I lifted my chin in challenge, hoping it would be enough to drag them out of their isolation. Because this wasn’t fair.
Not to any of us.
Still, neither Billy nor Jackson said anything but continued to glare at me.
I threw up my hands. “Fine.” I turned around to storm off down the street. My house was about five fences down. “I’m going home.”
A hand snaked out, grabbed my arm, and whirled me back to the group.
“Oh...” I gasped as I slammed into Jackson’s chest and his arms went around me.
I should have been terrified by his strength, his intensity, the way he was looking at me like he wanted to devour me.
But I wasn’t.
I wanted him to do to me, everything that look said he craved.
“Don’t go,” he said, and his teeth extended past his lips now. They were pointed and his jaw had changed. More angular. Strong.
I blinked up at him. “Tell your wolf to back off.” I cocked my head in thought. “Unless you want me to work a spell to put him to sleep? I’m sure I could.”
The growl that he released shivered through me.
One of his hands swept down to grab my ass and haul me against his body even tighter, fitting me into the cradle of his hips. The other hand moved up to the back of my head, gripping my skull so that I was staring into the stormy blue eyes of an Alpha wolf.
His gaze shifted when my lips parted so that I could breathe, my heart pounding in my chest like a runaway train.
He dropped his head and pressed his lips to mine, so much more gently than I’d anticipated.
I moaned in my throat as a wave of heat swept through me. I could feel the veiled strength and wanted so much more.
I ran my hands up his huge arms, over his neck, and into his thick hair so I could grip his head and pull him closer.
Damn, he’s big. How hot and muscly would he be under this sweater?
Jackson groaned and pressed open my lips with his, using his tongue to sweep inside my mouth.
I shivered with desire, my belly tightening with liquid heat.
The hand that cupped my head moved lower, grabbing my other ass cheek so that he was holding me firmly in his grasp.
I gasped against his mouth, stifling the wanton moan that rose.
“Ruby!” I heard my name being called as though from very far away.
Jackson froze against me, like a statue. His startled groan was not one of pleasure, but of pain.
I ripped my lips away from his and looked towards the direction that my name being called had come from.
My mother and her friends stood on the other side of the road. Oh shit!
I couldn’t extract myself from Jackson’s tight grip. He was frozen. Like a popsicle.
My mother raced over the road.
I glared at her as she stood in front of me. “Mother! What did you do?”
“What the hell are you doing with a pack of wolves?” my mother demanded, her eyes glittering with silver magic.
“Unfreeze him, Mom. Now. I can’t get out of here.” I was bent backwards and at a rather awkward angle I was now realizing. My gaze darted to Darren and Billy who were both frozen in place also. “Mom!”
“Okay, okay,” she said, and snapped her fingers.
All three men jolted forward in a strange way, coming out of their stupor.
I managed to get my feet under me so I didn’t fall on my ass, but stumbled a few feet away. My mother grabbed my arm and pulled me to her side.
The guys took a moment to regain their faculties, then came together with a growl.
“Back off,” my mother warned, conjuring a ball of fire with one hand and threatening the wolves with it.
“Mom! Stop!” I said, pulling down her arm. “You can’t use your magic out in the open like that.”
My mother finally seemed to hear me and dropped her hand down, though her best friends stood on either side of her like a military guard.
She barked at my men, “Go home. Now.”
Jackson glared at her. “We’re not going anywhere.”
Uh-oh. Mom won’t like that.
My mother glanced at her two best friends and as one they spoke a single word, flicked their right wrists in the air, and poof, my men were gone.
Gone!
I gaped at the space where six hundred pounds of wolf shifters used to stand.
I pulled my arm out of my mother’s grasp and glared at her. “Where the hell did you send them?”
Billy
One minute we were standing on the sidewalk, in town, glaring at a cluster of three older witches. The hairs on my arms and legs had been standing on end as my shifter howled to get out.
Then the next moment, light flashed before my eyes. I staggered like a drunk, legs weak, heart pounding, sweat rolling down my back.
I grabbed for anything to stop myself from falling to the floor. My hands found nothing, and I bit the dust.
My vision cleared as my head whirled, and my fingers dug into the dirt beneath my hands.
We were back in our town. Or I was. Where were the others?
Jackson’s groan sounded a few feet away, and I pushed myself to roll over onto my back, breathing heavily.
“What the hell happened?” Jackson said, coughing.
Darren staggered over to us, the only one still standing.
He took a deep breath and moaned as he straightened his spine and stood up, blinking rapidly. “They, uh, sent us back.”
I pushed myself up, using what little core strength I had left. “Who sent us back? And where the hell are we?”
I blinked, my vision slowly clearing. I recognized the dirt I lay upon now, the fence and the trees. We were just outside the wolf shifter community gates.
Darren’s lips kicked up at the sides. “Ruby’s mother, and her friends. When we refused to leave, or you said we wouldn’t leave, they cast a spell to send us back here.”
