Love Potion: A Valentine's Day Charity Anthology

by Graceley Knox

  “The fox shifter.” Jez refrained from describing her too much, because all the adjectives that came to him painted her in an overtly positive and glorious light. “I think she was the person responsible for the fire.”

  Loki regarded their surroundings. “She did a pretty good job. And no. I didn’t see her. Did she get you? That’s why you were unconscious?”

  “No, it’s…”

  What did that girl in his vision look like? Her features had been obscured by fuzz. He couldn’t even remember her attire. The only thing that struck him was the red hairpin.

  His stomach dropped.

  He had no idea why he was so attached to that object, but he needed to hold it. His mood soured even more when he reached into his pocket and didn’t find anything there.

  “Looking for this?” Loki asked, pinching it between his fingers.

  Jez forgot his manners and snatched it from Loki. “Where did you find it?”

  Another puff of smoke. “The paramedics found it right next to where you passed out. You were clutching it pretty tightly. I have no idea why you’re so attached to a piece of metal.”

  “Beats me.” Jez sat up and rested his hands on his head. “She has to be with the foxes, then.”

  “But we need to find her to get to them.”

  “Oh, uh, yeah.” Jez realized that his priorities were out of order. He intended to do things the other way around. Lifting himself from his seating position, Jez smoothed his hands over his shirt. They hadn’t changed him out of his old clothes despite cleaning him up, and the edges of his shirt had been burned.

  “I’m guessing they were short on t-shirts?” Jez asked.

  Loki tutted and flicked his cigarette, tossing bits of ash onto the ground.

  Jez’s brow twitched. “You realize that most of the people here are trying to heal, right? And the scent of tobacco isn’t going to help them any.”

  “They’re shifters. They can take a little bit of fucking smo— Where are you going?”

  “I’m supposed to lead investigations.” Jez padded away.

  “Better get that shirt changed first.”

  Jez snorted and ran his hand around his collar, loosening it. “I have to stop getting into trouble. I don’t like shopping for shirts.”

  He pulled the doors of the entrance open, letting too much light stream in. A collective groan from the victims sounded from behind him. “Are you going to just sit there and kill your lungs or are you going to give me a proper report?” he asked Loki.

  “Like hell a damn cigarette is going to ruin my health.”

  Jez answered with a one-shoulder shrug. “They never did any studies on it.” Many wolf shifters didn’t die of old age anyway—the disputes between shifter clans led to constant warfare. It resulted in too many casualties. Loki, with the way he enjoyed getting into pointless fights, probably wasn’t going to be one of the lucky few.

  “We lost Ridol yesterday.”

  “Just him?” Jez asked. He hated how cold he sounded, but he knew there’d be losses once he heard of the Slymoors, and he hadn’t been particularly close to Ridol.

  Another flashing image went through his mind. He thought he noticed more about the mystery woman each time he saw her in her memories. He recalled her laughing next to a vending machine, and a sharp pain in his chest accompanied that memory. The memory seemed recent, because he recognized that vending machine, and it had only been shifted to that spot a month back.

  Did he meet her yesterday?

  Was she why he’d fought a damn tree? He really didn’t know why he’d do that, even when intoxicated by the moon tonic, and she was such a conundrum that it was convenient to use her as an explanation.

  There’d always been a missing puzzle piece in his heart. It came to him that she just might be it. He had no clue where the thought came from, and it was troubling.

  “You with me?” Loki asked. He waved his fingers in front of Jez’s face. “You keep doing that lately. Spacing out.”

  “Sorry. Just distracted.”

  Loki didn’t seem convinced. “Hell you are. You’re always on the ball about shit. Maybe you’re hiding something.” Loki often did the deceiving—hence the name.

  Jez shook his head. “That’s not it at all.”

  “So, you heard what I said about the report?”

  “No.”

  “All right, dumbass, listen again. I’ve talked to your men, which you really should’ve done, but I’ll forgive you, considering you were passed out. Cory managed to find out where the foxes might be holing up.”

