by Colleen Vanderlinden
Published by Building Block Studios, LLC
Detroit, Michigan, 2015
© 2015 Colleen Vanderlinden
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the author at [email protected].
Contents
Books by Colleen Vanderlinden
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Letter from the Author
About the Author
Books by
Colleen Vanderlinden
The Copper Falls Series
Shadow Witch Rising
Shadow Sworn
The Hidden: Soulhunter Series
Guardian
Betrayer
The Hidden Series
Book One: Lost Girl
Book Two: Broken
Book Three: Home
Book Four: Strife
Book Five: Nether
Hidden Series Novellas
Forever Night
Earth Bound
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Dedication
In memory of my grandmother, Frances Kuczewski. The first stories I wrote were at your kitchen table, scribbled with green pen on the back of junk mail that you stockpiled so I’d always have enough paper. Thank you.
Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.
— Theodore Roethke
Chapter One
Sophie ran.
She ran, and no matter how fast she ran, it wasn’t enough. There was no outrunning the ceaseless emptiness and maddening hunger, or the terrifying slow creep of insanity that had become her reality.
She forced her legs to pump harder nonetheless, propelling her body between the trees in the woods west of her house. Fallen leaves crunched and swished beneath her feet. Sweat trickled down between her shoulder blades, and her chest felt ready to explode from the pressure of her pounding heart.
Not enough.
Calder shadowed her steps, as he had every day since the morning he’d woken beside her to find that she’d taken his curse. His presence was steady, comforting, and distracting all at the same time. All she wanted was him. She craved him the way a starving person craves nourishment.
And she would know about that well. The curse ensured she was always hungry. Always thirsty. Always on edge and in need of something. Never satisfied.
She envisioned punching her ancestor, Migisi, right in her stupid regal face. This was her fault.
What kind of complete nutcase curses and entire line of people because she caught her lover with his pants down?
She let out an irritated shout, needing something, some way to release the frustration and anger inside her. It mingled with the Shadow, making her feel wrong and filthy and like a stranger in her own body.
A warm body hurled into hers, and she felt strong arms around her waist, pulling her down to the ground.
Calder was straddling her, glorious in his nakedness, having shifted back from his bear form. His blond hair was a halo, the sun high in the sky behind him as he looked down at her. Golden hair trailed over his broad chest, down…
“You know you can’t dangle all of that in front of me like that, Calder,” she groaned, out of breath. She was opening her thighs to him before she even realized what she was doing, and he shook his head.
“You wanted to learn control, right?” he asked, his ice-blue eyes meeting hers.
“Not now, though,” she said. “That’s just mean.”
A small smile curved his lips, and he shook his head. “I can smell you. Settle down.”
She growled at him, a sound that, just a few weeks ago, would not have been one she’d ever imagined herself making. She was finding, living with his curse, that words weren’t enough. Screams, shouts, groans, grunts, growls…. none of it made her feel better, but they articulated, better than words, the frustration and anger she was feeling.
“Settle down,” he repeated. “Come on, kitten.”
She stopped thrashing, stopped trying to open her thighs to him. She went still.
“Breathe,” he murmured. “Good girl.”
“I’m not a pet,” she said.
He smiled. “You like it when I call you that.”
“Not unless you’re rewarding me with something.”
He laughed. “Nearly there. Your heart rate is slowing. A few more good, deep breaths.” He watched as she took several breaths of cool autumn air, filling her lungs and then releasing each breath slowly. “You’re getting so much better at this,” he said softly.
“I hate it.”
“I know,” he said. “Should I say it, or…?”
“Shut up, Calder.”
“What was I going to say?” he teased.
“You were going to remind me that I shouldn’t have taken your curse,” she said. “Which is crap, because it would have meant losing you. I’d rather have the curse.”
His gaze softened, and he lowered his forehead to hers, and they stayed like that for several long moments. “I love you,” he murmured.
“I love you too,” she said. She tilted her head so she could kiss him, and when their lips met, just like every time they kissed, it was like a cool drink of water on a hot day; like warm buttered bread to someone who was starving. “Love you,” she repeated between kisses.
He slowly pulled away after feathering a few more soft kisses over her lips, her jawline. “Come on,” he said. “Race you back.” She watched as he ran, muscular human body shifting, changing before her eyes into a huge, shaggy black bear. Sophie shook her head and followed, her feet pounding the ground again. She slowed only when she reached the fenced-in area where her vegetable garden had once been. She’d since cleared all of the dead vegetable plants out, and it sat empty. It was a lost cause unless she figured out a way to work her way back to the Light.
