And I certainly wasn’t going to fall in love with the first guy that happened to look my way. I’d rather be alone forever than live with the pain my mother did on a daily basis.
So hopefully, Fate, and our own magic, would not let us down.
Because we’d risked everything tonight to make our futures happen.
Ruby
My day job in the local florist certainly wasn’t glamorous, but it passed the time all the same.
“Have a nice day,” I said to the human woman who’d bought a bunch of roses for her mother and waved her out the door.
I let out a huge sigh and looked around the large shop filled with buckets of brightly colored flowers and potted plants. What was I doing here again?
Making yourself useful until you work out what you want to do, my mother’s voice sounded in my head.
The Witches in my family were healers, fortune tellers, teachers. But unlike all those women who had come before me, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life at this point.
I’d graduated high school with good grades, gone to community college, then… nothing.
I was adrift, and that wasn’t my personality generally. I wasn’t a flake. But unlike so many of the witching community who were addicted to the coven lifestyle, I just… wasn’t.
I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to hang around this town forever. Travel sounded interesting. If only I could convince Bella and Tiffany to come.
“Ruby, I’m just heading to the bank. Do you want me to grab anything for you for lunch?” Andrea, my boss, smiled at me as she picked up her handbag from behind the counter and headed to the front door.
“No. I’m all good today, thanks, Andrea.” I waved at her as she left.
Such a lovely woman, especially for a human.
When my mother had realized I couldn’t make up my mind on what I wanted to do with my life, she’d forced me to get a job with a non-magical person. To learn, to expand my horizons. To be ‘of use to the community.’
Which, at the time, I’d thought was a horrible idea. But as it turned out, there were a lot of nice humans out there.
The school I’d gone to had been mostly for witches, and I’d kept my head down at college and mostly associated with those I knew. Again, mostly witches.
Now, it was kind of nice to be able to weave between the different communities, not that the humans knew what I was. Of course.
I turned back to the flowers I’d been arranging when my last customer had come in. A phone order had come through for a large bunch of lilies and violets. Simple, but lovely.
I was so tempted to use my magic to make them bright, bigger, more beautiful. But there were pretty severe consequences for revealing magic to a human.
So, instead, I practiced my hand skills. I cut the stems and arranged them in a nice bunch, wrapping paper and plastic around them, and tying it off with an orange ribbon to contrast the vivid purple colors of the violets.
The bell above the door tinkled as a new customer pushed it open.
“With you in a moment,” I called over my shoulder towards the front door, and a tingle of awareness shot up my spine.
I shivered, not with cold, but with impending change. My breath caught in my throat as I twisted around to see who had set off such a drastic shift in my aura.
I moved slowly, so as not to spook either the person, or myself. A huge man stood in the shop, staring at me with quiet intensity.
His beauty struck me like a slap to the face. Beautiful, dark blue eyes. Brown hair falling to his shoulders. Features that made me want to crawl over the counter and jump into his arms.
But the person standing before me, staring at me like he’d never seen a woman before, wasn’t just a man. I took a deep inhalation of air through my nose and shivered at the gruff, animalistic notes.
He was so much more than that.
He was a wolf. And an Alpha too.
I’d come across one once, by accident, when I was a child. The scent was like barely leashed power. Earthy sweat. And strong animal. I’d never forgotten it.
I placed my hands on the counter in front of me, digging my nails into the wood so that I didn’t squeal or scream, or any of those immensely embarrassing female reactions.
I cleared my throat with a cough and forced myself to look up at him. “Can I help you, sir?”
He had the brightest, sharpest blue eyes. The darkest hair. And if he wasn’t six foot six, I’d bite my bum.
“You’re a witch,” he said, no inflection in his voice indicating it was a question.
“Shh…” I said, hushing him. “You’re lucky my boss has gone to the bank.”
He frowned. “She doesn’t know?”
“We don’t tell humans what we are, you know that.” I crossed my arms over my chest and raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you go around shouting to the humans that you’re an Alpha wolf shifter?”
His eyes went wide and he stared at me with his mouth open. He looked as if I’d hit him over the head with a frying pan.
“What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?” I asked, grinning at him for long moments.
Damn, he’s beautiful.
Though that was probably the wrong word for it. His jaw was darkened with the beginnings of a new beard and the muscles bulging under the grey hoodie he wore hinted at an incredibly lethal body.
“What are you?” he said, almost as an accusation.
“What do you mean, what am I?” I repeated and frowned at him. He knew I was a witch. What more did he want? “I’m Ruby. Why? What’s wrong?”
“How did you know that about me?” he asked. “I’m not the Alpha… not yet anyway.”
“But it’s in your blood, isn’t it?” I asked, second guessing myself now. I couldn’t be wrong about that.
He took a few steps forward, his intense blue gaze staying focused on me. “Yes, it is. So, answer my question. How’d you know that?”
My breath caught in my throat the closer he moved, the scent of him so familiar, like a long-forgotten memory. But how was that possible? I’d never met him before. I was sure of it.
