Seer: A Werelock Evolution Series Duet (Book 1 of 2)

by Hettie Ivers

  I recalled the way the stench of fear had grown amongst the seers as Antonio spoke, and the way the head seer’s light brown eyes had darted nervously to me and then pleadingly to Alyana as she’d wrung her knobby hands and warned in a soft voice, “There is an inherent danger should the boy be mortally wounded again. He has already been wounded far too much.”

  It was the “wounded too much” and “not suited for battle” sentiments I’d always carried with me from that day, along with the immediate shame I’d felt at knowing these human strangers—these seers—had somehow glimpsed my countless battle failures as a growing pup in Greenland and had deemed me unworthy to stand and fight beside Antonio to protect his pack. A wolf’s only value was as a hunter. A protector.

  Only now, in hindsight, did I recognize the significance of the seer’s “mortally wounded again” statement.

  15

  Lauren

  I attributed it to the absinthe in my system that night when my dreams were consumed by nightmares of the little white wolf pup being torn apart. Until similar visions continued to hit me throughout the following day.

  The visions were as confusing as they were horrific, because the white wolf pup was torn apart again and again, and yet somehow he managed to survive. He would approach wolf packs seeking acceptance, and each time he was brutalized for his efforts. Sometimes he’d even approach the same packs that had ripped him to shreds once—or more—already.

  It didn’t make sense. Why didn’t he die? Why did he keep going back? These had to be false visions I was receiving. In many of them, it seemed clear the white wolf had to have died, because there was no conceivable way he could’ve survived. But then, hours later, a new vision of the white pup would hit me in which he was slightly larger than he’d been before—and utterly unscathed by any of the previous attacks. I was certain it was the same wolf every time.

  By late afternoon, I just wanted it to stop. I hadn’t been able to focus all day during my classes, and I hadn’t been able to hold much food down because of the nausea the gruesome images induced. Now I was zoning out on people mid-orders at the coffee shop. Jeff had been giving me looks that alternated between concerned and pouty, and he was more convinced than ever that my drink had been spiked the night before. Evidently, he was taking the big brother label I’d slapped him with to heart.

  “Jeff, let it go. I’m just tired and not feeling well. I watched Kendall pour my absinthe, and Travis poured my whiskey. As for your suspicions about Emil and Michael, even though you’re right that I don’t know them, I seriously can’t imagine either of those guys needing to drug girls to get them into bed. You said as much yourself last night … you know, about how Emil is so good-looking that he can still be an asshole and get a date.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re that naïve.” He pulled a face as he worked the frother. “It’s not about that—whether they can get a date. Ted Bundy had no trouble getting dates. There are guys out there who are into some real sick shit, Lauren.”

  “Yeah. I know.” I gestured to myself. “Sociology major, remember? Previously criminology. Before that, psychology. I’ve got a lock on creeps and weirdos.”

  “All I’m saying is that there’s something off about both those guys. The same way there’s something off about that old suit who’s been stalking you.”

  The mention of Stranger-Danger made my heart ache with a sadness that was wholly irrational. “Kai isn’t stalking me. He relocated abroad and is never coming back.”

  “Who? Wait—you know him now?”

  Shit. “No.” I flapped my hand. “We talked. Once. Yesterday. I ran into him on campus. Outside my dorm.”

  “He went to see you at your dorm?”

  “No. Okay, yeah. He did. So what? Do you think that means he likes me? Don’t answer that,” I said when Jeff’s jaw unhinged. “It was a joke. I was joking.” I forced a nervous laugh and excused myself to use the restroom as my hands began to buzz with overwhelming energy.

  I locked the door and bent over the sink, clutching my temple as I was struck by the ghastly image of the little white pup’s gnawed-off head being flung over the side of a glacier cliff by a much larger wolf.

  I dry-heaved over the sink several times before sliding down the wall to sit on the floor, my body shaking. The strong stench of ammonia hit me, making me want to stand up and heave over the sink all over again. I had only myself to blame, having mopped the sealed concrete floors earlier.

