by Tasha Black
I blinked in confusion, my body still in a haze of lust.
He pointed out the window to something in the distance. I had to look for a moment before I spotted it. In a distant clearing in the middle of the woods there was a tiny red flickering.
“Looks like a campfire,” I murmured.
“Watch it,” he said.
I watched in silence for a moment, trying to keep my attention on the distant light and not the heat pouring off Reed in waves. It didn’t take long to see what he meant.
“It’s moving,” I whispered.
There was a sudden rush of air as the warmth around me vanished. I turned from the window in time to see Reed’s back as he disappeared out the door.
“Stay here,” he called out, the sound echoing in the stairwell.
I stood in place, unsure what else to do as the thunder of his footsteps on the stairs faded away from me.
9
Reed
The forest crashes past as I fly for the clearing, paws digging into the loamy soil with each heavy stride. I’m disturbing the smaller animals and drawing too much attention, but even my human side can’t be unhappy about that. This is not the time for stealth.
There’s something in the woods that doesn’t belong. And I don’t just have the Library to protect now, I have my mate.
This is the other side of the coin. Her presence brings me white hot pleasure and a sense of home. But the thought of her in danger fills me with fury and the soul-deep pain of my human side sings in harmony with my anger.
I haven’t felt this range of emotion before. It’s dizzying.
But there is no time to feel. I am a creature of action.
If I love this woman, I will show her my devotion by swiftly destroying anything that threatens her.
A night bird cries out and dark wings move before me. I am closer now. I can sense it. The wind changes slightly and the rhythm of my paws on the cold ground falters.
The air carries a smoky scent of brimstone.
I shake myself, my pelt whipping in the night air. I will not surrender to my fears when Cori’s life could be in the balance. This forest is my territory. Nothing can challenge me here.
The human pushes toward the surface, calling to me, but I press on. He can’t traverse the forest with the same reckless abandon I can. He may be larger than ordinary humans, but his flesh is weak compared to the half-ton of muscle and thick fur that protect me from the harsher side of the forest.
I blast through trees and foliage, not even trying to find the thinning areas that could resemble a trail. There’s a straight line between me and whatever’s happening out there, so that is the direction I will run.
But there’s smoke on the air now, growing stronger. I huff it out of my muzzle but more of it greets me on my next inhale.
The forest is burning.
Fear sends shockwaves through me and the human calls to me again, more insistently this time.
I push through to the last of the trees between me and the clearing and then let go.
10
Reed
The colors of the forest deepened, and my other senses faded.
The bear normally didn’t let me burst through quickly enough to perceive those changes so intensely. I blinked back into my own body as if I were a newborn.
I could still smell the smoke on the air, but I forced myself to stay calm as I stepped between the last few trees into the clearing.
A single column of smoke rose into the air.
Below it, an enormous tree was wrapped in a living gown of flames. The huge canopy of the mighty oak was alight, heat pouring off it that I could feel even from where I stood.
But the scent was all wrong. It wasn’t the rich redolence of a normal wood fire.
No. I smelled sulfur again. This was something darker.
For a moment I was frozen in place, overwhelmed at the sense memory that fire always raised in me, the sadness of the mighty oak in flames, and the horrible mystery of that all-wrong scent.
This was three kinds of evil, obviously the result of a deadly mischief.
But whoever had wrought it was gone, I could sense no trace of them, though they had surely been in this clearing not so long ago.
I closed my eyes and pushed my senses outward, looking for life beyond the natural forest life ahead of me, beyond the tree, in the direction they must have fled.
I pushed past the shimmering heartbeats of birds and small mammals, past the low thrum of rabbits and the pounce of a fox.
Suddenly, I sensed movement from the opposite direction.
Someone was running for the clearing.
I turned to meet the intruder, the bear dancing dangerously close to the surface.
11
Cori
Reed turned on me as I stepped into the clearing, his eyes flashing with fury.
“What are you doing here?” he roared.
I stepped back instinctively.
There was pain in his eyes along with the anger. I couldn’t understand it.
“Y-you left me,” I stammered stupidly. “What was I supposed to do?”
Before he could answer, there was movement in the trees behind me. I turned to see Headmistress Hart and a few of the teachers hustling into the clearing. Even Professor Sora was there, panting, a stray leaf in her silver bun.
“Stand back, Cori,” Headmistress Hart yelled out. “Ladies, let’s put this out.”
Professor Waita trotted to the front, arms out in front of her sturdy body, already reciting a spell in her firm dry voice.
I assumed the magical botany professor was trying to give the tree strength, but it was a spell I had never seen before. I tried my best to follow her words and movements, but I was out of my depth.
“Sora,” the headmistress cried out. “Help me freeze it out.”
The tiny magical theory lecturer joined Headmistress Hart, their physical types so different, but their magic in perfect synchronization.
I watched as a pale mist left their hands, floating toward the tree’s flaming branches.
But it had no effect that I could see.
Silas Brake, the groundskeeper and the only man on staff at Primrose Academy, jogged up with a shovel over his shoulder, panting raggedly.
