by M. L. Briers
“Why is it always the last place you look for something is where you find it?” Kirsty grumbled, throwing her backside into the comfy chair by the window and opening the book to where she’d left off.
“Chance’s little game of hide and seek, what would our lives be without it?” Erin said. “So, about Joe…”
“Oh no, no about Joe,” Kirsty said. “Nose in book and let’s find this sucker…”
“If it even exists, how reliable is the crone who told the alpha, who told you of its existence?” Erin asked. “Because you know that sometimes these Chinese whisper games don’t work out so well?”
“She’s the sister of a witch who used to be a mate in the pack,” Kirsty said, recalling what Catherine had told her in the small hours of the morning.
Erin shrugged. “So, pretty reliable then,” she said.
“I guess, unless…”
“Unless?” Erin asked, waiting for her friend to fill in the blank space.
“Unless she was lying and there is no spell, no legend.”
“But why would she do that?” Erin asked.
“I don’t know, but there have been some pretty strange things going on around here, well there.” Kirsty waved an absent hand at the window.
Erin considered her words for a long moment, and then she acted. She put the book down on the bed and pushed to her feet. “Right,” she said shrugging. “Let’s go ask the source.”
~
“You want to what?” Joe asked, looking at the witches in turn to see which one would give him a better explanation first.
“Go see the crone,” Erin said.
“Get it from the horse’s mouth,” Kirsty added.
Joe wasn’t sure now was the best time to up and leave. “But why?”
“To find out what she knows,” Kirsty explained.
“To make sure she isn’t leading you on a wild – wolf – chase,” Erin added with a sheepish grin. Kirsty nudged her, but she couldn’t help but smile.
“She said the legend was in a grey book, and the spell would be in there too if there was one…”
“But, she could be lying,” Erin said.
“Why would she lie?” Joe asked, not seeing what they saw.
Kirsty tapped her index finger against her lips. “Does this whole situation seem normal to you?” she asked.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Joe grumbled.
Nathaniel stalked into the room. He’d overheard them, and his interest was piqued. “Go on,” he urged, eyeing Erin like she was a tasty snack.
“What if this is just a distraction?” Erin said.
“No wolf spell?” Nathaniel didn’t like that idea.
“Maybe there is one, just not where she’s telling us, or maybe she can remember something more if we help,” Kirsty said. She didn’t want to dash his hopes just yet – they still had more books, but something had been bugging her about this whole thing.
“Does she live close?” Erin asked.
“Twenty minutes away,” Joe said. “But I…”
“Then what’s an hour or so, get there, talk to her, and back, going to hurt?” Erin said.
“It would make life easier to find out for sure, and she won’t talk to me,” Nathaniel said. “Not that I can go out in the sun.”
“Have you tried sunscreen?” Erin asked, unable to resist taunting him.
Nathaniel eyed the witch for a long moment. “Nooo,” he offered in a dry tone.
“Give it a whirl, what’s the worst that could happen?” she asked, grinning.
Kirsty nudged her friend and got a nudge back. “Be nice,” Kirsty hissed.
“I prefer to be myself,” Erin said.
“I hope you don’t put that glowing reference on your CV,” Nathaniel said, and Erin chuckled.
“He got you there,” Kirsty snickered.
“Fine, I’ll take you, but one of you should stay here and keep looking,” he said, hopeful that Kirsty would be the one to go with him.
“I can stay,” Erin said, eyeing Nathaniel like she was up for the challenge. “You should take your girlfriend,” she said and nudged Kirsty in the ribs.
Kirsty was speechless. She turned a glare on Erin and was just about to scold her when Joe growled.
“You know you’re my mate?” he asked, surprised.
Kirsty felt the blood drain from her head as his words slammed into her mind. She’d been all geared up for a sneering retort for her friend when he’d hit her with the proverbial sledgehammer and shattered her thoughts.
“Your what?” Erin asked, and let out a high pitched squeal of surprise.
“Yes, Joe, your what?” Nathaniel asked, stirring the pot, but his eyes were gleefully on Kirsty as the blood rush back into her head, and her cheeks pinked up once more.
“Ma …?” Kirsty couldn’t quite bring herself to form the word. It was either shock or denial, and right then she was feeling both.
“Oh crap,” Joe grumbled. He’d put his foot in his mouth and let the cat out of the bag thinking that she knew – what an absolute idiot.
“Big crap,” Nathaniel said, folding his arms and enjoying the moment. It certainly made his problems seem a little less important right then. “And guess who just stepped in it?”
“You guys should talk,” Erin said, and took a sideways step, but Kirsty reached out and grabbed her arm, yanking her back to her side. “We’ll be right over there,” she said, trying to release the death grip that Kirsty hand on her flesh.
“Do not take another step,” Kirsty hissed.
“But, you know I don’t like the sight of blood,” Erin said and got a snap double-take from the alpha.
“I do,” Nathaniel said, grinning from ear to ear. “Go ahead, let’s have it,” he urged Kirsty on.
Joe punched his brother in the arm, but the vampire didn’t move an inch. Joe did wince with the pain that travelled through his fist. “Whose side are you on?”
