by Leigh Kelsey
A lump shot into my throat. I blinked fast. How long had I wanted him to say he wanted me as his mate? But like this…
“You’ve already given me enough,” I snapped. “You don’t have to do this. We’ll find another way to keep the rogues away, maybe get another spell off Rita.”
The witch who’d helped us set up a safe space to shift. Since Whitby didn’t have any large wooded areas, we’d paid her to create a pocket world just for us. The portal was right off the cliffs—we had to do a running jump and fall through it. Gray’s idea. But if the witch could do that, she might be able to get these lones off our back. My back.
As if I needed to feel even worse, I realised that I’d put my whole pack in danger. My stomach squirmed, the urge to bolt and never come back hooking into me. I couldn’t lose anyone else—I couldn’t handle it, not after my parents’ murder and what those wolves did to my birth pack after our alpha was dead.
My sanity would snap for real this time.
“Whatever you think right now, Lyra, you are wrong.” One of Cas’s hands left my shoulder to skim along my jaw. I hated the way I leaned into the touch right then. My heart was so tight I didn’t think it would ever go back to normal. “I don’t say this because you’re pack, or my responsibility.”
That was one of his favourite words—responsibility. “That’s exactly why you’re saying this,” I mumbled against his chest.
“And the others? Do they do it for same reason?”
Oh good, the others. By which he meant Jack. And Gray.
I groaned, my only answer. I didn’t know what to think, let alone say. All I knew was it fucking hurt, to have everything I’d wanted thrown at me in this way—not because he wanted it, but to keep me safe.
I drew back, fixed my jaw, and said, “Maybe I’d have accepted if it had been for another reason. But if you’re offering to be my mate just to keep the rogues away? No. No chance, Casimir.”
“Lyra,” he sighed, dragging a hand over his face, but he let me leave.
I crawled into my bed and aching though I was, this last bit of stress tipped me over the edge into sleep.
LYRA
“I want to go to the abbey,” I said the next morning, tapping my black fingernails on the table and glaring at the three men in the kitchen. “Who’s coming with me?”
Gray lifted his hand, a rueful grimace on his handsome face. “I’ll come.”
I stared them all down, swinging my scowl from Cas to Jack to Gray. None of them would meet my gaze. I crossed my arms over my chest, my hip cocking out of its own accord. I’d decided to wear shorts and a band vest today, the dark red fabric ripped and holey over my skin, but I might as well have been wearing armour and wielding a big fuck-off sword for all they dared to look at me. I kicked Jack’s chair leg. “Having a nice conversation before I came in or something?”
I could guess, but I wanted them to say it, and if anyone would be straight with me it was Jack.
“It’s a good idea, Lyra,” he said in his most careful tone, daring a glance before looking away. He scratched his short hair, his cheeks flushed rosy brown.
“Great.” I stole a piece of toast from someone’s plate—whose, I didn’t care—and stomped out the door, grabbing my leather jacket from the peg as I went. Gray scurried after me, throwing me quick looks like I was about to blow up in his face as I crossed the patch of grass between the cottage and where we parked the car. “What the fuck is he thinking?”
“That you’d be safer with us protecting you?” Gray offered, scuffing his worn Converse on the grass.
I ripped a bite of toast off with my teeth and forced it down. “That I’ll be safer if I bind my closest friends to me in a bond they can never escape from? That as long as I’m okay, it’s fine if I force you to be my mates—”
Gray laughed loudly, effectively shutting me up. “Oh, man. Don’t be this thick, Lyra.”
I bared my teeth at him and the growl was a little more lupine than I expected. “Fuck you.”
“You can if you want,” he replied with a wolfish grin. “I wouldn’t complain.”
“Shut up,” I said through gritted teeth. I was so close to snapping—not in anger, but my heart breaking, my mind reaching a point it wasn’t safe to cross.
“Seriously, Lyra. You think you’re forcing us to be your mates? Do you honestly not realise it’s something we want?”
I stopped dead so I could glare at him fully instead of side-on.