  “Might be?”

  “They have their own wards, so we can’t know for sure, but we think it’s at Kingstrot. And we’re considering a trap to wipe them out all at once. No questions. We’d be rid of them forever.”

  Jez stilled. Loki’s suggestion played like a ticking bomb through his mind.

  “Goddammit,” Loki said. “Don’t tell me that you’re spacing out again.”

  “Sorry, I thought I heard wrong.” Jez spun around and folded his arms across his chest, leaning against a wall. “You’re talking about genocide here.”

  “Like they tried to do with us.”

  “They burned down a warehouse, not even our lodgings. My guess is that they wanted to take out our supplies to weaken us before launching a full assault. It was to get us out of the bay.”

  Loki plucked a flask from his belt and took a swig of alcohol. Jez’s guess was that he was going to find some coffee after that for the buzz. “Then they’re playing it too easy. The nice guys don’t win, and that’s why we’re going to do what we’ve planned instead and get a leg up.”

  Jez attempted to act like he wasn’t utterly appalled by the idea, but the disgust was impossible to hide. “You realize their gang won’t just consist of their men, right? Women. Children. Infants.”

  For a second, Loki looked genuinely concerned. Then he shifted his weight to his other foot and continued, “Children who might grow up to fuck up us wolves in the future. When you get rid of a problem, you remove it from the source.”

  “No,” Jez said. “We’ll come up with a better plan.”

  “We have our mixers and warders getting ready. The warders will hold them in their lodgings while our men set the explosives around. They’ll be wiped out in a night. Kenny’s already prepping the reporters and coming up with an explanation for it. Things are moving quickly. No thanks to you. You were knocked out the whole night. The wolves are mad, Jez. They want revenge for having their family members caught in a fire, and there’s overwhelming support for it. They want to avenge Ridol. You know they’ve always hated the foxes.”

  They’re moving way too fast with this. They’re not even thinking about what they’re actually doing. “Just no!”

  “No?”

  “Karla agrees to this?”

  “We might have changed some of the specifics when telling the others about the plan… omitted the part about the women and children. We told most of the Diremeres that the Slymoor women and children are staying somewhere else.”

  Guilt wound around Jez’s heart. He was less concerned about the innocent casualties, and more so about that woman who kept flashing before him. If she were taken out in the assault…

  That hurt more than he cared to admit, and the most troubling thing about it was that he didn’t even know why. It was like a barrier caged his mind, blocking out his memories. He trekked around it, wanting to find out more, but he was also afraid of prying it open. It had to exist for a reason, and Jez feared that the reason might be too painful for him to bear.

  He normally didn’t fear anything.

  “No way in hell will I give approval,” Jez said. “It’s despicable. Even for us.”

  “It’s not for you to decide,” Loki replied. “Your dad’s already ordered for plans to be executed.”

  “What? Get him to rescind it.”

  “You do it. It’s not like I’m his son.” Jez growled and shoved his way past Loki.
Loki offered his flask. “Have some. You need to loosen up a bit.”

  “There are some things in life that you can’t ‘loosen up’ about, asshole. This is one of them.” Jez smacked Loki’s hand away, slapping the flask against Loki’s vest. The booze spilled out of the bottle and onto Loki’s shirt.

  Loki gaped. “That happens to be expensive liquor!”

  “Not exactly what’s important right now. A bunch of innocents are about to be killed.”

  Jez ignored Loki’s complaining and continued onward. Loki sounded like a child and a brat. Jez only put up with the bastard because he could be fun at times and happened to be his roommate, but he was often reminded what a terrible person Loki could be.

  Chapter 4

  “Momma says that we shouldn’t be together,” D said.

  Jez looked forward to his weekend afternoons with D. She never showed in their special, forested place unless it was the weekend, so the weekdays were torture for him. She wore her hair in pigtails today. Jez wanted to tug at them, but she would always swat his hand away whenever he got too close. She’d explained, “Boys are stinky.”

