Bound to Change: A Limited Edition Spring Shifter Romance Collection

by Margo Bond Collins

  Earnestine S Lovatte was my personal hero. She was the one who’d discovered anodized aluminum would shield magic from being influenced and it made it safe from nulls too. She’d also been a null, which put her at the very top of kickass women I wished I’d gotten a chance to know.

  Despite the protection the buffers afforded, not everyone used them and not all magi-tech had them. Some people just liked living dangerously.

  “So, you’ll go seclude yourself in the mountains of Colorado, never to be heard from again.”

  I shrugged. It wouldn’t be ideal, but the view would be spectacular and I could live out my days without being a servant to a wicked asshole like Persimma.

  She smiled like she knew something I didn’t, and she probably did. It was strange being around someone who didn’t seem affected by the null.

  “Can you help me?”

  “By making sure the shifters aren’t aware when you leave?”

  “By making sure they sleep for a good eight hours so I have time to lose their trail.”

  She idly played with the pink straw. “Do you want to know what I see in your future?”

  My mouth went dry. Knee-jerk reaction? No. What if she told me that I would die in Persimma’s service? What if she said something horrible about my father, about Jake? After a moment’s thought, my answer remained the same. “No thank you.”

  “It could help.”

  “Or it could give me a shit-ton of anxiety and a need to drink.”

  Her chuckle almost lured me into saying yes, but I resisted.

  “Why did you help me? Us?”

  Another of those long, contemplative silences. “Things are changing. Not for the good, a lot of them. You know how the meteor seeded magic on this world back in 1908. The magic’s been growing ever since, like an out of control virus. Have you ever thought about what would happen if it kept growing? If it didn’t level itself off?”

  I hadn’t. “Is it not leveling off?” Was that even a thing? Why wouldn’t it stop eventually? “Is that why there are nulls?”

  She smiled like a teacher whose student had finally figured out the answer to a question on the board. “I believe so. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of you to make a difference. Which means more and more magicals are going to want to get their hands on you and others like you. You won’t stay hidden for long.”

  Shit. “I don’t want to be a chess piece in whatever game they’re playing.”

  “What do you think will happen to someone like Persimma if she keeps getting more and more powerful? Or Nicta or even me?”

  Persimma, more powerful? “She’d get older and crazier and meaner, I suppose.”

  “It’s good I’m here,” she said without a measure of embarrassment. “I absorb the excess. My power grows and grows, though, and eventually I’ll become over-saturated. Then I’ll die in a spectacular fashion.”

  “Like ... an explosion or something?”

  “Or something. It won’t be for a while, a long while, but it’s happening. I see it happening in the less powerful creatures more clearly. Long ago, when a vampire turned a human, it took them decades to grow stronger. Now, it takes a matter of years. Soon, even baby vampires will be as strong as the old ones used to be when they turn. Can you imagine the havoc that would cause? All the strength of an elder with none of the caution? Your power and your kind will be greatly coveted in the coming years, Dez.”

  “Fuck.”

  She sipped her drink, enjoying the flavor with her eyes shut and head back. “I can give you a few months of peace. Then it will be up to you to hide yourself.”

  Her eyes were still closed, but I felt her regard. What did she want in return, I wondered. The fey never did favors without expecting a return on their investment. Was Alexa the same?

  “If you’re wondering what I want, I’ll tell you. The chance to sit with you just like we are, so that you can drain some of this power from me.”

  So, my null did work on her. How strongly I didn’t know. Magic pulsed off her like the sun’s rays. Even I could feel it and I rarely felt any magic at all. “That’s really it?”

  “That’s really it,” she agreed. “I’m not Persimma to want you bound to me. That’s not how I work. I was once just a peasant girl in the forest when my entire world changed. The sky lit up gold when the meteor exploded. I should have died, you know, but instead a shard of that falling star pierced my chest right here.” She put a finger on the small white scar between her breasts. “And I became what I am now. I’ve been doing my part, Dez. I’ve been soaking up the magic so it doesn’t overwhelm us all, but I won’t be able to continue forever.”

  “What will happen to all of us if we don’t stop it?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m sure it won’t be conducive to human life. And if all the humans turn, who will the vampires feed on? And who will the fey make their deals with? And who will kill the vampires and keep the fey from encroaching on the rest of us? There’s a balance of sorts right now. A tentative one. But with magic continuing to grow, that balance will tip. I’m not sure when we will cross the point of no return, but it will be sooner than we wish.”

  “How will we stop it then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Chapter Ten

  I considered asking for one more night before I left but decided it would only make things harder. I’d had enough trouble saying goodbye to Jake the first time. And so Alexa put the shifters out for me, “for the afternoon and on through evening,” she’d told me.

  She gave me money and a change of clothes, and I slipped into the street with a backpack and a pocketful of cash. It was strange being out on my own without Persimma’s bodyguards. I felt both exposed and free. It was a giddy combo.

  The bus stop was only eight blocks away but I took a cab, wanting to get out of town as quickly as possible. Traffic was light which was good, and I only saw a few stores flicker into brown- or blackouts as I went by.

