The Enchanted: Council of Seven Shifter Romance Collection

by Juniper Hart

  “Wesley, if you know something about this…” Wes shook his head vehemently.

  “I don’t,” he replied quickly. “What could I possibly know?”

  “I’ve entrusted you with watching out for Danica, but if she’s been up to something—”

  “She hasn’t!” Wes snapped defensively. “Don’t you think I’d tell you if she was?”

  Landon shrugged. “We do things for our mates that we wouldn’t necessarily think to do,” he said flatly. “I need you to remember that your loyalty is to the Lycans and not to your mate.”

  “I am not even sure that Danica is my mate,” Wes muttered, wondering why he was lying. He’d known she was from the moment he’d laid eyes upon her, which made the task of protecting her all that much more difficult. Almost a decade ago, she had started as an undergraduate student. She had returned about six months ago to earn her master’s degree.

  “I am not about to argue semantics with you, Wesley. If Danica was the one who helped Gabriel escape—”

  “She didn’t! Of course she didn’t!” he choked, aghast. “Why would she? She’s as much a victim as the others!”

  Landon didn’t respond with anything more than a grunt, and again, he turned to leave. It was only then that he paused and glanced back at Wes, his eyes shadowed.

  “I don’t need to tell you that the women were spared because the Council agreed they were unwitting participants in Gabriel’s actions. If Danica knows more than we thought—”

  “She’s innocent,” Wes said with uncharacteristic sharpness. “She knows nothing! How can you accuse her of something like that?”

  “I’m wondering if we haven’t been looking at this all wrong. The women might not all be oblivious to what Gabriel has done to them. Or maybe there are more than four of them.”

  Once more, it seemed that Landon was thinking aloud, but each word he spoke made Wes more uneasy. It had been simple enough to dismiss the creeping doubts he’d formulated of his own accord since Gabriel’s bold and unprecedented move of creating his own pack. Of course, Wes hadn’t been alone with the notion that there was more going on than anyone understood, particularly with the women. But that didn’t make him any less defensive when it came to protecting Danica.

  “I think you’re overthinking,” Wes offered, trying to calm Landon down into a rational thought. The last thing he needed was the leader calling off the call for mercy on the turned mortal women.

  Landon grunted and shot him a dirty look before leaving without another word. Wes remained in his tastefully decorated office to consider the thinly veiled threat. He knew that the Council of Seven—the governing body over the Enchanted—had only agreed to leave the four illegally turned women as they were because of the reasons that Landon had stated: Gabriel had turned them without their consent. Or at least that was what everyone had believed. Landon had focused all his attention on finding the rogue wolf and his posse of turned Lycans, leaving the four seemingly random women in care of their mates.

  Danica had always been in Wes’ life, whether she realized it or not. It had been easy to find her when Landon had first approached Wes to care for right after she returned to the university to earn her graduate degree.

  Although he would never admit it, he had always been attracted to the student, even before she had been turned. He’d kept his distance as a professor and Lycan, but now, he was all but being instructed to approach and engage with her.

  As if I wasn’t dancing around the issue, anyway, Wes thought. With a heavy sigh, he sank back into his office chair and turned to look out the rectangular windows of his office to the lush green of the university campus.

  He knew it was almost noon, the gentle chime of the church bells in the distance announcing the hour as students and profs scurried toward their next lectures. As he always did, Wes trained his emerald eyes toward the west and waited for Danica to appear, her schedule ingrained in him by rote now.

  There’s no way she’s involved in helping Gabriel, Wes told himself, albeit not for the first time. He’d been plagued by this very issue more than once before, but he’d never allowed it to overcome his thoughts like it was now.

  Matters had changed now. Gabriel was captured, and Landon had suspicions.

  I’m going to have to confront her, Wes realized with grim regret, his gaze slipping over the quad as he waited for her to appear. Even though it wasn’t something that he was looking forward to doing, it could no longer be avoided.

