by Lola Gabriel
There was. She was a witch who felt no cold.
At all.
Ever.
“Queen of the cold,” her mother would endearingly greet her.
Despite her impetuous mocking, her mother was the most graceful person she had ever known in her entire life, and Asra wondered why she couldn't have inherited any of it. Even her grandmother was convinced she had gotten her ungainly trait from her father.
“There you are, Azzie,” her mother said as she stepped onto the wooden deck and threw the blanket over her. Asra knew that it was only for appearances, but even after all this time, her mother’s maternal instincts were still very strong. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, of course. I was just looking up at the sky, wondering a few things. It’s no big deal,” Asra waved her hand dismissively.
Her mother sat down beside her on the swing and asked, “Are you sure? Because if you want to talk about it, I’m right here.” Her mother smiled at her and placed her warm hand over Asra’s.
“I’m absolutely sure. Thanks, Mom.”
Her mother smiled happily and gazed up at the stars. “It was such a wonderful celebration tonight.”
“It was. It’s amazing how much lighter I feel after letting go of all that nonsense,” Asra remarked. “Now I can start fresh and focus on the good things in my life. Right?”
“Absolutely. I am so proud of you.” Her mother beamed and tucked a lock of wayward light brown hair behind Asra’s ear. “Speaking of good things in your life, honey—”
“Oh, no,” Asra sighed and moved away from her mother.
“Let me finish, please.”
Asra rolled her eyes but gave her mother the opportunity to speak, even though she already knew what she was going to say.
Ever since Asra’s twenty-fifth birthday, her mother had been giving her unsolicited advice regarding love and had even gone as far as to arrange dates for her. According to her mother, Asra didn’t have any time to find a suitable man and she had even urged her to stop working. Asra was naturally horrified and kicked up a lot of dust at first, and had done everything in her power to make her mother stop. Then she just gave up because there was no stopping her mother. Honestly, the men her mother had fixed her up with weren't that bad, but it felt forced for her. They were all nice guys, but Asra couldn't see herself with any of them.
She recalled this one guy named Ben who she now worked with—what were the odds? Ben had been a bit of a nervous wreck while on their date, and when Asra asked him why he was so on edge, he had told her that he found her mother rather overbearing and terrifying.
He wasn't wrong, she thought to herself and clamped her lips shut to suppress a smile.
“You’ll be thirty soon, and your grandmother and I are still very worried about you,” her mother explained.
“You and Gran don't need to be worried. I’m fine.”
“You’re still single after all those attempts, and your grandmother is beginning to think that you’ll never find a husband, especially with the smoking,” her mother muttered with a scowl.
“I stopped,” Asra pointed out defensively.
“For tonight.”
“I made a promise to stop, not only because you and Gran don't like it, but because it’s both expensive to my pocket and bad for my health,” Asra stated.
Her mother narrowed her eyes at Asra and stared at her quietly for a moment. “That is good to hear.”
“You want to set me up with another guy, don’t you?” Asra asked.
“He’s great, you know,” her mother said with feigned nonchalance. “Really great. Handsome and kind and funny, and he has his own business.”
“Wow,” Asra said with a sarcastic smile. “Then why don’t you marry him, Mom?”
“He’s much too young for me,” she said, but her facial expression seemed to tell a different story. “Besides, I don’t need a man to make me feel complete.”
“Then why do I need one? I’m perfectly happy on my own,” Asra responded in exasperation.
“You can’t have babies by yourself now, can you?” her mother chuckled.
“I can try. I’ve done more complicated spells before,” Asra pointed out. “Making a baby should be easy.”
“It’s not something you want to do by yourself,” her mother said.
“Mom, you do know I have had sex before, right?” Asra asked and raised her eyebrows.
“Making a baby is much more than just having sex, Azzie.” Her mother’s expression was soft and dreamy, and Asra wondered whether her mother was thinking of her father.
Asra’s dad died about ten years ago, around the time when Asra headed off to college upon her mother’s insistence, as her mother believed every woman deserved the right to get a degree. Asra had a very good relationship with her father until the day he died in a horrible car crash on the way home from visiting his mother who had fallen ill. Asra had considered her father one of the best men in the world, despite his disapproval of Asra’s mother teaching her of the art of witchcraft. Her father had known all about her mother’s family and what they were, and had accepted them without hesitation. He loved her mother very much, and it was evident in their everyday life.
He did, however, find Asra’s grandmother a bit overbearing, trying to instill their ‘ways’ into him. As a normal human, all their rituals and teachings were rather odd, and they had agreed that their child would have the right to choose what he or she wanted to be. Luckily, or sometimes unluckily, according to Asra, she was born a witch like her mother, and her grandmother took it upon herself to teach Asra the ways of being a witch.
“Can I ask you something, Mom?” Asra narrowed her eyes slightly and awaited her mother’s reply.
“Sure, honey.”
“Do you ever think about Dad?” There, she asked. It only took her ten years to find the right moment to ask this question.