“I want you,” he said baldly. “Jack’s been lusting after you for months. And Cas has loved you since day one.”
There. That was the end of my composure. I snarled the full force of my fear at him, enough that he took a step back. Didn’t he get it? Did none of them realise what this meant? I’d lost my mum and dad. My pack were all I had left—they were my fucking family. I couldn’t accept this because it meant I could lose them.
Fuck that.
I turned and ran, so quick that he couldn’t follow.
LYRA
I heaved for breath at the side of the road. I’d run way past the damn car, anger propelling me, but my pride wouldn’t allow me to turn around and walk back to it, so I stomped across the grass and onto the road that led directly to the abbey. Nerves twisted my stomach but they were good nerves. Bad nerves would be thinking about what Cas had suggested, what Gray had cemented as a real, unarguable plan. Instead, I’d take action about this whole red light and power pulse thing that had thrown my scent as far as Nottingham.
Ten minutes later, I’d walked off the worst of my temper and I was practically on top of the abbey. It had never unsettled me before, how close we lived to it, but it sat like a bad taste in my mouth now. I shook off the chills creeping over me and put my hands on the wall between the road and the ruin, vaulting over it.
The abbey had been impressive once, I was sure, but now it hulked like a forgotten relic. I only knew some of its history—built as a monastery in something AD, wrecked by Vikings and later rebuilt as a place of learning and religion. Craning my neck to look up at the shell of the building, it seemed to vibrate with everything that had happened here. I wasn’t hugely invested in the energy of places like witches could be but there was definitely something here and it didn’t take long to locate it.
An archway stood almost separate to the rest, off to the side, and beneath it was a crater in the grass and earth that I knew hadn’t been there last week. I was pretty sure I’d have heard about a giant hole in the ground. Not to mention the Church of Saint Mary was flattened to the ground, only dusty walls and wreckage remaining among the gravestones. What the hell had happened here? I moved closer to the ruins, my arms around myself to ward off both the sea wind and the bad vibes seeping from these hollow walls.
Something magical had happened here—or something seriously messed up with witchcraft. I’d only ever known good witches, who could use nature to do impossible things—like, for example, set up a tiny pocket world for a pack of wolves to shift in and make it so no human or other supernatural could ever sense it was there and accidentally trip into it—but I’d never come across the bad kind. Was dark witchcraft responsible for whatever was raising hairs on the back of my neck, sweeping chills down my spine?
This was where the pulse I’d felt in the night had come from, where the flare of red light had originated. But even ducking through the archway to stand in the middle of the ruins, in the centre of that wrongness, I couldn’t say what had caused it. I sighed and shook off the nervous alertness making my spine straight. Plan B, then.
I turned to leave—and froze.
A man stood at the edge of the abbey ruins, framed by a decaying wall. His dirty blonde hair was tied at the base of his skull and a tattoo peeked above the collar of his shirt. Hot, I thought, and then, shit. The wind had been blowing away from him but it changed, the sea throwing it back towards me, and I inhaled a scent that was pure wolf. Melted iron, forest, and whatever it was that rendered my inner wolf terrified. Pheromones,
declaring his intent, I guessed.
My breath caught as I took a slow step backwards. I’d jump into the wreckage of the Church of Saint Mary The Virgin if it’d save me. Hell, I’d jump into a fucking grave.
“What’s your name?” he asked smoothly, matching my step. He moved so sinuously. Beautiful and sharp and deadly. This wolf was a knife.
Knife.
I gasped and fumbled at my jean shorts pocket for the switchblade I always kept on me. I’d forgotten it before, when the first rogue cornered me, pure fear and shock taking over, freezing rational thought. Now, relief slammed into me as my fingers grazed warm metal.
“I’m not gonna hurt you, beautiful,” he said, edging closer. This time I stood my ground. Maybe it was stupid or maybe it was brave. Maybe it was being here alone with him, and the wolf in me knowing that if I didn’t put up a fight, he’d haul me off and claim me at the next full moon. He couldn’t make me his mate without the moon, without me in wolf form, but he sure as shit could kidnap me and keep me locked up until then.