  But as the minutes ticked by, Danica did not materialize, her normal route through the psychology building toward the administration forsaken. In the past six months, Wes had never seen her miss a class, and the knowledge that she was absent that day made his heart pound with worry.

  Why today of all days? he wondered, Landon’s own concerns now reverberating through his mind. Could Danica have had anything to do with helping Gabriel escape?

  He was on his feet in seconds, stealing out the same door Landon had just gone through. He knew he had to find Danica before Landon learned the truth: that Danica Jensen was the only one of the four women who had been fully aware of being turned.

  Wes had been lying to Landon for months to protect her, but he wasn’t sure if he could do that any more—not when matters had become so grave. He hurried onto the campus, his eyes peeled for any sign of the dark-haired beauty he’d come to love from afar.

  And he hoped for her sake that she hadn’t done anything stupid.

  2

  “We have to get out of here!” Boone hissed, pacing around the apartment, his face twisted in fear. “Get your stuff together, Danica. We’re leaving.”

  Danica gaped at the wolf in disbelief, shaking her head vehemently.

  “I’m not going anywhere!” she protested. “I… I can’t!”

  Aiden scowled at her. “Don’t you get it? They’re searching for us—all of us.”

  “No,” Danica corrected slowly. “They’re searching for you. They don’t know about me.”

  Aiden’s tiny features were blanketed in sheer malice as he leaned forward to sneer.

  “Are you sure about that?” he barked. “Seems to me that they know a lot more about what’s going on than you think.”

  Danica heard the underlying anger in his voice, but she ignored it. They had been over the role she’d played in Landon Burke learning about the turned women time and again. She was in no mood to rehash the narrative. All she wanted was the pack out of her apartment and on their way before trouble came knocking.

  “It wasn’t me who brought this on us,” she reminded the uneasy others. “If you hadn’t gone crazy trying to turn more mortals—”

  “We don’t need a lecture from you, Danica!” Aiden yelled, his face red with anger. “You’re the one who started this mess by doing what you did!”

  You’re right about that, she thought bitterly. I should have never fallen under Gabriel’s spell and let him turn me. But it was far too late for regrets now. Too much had happened since that fateful night, and there was certainly no going back. All Danica knew for certain was that the longer the males stayed with her, the bigger risk she was facing. With Gabriel in jail, it was only a matter of time before Landon Burke hunted him down and executed him, but not before he learned the whereabouts of his pack and her. Will Gabriel sell us all out?

  Once upon a time, Danica wouldn’t have believed it. Now, though, she wasn’t as naïve as she had been when everything had first started.

  “You need to come with us,” Boone insisted. “We can’t leave you behind.”

  “Leave her,” Aiden said. “She’s been more trouble than she’s worth.”

  “If we leave her, we have no females,” Boone muttered. To his credit, he had the decency to look embarrassed by the words. Danica scoffed at him.

  “What the hell difference does that make?” she demanded. “Without Gabriel…” She cleared her throat uncomfortably, and the others looked away, fully understanding what she was saying. She was crucial to
the pack for breeding purposes, but she was not about to mate with just anyone. And if by some miracle Gabriel made it out of jail, he wouldn’t want to know that his female had been with any of the others.

  But if he doesn’t make it out… Danica shuddered at the idea of being tied to the pack forever without him. Not that being with him was any great shake, but it’s the lesser of two evils.

  “I’m not going with you,” she told them again. “It’s bad enough that I missed classes today. I shouldn’t be upsetting my routine.”

  “School? You’re worried about school?” Aiden snapped. “We’re about to be executed! Who cares about your master’s degree?”

  “I care about it!” she barked back. “Now get out of my apartment before anyone sees you!”

  Aiden, Boone, and the other two wolves eyed her with a mixture of contempt and uncertainty. Danica knew what they were thinking; they could force her to go, but if Gabriel managed to escape and found out that she’d been mishandled, it wouldn’t end well for them. On the other hand, if they let her go, she was the last means they had to procreating.

