The twins had shown me that I might have two different shapes; human and wolf, but I wasn’t two different entities. For most of my life I had considered ‘my wolf’ to be something that took over when I shifted. But in reality, I had been suppressing half of who I was while in my human shape, and only being free when I shifted into a wolf. The truth was that I was just Anna, all the time, and it was okay to embrace my wolf half even when in my human shape. I was just starting to accept the part of myself that was fae, and I needed to learn to trust my instincts to do magic.
“Just watch,” Airmed told me with exasperation.
I struggled to see what she was doing with her magic, I was getting better at sensing the flow but was still clueless about how to replicate the intricacies of what she was doing. I really did want to learn to be a healer, but the techniques I needed to learn were eluding me.
If I was really honest with myself, though, a part of me was holding back because I was afraid of harming someone. What if I poured my magic into one of these people and set them on fire? Or made them explode?
Airmed closed her eyes and I felt the flow of magic come from within her to stream into the guard.
I had observed this many times before, but I couldn’t seem to get a handle on what she was doing, other than simply sending her magic into her patient. The guard grimaced as the magic wrapped around his injured arm and then sunk in. I leaned forward to see what the magic was doing but all I felt was a coolness emanating from the injury.
Airmed opened her eyes to examine the now-healed bone and the guard flexed his fingers with a grin. Yet another patient, easily healed by Airmed after I failed to do anything.
Airmed and I both sat back and eyed each other after the guard left. “Maybe talk me through what it is that you’re doing again?”
She sighed but started again. “Reach inside yourself, connect with your magic, and then use it to fix what’s wrong.” She had been telling me the same thing over and over again but using slightly different words each time.
“But how do you use it to fix what’s wrong?” I asked in frustration. I needed more than just a general statement.
She clenched her jaw. “You just… feel what’s wrong and use your magic to force things back into place.”
I exhaled. Maybe Airmed could heal instinctively because she had been doing this for so many centuries. “But what about when you were first learning? Did you struggle at all?”
She gave a snort. “I’ve always been able to do this, there was no ‘learning’ for me.” She paused thoughtfully. “But using magic is like fighting a battle, you have to master it and force it to do what you want.”
Once again, we were at a stalemate. Using my magic didn’t feel like fighting a battle. The few times when I was successful at doing anything with my magic it had felt more like a release than a battle. When I had successfully used my magic, it was because I had let my instincts and emotions guide me.
Working with Airmed was not teaching me anything. “Do you have textbooks on healing?”
“Textbooks?” She stared at me blankly. “What would a book tell you about healing? You just need to do it.”
I sighed and gave up. I guess it was too much to hope for that someone had written a book on the techniques used for healing. I could really use a book called something like ‘Theory of Magical Healing’ or even better ‘Magical Healing for Dummies’. But I guess that wasn’t really necessary for the fae since they lived for centuries and didn’t need to teach or pass down information like humans did.
I stood up since that was our last patient of the day. “Thank you for your help, Airmed,” I told her politely. “I appreciate you taking time to teach me.”
She gave me a look. “You’re welcome.”
I smoothed my dress down before exiting the room to collect Caylee. Froston had told me that the prince was off doing princely things. I had my freedom for the rest of the day and I didn’t intend to leave my room for any of it. I wanted to practice my magic so that I would be ready for the prince.
The next time we met, I wanted to be able to hold my own with him. He had told me before that using magic was like a muscle, I wanted to get my magical muscle bulked up like it was on steroids. I grimaced at the thought; that was bad, even for my terrible sense of humor. But I was not going to let Drake intimidate me or take advantage of me. I was going to stand tall and meet his challenge.
I lost myself in my magic once we got back to the room. Caylee was bored watching me sit on the floor with my eyes closed, so I told her to give me some time alone. She happily skipped off to go chat up one of the prince’s guards; apparently she had been getting friendly with them during my lessons. I was a little worried that they might take advantage of her, but she laughed off my concerns.
Alone in my room, I worked on my magic for hours until I was able to access it with barely a thought. I practiced making barriers, breezes, and tiny fireballs until it was second nature. But creating a slight breeze or a shower of sparks wasn’t going to help me impress the king or get out of here.
Being more confident in using my magic was going to help me stand toe to toe with the prince. And the more I practiced, the more natural using magic felt. I needed to get to the point where I trusted my instincts where magic was concerned. If I could instinctively form a complicated shield that blocked magic when Froston tried to zap me, maybe I could get to the point where I could heal just as well as Airmed using my instincts.
Chapter 11
Cody
I slid into the chair opposite Robbie with a bad feeling. He looked nervous and kept tapping on the table, making me even more apprehensive. His normally neatly combed hair was sticking up in all directions, as if he had been rubbing his hands through it. He had at least two days-worth of stubble, and his eyes were bloodshot and wild.
