The Dire Bear’s Witch

by Jessica Ripley

  “I’d rather we talk outside.”

  They ignored him and pushed past. “Search the place,” Maeve instructed.

  “You are not going to toss my house looking for a recipe,” Dixie warned.

  Before the words were out of her mouth, they’d already started opening cabinets, drawers, and doors. One of them opened the basement door, which revealed a normal-looking broom closet, complete with five witches’ brooms.

  “You can either watch us toss the house or come out and give me the recipe.” Maeve let her three men do the searching. She stood next to Dixie. “Or you can fight us, but your house will be more damaged than that.”

  It was too much when they moved toward the bedroom wing. “Stop!” Dixie shouted. Their rooms were the way they’d left them. There was no way she was letting anyone destroy them.

  When they kept moving, she wasn’t going to just let them do it. She used her immobilization spell and prepared herself for the kickback.

  “Dixie, no!” Slade shouted.

  Despite being prepared for it, the feedback still knocked her down, but she wasn’t out. Slade rushed to her side and roared at Maeve. “Stop this right now, or so help me, you’ll all regret it.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” There was a change in Maeve’s voice. “Hey, guys, hold off a second.”

  Dixie looked up from her position on the floor in Slade’s arms. “A feedback curse from the council, but it won’t stop me. I’ll die before I watch you tear this place apart.”

  Something passed over Maeve’s eye. Was it fear for how angry Slade was at Dixie’s collapse, or was it pity? “Just tell me where the items are, Dixie. The recipe and the items, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Maeve, for goodness sake, if I had items to perform the immortality rite for another, don’t you think I would have given it to my family? My sister?” She pointed to one of the photos on the wall.

  She followed Dixie’s gesture, and her expression further softened. It gave Dixie an idea. “Slade, can you and the guys leave us for a moment.” Dixie used his shoulder to brace herself and stood, showing him she was okay.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Please, I think Maeve and I need to talk.”

  His eyes searched hers, and finally, he relented. Once they were outside, Dixie sat on the couch and patted the cushion beside her. “Sit.”

  Though Maeve’s face was stony, Dixie could tell there was something lost and helpless in her eyes. Maeve did as told.

  “You’ve been coming after me since we met. You said you wanted my immortality recipe.”

  “And you refused.”

  “So why put the council on me?”

  “Because I knew you came in with Gerri. I knew you were Slade’s mate. But I also knew Slade is a bonehead and would mess things up. So setting the council on you right away might get him to claim you and get you to stay, which would give me longer to work on getting the recipe from you.”

  “So then when that didn’t work, when I left for the Coven, you set your men on us?”

  “They were supposed to retrieve you.”

  “And then you followed us here?”

  “It’s not like we attacked while you were sleeping.”

  “You basically burst in the door and started ripping my house apart. I don’t see the difference in if you did it last night or first thing in the morning.”

  “Ugh, I know.” She threw her head down into her hands. “I’m sorry, I thought giving you the night was being considerate. This is all messed up. I just needed to do something to try to convince you to help me.”

  Help her? The statement piqued Dixie’s curiosity. “Maeve, why do you want the recipe?”

  At that question, Maeve looked surprised. “You don’t assume it’s just the same reason everyone wants it? For power? For, I don’t know, because I don’t want to be dead?”

  “No one ever asked me why I wanted it. If they had, I wouldn’t have had a good answer. I thought I’d see if you had one.”

  “I do. At least, to me.” Maeve looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. She didn’t look like the stone-cold aggressive woman Dixie had first met. She looked small, scared even.

  “What is it?”

  She looked back up at Dixie. “I haven’t told anyone this. Not a soul.”

  “I won’t repeat it.” Dixie was watching everything about her now. Was she about to feed her a lie?

  “I was at a party years ago. I showed up late, as one does, fashionably late, but I was there later than I’d planned on. The party was mostly over, but I tried to play it off, chatting with the people who were still left. In wandering around, something inside of me stirred. I followed the feeling and found a man asleep. He didn’t stir, I assumed he had too many drinks, but I knew exactly what I’d come across.”

  Dixie could guess. “Your mate?”

  She nodded. “But there was a problem.”

  She pieced it together. “The man is immortal.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. If she were telling Dixie a false story, she was a really good storyteller. “I’ve spent years avoiding him while I search for a way to become immortal. I want to be with him, but I’m getting older and older. When you appeared, it was like this was it, my chance.”

  “How did you know who I was? What I was?”

  “I wasn’t lying when I said there were rumors. Having a wide-reaching network is one of the benefits of being the pack leader’s daughter. We’d just tracked you down when that meddlesome Gerri swooped in and whisked you off to the Galaths’.”

  “Oh.” Feeling a bit stronger, now that the magic feedback had faded a bit, Dixie stood from the couch.

  “Dixie, please,” Maeve pleaded, following Dixie into the kitchen. “I don’t know what else I can do.”