“Fate,” Nathaniel said, wiggling his eyebrows and enjoying his brother’s awkward moment.
“Ah, a softie,” Erin said, and pretended to vomit.
“Love’s young dream – fated mates – forever love – what’s not to like?” Nathaniel said.
Kirsty rolled her eyes and turned on her heels, by the time she’d reached the doorway, Joe was blocking it. “We should talk,” he said, and she cocked just the one eyebrow at him. “On the road,” he said and hooked a thumb over his shoulder.
“You expect me to get in a car with you?” Kirsty snorted a chuckle.
“I’m not going,” Erin piped up. “I have a sudden case of…”
“Verbal poops,” Nathaniel offered, and she snapped a glare at him. “I hear it’s going around.”
“You should know,” she snapped back.
Kirsty felt as if her head was going to pop. “Can we just…” Well, she didn’t know what, but not the snapping and the sniping.
There was a time for that, but not when she’d just been told that her life was all mapped out for her – her whole life – and beyond. How was she supposed to deal with that? Say thank you to fate and jump on the mating train?
Pah!
“I warned you this might happen,” Erin said, and Kirsty shot her a death glare. “Don’t shoot the messenger, heed the warning next time – not that there will be a next time because – you know – a wolf shifter isn’t just for Christmas, it’s for life.” She said, echoing the advert about puppies and Christmas.
“Oh, bite me!” Kirsty snapped, but the deep hungry growl that rolled from the alpha and seemed to travel deep into her bones made her turn a hard stare on him.
“It just – happened,” Joe said, shrugging.
“Ugh!” Kirsty tried to sidestep him to get out of the room, but he was just too damn broad. He filled the doorway, and while she might have appreciated his muscled, hard body before she knew it was all hers to enjoy for life; it was annoying when you couldn’t make a big showy exit to let him know how she felt. “Get out
of my way or I’ll…”
Erin beat her to it. “Huff and puff and blow your ass down,” she said and heard her friend groan. “Too soon?”
Kirsty didn’t want to think about it. She’d come to do a job, and she needed to get it done – now more than ever she needed not to think about what she’d just been told, and get on with something else. Distractions were good unless they were bad, but this one would be timely.
“So, help me, Goddess, if you don’t move I am going to fry you so hard your wolf will have bloody curly fur,” she bit out.
Joe opened his mouth to speak, but the determined look in her eyes told him she wasn’t playing around. He took a long step to the side, and she was off, stalking out of the room and through the hallway like a woman on a mission. “Where are you going?” he called, following on her heels.
“To find a crone and see what she knows,” she tossed back over her shoulder. “Before my head explodes and you have mate brain all over your shirt,” she added on a muttered grumble of annoyance.
“For the record; I was going to break it to you gently,” Joe said, snatching up the keys to Nathaniel’s car on his way out the door.
“For the record; I still wouldn’t have wanted to hear it,” she snapped back.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
~
Joe shot a look at his mate sitting beside him and squirmed against the leather seat. He’d never had a problem in striking up a conversation before, but this was different – she was different. Kirsty was the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with, and it would be one hell of a quiet life if he couldn’t talk to her.
Joe took the plunge. “Well, this is awkward.”
Kirsty shushed him. Joe tossed her another look, and she was concentrating on something ahead of them, but all that was ahead was the open road between towns. “Look, I…”
“Nope,” she said and took to looking out of the passenger window.
“But we…”
“Noooo,” she said, and that sounded a lot like a warning to him.
“I…”
“Give it up,” she warned again.
Joe grumbled a growl, and he would have rolled his eyes, but he was driving. “Just…”
“Processing, please wait,” she said in a tone that sounded a lot like a damn computer programme talking to him. He shot her another look, but he could only get a side view of her face – she certainly wasn’t smiling.
“How long…?”
“Hell freezing over.”
“That’s long.” He couldn’t help but chuckle, even if his wolf didn’t like the idea of waiting longer than the day’s end.
“And then some,” she replied.
At least she was talking to him if only to tell him that she wasn’t going to talk to him. Females were crazy like that, and witches? Well, he’d heard tell that they were the craziest of all.
“A lifetime together without words, sounds…”
“Please stop talking,” Kirsty said. She hadn’t lied, she was processing the fact that she was a mate, and she didn’t want to discuss it until she had a handle on things.
It was something of a shock to the system to realise that you’d found the man of your dreams, the love of your life, the father of your children, and the man you would definitely grow old with – unless you died, of course, and at that point, she wasn’t sure if death wasn’t a welcome thought.
It wasn’t him. Goddess only knew that fate had sent her a good one, well, eye candy good at least. But what did she know about him? He growled and had a furry side.
At some point, she was going to need to have a real conversation with him – it was inevitable – fate had seen to that. But stuck in a car, when she couldn’t walk away and regroup, and under the pressure of what was happening in their lives at that moment – it seemed … weird, strange, and surreal.