“I…” I swallowed and dropped my arms, grabbing for the counter again as my knees threatened to buckle beneath me. “I met an Alpha wolf. When I was child. He smelled the same as you.”
The Alpha wolf crept closer until he stood right in front of the counter I was leaning on for support.
I had to tilt my head up to look into his eyes, and when I did, a noise came out of my mouth that I couldn’t decipher.
A moan? A prayer? A curse?
What is this?
I gripped the desk as my trembling legs finally gave way. I muttered a spell word and a chair appeared beneath me.
I fell into it, feeling as drunk as I assumed drunk felt.
Witches had a great resistance to alcohol, so I’d never felt what being tipsy was like, let alone fully intoxicated. But I had to assume it felt like this strange, hot, creeping feeling that pulsed through my veins. Making me weak, and weepy, and strangely aroused.
Damn, that’s what this is.
Arousal! Heat! Pulsing from my core and radiating through my belly and down my legs.
I forced myself to look up at him. “I… Did you ask me another question?”
He shook his head and growled a little, as though he couldn’t speak.
What was going on?
The bell rang again over the door and Andrea strolled back in.
I jumped to my feet and made my chair disappear before she saw it.
“Welcome back,” I greeted her, putting on my cheeriest smile and happiest tone, though inside my head, my world was spinning.
Andrea placed her black handbag on the counter and frowned at the Alpha wolf in front of me. “Can I help you?”
I was surprised by her non-welcoming response. Didn’t she feel his strength, his power, his beauty?
Then something my mother had once told me, swam up into my subconscious. Humans didn’t like shifters. Wol
ves, especially. They could feel the danger in them, which to us, was an aphrodisiac, but for a human, only smelled like trouble.
And boy, am I in trouble…
He nodded and pushed a piece of paper across the desk.
I glanced down at it. An order of lilies and violets.
“Oh, these are for you, sir!” I almost yelled in my nervousness to diffuse the situation. I didn’t want Andrea being angry at him. He hadn’t done anything wrong.
I twisted around, grabbed the flowers I’d just been arranging, and turned back to him in a hurry. I leaned over the bench to give them to the huge man in front of me.
“Thank you,” he managed to say, though the words were garbled and his teeth were unusually pointed. Almost wolf like. They weren’t like that when he’d come into the shop.
He pulled out a credit card from his wallet and I glanced down at the name before putting it through the machine. I couldn’t help myself.
Jackson Davis.
Oh, I liked the sound of that. But where did he live? Where was he from? Was he just passing through town, or did he belong to a pack in the area?
I have to find out!
I processed his payment and handed the card back.
He was careful not to touch me as he took the plastic card, though I ached to see if I could feel something between us.
I was early in my training as a witch, but all my teachers said I had a natural infinity with scrying. Future predictions. And my instincts were always on target.
And every instinct I had was telling me that Jackson and I would be seeing a lot more of each other in the future.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, though he barely opened his mouth to speak.
Was he fighting the urge to shift? Did he feel the attraction between us that radiated like the sun? I wanted to know so badly what was going on inside him.
“Oh, ah…” I tried to call out to him as he left, but he practically ran for the door, hopped into his truck, and was speeding down the road before I could even walk around the desk.
Andrea shook her head and tsked loudly as she opened the cash register and began unloading the change she’d gotten from the bank. “He sounded like such a nice man on the phone. I’m sorry you had to serve him while I was out. I’m sure he scared you.”
“Scare me?” I asked, moving away from Andrea to arrange some nearby roses. Idle hands, and all that.
“Oh, yes,” Andrea said, shuddering obviously. “Didn’t he irk you? The size of him… the feel. Argh...” She shuddered again.
I clenched my jaw. Why didn’t she understand that there was nothing wrong with him, but instead, something wrong with her?
But I swallowed down the anger and the thoughts. It was for the good of the human that they were afraid of the shifters. It was natural. And I shouldn’t be offended.
I forced myself to continue with normal conversation. “Who were the flowers for? A wife? Did he say?”
There hadn’t been a card ordered so I was left wondering.
“His grandmother, I think,” Andrea said as she went into the back to check stock and I was left staring out the window.
Was this the man I was meant to love? The one that our Halloween spell had called upon?
None of us three had even had a single date since that fateful night, exactly twelve months ago.
But from the feel of Jackson Davis, and the prickling of the hairs at the nape of my neck, I was pretty sure I’d just met my one. My only. My soul mate.
And he was a wolf shifter.
Damn. I hope the coven doesn’t mind!
Jackson
“What the fuck was that?!” I growled at myself from the inside of my truck cabin.
My skin was on fire. My wolf shifter leaped within my gut to come out. To rip through me and roar to the sky that he’d found his mate.
No! No, it can’t be. She’s not even a shifter!
I wasn’t looking for my mate yet, anyway. I was barely twenty-eight. I wanted more time to travel, to explore, to be free.
If she was a shifter, maybe I would be able to wrap my head around the fact I’d just found my mate. It would have been fine, and ideal long term, really.
She’s not even human!
