Werewolf Mage 4

by Harry Nix

  Werewolf Mage 4

  Harry Nix

  Werewolf Mage 4 Copyright 2020 Harry Nix. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

  Harry Nix

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  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogs in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  1

  Alex nodded to the two guards as he carried the heavy bags of groceries in from the old wreck of a car that they'd bought.

  “Zara, Anton,” Alex said.

  Since the attack on the village two weeks ago and the death of ten werewolves, some of whom Alex hadn’t even known by name, he was determined to learn the name of every member of his pack.

  “Alex,” Anton said and helpfully opened the rickety old wooden door before returning to scanning the street. Out here in the industrial area, it was mostly deserted with only an occasional squatter being seen walking the streets and sometimes cars driving around, but no matter the isolation there were now guards around the clock.

  Alex shouldered the door open, Jacob and Jeremiah following behind, carrying heavy bags of groceries of their own. Immediately, six children, who had been playing in the corner with some plastic blocks, got excited and started jumping around.

  “Alex, Alex!” Ruby said. The children crowded around him trying to get a look in the bags and he had to lift them up above his head. Lewis, who was the youngest at two, had no hesitation about shifting to hybrid form and using his claws to get what he wanted.

  “Did you get us something?” a little girl asked. Alex looked at her for a moment before he remembered her name. Sienna, that was it.

  “I got you… a giant bucket of dirt. That’s what we’re having for dinner,” he said.

  “Noooo! We don't want dirt!” Sienna said.

  “Watch out everyone,” Alex said, shuffling past them through another ruined door and into the wreck of the kitchen. River was in there, cooking. He was as tall as Alex but with darker skin and brown hair that came down to his shoulders. He also wore gold rings in his ears and dressed in a way that made him look like a pirate. It also turned out that he was an excellent cook, and with their move to this abandoned wreck of a house in Baxter, he had taken over kitchen duties for the pack, working miracles with the electric stove that only had two working hotplates out of four.

  “Finally, some celery,” he said when he spotted it sticking out of Alex's shopping.

  “Yay, more things to peel,” Yvonne said, the teenage werewolf sitting dejectedly in front of a pile of potatoes with a peeler. Alex carefully placed the shopping bags on the wooden table in the center of the room. They'd found it in one of the abandoned houses nearby, and although it was sturdy, it was old, and Alex half expected it to collapse under the weight of all the shopping they were bringing in. Alex began to rummage in one of the bags, just as Esme and Lydia came in from the back room. They caught him grabbing treat-size chocolate bars and stuffing them in his pockets.

  “Spoiling children is for grandmas,” Esme said.

  “Don't listen to the old floozy. Just do what you want,” Lydia said. She was still walking slightly hunched over. Although Alex had used his healing spell to heal her up well enough for them all to escape the caves before the fire mages came, there was still a deep healing that needed to happen and it appeared to be going slowly. Nevertheless, her color was coming back. She was definitely breathing easier, every day getting better and better despite the fact they were living in a dusty old hovel.

  Alex saw Yvonne perk up as Jacob came shuffling into the room. Jacob was wearing a tight white T-shirt and had muscles bulging all over the place but as usual was completely oblivious to Yvonne's gaze. Alex chuckled to himself as he saw Yvonne adjust her top, trying to push up some cleavage. Jacob completely ignored her and went over to sniff at River’s cooking before being waved away. Alex left them all to it to unpack the groceries.

  It’d taken them four days in total to travel from the wilderness with their injured and make it to Baxter. Lacking any money, they’d been forced to walk over to the industrial district where Alex had chosen the house for them to squat in. It was beside the factory where he’d fought mages in the past. The shiny spot on the concrete where he’d incinerated them in their car was still there.

  Although he been enchanting rings like crazy, and April had been going out to sell them, money was still a serious issue.

  It had been made worse by the fact that Juno’s grandmother Ruby was gone, and they could no longer find Juno's home. April and Nia assumed that they been removed from the ward somehow, although they couldn't work out why Ruby might do such a thing. It had been Alex's first stop after making sure his pack had at least a roof over their heads, and although he knew the street where Juno's house was, the ward prevented him from finding it. It had been the most unusual thing to find himself walking down the street then finding himself a street away, confused and wondering where he was.

  April and Nia had both assured Alex that Ruby hadn't vanished with the money. He knew this was true but it was puzzling. Alex had gone every few days over to where he thought the house was, hoping that Ruby would reappear. He desperately needed the quarter million.

  Alex went back into what could charitably be called the living room and wandered over to where the children were playing. At some point in the week April had bought a bunch of toys for them, including an enormous tub of plastic blocks, toy cars, and small figurines. The children had built houses and a castle with them and were playing some complicated game involving superheroes, bad guys, and people constantly being sent to jail and escaping.

  Alex took one of the chocolates out of his pocket and held it up. “No one here likes chocolate, do they?” he said to the air, looking up at the ceiling which had been white at some point but now was aged and flaking.