  I wished I had control of the damned null. Wished I could rein it in when I needed to. If someone was on the lookout for me, a series of brown- and blackouts would be a dead giveaway to where I went. They’d just have to follow the trail of stories.

  The bus station was a small building on a street corner in a poorer part of town, which meant there wasn’t as much magi-tech for me to affect. A streetlight down the way flickered as I waited for my next ride, but that could’ve been due to its age since it was at the outer reaches of the null radius.

  In addition to the money and the change of clothes, Alexa had given me a burner phone and a necklace with a sunflower on it. Her symbol. “Normally, I can reach out to those who wear a sunflower and speak with them. I don’t know if that will be the case with you, but let’s try it, shall we?”

  I was game, though I doubted I would be hearing from her through it. She knew where I was going to be, so she could always come visit if she needed to be drained.

  A small smile played on my lips, though the idea of a world barreling to its destruction still hovered over my head like a dark cloud. I was a goddess’s pimple popper, wasn’t I? She’d swell like a zit and I’d squeeze out the pus.

  “I’m disgusting.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I looked over to see a man slumped against the wall, a coffee in one hand, a paper in the other. “Just talking to myself.”

  He eyed me then went back to reading.

  Telling myself to stop acting like a crazy person, I went to the vending machine and plunked in a coin. It spit out a drink and I shuffled onto the bus with it twenty minutes later. Ten minutes after that I was on my way out of the city.

  Chapter Eleven

  One month later

  My dad’s cabin was tiny, but with the goddess’s money and the help of the people who lived in nearby Wyaxahotic, I was able to make my new home comfortable. It was cramped compared to what I was used to, but better than being beholden to a pissy fey. The locals, wary at first, decided they liked me once they reali
zed I was a non-magical. Some of them remembered my father fondly, because he’d once been a hard worker before he lost himself in the notion that gambling would solve all his problems.

  The cabin sat up high in the mountains, off a windy road that eventually spit people off at a small ski resort that never took off. It still did a fairly brisk business with the locals on the mountain and below in Yaguza Valley, but it wasn’t the place for magicals. One, everything ran on human ingenuity not magic, and two, magicals were just ... discouraged from visiting altogether.

  For one, signs at the bottom of Cressipe Peak warned newcomers that the mountain was an experimental living area for flats. There were plenty other places like it around the world, though I wondered how long they would last if what Alexa had said was true. Would flats eventually develop magic? Were they secluded enough they wouldn’t ‘catch’ it here or was it inevitable, like the tides?

  There were too many questions and I had no way of searching for answers, so I stuffed it away as best I could and hoped someone smarter than me was working on the problem.

  As I made the place my home, I thought about Jake. Wondered if he was looking for me, thought about our night together, dreamed about it too. I woke up in a sweat more often than not, my body aching for him. I’d almost forgotten to be horny after four years of abstinence; now I almost regretted making love to him. Now my body wanted more and more and more and my hand—while accomplished—just wasn’t enough.

  I kept my eye out for news about the Ragwort. I figured it would be in the news—four powerful fey, one from each Court in a showdown at a bar in Chicago? Surely it would have made the news, but there was nothing. I had no idea if Persimma still had all her body parts or if her siblings ripped her limb from limb. I didn’t know if any of them were looking for me, but I moved through my world as if they were.

  I paid a few of the locals to keep an eye out for strangers for me, telling them I had a bad relationship that ended with black eyes and heartache. They were more than willing to let me know when newcomers were coming up the mountain so I could hunker down and hide.

  The small track that led to the cabin was practically hidden in trees and I kept an iron gate covered in brush across it. The cabin itself was hidden from view until you were almost on it, and I made no improvements to the front to keep it looking rundown. Out back, I had a greenhouse tucked into the ground, only its thick glass ceiling above the earth. Around either side of the cabin were blackberry bushes bristling with thorns to hopefully keep out anyone persistent enough to climb over the gate.

  The main thing the cabin had going for it was its dusty basement lined in iron and stocked with food. There was also a small tunnel that I could crawl through to get about a hundred yards from the house. I kept an ATV at the end of that tunnel, gassed up and loaded with supplies in case I had to make a swift getaway. I wasn’t sure I could really escape if someone came after me, but it made me feel better knowing I had a plan.

  Settled on the couch with one of the books I’d picked up from the used bookstore in Wyaxahotic in one hand, a steaming cup of cocoa in the other, I almost felt normal. It wasn’t ideal. I missed people. I missed my father despite his mistakes. I even missed the bar. But I was safe here. Cozy.

  And if I fantasized about having my way with Jake ... or one of his shifters ... on the couch or in the greenhouse, or on a pile of the gradually turning fall leaves, well, that was between me and the glassy-eyed moose head mounted above the fireplace.

  Everything was going well. Quiet, but well. I had a routine down. Get up, chop wood, haul it in for my fire. Get water boiling for tea or cocoa, cook breakfast, feed the chickens, tend the plants growing in the greenhouse and on and on. I was busy all day and when the sun dipped beyond the mountains, I was usually snoring in my bed. It was probably why I missed the fact that my period was late.