  Why was I seeing this? What could it possibly mean?

  Surely that would be the last of the white wolf visions. No creature survived decapitation.

  Except for maybe …

  I withdrew my phone from my pocket and dialed Babs’s number. She didn’t pick up. When her voicemail message should’ve kicked in, I heard the phone company’s standard recording saying that the person I was calling hadn’t set up voicemail on the phone yet. Weird. Had to be a glitch.

  Pulling my shit together, I got up, washed my hands at the sink, and splashed cold water on my face.

  Kendall was sitting on the couch all dressed up to go out when I pushed through the door of our suite at ten-thirty p.m. I was hot and sweaty, while somehow also freezing, and I was shaking like a damn leaf.

  “Hey, there,” Kendall welcomed me, all smiles. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  I’d been waylaid by three female ghosts I’d never encountered before on my walk up to the fourth floor. All efforts to block them out had failed. Even more distressing, they’d claimed to know my grandmother and were eager to talk to me about a powerful werelock named Maribel. I hadn’t heard the term werelock in a decade, and I had only thought to broach the topic with my mom this very afternoon, which made the timing of the new stairwell ghosts all the more eerie.

  Something strange was happening. I couldn’t figure out what I might be doing wrong—why there were more spirits bugging me than ever before. And I wasn’t ready to face the reality that this might be permanent—that I might be coming into my full seer abilities now that I was twenty-one. Either way, I needed Granny Nina’s journal like yesterday.

  “Aw, that bad, huh? Figured when you didn’t answer any of my texts.”

  Kendall had sent me several texts throughout the day. In between the ones asking how I was feeling and whether I was horribly hung over, she’d gushed about how mind-blowing her sex with Emil had been last night. Not exactly what I’d wanted to hear about or respond to while being bombarded with gory visions of a little white wolf being mauled to death.

  “Sorry, Ken.” I set my bag down and yanked my gloves off. “Busy day. Meant to text you back.”

  “It’s all good. Jeff give you a hard time about last night?”

  “Eh. Nothing I couldn’t handle. Are you going out? I thought you were working tonight?”

  “I was. But Travis called and gave me the night off. Said he’d cover.”

  I fought static cling as I removed my winter coat. “On a Thursday night? Is he nuts?”

  “I know, right? That’s what I said to him. But he said he had help. I was honestly about to ask if he was firing me, when he threw me another curve and told me he was giving me a raise.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yup.” She shrugged. “Totally bizarre. But the best timing ever, because he called to give me the night off not ten minutes after Emil had called and I’d told him that I couldn’t go out with him tonight because I was scheduled to work.”

  “Emil? You’re going out with—”

  The television suddenly came on at full volume—on its own. On the screen, an episode of The Vampire Diaries was playing a scene in which Damon was compelling some unsuspecting human. In a bar.

  Chills swept up my spine. Casper was trying to tell me something.

  “Why does it always do that with you?” Kendall commented more so than asked.

  “What do you mean?” I kept my tone casual as I hung my coat up.

  “The TV. It only acts
up whenever you’re around.”

  “Huh.” I glanced back at the screen, humoring her. “Well, I’ve never been good with electronics.”

  I heard the sound of our bathroom toilet flushing, followed by water running at the sink. My eyes darted to Kendall, but before I could ask, she supplied, “Emil is here, by the way.”

  The door at the end of the short hallway that led to our bedrooms flung wide and Emil strode out of the suite’s bathroom. He had to bend his head down to fit through the low-hanging doorframe that was the standard throughout our retro building. There was something troublingly commonplace and normalizing about seeing Emil’s behemoth, regal personage emerging from our loo—as if he were just like any other guy Kendall might be dating.

  Except he wasn’t.

  Not as far as Casper was concerned, at least, because the cable channel switched all on its own to a station that was playing the shower scene from Psycho as Emil entered our tiny living room.