  “Me, me, me! We like chocolate!” Ruby called out. He was instantly surrounded by children calling out, “Me, me, me. We do.” He kept looking at the ceiling.

  “It's a pity there's no one here who likes chocolate. I guess I’ll just have to eat this all by myself,” he said and pretended to open the wrapper, driving the children crazy.

  “Down here! Look down here!” Sienna called out, pulling on Alex's clothes.

  “What's that? I think I can hear a mouse or something squeaking. Oh well, I guess I better eat my chocolate,” he said, keeping a straight face. The children went crazy until eventually Alex laughed and looked down. He then handed out the chocolates.

  Lewis demanded to open his own, but then just shifted into hybrid form and shredded the packaging with his claws before shoving the chocolate and some of the plastic in his mouth.

  Leaving the children to eat their chocolate, Alex went out the front door, nodding to Zara and Anton as he went into the abandoned factory next door. As he walked the short distance across to the factory, the warm sun shining down on him, he shook his head at the unreality of all this.

  Juno was gone. Two weeks now. Yet life continued on. Inside, Yvonne was peeling potatoes and River was cooking. Children who had witnessed Lydia being attacked were now laughing and playing, building castles out of plastic blocks. Alex had just been walking around the supermarket, followed by Jacob and Jeremiah, fil
ling a shopping cart, looking at grapes, and working out how many bananas he had to buy.

  The attack of two weeks earlier was still there in his mind, but it had faded somehow, becoming a story once more. Alex knew that something had changed within him, however. When he’d discovered April, virtually gutted, bleeding out on the bed, he’d used his magic to heal her and then had learned that mages had taken Juno. He'd almost gone wild at that point and had been stopped only by Jeremiah punching him repeatedly in the face. It hurt, and Alex had lost a few teeth, but he was thankful to the big werewolf because otherwise Alex would have run off into the wilderness, chasing the trail. Lydia would have died and probably more of his pack too.

  So instead of chasing Juno, Alex used his magic to heal his pack before they all left the cave, escaping before the mages who destroyed their village could find them. The white-hot rage that had almost tipped him into wildness had turned into some kind of cold steel. Alex could feel it within him, as though, somehow, Jeremiah thwarting his shift to wildness had physically changed something within him. So, while he was laughing with children or trying to work out which type of detergent to buy, a cold and sharp part of him had been forming a plan.

  Over the four days of marching from the wilderness, Alex had learned that there were multiple fire mage enclaves, However, Ignis were easily the largest, and surely must have been the attackers given the sheer number of them, their strength, and also their protection and weapons. In addition to weapons firing silver bullets, they had been wearing multiple rings that protected them against direct attack.

  Alex walked past the shiny spot on the concrete where a lifetime ago a car with four mages in it had detonated. He shook his head as he passed. He’d destroyed them by injecting his own code into their spell.

  It was the first, and so far, last time he managed to do something like that. The truth was that in the heat of battle he kept behaving as though he was just a werewolf relying on his teeth and claws and strength. That was another thing that needed to change, however, and why he was coming to the factory now. He could no longer afford to be so foolish, so naïve. He was a werewolf and tremendously strong, but so were most werewolves, and he was ultimately just their equal on that level. But as a werewolf mage, he could outclass all of them. Even the haste spell which Alex had originally dismissed as mostly useless, given his speed, had proven to be invaluable. A werewolf fight was fast and vicious, and Alex discovered that the faster he was, the more often he won.

  Alex walked in through the open door of the factory and found Nia and April inside. They’d set up a makeshift laboratory table behind a large piece of machinery, protected from the main training area. Nia was chopping herbs while April was adjusting the flame under a bubbling beaker.

  “Alex!” Nia called out when she spotted him. She dropped the knife and came rushing over with April close behind her. Although he’d seen both his mates that morning, Alex's heart soared at the sight of them. They all collided, Alex kissing each of them one after the other and then pulling them into a three-person hug.

  It turned out the thrall, although being alternatively called the curse, had some interesting side effects as well. Despite the sheer horror of Juno being missing there was no doubt that their bond had deepened because of the thrall. Alex couldn't really explain it but sometimes it felt as though they were more in sync with each other and sometimes he caught April and Nia finishing each other's sentences.

  Before the thrall, there had been many thoughts about the fact that he barely knew his mates, that this had all been a rush, but afterwards most of those concerns had evaporated away. Sure, there were still gaps, histories to be filled in, but Alex was comfortable with discovering, through conversations and time, more of who his mates were. They finally pulled apart, then Alex removed the final two chocolates from his pockets.

  “Here’s payment for beating the hell out of me,” he said. April and Nia snatched the chocolates from him, almost faster than the kids inside had, and immediately opened and ate them.

  “You’d better get ready,” Nia said through a mouthful of nougat.