Darren glanced around and I followed his gaze. We’d been dumped just outside the town’s gates. The witches obviously didn’t know where else to put us.
“Pretty impressive actually,” Darren said, his tone indicating he was enraptured with the witches.
I tried to growl and glare at him, but it didn’t come out strong. I felt like she’d sapped every bit of strength from my muscles.
“Why do I feel like shit? And you’re standing there looking okay?” I asked Darren.
It wasn’t due to physical fitness or strength, obviously. Jackson and I were three-fold stronger than Darren.
Darren shrugged. “I assume my own magic gave me some resistance to theirs. Obviously not to stop them, but to handle the spell better. You guys probably haven’t had a spell put on you before.”
“And you have?” Jackson asked from where he sat nearby.
Darren nodded. “Yeah, a few. My grandmother used to teach us to use our magic a little when we were kids. And she used her magic on us, even if it was just to make some new clothes, food. It wasn’t anything nasty, just common, day to day stuff.”
I stared at Jackson, then back to Darren. I hadn’t realized witches used magic for… everything. Clothes? Food? Was he serious?
Jackson hauled himself to his feet and I followed suit, forcing pure will into my muscles to make them hold my weight. It hurt!
“So, what do we do now?” Jackson said, dusting his hands off on his jeans.
“We need to go get your truck, for one thing,” I said, annoyed that we’d have to drive back into town and get it.
Fuck it. Tomorrow.
Jackson stared at me, one eyebrow raised. “Don’t know about you, but I could really use a run.”
My mouth dropped open. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d shifted into our wolf forms and run through the forest bordering our town.
I grinned. “Oh, yeah. Me too.” My wolf had been flexing his strength inside my mind since we’d found our mate. “It might make it easier to control them around Ruby.”
Jackson nodded. “You wanna come?” he asked Darren, I assumed out of politeness. Everyone knew Darren didn’t shift.
Darren grinned. “You know what? I’d love to.”
My eyebrows flickered up with surprise. Without further discussion, we all started walking the mile back to our actual town.
I had often considered perhaps Darren simply couldn’t shift, but then again, he was three-quarters wolf.
It took us ten minutes or so to walk back, but by the time we got to Jackson’s house, I was buzzing with energy.
The sun had dropped, the darkness had settled, and it was Halloween. It might be the perfect night to scare some local kids.
We dropped all our clothes at Jackson’s place and let the magic of the wolf shifter rip through us.
There was nothing like it.
When I let go of my humanity, my skin burned like I was standing too close to an open fire. Then the fur began to sprout, and my bones began to bend and change. It had been painful the first few times, but soon I’d embraced the feeling.
A growl ripped through my chest as I transformed into a large black wolf. Not as big as Jackson, who stood half a head taller than me, but big enough.
Once Darren had shifted too, slower and smaller than us, we took off into the woods.
We ran as hard and as fast as we could, howling through the trees and rejoicing in this strange new adventure we were on. Together.
And for the first time since we’d met Ruby, I was glad I wasn’t alone.
Ruby.
I waited for my mother to reply to my question, and when she didn’t, I threw up my hands and charged back across the road toward home.
She wasn’t allowed to use any magic, let alone transportational magic, out in the open! Anyone could have seen her. And where the hell had she and her friends sent my men?
I stormed inside the house, not bothering to shut the front door, because I knew they’d be along in a minute.
I couldn’t sit down. Couldn’t stay still. My veins buzzed with adrenaline and anger, my heart banging against my ribs and my hands shaking.
I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and drank half of it in a few gulps.
“Ruby! What were you doing with those men!” my mother demanded as she stormed into the kitchen, her best friends hot on her heels.
“I was kissing them!” I yelled back, flinging my arms around so that water from my bottle flew across the room, splattering the cupboards.
Bella’s mom flicked her hand and the water splatters disappeared.
I rolled my eyes. She hated mess.
My mother’s gaze narrowed at me. “You were kissing him. Why?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Because I wanted to. Because he kissed me!”
And because I’m their fated mate, but I’m not sure I want to say that out loud just yet.
My mother paced around the kitchen and her friends fell back, resting against the wall and one of the cupboards.
It was better to give my mother room when she was mad.
“How do you even know a group of wolf shifters?” she asked me.
“I met them at the flower shop yesterday,” I admitted.
“All three of them?” She narrowed her eyes at me.
I nodded.
Mom gestured with her hands, in a rolling motion, and said, “Go on. I know there’s a story behind all this.”
Of course, there was, but how much did I want to tell her?
I closed my eyes, weighing the pros and cons of exposing all now versus later. No matter what, my mother would find out everything.
“Ruby…” My mother’s tone held a warning and I groaned, opening my eyes.
“Fine. Jackson, Darren, and Billy say they’re all my fated mates. I feel the same way… I think. So, yeah, there’s that.” I threw my hands up and shrugged.