  “I think there might have been better ways to go about this, but what’s done is done.” She reached for the large family photo that was propped up on the breakfast bar and started to take the back off. “I’ll give you this, but remember that it took my family generations to get all this stuff. I don’t have any of the items. You’re on your own for that.” She handed her the slip of paper that was hidden inside the frame.

  She looked at it, her eyes wide and unbelieving. “This is it, for real?”

  “Yep. And before you question it, it really is the full honest-to-goodness list.”

  “You said you weren’t interested in sharing.”

  “I wasn’t, but you’ve persuaded me.” Well, that, and her sort of change of heart from being home. “I don’t have anyone else to pass it down to, no other family. In a way, giving this to someone else feels like the right thing to do.”

  “If you’re saying this makes us family…” Dixie expected her to say something snarky, but instead, she hugged her. “Thank you, Dixie. You don’t know how much this means to me.”

  “Maeve, I don’t want to burst your bubble, but did you hear what I said about it being generations? I don’t know if you’ll be able to—”

  “But at least now I can try.”

  Dixie saw a determination in Maeve’s eyes. She had a goal, just as Dixie had. She might die before reaching that goal, but at least she had it. Just as Dixie had focused on that recipe so she didn’t have to despair over the loss of her loved ones, now Maeve could focus on it and ignore her heartache.

  “Good luck.”

  14

  Dixie sealed the house back up, accepting the support Slade offered her, and then they were on their way. She was emotionally wiped from the visit and physically wiped from the magic feedback, so she slept for the first part of the ride. When she woke, feeling a bit better, she found herself gazing at him and wondering at how at-home she felt by his side.

  “Why don’t you want to be with me?”

  “What?”

  “Mates want to be with each other, and you’ve been more than happy to pawn me off on the coven this whole time. Why? Why don’t you want to be with me?”

  “You don
’t want to be with me, either. You don’t have the mate sense. I’m not going to try and make you want to be with me.”

  “No, I don’t believe that. If you wanted me to be with you, you could have done anything to try to get me to fall for you.”

  “Do you want to be with me?”

  “Maybe,” she answered.

  “Well, see—wait, what?”

  “I don’t want to be with you because I’m afraid.”

  “What?”

  “I’m afraid to let myself have a meaningful relationship with anyone. I’m raw from the hurt. I never properly grieved my loved ones. I focused on my work, and then I fled. I can admit that now, now that I’ve gone home and had to face it. Going to the coven was me doing the same, fleeing you before you became something I cared about and feared losing.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because my kind, the Dire Bears, we can’t have love. We’re cursed.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes. My dad, he lost his mate, my mom, before we were turned. But my brother Tad, he met his mate, and it was a cursed match. When he lost her, he lost it. It crushed him. I didn’t want a mate because I didn’t want that to happen, but then I saw what happened to you when you collapsed, and I realized it wasn’t about my fear for myself anymore; it’s my fear for you. I can’t let the curse happen to you.”

  “The curse on me is because of the council, not because your family has some curse.”

  “Semantics. I’m cursed, which means you’re in danger, if not from the council’s curse, then look at Maeve going after you. It will always be something else.”

  “There’s always a way to break the curse. We could ask at the coven. I’m sure whatever we need I have back at the house—”

  “No, it’s not like that.”

  “There’s always a way to break a curse.”

  “If there was, Tad would have figured it out.”

  Dixie let the matter drop and dozed most of the rest of the ride. Getting up for rest stops and food.

  She would be glad when the curse was off her. The moment that happened, she was going to cast every spell she could think of!

  “Adelle is waiting for you,” the young witch from before informed them when they got back to the coven. Adelle must be anxious to see if she’d finished the task. She was alone when she walked into the sitting room, leaving Slade behind.

  “You’re back so soon!”

  Her face lit up when Dixie handed her the crystal. “It’s perfect.”

  Dixie didn’t ask for what. It wasn’t her business. If there was anything she’d learned from being a witch, it was that sometimes letting people keep things to themselves was best for everyone. Less trouble to get wrapped up in.

  “So, you’re in then. There will be an official ceremony for you, and all that, but the first thing we’ll do is pen a letter to the council to let them know that you’re one of us now—”

  She saw something in her face. “Dixie, what’s wrong? Why do I get the feeling that joining the coven isn’t what you really want to do?”

  If Adelle was going to be Dixie’s sponsor, Dixie had no reason not to tell her the whole truth. “Adelle, I think if I could be with Slade, I might want to be with him, over committing to the coven. I’m sorry to say that, but I figured you should know.”

  “What do you mean, if you could be with him? Why can’t you?”

  “He says there is a curse on his family. He believes I’m in danger as long as I’m around him.”

  “Why does he think that?”

  “He has a brother, Tad, who had a cursed love, and Slade’s, well, I guess he’s afraid because of it. The council’s curse worked on me a few times, and he thinks it’s connected to his curse.”

  Adelle’s face set hard. She stood. Dixie wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but she heard her speak to Reyna, who was waiting outside the door. “Can you go retrieve Mr. Galath for me?”

  She didn’t return to her seat but went to a window, examine the glimmering glowing crystal in the natural sunlight. Only when the door opened again and Slade walked in did she return to Dixie’s side. “Mr. Galath, please sit. We need to talk.”