She’d given up everything she believed in, turned her back on her faith, turned to the Shadow to save Calder. Because she’d seen what he would become, and she couldn’t let him go on the way he had, especially when her ancestor was to blame for the curse that had doomed him and so many males in his family before him.
She’d watched him kill his own father, who had long since lost his own humanity in the grips of the curse. He still dealt with the grief, the nightmares of what he’d been forced to do. It had made her decision all too
easy, to take the burden on herself rather than let him fall to the same fate.
The advice Migisi had left for her in one of the journals, to destroy Calder and end the curse, wasn’t even worth thinking about. Ending anyone’s life, let alone someone she’d loved since she was eleven years old, was something she’d never do. It went against everything she was, even now.
Especially now, maybe.
He stood on the back porch, buttoning the flannel shirt he’d been wearing before they left for their run, and she was sorry to see him all covered up again.
“So mean,” she repeated as she walked toward him, and he smiled.
“You wouldn’t learn any control at all if I gave you what you wanted all the time. You decided you wanted it this way,” he reminded her.
She didn’t answer, grabbing a large bottle of water off of the railing instead and chugging over half of it before forcing herself to calm down. He wasn’t lying. He’d been prepared, more than willing, once he realized what she’d done, to do everything in his power to keep her satisfied. He’d fed her, endlessly. Ensured there was always something to drink, that she was well-loved as often as she’d wanted it, which was often.
After a week, she’d realized how tiring it was for him. He’d never said a word, had kept to his promise to care for her, but she hated it. So she’d decided to learn control instead, so she could at least act, for the most part, as if everything was fine.
And every time she lost control and started acting like a mindless animal, she remembered how well he’d hidden the ravages of the curse from her. She would do the same for him, and, at the same time, retain some of her pride.
They’d made it through the solstice, which would have been a nightmare for him, as a shifter, but was just one more intolerable day for her, no better or worse than the day before.
“Don’t you think we should try going into town for a while?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Sophie.”
“Not a chance in hell.” She watched him. “You can go, though. I know you need to pick up those parts that came in.”
“Your leave from work ends in three days,” he reminded her.
“Then I’ll deal with it in three days,” she said.
He crossed his arms, watching her. He blew out an irritated breath. “Okay. I’ll go then. I’ll stop at the grocery store, too. Do you need anything in particular?”
“You,” she said, and he shook his head.
“You’re not playing fair,” he said, stepping toward her and pulling her into his arms. “Control, remember?”
“You already said no once. That counts, right?” She leaned forward, stood on tiptoe, and pressed a row of open-mouthed kisses to his throat. A low growl vibrated deep in his chest.
“Good point,” he said, picking her up and taking her into the house, barely remembering to close the door behind them before he started pulling her clothing off.
A while later, she watched as he pulled his truck out of the driveway, waving to her before he backed out onto the road. She watched until she couldn’t see the truck anymore.
God, was this what his beast had gone through every time she’d walked away from him? It took everything in her not to chase him down and drag him back. Sophie took several deep breaths. She focused: breathe in, breathe out, over and over again until she felt less insane. There was panic there, that he wouldn’t come back. She wasn’t sure if that was her own fear, or something caused by the curse. Either way, she hated it.
She turned toward the living room, went to work cleaning. She washed windows, swept and mopped the floors, polished the wood furniture with beeswax until it gleamed. Her house had never looked so good; it got this treatment on an almost daily basis now. As with many things regarding the curse, Calder had been right about this as well. The need to keep her hands busy, to stay active, was almost overwhelming. Sitting and just reading, which she’d always loved, drove her mad. She couldn’t stay still long enough and, even when she and tried to read, she couldn’t focus. That, almost as much as anything else, was what she mourned. Reading, gardening, taking care of her animals, soap making… all of it was lost to her, at least for the time being, either corrupted by the Shadow or impossible to do because of the curse Migisi set on Calder’s family.
So she ran, and she ate, and she drank, and she let Calder ravish her as often as he wanted. When she wasn’t doing those things, she cleaned.
She guessed she’d be really, really good at her job when she went back to work, she thought as she scrubbed the kitchen sink. Her boss at the Falls Resort had been very understanding when she’d asked for a month’s leave due to “health issues.” It was time to go back soon despite the fact that leaving her land terrified her. Interacting with people other than Calder and her best friends, Layla and Cara, had her on the verge of panic.