Mom fell into one of the kitchen chairs. “Holy shit.”
My eyebrows flickered up. “Holy shit?”
Bella and Courtney’s moms began backing out of the kitchen.
“We’ll call you later,” Bella’s mom said, and Courtney’s mom flashed an uncertain smile. They hightailed it for the front door.
Smart move.
My mother jumped to her feet and began flicking her wrists and waving her hands around, magic zipping around our kitchen like a storm.
I sat as still as possible. This happened on occasion, and although my mother’s magic was simply baking bread, making food, and changing the colors of the cardboards, it wasn’t smart to get up and get in the way.
So I waited to see what would come out of my mother’s mouth at the end of it all. And what, exactly, she was so upset about.
Finally, the white sparks stopped flying and my mother halted, turning towards me with her green eyes blazing with light. “You’re going to… mate with three men?”
I looked down at the kitchen table and ran a finger up and down the white kitchen table. “I… don’t know. I’ve barely spent any time with them yet. I just….”
I shrugged.
My mother collapsed into the chair opposite me. “This is all my fault.”
Her fault? I was the one who did a Halloween spell calling my one true love to me. Perhaps having Bella and Courtney work the spell with me tripled the strength and called three men to me instead?
“Your fault? What are you talking about, Mom?”
My mother ran her hands through the long strands of her red hair, highlighted with natural grey.
“Mom. What is it? Tell me,” I said. This didn’t look like good news.
“Your…” She cleared her throat with a rough cough. “Your father wasn’t a human. And he certainly wasn’t a warlock.”
My chest tightened, my breath getting stuck in my throat. “What do you mean? You always said he was a warlock passing through town. That you didn’t know much about him.”
I’d always hated the idea that my mother had procreated with, and made me, with a practical stranger. It made me feel unwanted… lost, unplanned. Which I had been.
“Well…” My mother inhaled deeply, stalling whatever terrible fate she was planning on telling me.
“Well, what?” I demanded.
“I did know him. We dated secretly for almost a year before I got pregnant. Then he disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” This was new information. Since when had, ‘shooting through’ after she got pregnant, turned into ‘disappeared.’
“Yeah, well, at first I assumed he’d just left me. Abandoned me when I needed him. But no-one’s seen him since the night I did, and well, there are some strange things that happen to wolf shifters when they mess with witches. And you know my parents weren’t the kindest of people.”
I put both hands out in front of me, halting her next words. “Hang on a second. What did you just say?”
Mom blinked at me. “Which part?”
“Did you just say that my father was a wolf shifter?”
My mother nodded and swallowed hard, running her fingers over her hair. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
Suddenly everything in my world made sense, especially the fact that I had three wolf shifter soul mates.
But how were they going to feel about my blood lines? And the secrets I carried too.
Ruby
I jumped to my feet, my magic whirling through my veins making it hard to sit down. I wanted to fly to my three men. I wanted to explode the roof off the house. I wanted a pizza.
Yes. Definitely a pizza.
Instead, I stayed in my mother’s kitchen and paced around the room.
“How could you not have told me this earlier?” I asked.
“I didn’t know how to.”
I glared at her, then kept pacing. “You mean you didn’t want to.”
“No, you’re right, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to influence you in any way. I didn�
��t want you to worry about your magic developing, where you fit in society. Or if you were going to, you know…” She gestured helplessly around us.
I groaned. “Going to… what?”
She bit her lip. “You know… shift.”
I stopped pacing then and stared at her. Shocked.
No wonder I felt like I didn’t have a place in the witch community. Why I was powerful enough, but had always ached to run, to be free, not rooted to this community that everyone else felt integral to their survival.
But to shift into an animal? Crap balls. “Is that possible? I mean, how would we know?”
“Oh, it’s not going to happen now. Not that you’ve reached full maturity. I was told that it would come out a lot earlier if your wolf genes were going to be dominant, which, considering how powerful your magic is, would be unusual.”
I didn’t want to sit down, but I didn’t know what to do with all the energy in my body.
“Okay. So, you’re telling me I’m half wolf shifter? Which is probably why the men I’m meant to be with, are wolves?”
That part at least made more sense.
“I’ll give you that. But three?” my mother said, looking skeptical as her gaze darted back to me.
I shrugged. “That wasn’t my choice. It’s just… how it is. I can feel it, and so can they.”
My mother sighed, glancing down at the table. “So, what are we going to do now?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and stared down at her. “Well, you can tell me where you sent them, and I can go sort all this out.”
She nodded and sighed in a resigned way. “I’ll drive you out there if you like?”
“You don’t want to just zap me to the same spot?” I asked.
She stood up. “They could be anywhere by now. I’ll drive you to the outskirts of their town, and you can decide what to do from there.”
I stared at her. “You’re gonna just drop me off?”
My mother shuddered, as though letting me go off into the big world at aged twenty-two was an ordeal she’d never thought she would have to endure.
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