Kirsty didn’t think of herself as a feminist; she did not need to define herself. She was a woman and had magical gifts, and that was good enough for her, but she was sure from what she’d seen of Joe that he was a male chauvinist pig. All alpha men were, weren’t they?
Kirsty supposed the one thing they had in common was that their lives were up in the air right now. He had his pack problems and a vampire brother, and she had just been slapped in the face by fate’s little plan.
It wasn’t that she had a life that was cast in cement back home, she didn’t. She worked at the bar, she did odd jobs for clients who needed a little witchy help, and she lived with Erin in a broom closet of an apartment that had seen better days. Hardly a life that would be a wrench to leave.
But Kirsty had always believed in free will and choices, and fate wasn’t really giving her any options. Sure, she could walk away, although she thought Joe might follow on her heels like a stray puppy, but how hard was it to pack up and relocate somewhere across the country and keep her head down for the next sixty years or so?
Or, she could kill him. One sneaked glance in his direction told her that wasn’t an option. She’d only ever used her magic to defend herself or others, and he was – well, he seemed … nice.
Who was she trying to kid? He was exactly her type – except for the fur and fangs – but that whole alpha male, bad boy thing he had going on was – as sexy as all hell, and it drew her in.
Ugh! Why couldn’t she just play it safe and like nerds?
Everything about him drew her in. Right now she was more than aware of his taut muscled forearms, mainly because it was all she could see out of the corner of her eye, but those corded muscles – Wowza!
Strength and he had a lot of it – and not just in his hard-muscled body. His whole persona oozed it, screamed it, and that little bit of feminism inside her kicked her in the backside, but she liked a man who could take care of his own.
It was inbuilt in a woman through evolution to look for a man who was the hunter-gatherer of the pack – well, he was certainly in a pack, and he looked like he could hunt and gather just fine. Basic instincts – they both had them, and his were calling to hers.
Back in the day, he would have bopped her over the head with his big stick and carried her off – what a marriage proposal that was. At least now a woman had a choice – unless fate said otherwise. But fate had taken stock and made them the perfect fit.
Damn stupid fate.
This wasn’t an arranged marriage where you might get to love him over time – this was a cast-iron guarantee that you were going to fall head over heels, and unless he farted at the dinner table, peed on the toilet seat, and slobbed on the couch naked – nope, scratch that last one – him naked and laid out on a couch was not in the cons section of her list, but disgusting habits aside, he was Mr Right.
Mr Right and Mr Perfect weren’t the same things, and if you went through life looking for the man of your dreams who had no flaws at all, you’d pretty much guarantee that you’d become that little old cat lady. Kirsty got that – give and take – accepting.
So what was it that she was freaking out about in the deepest, darkest recesses of her mind?
Joe was a sure thing, and how many times did one of those come along in life? Did she need the two-year getting to know you stage only to find out that he was secretly married to another woman, dating someone else on the side, or a serial killer looking for an alibi?
It should have been uncomplicated, so why did it feel like her head was going to explode?
Shock. The suddenness of finding out that you hit the jackpot and the search was over.
Maybe life wouldn’t be all fluffy bunnies, kittens, and puppies – mainly because he was the big bad wolf and he might eat them – but, it wouldn’t be dull.
Hadn’t she wished for an exciting life in her younger days? Boy, was she getting it now and how!
“Should I book an appointment?” Joe asked, and when she turned to offer him a cold, hard stare to make her point – he gave her the best drop-dead gorgeous smile she had ever witnessed.
Like that didn’t send w
aves of excitement through her jiggle-jangling body. If Kirsty had to bet, she’d think that was a cold hard calculating move on his part, but it still had devastating effects.
“I’ll let you know,” she said.
Kirsty didn’t know how she managed to get a signal from one busy brain cell to the other as she pictured him wearing nothing but that smile, let alone how she managed to keep her voice level and even, but thankfully; she did it.
That was one hell of a rush to her feminine parts, and she had to wonder how a smile was capable of that, but she was living proof that it was.
Kirsty had always sneered at those newspapers stories of love at first sight couples who met and married in exotic locations like – Vegas – and sure, there was usually a copious amount of alcohol involved. But for the others, maybe there was something in fate’s little plan after all.
But what about her little problem – love at first bite? Well, he hadn’t bitten her yet, but she had fancied the clothes off him from the first time she’d seen him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
~
Erin scanned the book on the table for any mention of a shifter on the pages. Some words caught her attention and some spells she’d like to revisit, but she managed to keep her focus on the main problem at hand – Drac-a-wolf.
Erin quite liked the idea of being able to keep your gifts should you ever be unfortunate enough to be turned into a vampire, and now that she was involved she wasn’t about to turn down the chance to find a spell, if there was one, in the hope it would work for witches.
She was nose deep in concentration and didn’t notice the man sitting in the chair across from her until he spoke. “Why are you here?”Nathaniel asked, curious about the woman.
Inside, Erin jumped like a cat meeting a ghost, on the outside, she hadn’t even raised an eyebrow. “I heard Kirsty was shacking up with you and decided to bring a stake to the party, just in case,” she informed him, flipping the page of the book and keeping her gaze firmly locked on the words.