  “Is everything all right?” he asked.

  Dixie felt soothed to have him in the room with her. He looked so handsome in his suit, with that bit of stubble on his cheeks, his chiseled jaw, but the kind eyes looked at her with concern.

  She shrugged and looked to Adelle.

  “Dixie tells me that you believe there is a curse on your family, one that will harm her, and that is the reason you’re pushing for her to be in the coven.”

  He looked taken aback, so Dixie said, “I’m sorry if I told your family business. I just wanted her to know what my thoughts were.”

  “Your thoughts?”

  “Yeah, that if I had the choice, I think I’d rather be with you than the coven, but I can’t because of the curse.”

  A small smile formed on Slade’s face, as though she’d said something he’d wanted to hear. “It means a lot to me to know you feel that way, even if there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “You’re not cursed,” Adelle interrupted.

  He looked back at her, scowling. “How do you think you can presume to know anything about me or my family?”

  “First off, I’m a witch, and one of my areas of expertise happens to be curses. I can see the council’s feedback curse radiating off Dixie, but the only curse on you is your immortality. The devil didn’t do anything else to you. He thought living forever was enough torture.”

  He shook his head, still refusing to believe.

  “Fine, if you don’t trust my expertise, then tell me this. What was the name of Tad’s paramour?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember because the curse on her erased her memory from you and your family. It didn’t work on Tad, though, because of the mate sense. Not only can the two of them not touch, but Tad couldn’t even turn to his family to talk about her. She all but ceased to exist, if not for his longing for her.”

  “So? Even if it was a curse on her, it happened because of the curse on my family. Just like this curse on Dixie.”

  “You’re wrong, Slade. There’s no curse. No one has ever found one, even after you insisted there was one. Your father looked into it, didn’t he?”

  “He claims they found no trace of another curse.”

  “Just like I said.”

  “I just don’t believe it.”

  “You should. And I’ll tell you why. I know for a fact that the curse on Tad’s mate had nothing to do with him and everything to do with her, because…” She paused.

  Dixie understood. “It’s you.”

  Slade looked between the two of them in shock.

  Dixie continued. “The crystal is going to help you break the curse.”

  She looked down at it. “I’m not sure, but I’d like to try.”

  Slade stood. “We have to find Tad, let him know!”

  “No!” Adelle and Dixie spoke at the same time. Dixie continued. “You can’t tell Tad. You can’t get his hopes up.”

  “I will find him, if and when the time is right.”

  “The curse was on you, though, and you have every ounce of confidence that it did not originate from our family?”

  She nodded. “I’m very sure. I know that you have fears about being with your mate, but you won’t suffer the same fate as Tad and me. Besides…” She looked at the crystal again, turning it in her hand. “Our story isn’t over yet.”

  “I’ve made a decision,” Dixie said, looking at Slade. “I’m going to decline Adelle’s offer.”

  Slade said nothing. Dixie knew it was likely that he was so used to leaning on the curse as an excuse that now he didn’t know what to do or think.

  “I can respect that,” Adelle said before holding the cryst
al out to Dixie. “Would you like this back?”

  “Absolutely not,” Dixie said. “You use it for whatever you need it for. And if you need anything else, let me know.”

  “And me,” Slade added, his voice cracking a little. “I would love for my brother to come home, to be reunited with his mate—with you.”

  Her hand closed around it, and Dixie saw relief wash over her face. “Thank you. I owe you, for real. If you ever decide you need me, I’ll be here for you. Whatever you might need.”

  Dixie smiled. It felt good knowing, in a short time, she had two new awesome girlfriends, Gerri and Adelle.

  Add in Slade, and things were really looking up for her.

  “I appreciate it,” Dixie told her. “Life is long for us. I’m sure we’ll cross paths again.”

  “I know we will,” she replied.

  Slade still looked dazed as they stood, and Dixie took his arm, offering him physical contact, a symbol of support that he’d been doing for her the last few days. The three of them left the room and found Paris with the young witch in the hallway. She observed the way Dixie clung to Slade, and understanding crossed her face. “We wish you the best, Dixie, and we look forward to being your ally through the Dire Bear clan.”

  “Thank you.” They left the coven, going back to the car.

  Slade moved as if he were on autopilot. “Are you sure you want to drive?” Dixie asked him.

  When they were inside, and the doors closed, he turned to her. “Are you sure you want to be with me?”

  “Today, I spoke to two women who would both go to great lengths to try and be with the one they love. I’m not going to be a fool and run from love just because I’m scared. I want to be with you, I want to explore this life together, and I won’t let fears, mine or yours, stop us from having the gift of a lifetime.”

  He closed his hand around hers.

  “I know it will take a long time, maybe forever, for you to not worry about a curse, no matter what people tell you, but can you just take this leap with me? Can you just, instead, think, what if it will be okay?”

  “I can try.” His voice was hoarse.

  Her heart warmed. “Forever is a long time for an immortal. Do you think we’ll get sick of each other?”