  She liked him. She just didn’t know it yet.

  Jez preferred it when she let down her hair, anyway. Her curls framed her face more prettily when that happened, and her big blue eyes looked more sparkly whenever they contrasted with the stark color of her hair.

  “Are you still going for those lessons?” she asked. She plopped herself down next to the riverbed and left her pretty pink sneakers next to a foxberry bush.

  “About wolf history?”

  “Mhm.”

  “Father doesn’t like it if I don’t.”

  “Is he still just as mean?”

  Jez had showed D his scars during one of the sessions. They covered his entire back, and the recollection of how each one came about pained him. His father meted out punishment whenever what Jez did was unsatisfactory, and that occurred more often than not, because Father had impossible standards.

  Jez slid his bare feet into the river just like D had. Pressing his hands tightly against his knees, he nodded. “Yeah.” His shoulder was touching hers, and that sent little tremors down his chest. She didn’t seem to mind that they were this close, even though sometimes she pretended that she did.

  “Seems like you have it worse than me.” Like Jez, D had strict parents, but she told him that they would never lay a finger on her. The words they said to her, however…

  Jez still wanted to touch the hairpin tucked in her hair. She was adamant that she couldn’t give it to him, saying it had special significance.

  “I studied biology today,” D said.

  The both of them were always having to meet tutors, and, despite being young children, were held to many responsibilities. Jez knew that it was because Father wanted him to be a good leader for the Diremeres in the future, and as alpha, Father always put the clan first—even before his son. Jez wasn’t sure why D had to go through the same things. All he knew was that she was a fox.

  Jez pulled his nose up in disgust. “Yuck.”

  D whipped her head toward him. “Yuck?”

  “It’s about gross things. Like ickiness of bodies and stuff, right?”

  “We actually studied mate bonds and how it works between shifters.”

  Jez peered at D’s side. Half her front locks were tucked in, and the other half lay against her slim neck. “Mates?” Jez had heard Father talk about it bitterly, but didn’t understand the concept. Girls and boys weren’t supposed to mingle, right? The two species were two sides of entirely different coins—except for D, because she could stay on his side anytime.

  “Two souls supposed to be together. When everything feels right.”

  Jez didn’t understand.

  “Offspring between true mates are supposed to be stronger than any other, and better rounded. There is a strange phenomenon with interspecies true mates, however.” She looked up at him. “The clans don’t agree with it, and, in such cases, would rather the mate bond be torn apart.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Something about… clan integrity before the one person. Not sure what ‘integrity’ means, but my tutor keeps trying to repeat it.” D moved her foot, and a bunch of water splashed around her calf. “Most of the things I learn usually don’t make much sense.”

  “I think we’re mates,” Jez said, smiling. “I feel right with you.”

  “What?”

  “Is something wrong with that idea?”

  “Yes.” D smoothed the side of her dress. “For one, mate bonds can’t form unless the two people are fully grown. And even then, you’re a wolf. I’m a fox. We’re not anything at all.”

  “You seem to have studied well.” Jez craned his neck, looking up. Branches twined above him, forming a shade of leaves. Growing on the branches was a cluster of flowers that reminded Jez of D’s hairpin. “All I know is that I’m happier when with you, so I don’t care about the specifics.” Jez wouldn’t mind spending the rest of his life with D, and he didn’t even know her full name.

  He’d be afraid of letting Father know about her, however. Every time he went home, he had to take a bath in the river just in case Father noticed him smelling like fox. Jez couldn’t even fathom what he would do to D if he caught her.

  “You’re an idiot,” D said.

  Jez squinted. “What?”

  “I’m saying you’re an idiot for thinking stupid things like that.”

  Her tone was sharp, but Jez couldn’t ignore the smile plastered across her face.

  “I like you, D.”

  “Well, isn’t that obvious?” she said.

