by Zana Wilder
The rest of the room crowds over, all talking at once. I try to get up, backing away. The wave of pain is so extreme I'm convinced this can't be a dream. Surely only being awake could hurt this much?
Seeing my disbelief the small group ushers me slowly back into the ballroom. It's been cleared of guests. I look around in shock – all bar the furthest of the magnificent chandeliers are destroyed. Bits of crystal are strewn everywhere, the nearest windows are smashed and there isn't a whole decanter in sight.
“You think I did that?” I gasp, feeling utterly bewildered.
Marc suddenly appears at my elbow and steers me back into the safety of the library. He's not exactly the first person I want to see, but he's a familiar face and he seems genuinely concerned.
Very slowly he explains the events of the past hour, using little words and leaving lots of gaps for my brain to catch up.
“There's no sugar-coating that will make this easier Freya. The truth is, you're a witch. You might not have known it before tonight, but it's a fact.” Marc states calmly.
“You over-reacted to some French bimbo coming onto me – it set off a surge in your emotions, which caused the whole fiasco in the ballroom.” He looks at me appraisingly “I have to say that was some show of power. I'm rather touched you care enough to be so jealous”
I can't really grasp the enormity of what he's saying and instead focus on my upset. I want to wipe the smug look off his face, fast. The arsehole was a hundred percent a willing participant in that kiss.
“You encouraged that Marc! You were as much into her as she was into you” I snap.
He bats me away with another bombshell. “Your energy surge,” he explains ignoring my snarking about the countess “caused our guests severe pain and shattered all the glass within your aura-field.”
I blink at him, unable to retort.
I suddenly recall all the guests clutching their heads and writhing around and I can't help but half entertain his theory. Does he really believe I caused all this chaos? Why is he so calm? What on earth would make anyone jump to the conclusion I caused this? And yet it sort of makes sense, my head's so full of contradictions, I can't form a sentence.
“Look Freya, you remember telling me about all the 'faulty' lights and electrics at your work? Didn't it even seem a tiny bit weird it started happening at home too?”
I peer at Marc, feeling incredibly thick, my mind playing over each of the incidents. They did always go haywire on days I was at my most emotional, or when my migraines were at their worst, but I'd assumed the cause and effect were the other way around. What if he's right; what if I'd caused them?
My mind flicks over the episode this week where my bookcase spontaneously emptied itself on the floor. I'd put it down to nearby building works causing tremors, the building's subsidence, 'or something'. I couldn't fully explain it, and my brain had promptly ignored it.
The grumpy school caretaker bitching about electricians who didn't know their shit pops into my head. I guess he was right - it wasn't a power surge, it was me.
This is like make-believe. I can't understand these fully grown adults all agreeing with straight faces that I'm a witch. I briefly recall Aaron's words... He called me a witch too, didn't he? Did he work out what I was that night? It's all too much and I burst into mortifying tears. What the hell? I don't cry!
Marc's calm face amongst the excited ones is my only rock. He gently suggests that perhaps, not knowing what I was, meant my powers had nowhere to go and so just built up causing migraines and all the weird shit to happen. To be fair, right now, it's about as reasonable an explanation as any.
Holding my hand Marc formally reintroduces himself as Marciel de Vaudou, first son and heir apparent to the Coven of Madame le Comtess de Vaudou and Monsieur le Comte de Vaudou. He gestures towards the thin man with the French cigarettes, and a rather severe looking high cheek-boned woman beside him.
I gulp, I hadn't realised his parents were here, or that they were actual real life nobility. Then it hits me... he said coven, as in witch coven? They're all witches? We're all witches? The reality of the bizarre situation swamps my brain, making my vision swim.
Marc presses a tonic into my hands – something he's made himself to help take the edge off. He takes hold of the sides of my face forcing me to look at him, calming me, talking me through taking deep breaths.
I'm so glad he's here. Everyone else is looking at me like I'm a fascinating project, or an experiment gone wrong.