“Sometimes,” was her mother’s simple reply. “How long have you been holding that question in?”
“A while,” Asra admitted sheepishly.
Her mother sighed and sat back against the pillows. “I haven’t thought about him in a while, to be honest. Even though he was a wonderful man, and he will always be in my heart, there is no point in being sad. I loved him very much and I miss him very much, but I also know that your father wouldn't want me to be sad all the time.”
“I miss him,” Asra said for the first time in ten years.
She had always thought that she needed to be strong for her mother, but now she was sick of pretending not to miss him. He was her father, her hero, even if he was a mere human, and she would always miss him.
After her mother gave her a reassuring smile, she asked, “You don’t like it very much when your grandmother and I dictate to you how to live your life, do you?”
“Not particularly,” Asra answered and turned to her mother. “You taught me that I was a strong and capable woman—”
“You are,” her mother interjected.
“But still you insist on arranging dates for me, Mom. That’s a little contradictory, and very insulting to me,” Asra said angrily.
“We just want the best for you.”
Asra had had quite enough of all this and stood from the swing, allowing the blanket to fall onto the ground. “It’s getting late. I should go.”
“Azzie,” her mother called out to her as she made her way across the deck, and Asra spun around.
“What?”
“I love you, no matter what you decide.”
“Then act like it,” she muttered before returning on her way inside the house.
Asra was still fuming as she stopped in front of her house and climbed out of her car, slamming the door harder than she usually would. She was fed up with her mother and grandmother meddling in her life, but there wasn't anything that she could do about it.
“I can find my own damn husband,” she grumbled as she unlocked her front door and stepped inside. “I’m not sure I even want one.”
<
br /> She flicked the light switch, expecting the lights to come one, but they didn't. “Argh, seriously?” she groaned, flicking it a few more times, without any change.
She held her hand up in front of her, and a warm light emerged from her palm, illuminating the room in a warm glow, allowing her to find her way to the power supply box in the kitchen. Nothing seemed to be wrong, but Asra was too tired to try and figure out what was going on. She sauntered upstairs along the curved wooden staircase and entered her bathroom. She ran herself a hot bath, as she reeked of burnt sage and incense. Normally she wouldn't mind the smell, but now she associated it with her grandmother and mother trying to rule her life. Sage was supposed to cleanse and renew, not confine and control.
She lay in the bath until the water turned cold and she climbed out. A short while later she climbed into her comfy bed and closed her eyes. Desperate for some sleep, she hoped that her dreams would not terrorize her as they had for the last week.
As much as Asra would like to admit that her dreams scared her, she was much too proud to tell her mother about it. Or her grandmother, for that matter. They weren’t too terrifying; they were just unsettling. Every night had been different, but Asra knew a warning when she saw one or felt one. Her dreams were a way for the spirit realm to tell her whether she should be wary or not, and lately, the spirits of her ancestors wanted her to know that something was up, or something was going to be up very soon, and she needed to be prepared for it. She didn't know what it was, because ancestors tended to be very cryptic when it came to giving out information and warnings. A full moon had been present in all of the dreams, but that could mean anything, really.
She had been given a dream reference book by her grandmother when she was eleven, and she knew it was somewhere downstairs in the basement, but she just wasn't sure where. She definitely didn't possess the energy to get up and look for it, even though she was dying to know what those dreams meant.
A groan escaped her throat as she heard her phone ring on her nightstand and she blindly reached for it.
“Yes, Mom?”
“Oh, honey, you weren't in bed, were you?” her mother asked.
“Yeah, kind of,” she answered and rolled onto her back.
“I forgot to tell you. I found a box with a few of your father’s things in the attic. I thought you might like to go through them and take whatever you want for your altar,” her mother said.
“I don’t have an altar,” Asra muttered, even though that was a lie.
“Anyway, I’ll leave the box in the kitchen, so you can just come help yourself. Okay?”
“Okay, thanks, Mom.”
“Sleep tight, Azzie.”
“You too.”
The call disconnected and Asra placed her phone back on her nightstand.
Asra hated lying to her mother, but in this case it was needed, even though she was pretty sure her mother knew she had an altar in the first place. Her mother seemed to know everything.
Everything of value, as well as things that reminded her of her father, were arranged on a special altar in her meditation room. She wanted to keep him close to her, and that was the only way she knew how, apart from using a spell to bring him back from the dead, but unfortunately that was one of the most important rules of their coven as set out by the elders of decades ago. Even though they had the spells to do that, they weren't allowed to, because the last witch who tried to bring a loved one back from the Other Side died a terrible death at the hands of that very loved one, who turned out to be a ravenous, bloodthirsty necromancer. Not even the most skilled witch was allowed to do it, which made Asra a little less confident in her efforts to bring her father back. Her altar would have to be good enough,
For now at least.