  Chapter 5

  Jez flung his fist against the punching bag. His father, Caspian, hadn’t listened to his pleas—but of course he wouldn’t. The old bastard never did like to consider Jez’s opinions.

  D.

  Why had he not remembered her until now?

  The dream from last night kept playing in his mind. Did he have a mate? Old emotions flooded his chest more intensely than before, and he tried to remember what she looked like, but those memories always seemed to have a fog around them, blocking him from the pain. He’d asked Loki and Karla about it, hoping to get some clues, but all of the wolves kept his hidden past a secret.

  He threw his fist against the bag once more. The redness around his knuckles subsided after each thrust because of his healing abilities. The wolf inside him howled from the pain. It needed it. The pain provided clarity, like a hard pinch inside a nightmare.

  “You’re overdoing it,” Karla said, passing him a towel.

  Jez backed off from the bag and accepted the towel. He wiped the back of his ear. “Don’t you have more important things to do?” He dripped with sweat.

  “Thought you might need a listening ear. You’re the only one so vehemently against what we’re going to do with the foxes.”

  “All I need to know is if you remember a girl named D.”

  Karla frowned. The flicker across her eyes told him that she might have some clue, but she didn’t answer. “Want to get some coffee after this?”

  “I’m not in any mood for that shit.”

  “Just making a friendly offer. You don’t have to be a grumpy A-hole about it.”

  Jez brushed a hand across his fringe. “Sorry, I’m just… You’ve heard about the details, yes?”

  Karla nodded.

  “And you’re totally okay with it?”

  “I don’t agree with it, but orders are orders. The clan comes first, and if that’s what it wants, who am I, as a beta, to question what the alpha wants?”

  “Even if it’s wrong?” He tossed the towel over his shoulder.

  “Rules are rules, right? Clan comes first. Clan integrity.”

  Clan integrity.

  He hated that phrase, though he didn’t know why. It had to do with that fucking mental block he wanted so hard to remove.

  “If you want to find out more about D,” Karla said
, “it’s in you.” Her voice dropped a couple octaves, and she slouched. “I’d always known about her. I stayed with you, tried to keep the relationship because it was comfortable, and I wanted to make it work because of that. But some part of me knew that you’d never be as perfect as when you were with her.”

  “Perfect?”

  Karla avoided eye contact. “I’ve said too much.”

  “Again with the stupid rules.” Jez walked past Karla. At first, he’d wanted to follow the clan instructions. The lashings from his father and the constant disapproval from his peers gave him pause for at most a day. He was ashamed that he’d even hesitated. He should have tried to fix the situation as soon as he could.

  But wouldn’t that also put his fellow wolves in danger?

  He had to think of a better way to limit casualties on both sides. His head fucking hurt.

  He felt Karla’s gaze on his back. “Where are you going?”

  “To do what’s right,” he said, stalking off.

  “You know I’ll have to tell the alpha.”

  “And that’s why I’m not letting you in on my plans.”

  Jez trekked to the shower stalls. He wiped himself down, then took a quick shower. After, he studied the scar that slashed across his hip to his pecs. He’d had that for as long as he could remember—problem was that he never could pinpoint how he got it.

  As he walked through the hallways of the wolf pack’s training grounds, he passed by rows of wolf shifters preparing for a large battle. Knives, bullets, wolves in reinforced vests. How eager they were to kill made Jez sick. Jez killed, but only when he needed to. He never found blood enticing, even if many of his clan members found joy in giving in to their animalistic instincts.

  Jez’s phone buzzed. He plucked it from his jeans and glanced at the screen. Beneath the timestamp, he saw a green box framing Loki’s text message:

  You better not fuck this up for us. Karla just…

  Jez ignored it and slipped the phone back into his pocket. Loki could suck it.

  He took out the scrap of paper he’d used to steal his father’s plans. Because he had high-level clearance, Jez could get most of the information he needed.