The tonic works amazingly quickly to make me feel relaxed. So relaxed I can't feel my fingers or my toes, a glorious numbness soaks over me and I doze off.
Chapter Sixteen
Aaron's POV
After I learned about the bitch's spell I had to lock myself away from everyone. I swing between brutal angry destruction of everything in my path to the depths of a vulnerability I didn't know existed. The pack can't see me like this.
I had no bloody idea how attached I was to the fiery-haired witch until it was too late. Which feelings are real and which have been contorted by her dark majik? I can't even trust my own emotions. I'm grieving. I'm full-out grieving the loss of someone who didn't ever really exist.
The Freya I was falling for? She's not real. She was only that person so that she could ensnare me, so that she could trap me. It makes me furious because the little bitch played her role so fucking perfectly that my own wolf still believes it. That's almost worse than the betrayal – I'm having to fight my wolf on this, every step. I should've known better.
After holing myself up for a week, I have a slightly better handle on my rage and I venture out of isolation. Intermittently I still catch myself behaving like a truculent teenager, taking offence over the smallest of issues. It wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't alpha-heir, but because I am my bad temper fans out over the pack-link, making tensions run high.
It takes longer than it ought to, but eventually my father’s waning alpha instincts kick in and he roots me out as the source of the upset.
This father-son talk isn't likely to go well. We're a close knit family but talking feelings is not something my father excels at – it's an alpha trait. Or maybe that's just the fucking excuse we tell ourselves to avoid shit like this.
“What the hell is going on Aaron? You're behaving like an emotionally unstable toddler- the whole pack is wound tight. This shit better not be over some harlot.”
I cringe slightly “I know. I'm not myself... I... I was seeing this girl. This human girl, and my wolf got really attached and...” I trail off.
My father's disapproval is palpable in the air as soon as I mention she's not a wolf-shifter.
“You were going out to find your Luna Aaron. You delayed a decision on the Luna Rite for a bloody human?! A human is not your mate, and definitely not your Luna. And yet you're getting your panties in a twist and affecting MY pack because of the fallout from dating a human?”
His voice rises “You lied to me. You lied to the pack, by omission – deceiving the pack about your intentions of finding their next Luna. Do you even understand how important it is for this pack to have a stable Alpha and Luna?! Did anything I've taught you about the Luna's link with the Watch ever sink into your thick skull?!”
I blink slowly. I hadn't even considered the Watch in all of this. Until I'm alpha and initiated into the Watch I know only a little more about it that your average pack member. The rhetoric every pup learns is that, as members of the Fenrir Watch pack, we have a duty to the elementals.
Through an ancient rite those members of the pack initiated into the Watch are bound to protect the Doras - a gateway to the elementals. Each generation of the Watch consists of the Alpha and his Luna, the beta and any fated-mate pairs in the pack.
Just by being linked to the Doras every pack member is somehow that little bit faster, and that little bit stronger than your average shifter. But the majority of the power is through the Luna, her selected warriors, and of course her mate-bond.
&nb
sp; I don't even know what the elementals really are, or exactly why the Luna is so important, it's just of those tales you assimilate as a kid and never think to question.
It's been generations since the Fenrir Watch were called on, which is a fucking good thing – we've dwindled to a handful of fated-mate pairs, and my own father has a chosen mate – we're a pitiful excuse for the force we once were.
What my father is driving at however, is that my taking a Luna isn't only important for me... it's vital to the life force of the pack, and to the continuation of the Watch. He's telling me I've risked the existence of the pack, and whatever the fuck it is we guard, and he's right.
I struggle to explain how conflicted I was, and why my wolf was so enamoured by Freya.
“ Father...” I correct myself “Alpha Connell, I thought perhaps somehow she was my mate. I didn't really examine how that could be...I know it sounds stupid. It was stupid.”