  “Lauren,” was all Emil’s deep voice said in greeting.

  “Emil,” I replied, and hoped that it sounded as mocking in actuality as it had in my head.

  “Are you seeing this, Lauren?” Kendall pointed at the television screen as she arose from the couch. “I’d swear our TV is possessed.”

  “Nah,” I dismissed. “It’s just the old wiring in the building.”

  She chuckled. “You sound like our maintenance guy.”

  When Kendall walked over to Emil, I realized that although she was dressed up to go out, she was slightly disheveled—her makeup mussed and her hair tousled.

  Wow. They’d fucked. Again. Already. Okay then.

  “Hey—” Kendall’s brows drew together as she looked me up and down— scrutinizing me right back, apparently. “You look crazy tired.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “You know what I meant. I’m worried about you. You haven’t been sleeping well for a while now. Are you having nightmares again?”

  “Kendall.” My eyes flashed a warning. “I’m fine.”

  “Nightmares?” Emil cocked his head at me as he put his arm around Kendall, drawing her close. “How dreadful.” His false concern was as mocking as my greeting to him had been, confirming our mutual dislike of one another.

  Kendall snuggled closer to my enemy, answering on my behalf, “Yeah, it’s awful. They’re so bad she even falls out of bed sometimes.”

  “I said I’m fine, Kendall,” I snapped. It came out harsher than I’d meant it to. I knew Kendall’s concern was genuine and stemmed from a loving place, but I didn’t want to talk about it in front of Emil. Why would she bring something like that up in front of a virtual stranger?

  “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Calm down. But just know that there’s melatonin in the kitchen cabinet with the other supplements if you need something to help you sleep tonight.” She broke away from Emil’s side to give me a hug. As she did, she whispered in my ear, “And there’s a bottle of prescription Ambien if you need something stronger.” She gave me an extra squeeze. “Love you, you stubborn bitch.”

  She was grinning and radiating freshly fucked satisfaction as she pulled away from me.

  God, I was a bitch. Why couldn’t I be happy for her that she’d found someone she was excited about and had incredible sex with?

  Casper answered that question for me when the cable channel switched on its own again to display Mark Wahlberg on the television screen portraying Reese Witherspoon’s psycho-possessive boyfriend in Fear.

  I ate half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with stale bread for dinner. I tried calling Babs again but got the same phone company recording saying that the voicemail wasn’t set up.

  I pulled my laptop out and opened up my email to find not one but five new messages from my mom from last night offering outfit suggestions for my date with pre-med. Rather than reply to any of them, I began a new email to her.

  Mom,

  I know how hard it was for you when Grandma died. I know we agreed never to talk about_

  I stared at the blinking cursor idling on my screen for a full minute before deleting and starting again.

  Mom,

  I know you told me they weren’t real, and you made me promise never to mention them, but I need to know … Do werelocks exist? Was the purple-eyed spirit trapped in the ether a werelock during her lifetime? I remember overhearing you and Grandma talking about her more often than any of Granny Nina’s other “clients,” but I can’t remember her name. I’m not sure I ever heard either of you say it. Was she the reason all the seers were kil_

  Fuck. I couldn’t say that either. I’d gone too far when I’d brought it up to her last night.

  I decided to give it more thought while I went to the bathroom to wash up and change for bed. When I plopped back down on my bed to rewrite my unsent email that was still open on my computer screen, my stomach rolled and my heart nearly jumped from my chest when I saw that a response had been typed beneath the draft email I had written.

  Lauren,

  Yes, werelocks are real. Yes, the purple-eyed spirit trapped in the ether was a werelock during her lifetime. Her name was Maribel. She killed your grandmother. She killed all the seers.

  Casper

  P.S. You should talk to the spirits in the stairwell. They’ve come to help you.