  Although Alex was wearing a shifter charm, he went over behind one of the larger pieces of machinery, stripped down to nothing, and removed the charm. He also took off the two fireball rings he was wearing, and the shield charm. The point of training was to train and it turned out that using rings to cast spells did nothing to improve his magic ability. He’d also taken off his clothes because he was practicing a new style of fighting, rapidly switching from wolf to hybrid form to human, using the advantages of each form, although he had to admit the human form didn't have many. Alex came out from behind the machinery and grinned at his two mates as they started wolf-whistling at him.

  “Come, bring that thing over here,” Nia said, looking squarely at his package.

  “I'm already charged up, thank you. Maybe after I use some of the magic,” Alex said.

  Nia let out a disappointed sigh, but there was a glint in her eye that meant she would take him up on his offer soon. Despite the terrible nature of their accommodations, and the fact that they were sleeping on inflatable mattresses—as they were the cheapest thing they could afford—they often made time to sneak off.

  There was a utilitarian point to it, of course. Alex was still enchanting rings like crazy for most of the day, using every drop of magic, so charging up the sex magic with his mates was a necessary step. In those moments together there was sometimes a franticness to it as though Juno's absence and the death of all the werewolves in his pack had shown them all how short life could be, and they were desperately trying to connect.

  Alex walked into the middle of their impromptu fighting circle. Nia stepped in, shifting to hybrid form and flexing her claws at him. April was behind Nia but no longer called out the names of the spells as she cast them. After all, their enemies didn't. Alex saw a flicker of the spell screen above her head just as Nia leaped at him and he instinctively dived, rolling under her and avoiding the vines that had burst out of a small crack in the concrete from the earth below. Alex was on his feet immediately and cast haste, streaking across the room to punch Nia as hard as he could in the back of the head. She was wearing a shield ring and it flared as Alex connected. The werewolf spun and aimed a vicious slash at his face. Alex cast shield before she could connect and her claws sparked as they hit.

  Alex had part of his spell screen open; that too he’d modified in the last two weeks realizing he didn't need to see all of it, especially not in a battle. He'd reduced it to see his health, mana, and spell effects as well as a list of spells he had available to cast.

  He had fourteen in total now, rapidly growing from the original ten that Juno had taught him. On his own he had added flame shield, merging two spells together to create a new one. Henry the necromancer had given him minor necromancy, which he had thus far only used to bring back a chicken one time. He had written a minor healing spell healing flame and then with Stephen's help had improved it. Instead of only being on the surface, the healing would leap to the most severe injury.

  Finally, he had his homebrew fireball spell that he’d created with Stephen's help. If Alex had known how useful the young necromancer had been, he would have made a greater effort to keep him a few more days to see if he could learn more.

  Thinking back on it, he could now feel a new division in himself. It was no longer between man and wolf, but between his soft, naïve past self and the cold hardness growing inside him. He’d let Stephen go, thinking of hearts and minds and all that bullshit. In return, the young necromancer had helped him with his magic, had helped him make breakthroughs with enchanting, but then he’d vanished, stealing some of the rings that Alex had enchanted and leaving behind only an address on the edge of the industrial zone.

  Alex took two rapid steps back, making some space between him and Nia, then felt his lungs lock down, the spell gasp appearing in his active spell list. It was a favorite of April's and essentially stopped the victim from bre
athing. However, it was short-lived, requiring a constant flow of mana, meaning that if Alex could outlast it, April would eventually have to let it go. Additionally, his resistance had been growing. Originally, when she'd cast the spell, he’d been unable to breathe at all. Now, it still felt as though there was an iron band around his chest, but with great force of will, he could take in some air, pushing against the spell that April had on him, requiring her to force more mana into it to hold it. But still, it was incredibly effective, taking his attention, and restricting what he could do.

  Nia dived at him again, slashing with her claws as he ducked out of the way.

  He shifted to wolf and charged her legs, knocking her off balance before he shifted back to hybrid as she fell. He grabbed her arm, attempting to put a lock on it.

  He managed to get her wrist and elbow as they went down together. Despite the fact he was still under gasp, Alex suddenly found himself in a familiar position: on top of Nia, half-sitting across her butt.

  “Fight me or fuck me, but make up your mind,” the werewolf snarled, struggling to get free.

  Alex looked across at April and saw her cheeks were pink, perhaps from the exertion of the spell, but Alex knew that wasn't all of it. More than once their training sessions had turned wild. Alex suddenly felt gasp release. He could breathe again. He looked down at Nia. He had her by one wrist, the other hand on the back of her neck, and as he was in hybrid form, and so was she, there were no clothes between them.

  With his heart thudding, and the wildness inside him, he looked back up at April, who was watching the two of them, almost mesmerized. Alex kept hold of Nia’s neck and her wrist and slowly moved, pressing the length of himself against her. Nia struggled one more time as though she was trying to get away, but Alex couldn't help but feel she had lifted her butt a little, allowing him greater access. He clamped his hand on the back of her neck, holding her still, and then slipped into her. She was hot, wet, and Alex could feel the throbbing of her heart in time with his own. He looked back at April who had sat down on the concrete step and was watching them, one of her hands straying to her inner thigh.