He scowls ferociously and it hits me - I'm still fucking keeping her nature a secret. Not telling my own father, my pack leader, the whole truth. I'm still protecting 'my woman'. She doesn't deserve that. She's not my woman. She's a witch, a conniving tricking deceitful witch and my pack need to know. They need to know what lengths the Coven are going to.
As alpha, Connell is incandescent when I explain Freya was part of the de Vaudou Coven, had not only hidden it from me, but cast a spell seducing me into thinking she was my fated-mate. As a father, he's far more lenient than I fucking deserve. I endangered this pack and the others under our protection just because I was chasing a bit of skirt. It's worse because he's being so forgiving about it.
The more we talk, the more my poor wolf paces around, frustrated that we’re bad-mouthing the woman he still considers his mate. I have no way of reconciling the more primitive part of my brain with the rational explanation that it's a spell, a trick of the mind. My sister's is wolf gone, and mine is locked in battle with me. Great.
Angus, the packs' beta, is positively distraught for me. That just makes me feel awful, as if I'm some disadvantaged, bottom-of-the-pack wolf everyone should feel sorry for. I'm the alpha-heir, I shouldn't need, and don't bloody deserve, pity.
The only council member who is entirely unsympathetic is my father's third in command, Rennard. He's the gamma, a sly grizzled wolf that I've never seen eye to eye with. He's also the fucker who approved Alpha Silver's proposition of his sixteen year old daughter as a child bride for the Luna Rite. He's a slimy, sleazy bastard and I've no idea what my father sees in him.
This time though, he has every right to disapprove. I don't need Rennard's prompting to feel disgusted with myself, although it's oddly cathartic.
I'm excused from the council’s chambers while they discuss the implications of this latest plot by the Coven. Being shut out is a slap in the face. By rights my place is in there. She's even taken that from me.
I see Rennard skulking out shortly after – his face a mass of scowls. He's never taken easily to being excluded from talks involving the Watch, but he never found his fated-mate – so he's never been initiated.
I try shifting, but spending time in animal form isn't a release. My wolf can't comprehend Freya's absence, despite knowing her only briefly. He stubbornly keeps demanding we go after her. Shifting is a battle of wills, and it's just making me more and more angry.
I'm a nightmare to be around. The pack is giving me, and my temper, a wide berth. That at least, I understand, but Tavey's absence is stark and confusing. We're alpha and beta – we’re meant to weather the good and the bad together. I need him to step up right now, and the arse is avoiding me. I already have a big hole in my chest, his desertion leaves one at my side to match it.
I swear, if it's that bloody cougar keeping him away then so help me I will make him choose between being beta and being with her.
Fuck, that's just jealously talking – I would never make him choose... but there's something gnawing away in the back of my mind. I know Tavey so well. I could swear he's hiding something from me, and hiding away from me to do it.
My rage and disappointment with myself is channelling into an unhealthy resentment for my beta.
∞∞∞
We're finally forced back together, to my angry delight, in the training ring. The pack council decided we need to be war-ready – every able bodied shifter has to rejoin the daily training sessions. We must be ready to fight the Coven. I'm ready to fight alright, although I want to fight Tavey first, the Coven second.
For the first time in weeks we square off against each other in the training ring. Our normally smooth sparring is nothing like the choreographed form we've honed it to over the years. It's harsh and ugly, quickly turning to full body impact blows as we let our anger spill out.
I swipe at Tavey's jaw “I can't believe you still fucking see her around” I pant “if your girl is her friend then she's a fucking traitor too!”
Tavey ducks and spins, hitting me between the shoulder blades.
“Not my fucking fault you're so messed up” he spits “Liz is no witch, you back the hell off and leave her out of your misery. I've done my fucking homework, like you should've, Liz is clean. ”
“If it's not Liz you're protecting what is it... coward?!”
I glare and leap at Tavey, both of us shifting in almost the same instant. I'm the bigger and brawnier of our two wolves, and my words distract my beta, who lands badly.