Like hell I’d let that happen.
“I just want to know your name,” he said. His accent wasn’t local. Midlands, maybe? Brummie? “You don’t need to phone for help.”
I thumbed the catch, ready to depress it at a moment’s notice. So he thought it was a phone? Good. Phones couldn’t stab—he wouldn’t be prepared when I spilled his blood.
My wolf rose, her fur scraping the underside of my skin. It was only a handful of days away from the full moon. While I couldn’t shift, I could sense her more. And she was furious that this male wanted to take us. And he did—I knew it and she could smell it. He was like Max, the lone wolf in the Moonlight. He was fixated, and inhaling my scent wasn’t helping, but he was being smarter than the first guy. “What’s your name?” I threw back, my eyes narrowing as he came within four steps of me. Almost close enough to touch.
“Will,” he replied with a charming smile. “It’s nice to meet you,” he added and took a step.
One more, buddy, then you’ll see how nice it is. My blood pounded, my arms trembling, but I wouldn’t miss. Not when so much was at stake—when I was at stake.
“What do you want?” I asked, playing the typical victim card. I let some of my fear shine through my eyes, going against my greater instinct to play tough and hide every hint of it.
He tilted his head, his eyes skimming my body. Hot or not, he was dead for that look. I was just a female for him to claim—to own. Hell no. That was not my fucking path in life. And if it was my path, then fine, as long as I could choose it. No asshole werewolf was making life decisions for me. “I want you, beautiful.” He smiled that wicked smile again. “You’re going to be mine.”
He closed the distance between us, his eyes greedily sliding over the sparse curves of my body before returning to my face. I didn’t waste a second. I pushed the catch on the knife as I ripped it from my pocket and jabbed it hard into his neck. His eyes didn’t fly wide with shock; no, they narrowed, and then he laughed, once. “What a prize you are,” he said, and pulled the knife free.
I scrambled back, not even daring to retrieve my knife when he flung it to the ground. I stumbled into a half-crumpled abbey wall and froze as the wolf dropped to his knees, blood pouring freely from the messy wound in his throat. He was still smiling when his eyes turned flat and he fell onto his face in the grass.
For a minute I just stared. And then I broke.
I choked on a sob, sliding down the wall to collapse on the damp grass at the bottom. I pressed my hands over my face as my breathing shattered and my chest hollowed out. I wanted Cas. I wanted my alpha, and my best friend, and Jack. I wanted my pack.
But they weren’t here, and they weren’t coming. I’d run away from Gray; he wasn’t coming to wrap me into a bony hug and tell me everything was alright.
My breath hitched as I tried to control it, to press down the sobs, to grab some kind of control. I peeled my eyes open and looked at the steely sky overhead, the pale outline of the moon visible even with the sun just behind clouds. I looked at it and took a ragged breath, then another, each one longer, slower, fuller, until I could breathe properly. The moon’s power didn’t fill me the way it did at night, but I felt it warm my bones, press against my skin like a hug.
I was okay. I was fine. He was dead.
I’d killed him. I might have felt horror, shock, disgust. Should have felt them.
Instead I felt … glad.
I shook off the last of my panic as I got to my feet, brushing my bloody hand on my jacket to clean it and shoving all my fears in my mental closet before bolting that door shut. The lone laid at my feet, his face in the grass. I wanted to walk away but I couldn’t for two reasons. One—I needed to know he was dead. I used my boot to roll him over. His face was white, still fixed in the rictus grin from before. Good. Even if it was creepy as hell and my blood ran cold, good. Two—I couldn’t leave a body here for someone to find, especially a human. The last thing I needed was to have police looking for me right now.
So I grabbed hold of his feet and, heaving for breath, furious and red hot, I dragged him through the abbey, across the grass, and back up the road to shove him over the wall of our property.
I’d deal with that later.
Now, I needed to figure out what the hell was going on with me, how these lones were picking up my scent, and how to get it to stop.
