.
I step toward him, taking in his state, and I tear off my shirt and press it against the deep cuts lining his right arm. He throws his head back and hisses in pain when I apply more pressure, and I apologize as I look for any more damage to his body that needs immediate attention.
“By the stars, what was he doing to you?” I ask absently as I take in all the bruises.
“We graduated from beating to cutting about an hour ago,” he informs me.
Rage simmers inside of me, and I hope the twins get Silva the hell out of here, or I might press for a round two with him. I run my eyes over the chair the lamia is strapped into, and it looks like Silva or one of the others made it. Pieces look welded together and constructed just for this purpose, and my stomach roils when I wonder how many lamia they’ve done this to.
“What the fuck?” Knox asks from the doorway before he rushes forward to help.
“They were still doing it,” I tell him, shaking my head as we search for a way to release the constraints.
Blood is starting to soak through the shirt I have wrapped around this lamia’s arm, and I notice that he’s just sitting here, watching me warily.
“Knox, I need your shirt. Do you know anything about lamia, like how to stop them from bleeding to death?” I ask.
Knox whips off his shirt and hands it to me, and then he starts messi
ng with a chain under the arm on his side of the chair. Enoch, Kallan, Nash and Sabin pour into the room, and everyone but Sabin’s eyes harden when they take in what’s going on.
“Vinna, what are you doing?” Enoch asks me, stepping forward and reaching for me. Sabin grabs him and stops him from pulling me away, and they start arguing.
“I need something that’s going to dilute the shifter venom that he put in all of my cuts and that I’ve been dosed with since I was brought here. Then I need to feed, so I can start to heal,” the lamia informs us.
“I can put something together for the toxin,” Knox tells me, and then he motions for Sabin to come over and take his place. Sabin steps in and starts working on the same chain that Knox just was.
“Are you guys crazy? Are you forgetting that lamia kidnapped us, Vinna, and killed your friend?” Nash asks from the corner of the room he’s standing in as he takes in everything with disdain.
I shoot him a glare. “Not this lamia, Nash. He didn’t take us.” Nash shakes his head in obvious disapproval, and disappointment wells up inside of me. “I was taken by casters, too; should I also assume every caster I meet is bad and deserves to be tortured and brutalized?” I ask him casually. I turn to Enoch who I can see is having the same issue with this situation as Nash. “I refuse to generalize a whole species based off the actions of a few.”
“That’s probably because you have very limited experience with this particular species,” Enoch grumbles.
“Well, being that I’m alive and pretty much everything that I am today because of a lamia, I’m going to say I probably have more legitimate experience than you do,” I argue.
I turn back to the crystal-blue eyes of the lamia that’s still strapped to the chair. “So the whole feeding thing is new to me. Do you prefer a neck, wrist, blood in a cup? What works best for you?”
His eyes widen in shock, and they move cautiously from me to the others in the room. “You…you would feed me?” he asks, his voice low and just shy of a whisper.