Which would have been inferior, but at least accepted within my pack.
But a witch? Hell, no. Our children would be some strange, terrible half-breed.
I exhaled sharply, all the fight going out of me as I slumped over the wheel driving towards my grandmother’s house. “Damn it.”
A large part of me, namely the sane, non-wolf part, was screaming that it couldn’t be true. That it wasn’t. That this was some terrible mix-up and my shifter was just horny… or something.
Though she had the scent of an innocent…
“Damn it!” I slammed my clenched fist into the steering wheel.
A witch and a virgin as well? She’d probably blow my damn head off the first time we had sex.
What had Fate done now? Because she was seriously screwing with me.
I turned right off main street and followed the road around to my grandmother’s house. The only human relative I had.
My brothers never visited her, but she’d been a good, and stable influence in my life since I was a child and I wasn’t interested in shunning her.
I parked my truck in her driveway and turned off the engine.
“Wonder what she’ll think about this twist.”
The front door opened, and Grandma stepped out on the porch, waving at me with a huge welcoming smile on her face.
I sighed, too heavily, and grabbed the flowers which still smelled vaguely of my mate’s touch.
I grimaced as I hopped out. Her scent had me hardening like a lake in winter.
“Jackson! What brings you here?” Grandma called out as I rounded the truck and headed towards her.
Her long grey hair was piled on top of her head and she was paler than normal.
“Mom said you weren’t feeling so good.”
“Pah,” Grandma said, swatting at the air as though there was a fly, “I’m fine.”
I lifted the flowers and offered them to her.
She sighed and made a huffy noise at the same time.
“You shouldn’t have,” she said, but she seemed pleased as she took them and bent to smell them. “Thank you.”
I waited patiently, and finally she waved me inside.
“Oh, come in, come in.”
We strolled inside, away from the sounds of the humans next door, and I could relax a little. There was something about town that always set me on edge, and now I had an extra reason for it.
“Let me get some lemonade, and I made an orange cake this morning,” Grandma said. “Sit, sit.”
I grinned as I collapsed on the couch and she ran off to grab whatever baked goods she could acquire.
There was nothing like homemade baking. It soothed the soul.
When she came back into the room, she’d put the flowers into a vase and placed them on the table. But the best part was that she also returned with a plate of desserts the size of my chest.
“Ah, expecting guests?” I asked, gesturing to the hoard of cakes and chocolate chip cookies while she poured me a glass of homemade lemonade.
“Well, it’s Halloween tomorrow,” she said, as though that answered the question.
“And…?” I asked, then shoved a chocolate chip cookie into mouth, groaning as the chocolate melted right on my tongue.
Just out of the oven. Perfect.
“And I like to give the little trick or treaters a homemade treat. None of that town bought candy rubbish,” she said, shaking her head as though the tradition of hoarding candy in a bag for months after Halloween was a bad thing.
I chuckled. “Well, you do go all out. These cookies are amazing.” I grabbed another one then picked up the glass of lemonade she’d poured. “Thank you, this is great.”
Grandma leaned back on her sofa chair and narrowed her eyes at me. “What�
�s going on, Jackson? You don’t seem like yourself.”
I tried to smile. “Just came to see you.”
Which I had. Initially.
“Mm-hmm…” she hummed, giving me the eye that meant she didn’t believe me.
I sighed. “I did. I had the day off work and Mom said you hadn’t been well, and I realized I’ve been slack in seeing you.”
“Then what happened?” She asked, raising one eyebrow.
“I… ordered flowers from a florist in town. Just to, you know, apologize for not coming to visit more often.”
She nodded. “Yes, then what happened to make you so itchy?”
I grabbed another cookie. This was another reason I loved my grandmother: she read me better than anyone else in my family. It was confronting sometimes, but it was reassuring to know that someone loved me enough to check on me, see how I was going.
I swallowed hard. God, this was more difficult to say than I’d expected. “The girl that works at the florist…”
“The new girl? With the gorgeous red hair? I’m not sure of her name….” my grandmother said, her eyes lighting up with interest.
I shook my head. “I don’t know it either.” I hadn’t looked, hadn’t wanted to know. If she’d been wearing a name tag, I didn’t see it.
“So? What about her?” my grandmother probed.
“I think…” I clenched my jaw, forcing myself to say it. “No, I mean, I know. She’s my mate.”
My grandmother clapped her hands together. “That’s wonderful!”
I scowled at her unintentionally. “It is not. She’s a Witch, Grandma. Did you know that?”
“Pah,” my grandmother said, waving her hand to dismiss my agitation. “So what? In this town, everyone’s something.”
That wasn’t true. Most people were human.
“But she’s not a shifter! Don’t you understand what that means?”
My grandmother nodded. “Yes. Instead of turning into a wolf whenever she wants, she’ll be able to work magic every day of her life and probably make me some absolutely kickass great grand babies.”
I put my glass down and collapsed against the sofa back. “You don’t get it.”
Wicked Souls: A Limited Edition Reverse Harem Romance Collection Page 194