She was Shadow now. She was a Shadow lord’s plaything, destined to do his bidding. The fact that Marshall hadn’t made a single appearance since the day she’d let him turn her to the Shadow only made her more stressed out. When he finally did demand something of her, she knew it would be something she would hate.
This was the price. This was the cost of keeping Calder sane and alive. This was the cost of trying to keep control of the darkness that was beginning to consume her. And she promised herself every single day that she was still a daughter of the Light, that she would find a way to work her way back to Its grace.
That was another reason why getting some semblance of control over her curse was so important. It was distracting, and when all she could think about was when she could eat next, or how best to get Calder naked, it was nearly impossible to focus on learning about the Shadow magic she now wielded. In those rare moments when she felt like she had some form of clarity, she could almost see the structure of the magic, just barely, and then it was gone.
Control first.
Sophie looked around. There was nothing left to clean. She’d sorted through the rest of the attic, even cleaned out the barn and two small garden sheds her aunt Evie had filled with stuff during her years on the property.
Cooking. That was something she could still do well enough. Sort of.
She looked through the pantry and realized she had ingredients for brownies. She assembled her ingredients: flour, cocoa powder, semisweet chocolate, eggs, salt, butter. She forced herself to focus on the task at hand: measuring, mixing. She chopped walnuts and more dark chocolate, added it to the batter. Every time her mind wandered, she tried to bring herself back to the moment, to the rich scent of the chocolate, the feel of the well-worn handle of the wooden spoon in her hand, the sight of the light filtering through the butter-yellow curtains over the kitchen sink. It was another trick Calder had taught her, and for a moment, she was lost in the memory of his lesson.
“Focus on the moment. This moment. Nothing else.”
“You say that like it’s easy,” she complained. She was in bed beside him, at the end of a particularly frustrating day.
“I didn’t say it was easy, kitten. But it’s worth a try.”
“I don’t even know what you mean.”
He pulled her into his arms and rolled both of them over until she was trapped beneath him. “My worst moments, before you took the curse, I held myself together with you. I’d look at your eyes, the way your lashes contrast with your gorgeous skin.” He gently kissed each of her eyes. “The scent of your skin. You’re like vanilla and lavender, maybe a touch of something smoky. Delicious,” he murmured, kissing his way down her jawline.”The way your skin feels against mine.” He ran his palms down to her hips. “I think I need a reminder of how you taste, though. You know, so I can describe it better…”
She shook her head, aware that she was smiling like a fool, blushing at a memory. He tended to have that effect on her.
She finished making the batter, but despite how hard she tried to focus on concrete things, her hunger came roaring to the forefront. Her stomach was growling. She was truly i
n pain, her stomach cramping from the emptiness, and she bit back a whimper as she placed the pan of brownie batter into the oven and set the timer.
“Control,” she whispered to herself.
She put the flour back in the pantry, placed the eggs and butter back in the refrigerator. She was wrapping up the baking chocolate when, before she could even stop herself, she began shoving it into her mouth.
It was bitter. Dry. It tasted chalky and foul, and she couldn’t stop eating it. She inhaled what was left of the bar and she needed more. Before she could think, she grabbed the canister of cocoa powder off of the counter, started spooning it into her mouth in huge heaping tablespoons, gagging on it even as she shoveled more in.
The entire canister was gone before she realized what was happening, and she pulled the refrigerator door open, grabbed the last gallon of milk and started chugging it, just trying to fill herself, trying to satisfy the emptiness inside.
Even after it was empty, she wasn’t full. She was still ravenous, and now the smell of the brownies baking suffused the air in her house.
She was barely even aware of where she was anymore, as if she was floating, somewhere between dreaming and reality. She wrenched open the oven, pulled the pan from the oven.
Her fingers were burning, and she didn’t even care.
She dropped the hot pan on the floor and got ready to start pulling the searing-hot, mostly raw brownies right from the pan.
“Stop!” Calder shouted from the living room. He’d just walked in, and he dropped the bags of groceries he was carrying as she snarled at him and turned back to the pan. She’d nearly gotten her fingers into the molten hot batter when he grabbed her, pulling her back from the pan and its contents, and all she wanted to do was scratch his eyes out for getting between her and satisfaction.
“Stop,” he repeated as he held her close to him, her back to his chest, his arms like iron around her, holding her arms to her sides as she struggled with him. “Sophie, stop,” he said in her ear, and she tried to head butt him. He dodged it and only growled when she brought her heel down hard on his toes.
Shadow Sworn (Copper Falls Book 2) Page 1