Robbie had called earlier this evening and had wanted to talk to me alone. His request wasn’t that unusual under normal circumstances, a lot of the guys would call me when they needed me to be an intermediary between them and James or Austin. Robbie had been recruited as a much-needed psychologist for the pack. He would usually call me when he was worried about one of the guys, or if he was having a difficult time with one of them. Austin and I had put a lot of faith in him to take care of our guys.
But these were not normal circumstances and Robbie was already on the pack shit list. He and Quinn had both given us stories the night of the attack on our pack house that didn’t match. Even worse than that, he had let one of our enemies get past him and onto our territory to place a bomb. We didn’t have any solid evidence to show that he was in league with the enemy, and I really hoped that he wasn’t. I wanted it to be just a coincidence, but my gut was telling me otherwise.
Austin had given the order for us to quietly keep Robbie under surveillance. If he was working with the enemy, we wanted to control the flow of information that they received. Giving the enemy false information was sometimes more useful than nothing at all. Caleb was monitoring all of his electronic communications to trace them. We didn’t have anything yet, but if we simply kicked Robbie out our enemies would just plant another mole that we didn’t know about. It was better to use the one that we thought we found.
Robbie had asked to meet in this hole in the wall bar in the middle of nowhere. We were the only patrons here, and the bartender looked like he would be pissed if we tried to order something from him. He was kicked back in his chair, playing on his phone, and completely ignoring us.
“Cody,” Robbie started, tapping his fingers even faster on the table. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, so this was not going to be a pleasant conversation.
“Um, you know I have-” his voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. Dude was about to kill me with the suspense.
I tried to keep my impatience to myself, intimidating him wasn’t going to make him spit it out.
“I had a sister,” he finally mumbled.
I frowned. I knew he had a sister that was mated into
a pack somewhere in the Midwest, but her pack had not wanted to take in Robbie along with her. Receiving a female into a pack was a huge bonus, but adding another male to compete was usually a no-go in most packs. Robbie, in particular, was a no-go because psychology wasn’t considered to be an occupation worthy of a wolf.
“Did something happen?” I asked him quietly.
He finally stopped the incessant tapping and threw himself back into his chair with a sigh. As he let out his breath, all the tension flooded out of him and he finally met my eyes. What I saw there in his tired eyes was defeat. He had given up.
“I have something to tell you,” Robbie stated dejectedly.
My stomach sank as Robbie told me his story. He had been approached by another wolf a week before we had even found Anna or knew she existed. Initially, he was just offered money to betray the Seaside Pack but turned it down. The same night that Evelyn had been killed, he had been approached again.
This time, the wolf told him that his organization had his sister and would be mailing her to him in pieces if he didn’t cooperate.
“Cody, you gotta believe me,” Robbie said with a plea in his eyes. “I never meant to hurt any of you guys. At first, they just asked me to do stupid stuff. Asked me about which room Anna was staying in, or when we were having meetings…”
I couldn’t help the low growl that came out. “Putting Anna and the rest of the pack at risk isn’t ‘stupid stuff’. You allowed the enemy onto our territory-”
“I didn’t know what they were planning that night they attacked the house,” he told me insistently. “He said they wanted to meet with me on the other side of the property, I didn’t realize they were going to sneak onto our pack lands.”
“And the bomb?” I asked angrily. “If Anna or anyone else had been standing close-”
“They weren’t,” he asserted. “I made sure no one was around.”
“So you knew?” I asked in a dangerous voice. Robbie had better think really hard before he answered that question.
He paled and lowered his head in shame. “I knew.”
I heard enough. Robbie was lucky that I had self-control. If James were here now…
I reached for my phone to call Aus, I was too far from anyone else in the pack to use the pack bond to get a hold of him.
Robbie reached for my phone to stop me and I looked at him incredulously, standing slowly. I leaned over where he was sitting and let him feel the full power of my anger and sense of betrayal. He shrunk down in his chair with a mumbled apology. Content that he was willing to submit, I looked back at my phone and cursed. No bars of service.
“This is what we are going to do,” I growled at Robbie. “You are going to come back to the house with me quietly. You are going to fully cooperate, and you are going to tell us everything. If and I mean if we get Anna back and no one in the pack is harmed, we might let you live. But you are skating on thin ice right now.”
Robbie gave a sharp nod. “They killed my sister,” he whispered and raised his eyes to me. “I’m next.”
I shook my head in disgust. The only reason he was confessing right now was to save his own skin? “You should have come to us.” I told him angrily. “If you had told us that they had taken your sister, we would have done everything we could to get her back unharmed. We were your brothers in arms, and you betrayed us. For what? What did you gain?”
“Nothing,” he whispered. “I lost everything that ever mattered to me.”
I grabbed his arm and hauled him up out of the chair, pushing him ahead of me. He exited the bar first and I squinted when I walked out into the bright light. That’s why I never saw them coming before it was too late.