  When I finally figured it out, I was due for a trip into town anyway. I’d get a few groceries to tide me over and a pregnancy test to confirm I was stressed out and not about to become a single mother. The weather reports had been warning about a blizzard, one that would bury Wyaxahotic and all the surrounding area in the first snow of the season. I wasn’t looking forward to being stuck in the cabin for weeks at a time, but I’d almost resigned myself to it ... until I looked more closely at the calendar hanging by the front door. Until I began counting back. Until I realized ...

  No. Stress. I told myself it was only stress, had to be stress because gods damn it, it wasn’t going to be anything else. Couldn’t be. I didn’t deserve that on top of everything else, right?

  Right?

  “You okay, Tess?”

  I blinked as I looked up from the tiny box in my hands, the fake name still ringing untrue in my head, though at least I recognized it enough to respond when someone used it. “Yeah, sorry Bert. Just thinking.”

  He glanced at the box and then away, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “You sure you’re ready for this snowstorm? Greenhorn like you, it’s going to feel like it lasts a lot longer than it does. I don’t want to have to come up and save you, now.”

  “You won’t have to. I have more than enough food for a couple week’s stay and Bette and Millie helped me winterize the pipes and chicken coop.”

  “And if it stretches into three or more?”

  “Still good.” I put the test in my basket along with the extra water and canned goods.

  “What about wood? You have enough laid by?”

  “I do,” I said, and my hands showed the proof of it too.

  He was about to ask me even more questions when the bell at the center of town rang loudly, a deep-throated chime that sent chills all up and down my spine. “Shit.”

  Something powerful, something magical had found its way into one of the lower valley towns. Wyaxahotic’s bell was an early-warning system and most of the mountain’s towns had some sort of similar set up. It had been one of the reasons I’d wanted to come. I knew from Dad’s stories that people around here didn’t particularly trust magicals as far as they could throw them.

  “You’d better take that on up to your cabin and stay put,” Bert said, his all-too-knowing look making me wonder how good my fake name and even faker story really was. “Make note of what you have in the basket and we’ll settle up after this all blows over.”

  I nodded, grateful in ways I couldn’t even express. I hoped to heaven it wasn’t about me. There were other reasons why magicals might be visiting Cressipe Peak after all. It wasn’t unheard of, though the locals tried their best to make things as miserable as possible for the visitors.

  “See you in a few weeks. Thanks, Bert.”

  He nodded. “Might be that I’ll give you a ringding to take with you. Give you a head’s up when the, uh, roads are all clear.” He went off behind his counter and came back with a slender black box similar in size to a phone, but fatter. “Push this button to talk. Keep it on channel 5 and when it’s safe to come back down, I’ll let you know.” He also gave me a box of what looked like coins stacked between long, thin strips of metal. “These’ll keep it running. Neat tech. We’re working on making them bigger so we can run our own cars on them, but that’s a few years away. Now get going before the snow hits. Already spitting out there.”

  I glanced outside and sure enough, there were tiny flakes falling.

  I packed the groceries into the back of my vehicle and headed back out of town and up the tiny road to my cabin. I ignored the slight tremor in my hands as the utility truck chewed up the miles between Wyaxahotic and safety.

  “Please don’t let it be Persimma,” I whispered under my breath. I didn’t even let myself think what would happen if it were Nicta, Augustine, or Kieran.

  I’d rather be dead.

  I made it home without any trouble, though it started to snow as I was chaining the gate across my road. I managed to get all the groceries inside before the wind kicked up, and then I was drinking hot chocolate on the couch trying to concentrate on my book. The ring
ding sat nearby as did the stupid stick from the stupid pregnancy test I was stupid enough to buy.

  One line for negative.

  Two lines for positive.

  “It may take up to two minutes for a result to appear.”

  It hadn’t even taken two seconds for that second line to rear its gods damned head.

  I curled around my mug of chocolate and wondered what the hell I was going to do now.

  THE END

  NJOYED THIS STORY? Be sure to leave a review! Dez’s first book will be out this year and I’m super excited about it. I haven’t written a book starring shifters before—though I have had shifters in other books. There’s a hell hound in the Curses, Charms, and Incantations books and there’s a hyena shifter in the Devany Miller books, along with a kickass spider shifter. Anyway, stay tuned for awesome stuff this year!

  About the Author

  JEN PONCE LIVES IN the Panhandle of Nebraska with her boys, her animals, and a ridiculous number of books. She’s interested in everything magical, and she may have an unholy love for spiders.

  Want to keep up to date on what’s happening in Jen’s world? Check out the links below.

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  www.JenniferPonce.com

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  Read More of Jen’s Books

  Curses, Charms, & Incantations (Reverse Harem)

  Corpse Curses: Book 1

  Caustic Charms: Book 2

  Magic, Mayhem, & Rebellion (Reverse Harem

  Captured Magic: Book 1

  Raster City Series (Reverse Harem)

  Raster City Rebel: Book 1

  Raster City Rogues: Book 2

  Raster City Rumble: Book 3

  Devany Miller Series (Dark Urban Fantasy)

  The Bazaar: Book 1

  Slip Song: Book 2

  Demon’s Cradle: Book 3