And I knew exactly who to ask.
LYRA
I left the abbey behind, along with my panic and whatever still hung over that once-sacred space, twisting it into something unnatural. Jamming my hands into the pockets of my jacket, my head ducked against the wind slamming into me from the seafront, I took a shortcut through the Church of Saint Mary’s grounds and down the hundred-and-ninety-nine steps. The church was basically gone now, a blown-out husk. I tried not to look too close at it.
The wind was alive the closer I got to the bottom, the view in front of me sending my heart into a tailspin the way it always had, even the first time I’d seen Whitby. Some instinctual part of me had sighed home. From the uneven rows of houses in every colour possible to the sweep of the pier into the water, topped by the lighthouse, to the B&Bs and quaint shops at the bottom of the steps, everything made my heart sing.
I let that sense of belonging push off my worries as I wound around the streets of Whitby’s centre, past shops that could easily have sat on Diagon Alley and bars, pubs, and restaurants that all had their own charm and dignity. I walked off every trace of my attitude and anger—that would gain me nothing where I was going—and only when I was sure I was going to be perfectly fucking cordial did I approach the tiny shop painted a cheerful lime green with hand-painted sunflowers around the door.
Fabric bunting was strung all around the shop, the wares ranging from Kath Kidston teapots to prints by local artists to all manner of kitschy trinkets, vases, bowls, and candles. The first time I’d come here, I’d expected it to smell of sage and sulphur but instead a crisp sea breeze scent wound through the air, and the woman on the till was nothing like I’d expected.
She sat hunched over a zine—likely drawn by one of their suppliers—her blond hair twisted into a knot on her head and held in place by a pencil, the ring in her nose glinting almost as much as the sequins on her boyfriend cardigan, the words BE KIND spelled out over her breast. Not your stereotypical witch.
“Heyyyy,” she said, glancing up and offering a smile. The smile was because I had a thing about witches—in that they scared me shitless—and I’d never brought my crappy attitude or bad mood into this shop. So she thought I was nice. “Lyra, right? What do you think of these?” She pointed at a delicate glass tray full of porcelain cats, all of them painted with a different, brightly coloured design.
“Cute?” I offered.
She nodded sagely, happy. “Take one.”
“Oh.” I debated my words carefully. “No, I couldn’t.”
“Nah, it’s fine. Tell your friends you got it
from here. Spread the word.”
Left with no way out, I plucked a pastel pink and black cat from the tray. It had a crescent moon between its eyes and claws drawn on its feet. Okay so it was pretty cool. “Thanks, Dolly.” Yep, she really was called Dolly. Poor cow. Though to be fair, most of her coven had some dubious names. I guess it came with the witch territory.
I pocketed the little cat and asked, “Is Rita around?”
Dolly pointed over her shoulder to the back of the narrow shop and returned to reading her zine. I edged between the antique table the till sat on and a shelf full of quirky greetings cards, spotting a purple hijab towards the back of the space. Rita sat cross legged on the floor, the black fabric of her skirt in a pool around her and her head ducked over a pile of beaded bracelets I assumed would end up on the revolving rack behind her.
“Rita,” I said, debating kneeling beside her but staying upright, my hands shoved in my pockets. “Hey, could I talk to you?”
She tipped her head back and sighed, her eyes going flat. “Let me guess. You want answers about the wave of power. Why does everyone think I have answers?”
I shrugged. “You seem like that kind of girl?”
Her mouth pursed but she got to her feet and motioned for me to follow her into the little stockroom off to the side, shutting the door behind me. My heart jumped to be enclosed in such a small space with someone I didn’t really know—and a witch—but I focussed on my breathing until I felt steadier. God, I wished I’d brought Gray with me. Why had I stormed off again? Oh yeah, because my pack had suggested a giant orgy fest would save me from the slavering wolves stalking me.
“Look,” Rita said, putting her hands on her hips, “I don’t know much. You know my brother?”
“No.” But I’d met his sire once. Power and danger hidden behind golden good looks and an easy smile. I was still wary of him.