  I slapped my laptop screen shut and leapt from the bed like it was on fire. Snagging my softball bat from the closet, I checked the whole suite, and then I checked and double-checked the front door lock. There was no one in my apartment pranking me. I was just officially crazy—conversing with a friendly ghost via email now.

  I couldn’t do this. This couldn’t be my life.

  I went to the kitchen cabinet that held our supplements and found Kendall’s melatonin and Ambien. I had class in the morning, so I went for the melatonin.

  Miracle of all miracles, it worked.

  Right as I was drifting off to sleep, a completely bizarre, although not exactly unappealing, vision of Kai hit me: He was lying naked on his back in a dark cave—fisting a massive erection. His eyes were closed and his muscles were rigid with tension as he groaned and stroked himself, his hand moving faster and faster. I felt my own sex awakening in response, despite the heavy pull of sleep that was taking me under.

  Somehow I knew it wasn’t the past that I was seeing. Neither was it the future.

  It was the present.

  Then he said my name.

  16

  Kai

  Despite the poachers I’d slain, I felt no calmer about Emil’s visit to Washington. It’d been a little more than twenty-four hours since I’d left, and it was requiring all my willpower not to teleport back to Lauren. I imagined it would only get worse as the days progressed, and thus harder to conceal my heightened emotions from my Alpha. So I decided to check in with Milena now—while I could still pull off a reasonably convincing “normal.”

  Milena had been attempting to tap my mind to reach me. I’d sensed her genuine concern for the past day, and I knew she often worried about me—more than most had throughout my entire lifetime, in fact. While I’d always adored her for her sincere concern, it unnerved me now.

  Ever since my fixation with Lauren had begun to consume my thoughts and emotions, I’d made a greater effort to block Milena out. The problem was Milena was more respectful of boundaries than most Alphas. And werelocks in general. Ironically, this made it harder for many of us to resist the allure of her Alpha pull.

  Shifting into my human form, I teleported to our Reinoso pack’s stronghold in São Paulo to visit with her. Putting on my most civilized, detached front, I reported on Lauren’s progress in intentionally vague terms. Then I shamelessly borrowed from Mike Salvatella’s trough of bullshit, spewing nonsense about seers needing space to grow and thrive—as if Lauren was a fucking flower that wouldn’t bloom if watched by werelocks.

  As for my visit to Greenland, I didn’t offer Milena much explanation beyond saying I needed some time away and citing concerns
about recent increased poaching activity in my homeland. Then I turned the conversation to Milena’s pregnancy and asked how she was feeling. She was nearly six months along, and despite my extended absences for various missions lately, I was still officially the pack’s head doctor.

  I wasn’t fool enough to believe I’d actually convinced Milena that there wasn’t more going on with me than I’d shared, but as we parted ways, I felt reassured that Milena would respect my privacy and leave well enough alone—at least for a little while.

  “Poachers my ass,” Lessa drawled once Milena was beyond earshot. I hadn’t sensed Lessa teleport in behind me where I stood in the basement hallway of our compound’s infirmary. But Lessa’s skill with magic had always been impressive, and she’d been teleporting for several centuries longer than I had. I’d only inherited the ability from Maribel upon her death. “You haven’t been back to Greenland for a hundred and eight years, Kai. What’s going on?”

  She was right. The last time I’d returned to Greenland was months after Maribel’s passing. After I’d failed to die like a normal mated werelock was supposed to.

  “What do you care, Lessa?” I turned to face her, and noted the subtle changes in her appearance since I’d seen her last. She’d lost more weight. Dark circles rimmed her eyes and her coloring was sallow—despite her expertly applied makeup that she’d never needed to wear before. Even the brilliant hazel of her eyes had dulled somewhat. Her separation from her true mate (aka Wyatt’s rejection of her) was taking its toll. Of course, to almost anyone else, Alessandra Reinoso would still look as gorgeous as ever. On the surface, Lessa was every bit the stunning beauty her mother Alyana had been. But that was where the similarities ended for me.