2
The sunlight crept through the small gap between the two light purple curtains and fell directly on Cole Wylde’s face. Cole seemed unfazed by it, as he was concentrating on something much more important. His arm was stuck under a naked blonde woman who lay next to him, and he was contemplating how to free his arm without waking her. A light headache drummed against his skull from all the tequila he had consumed last night, and with every moment that passed, he remembered more and more of what he had done the previous night just to get in the blonde’s bed.
Now he was determined to get out as fast as possible. He glanced around the room, a little unsettled by the rows of stuffed animals glaring at him with dull and lifeless but oh-so-judgmental eyes.
How old was this woman? he wondered to himself and inched his arm out from under her, desperate not to wake her. When he eventually freed himself, he carefully slid out of bed and searched for his clothes. It took him longer than he had hoped to locate them, as they were scattered all over the bedroom. When he found them all, he quickly got dressed and left the house as quietly as he could. He stepped out into the sunlight, not bothered by who saw him leave the house looking properly sexed up from the previous night.
If there was one thing that Cole believed, it was that he would never allow anyone to make him feel uncomfortable for being himself.
He had experienced that too many times while growing up with his four younger brothers, and frankly, Cole was sick of it. Now, as the Alpha of his own pack in Oregon, he did what and who he wanted, and didn't have to answer to anyone or be left feeling guilty for doing what he wanted.
An older woman—the blonde’s neighbor—glared at him in disgust, but he simply greeted her with a smile and told her to have a wonderful day.
Maybe it was a little cocky of him, but he seriously didn't care what she thought of him. He wasn't going to see either of them ever again, so it didn't faze him in the least.
He approached his big black motorcycle that was parked in the driveway and climbed onto it. He pulled his helmet over his head, started his motorcycle and sped off.
As he drove along home, he felt his stomach cry out in hunger and realized he had not had a proper meal in over twelve hours. He had spent the night at a bar he had never been to, and as soon as he saw her in the crowd, the tequila flowed freely. This wasn't a regular thing for Cole to do—go to a bar, pick up a strange woman, impress her with the size of his... bike, and go to her house to have drunken sex, then sneak out the following morning. He only did irresponsible things like that when he was stressed out, and it was especially true this week.
Also, Cole would never take a woman back to his house for a night of wild sex. The last thing he wanted was to wake up the next morning with the girl still in his bed, and in his space. He was never in the right frame of mind to deal with awkward conversations with them, and most of all, he definitely didn't want to see them again.
Cole decided he’d rather go to their houses, so he could avoid all that awkwardness and just be on his merry way.
Cole had not always been the type of guy who would enter a room, and all the women would fall at his feet. He was an awkward teenager, and in the presence of his four younger and more attractive brothers, he always felt like the outcast, the ugly dog. His younger brother, Kodiak, seemed to have been the most popular with the girls as a teenager, which Cole found rather unfair at times.
Sure, Kodiak was handsome with his broody stare that had the ability to melt underwear right of a woman’s body, but he was terrified of girls, apart from his best friend—whose name had always evaded Cole. Those two spent an inordinate amount of time together, but nothing ever came of it.
As the eldest brother, being far older than his brothers, Cole mostly felt like a loner, and spent most of his time with his father, Luther, who was the Alpha of their pack in Minnesota. Even though his brothers, especially Wren, found this completely unfair, Luther simply made Cole feel like he belonged. Luther made him feel important and valued.
Cole thought back to all the things Luther had done for him, good and bad, all the sacrifices he had made for Cole, and Cole was truly grateful to him for that.
A pang of sadness hit him unexpectedly as he pulled into hi
s own driveway, and he stayed seated on his bike for about a minute before heading inside.
He made a cup of coffee to give himself his much-needed caffeine hit for the day. He had a bunch of errands to run this morning before checking in with his Betas, Orin and Mash. The duo was due to return from a scouting expedition, investigating a potential threat to their pack.
Things hadn't always been easy for Cole and his pack, which spanned across the entire state of Oregon. Apparently, his name traveled further than he had anticipated, along with the scourge that was Luther Wylde. Cole was well aware of Luther’s shortcomings as both a father and an Alpha, but he always had the best interest of the pack and his family at heart. His mother, Skye, even more so.
As the Alpha’s mate, Skye had a natural obligation to look after her family and keep them safe above all. She also had the same abilities that Kodiak had, control of feelings and memories, although sometimes he thought they could predict the future as well. This was first brought to Cole’s attention when Kodiak dropped subtle hints about things that had not yet happened, but they always came true.
Maybe it was a tragic coincidence, but Kodiak denied ever having an ability like that. He would normally just shrug it off and blame his perceptiveness on everything around him. It made sense, but it was certainly a topic of conversation between Cole and Luther.
As Cole sat at the kitchen counter, swaying to and fro, he noticed Orin and Mash through the large window that overlooked the massive backyard of Cole’s property. His home wasn't in the suburbs—it was surrounded by a forested area with a stunning view of Broken Top Mountain, and North and South Sister Mountains in the distance. His home was perfect, designed just the way he wanted it, with high pitched ceilings, wooden floors and a large stone fireplace which resembled the one at the old Wylde home in Minnesota.