  Quite the catch-22, she thought. What would I do if I were them?

  “Come on,” Boone mumbled, turning for the door. “I don’t like being in the city.”

  “So we are leaving her?”

  “For now,” Boone said, accepting the role of second-in-command with Gabriel captured. “We know she’s not going anywhere.”

  You don’t know that at all, Danica thought before she could stop herself, and Aiden glared at her hatefully. He had read her thoughts.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Dan,” he snarled. “You’ve done enough damage to this pack as it is.”

  “Leave her alone,” Boone growled. “Let’s go.”

  “Where are you guys going?” Danica heard herself ask. There was no immediate response. “Aiden? Which house will you go to?” Aiden didn’t answer, but Boone turned to eye her from the doorway.

  “I’ll send you a text when we’ve settled somewhere,” he sighed reluctantly, and she nodded.

  “Let me know if you hear anything about Gabriel, too?” she added as he moved out of the doorway. He didn’t say anything, but Danica knew he would. There was nothing she could do now except wait for word on Gabriel and act like everything was normal.

  A combination of relief and anxiety filled Danica when silence filled the apartment following the departure of the pack. Normally, she would have welcomed the quiet, but that afternoon, it wasn’t what she needed. If anything, her mind needed to be distracted, occupied.

  I need to get to class, she decided, reaching for her laptop and bookbag. Even if her heart wasn’t into her studies that day, she wasn’t about to sit around the apartment all day and tear her hair out. Maintaining her routine was the best thing she could do for herself—and for Gabriel.

  As she reached for the door knob, a loud knock caused her to gasp in fright, freezing in place.

  The pack? It seemed unlikely that they would bother knocking when they’d just left. Decorum wasn’t really their thing, after all. Gabriel? He was even less likely to knock.

  “Who is it?” Danica managed when a second rap came on the door.

  “Professor Vance.”

  Confusion flooded her as she gaped at the still-closed door. What the hell is he doing at my apartment? There was only one way to find out, and she pulled open the door to confront him, her brows knit in perplexity.

  “Hello, professor,” she said slowly, cocking her head to the side. “What are you doing here?”

  Professor Wesley Vance smiled at her, the expression sending a familiar wave of shivers through Danica’s body. To say she was attracted to the gorgeous teacher was an understatement. From the moment she had first seen him as an undergraduate, she had been struck by his attractiveness. She was pleased that he was still there when she returned to school to finish her master’s degree.

  It somehow didn’t seem fair that such a ruggedly handsome man could be a professor of literature. Despite the proper glasses, which barely obstructed the vivid green of his eyes, he seemed more a mountain man, with a perpetual scruff overshadowing his face, the hair a shade darker than the light brown crown on his head. When he smiled, the whites of his teeth shone unnaturally against the bristle of his face, and Danica had always wondered what his full lower lip might taste like.

  “Can I come in?” he asked. Danica stepped back, her heart picking up slightly as she permitted him to enter.

  I’ve seen this movie, she thought, humiliation coloring her cheeks at the dirty thought. It was difficult not to be overpowered by his masculinity as he sauntered past her.

  “I missed you on campus today,” Wes continued without preamble, his eyes darting around the apartment like he was taking in every aspect of the unit for future reference. “Everything okay?”

  “I slept in,” Danica replied, her eyes widening. Since when does Wes Vance miss me on campus? she wondered, her heart hammering in her chest so loudly, she was sure he could hear it.

  “Well, I’m glad everything’s okay,” he said lightly, turning to face her fully. Her eyes met his smiling irises.

  “How do you know where I live, professor?” she asked before she could consider the question. Why do you care? The sexiest man on campus is in your apartment. Welcome it. Don’t fight.