I'm not fucking around and I press the advantage home, bowling Tavey off his feet and over several times before I pin him to the ground. Growling and breathing heavily, my teeth hover over his neck. It takes several long minutes before Tavey looks away in submission.
Panting we both shift back.
“You... You need to talk to the council Aaron” Tavey's words come out quietly, almost choked “it's not my place...” he trails off still refusing to look me in the eye.
I freeze, anger consuming my body. There is something I'm not being told. Spinning away I change form into my wolf mid-air, charging towards the council quarters. I don't even think, I shift as I arrive, turn the handle on the library and burst into the middle of the council meeting stark-bollock-naked and seething.
A degree of luck means that only my father Connell, his beta Angus and the kappa Rennard are there when I barrel into the oak-lined library demanding 'the truth'.
Angus, uncharacteristically, averts his eyes and mutters something before handing me a robe. Rennard looks me up and down and sneers
“Which version? One with a spell or not?”
I snarl in his face, ready to start a fight, his status on the council be damned. But my father's next words silence us all, and both Rennard and Angus' faces visibly pale.
“It's time for the whole truth.”
Chapter Seventeen
Freya's POV
The next few days go by in a bizarre dream-like state. I'm sure Marc's tonic helped for the first 24 hours, god knows what was in it, but it was super potent.
This is a whole new parallel world existing right alongside my old world. It's bewildering to get my head around. I feel so lost and very, very alone. There's no-one to talk to, except Marc. He's the only tangible thing in this weird new world – the only solid trustworthy being in my life right now. I can't even trust my own body not to pull some whacky shit and set off a power surge.
Marc thinks I need to fully immerse myself in this new life to come to terms with it, and while I'm not delighted, it sort of makes sense.
He bluntly tells me if I can't get myself under-control I could kill someone during a surge. Considering how much pain I inflicted on the Coven members, people far more powerful than your average human, I guess he's right. That's pretty damn scary. I need control of this, I need control of myself.
While I'm grappling to come to terms with who I am, I let him organise me into my 'new beginning'. I don't like feeling so passive in my own life, but the impact of such a revelation has my head spinning so much that it's just easier to go with
the flow. Marc's pushy nature just excels at trying to reshape me.
He immediately moves me across town and in with him, to be closer to the Coven. Quick access to the Coven's huge knowledge base seems pretty sensible. The very fact they'd help me after I caused such damage is hugely magnanimous, so I don't dare to disagree.
The bright, almost sterile penthouse style apartment is a million times more upmarket than my grubby, decaying flat.
I half miss my flat, which is bizarre. I definitely miss my plants – only a select few seem to have made it through the packing process, done of course by Marc's 'people'. He didn't think the stress of moving would be good for me, so instead I arrived to find all my belongings already moved in. That is, the ones that made the cut.
The views across the city are stunning, and not only does the apartment have a working buzzer system but a concierge too. It should feel perfect, but the minimalistic style feels empty.
Marc's promised I can put my own stamp on it when we have time, so for the moment I just need to adjust. Of course it's far outside my budget, but he's insisted that there's no need for rent since his family owns the building.
If I'm honest with myself, since the ball, and the utter fiasco of my great witchy revelation, my feelings for Marc have changed. As annoying and arrogant as I found him before, I'm starting to look beyond that. Maybe it's because I've been forced into close contact with him, and I need him for support. He's really the only person I can talk to about the 'new me'. It's not as if I can look Liz up and say “Hey! You know what? I'm a witch... whatcha think?”
Marc's become a solid fixture in my life, and I'm severely lacking those at the moment. It doesn't hurt that the man is devilishly handsome. I can't help thinking he's not like Aaron, but does have a body most women would die for. And now, without really noticing how it happened, I seem to be his.
It's surreal, like I'm living someone else's life. His family all thought we were already a couple because of the stunt we pulled ... and it's just snow-balled from there.