Robbie’s head snapped back, and I was hit with a spray of blood and other things I didn’t want to think about. I immediately crouched to make myself a smaller target and hurled myself back into the bar, rolling behind the wall for cover. Robbie’s body hit the ground with a thump in front of me.
“Shit.” I looked around the bar desperately for anything I could use as a weapon. Nothing.
The bartender was gone, no one was in sight. I extended my senses and felt the presence of other wolves nearby who were not in my pack. I cursed again, glancing at my phone – still no service.
I felt the wolves outside, not making any effort to come in here after me. What were they waiting for? I tried to extend my senses further and felt something odd. Where the wolves felt like warm, glowing balls of energy, there were other spots that felt cold and dark.
For the second time today, my heart sunk. I knew what this was, that was how Aus and James had described the man that took Anna. But it wasn’t just one this time, there were a bunch of them, and they were about to enter the bar, leaving the mysterious wolves outside.
I smashed one of the chairs and picked up the leg to use as a weapon. I was not going down without a fight.
Chapter 12
Anna
“Anna! I have a surprise for you!” I tensed when I heard the prince call out in a singsong voice. A moment later he strode into my room followed by a group of his guards, dragging something between them. The prince had been absent for several days now, leaving me to work with Airmed and to practice on my own.
I was even more nervous when I realized that he had brought six of his guards along with his ‘surprise’. What kind of a surprise needed that many guards? Probably not a good one.
I stood to peer in between the guards and try to see what it was amongst their circle without getting too close. I gasped when I picked up on his scent and saw a flash of Caribbean blue eyes.
“Cody!” I shoved my way through the guards without a second thought, elbowing one in the ribs when he didn’t move quickly enough for me.
The guards released him, and Cody struggled to stay upright on his knees, swaying as he met my eyes.
I knelt to inspect his injuries. One of his eyes was almost swollen shut, he had cuts and abrasions all over his face and his clothes were torn and bloody.
I gently cupped his face in my hand and he gave a contented sigh. “Found you.” He gave me a rueful grin and reached for me.
“What have you gotten yourself into?” I murmured to him as we embraced, and he breathed in my scent. I was thankful at how much stronger I had been getting, because Cody was leaning into me with all of his weight and I was able to support both of us.
I pulled back and steadied him when he swayed again. “I need to take a look at your injuries.”
I shot a dirty look at the prince, who seemed to just be watching our reunion with amusement. What was wrong with that guy?
I brushed Cody’s hair back gently and ran a hand down his jaw. Most of his facial injuries looked painful, but not serious. “I’m going to check your eye,” I warned him before carefully pulling down his lower eyelid to get a look at the eye itself. His beautiful eye was bloodshot, but I didn’t notice any obvious damage to the eye. “I need a flashlight,” I grumbled to myself.
To my surprise, one of the guards reached into the pocket of his black uniform and pulled out a small keychain flashlight. He glanced at the prince before handing it over to me. I gave him a nod of thanks, but it was a little difficult to be truly thankful when I was guessing that he had a hand in this.
Cody’s pupils both dilated appropriately so I felt a little bit better. I also couldn’t see any obvious abrasions or tears in the eye.
The rest of my exam of Cody went a little quicker, but I got angrier and angrier at the more damage I saw. Cody must have been pretty out of it, because he didn’t complain or ask any questions. He just grunted occasionally when I touched a sore spot.
The prince and his guards also didn’t murmur a word, just watched.
“Can you stand?” I asked Cody.
He grunted but was able to get to his feet. I stumbled a little trying to hold up the weight of a 230-pound werewolf but managed to keep both of us on our feet until I could guide Cody over to the couch to rest.
I helpe
d him lie down on the couch and he closed his eyes in relief. Once he was settled and I smoothed my hand over his brow, I jumped up in anger.
“What did you do to him?” I growled as I stalked closer to the prince.
A few of his guards moved to intercept me, but the prince waved them back. “That will be all, you’re dismissed.”
There was some hesitation, but all of them bowed and took their leave of the prince before heading out the door.
The prince and I circled each other. I was angry, and the amused smirk on his face was just infuriating me further.
“You don’t like my gift?” he taunted me.
“What did you do to him?” I repeated, narrowing my eyes.
The prince laughed. “He didn’t initially accept the gracious invitation that I extended to him. My guards had to convince him to come along.”
“You did something else.” Cody would never just lie on the couch peacefully while I spoke with the man responsible for taking me from the pack. He had to be drugged or magicked into compliance somehow.
The prince shrugged. “Consider it part of your lessons. I have a feeling that you will be much more motivated to heal one of your wolves than one of my guards.” He flashed a grin at me. “I’m sure you can figure out how to unravel the magic on him…eventually. But you might need a few more lessons in compulsion first.”
I seethed but the prince just gave me a haughty grin. “Are you ready to go back to learning?” He stopped circling me and stood still.
“Fine,” I ground out. “But teach me compulsion first.” I needed to fix whatever was wrong with Cody ASAP.
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