  When would she ever be able to enjoy the unwatched company of a man again? Gabriel was not there to keep tabs on her, and the pack was on the run. For the first time in a long time, Danica felt a modicum of freedom, and it emboldened her in ways she didn’t quite understand. Suddenly, the desire to plant her lips on Wes was overwhelming her to the point of suffocation.

  You’ve had a crush on this guy since the minute you saw him, she told herself. Now’s your chance to act on it.

  It was inane, inappropriate, but somehow, she didn’t care. Perhaps it was knowing that she might never know another man outside the pack again. Or maybe it was something else altogether. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time she had been overcome with emotions she didn’t understand since Gabriel had entered her life. Danica had long since learned to roll with her feelings and not question anything.

  But seducing a literature professor? He wasn’t her professor, though—not anymore. Why not? They were two consenting adults, and he had come to her. I asked for a distraction, and here is one.

  Closing the door, Danica dropped her bag on the ground and ambled toward him, her coffee-colored eyes widening demurely.

  “I know a lot about you, Danica,” Wes said. “More than you realize.”

  A slow smile formed over her lips, and she raised an eyebrow.

  “I had no idea you were so interested in me, professor,” she said coyly, sashaying toward him. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

  To her surprise, Wes didn’t smile, his eyes locking onto her face.

  “Where is he, Danica?” he asked flatly. Suddenly, she realized that he was not there to be romantic.

  “Who?” she asked in genuine confusion. Wes exhaled and flopped, uninvited, onto the sofa.

  “You know who,” he grumbled. “Let’s not play games with each other.”

  A dozen confused thoughts popped through Danica’s mind as she continued to stare at him uncomprehendingly. Was he looking for a colleague? A student?

  “I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about,” she told him honestly. “Who are you looking for?”

  Wes leaned forward to rest his forearms on the knees of his pants, and for the first time, Danica realized how expensive his wardrobe was.

  How much money can a university professor possibly make? she wondered idly.

  But that was hardly the focus of her concern when Wes was sitting there, shrouded in enigma.

  “I know who you are, Danica, and I know you’re in trouble,” Wes told her. The words were both thrilling and unsettling, as she could only think of one meaning behind them. He knew she was a Lycan.

  “I don’
t know what you mean.”

  “You do. I know you’re one of the women that Gabriel turned,” Wes said, and Danica’s mouth fell open in shock.

  “What are you talking about?” she whispered, fear overtaking her previous infatuation with the professor. Was he there to kill her? Had Landon Burke sent him?

  “You know what I’m talking about. About eight-and-a-half years ago, Gabriel turned you and three other women into Lycans illegally.” Danica blinked, the breath knocked out of her chest as she started to shake her head.

  Deny. That’s what you always said you’d do if you were caught. Deny. Pretend you don’t remember, just like the others. They were spared, and you might be, too.

  “I-I have no idea—”

  “Save the acting,” Wes told her curtly. “I know you remember everything.”

  She slowly raised her head and stared at him in shock, her lower lip quivering. He’d been watching her all along. But what could he want? To blackmail her? Danica didn’t have anything to give him, and he certainly didn’t seem to need money.

  “I’m right, aren’t I? You do remember being turned?” Wes insisted. “It’s important that you answer me.”

  Danica’s mind raced. She had no way of knowing exactly how much Wes knew, but if Landon Burke had sent him, she would need to seem as innocent as possible if she wanted to escape from this alive.

  “You’ve been following me!” she cried, trying to muster as much indignance as she could, though it was difficult when she was trembling with worry.

  Could I take him? Is he a Lycan? She wasn’t experienced enough in the ways of the Enchanted to identify one when she saw him, but Wes was certainly speaking as though he was one. Careful what you say and do.

  “I-I remember,” Danica muttered. “But I was forced to do it.”

  Compassion touched Wes’ face, and he exhaled in a whoosh of air.

  “I’m not surprised,” he said, rising from the couch and pausing before her. “Gabriel is a bastard, and he needs to be put down.”