He began to hurriedly dig in the loamy soil just outside the heat of the burning tree.
Professor Batts said a spell over him, and his work sped up, the shovel flying through the moist soil with and almost eerie quickness.
Students began appearing on the edges of the trees as the professors worked to stop the flames.
“Are you okay?” Anya asked, jogging up to me.
“Sure, it’s just…” I looked for Reed, but he was gone. He must have slipped away when all the witches showed up. “Sure.”
“Did he do this?” Anya asked.
“No, no of course not,” I told her. “I, uh, also didn’t do it.”
“Obviously,” she said.
But it wasn’t obvious. I messed up literally everything I touched. If I had real control of my magic, I could make it rain right now, put out that fire, and save the day.
But I would more likely strike it with lightning or cause it to hail directly on the headmistress, or literally anything other than help.
Anya would say I was being too hard on myself, but my shortcomings were made painfully clear by the fact that no one had even asked me to help.
“Did he… did you?” Anya asked. I could see her mind working at finding a polite way to phrase her the real burning question on her mind.
“No,” I said. “We had a grilled cheese sandwich, and then we saw the fire out the window, and he just took off.”
“Wow,” she said.
“I followed him,” I said, remembering the fury in his eyes. “But he wasn’t happy to see me here.”
“Well, his whole deal is that he wants to protect you, right?” Anya asked.
I shrugged, feeling dejected.
“He’s s
upposed to be your Lord Protector, idiot,” she said, giving me a friendly shove. “He obviously doesn’t want you out at night in the middle of a potential forest fire.”
“He didn’t say that,” I told her.
“I got the impression earlier that he’s not really a big talker,” Anya said, quirking an eyebrow.
He had lumbered out of the castle as a bear and transformed into a man only to throw me over his shoulder and run to the tower. She wasn’t wrong.
I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. Anya was a good friend.
We turned back to the tree. Silas had dug a trench in a half circle around the wide trunk. Which was impressive, since the tree was massive. It looked as old as the one in the center of the library. He stepped back as Professor Merness raised both her hands to the heavens, singing something too softly for me to hear over the jumble of other sounds.
At first it seemed that nothing was happening. But then I realized water was bubbling up out of the ground to fill the trench, turning it into a sort of moat.
The professors moved to the edge of the water and I watched in wonder as they raised their hands as one, chanting and swirling until the water formed a mist that enveloped the tree.
The headmistress leapt forward, vaulting herself over the moat and into the fiery oven-like heat that surrounded the tree. I could feel it even from back where we stood, and for the first time I was really afraid for her.
But Headmistress Hart clearly wasn’t afraid at all. The fire shone in her ebony hair and lit her face so that she looked like a goddess from an ancient myth.
A cool blue glow emanated from her palms, growing slowly and then picking up speed until she appeared to hold an enormous ball of shimmering blue magic.
She released it and it floated like a bubble on the night air, up, up to the top of the tree.
Headmistress Hart clapped her hands together over her head and it burst, sending a deluge of magic down over the tree as the others continued the flow of the mist, swirling it all around her.
The flames convulsed, as if the fire itself were alive and fighting against the magic. But the combined force of the witches of Primrose Academy was too much. It sputtered and went out.
The clearing went up in a cheer as students and staff celebrated saving the forest.
Headmistress Hart swung around to face us all from the other side of the moat.
“Well done, women,” she called out, her deep contralto ringing across the meadow. “The fire is no longer a danger, but this is a time of loss. This was the oldest tree in the forest, and now it’s nothing but ash.”
Her words seemed to echo in my mind. There was something so familiar about them.
It hit me.
The page from Bella’s book - it was full of components for the spell the warlocks from the Order of the Broken Blade were convinced would bring back the Raven King. Lark and Nina had translated it so that we could have some idea of what the warlocks would be after, and do our best to keep them from it.
One of the things we’d told Luke and the other guardians to keep an eye on was the oldest ash tree in the forest. They had narrowed it down to a few and sent guardians to patrol those areas in shifts.
But we’d had it wrong. It wasn’t the oldest ash tree.
I glanced over at Anya. She was looking at me too, eyes widened slightly.
Lark and Nina had joined the gathering at some point. I noticed them looking our way and whispering to each other, clearly coming to the same conclusion I just did. Kendall broke from the crowd and began making her way over, leaving Esme and Dozie gazing after her.
“It’s ash from the oldest tree, isn’t it?” Kendall demanded as she reached us.
“Hush, Kendall,” Anya hissed, looking over her shoulder, as if that meant anything to anyone but us.
We needed to tell the guardians about our mistake. I glanced around again for Reed on pure instinct, knowing he wouldn’t go far from me.
After all, I’m supposed to spend three nights in his bed.
12
Cori
Relief washed through me as I sensed Reed’s approach. He really hadn’t gone far. Probably just out of view of the professors, who, along with the rest of the gathering, had abandoned the clearing at this point, leaving just me and my friends at the scene.
“Cori.” Reed’s voice was rusty, as if from disuse.
Anya’s eyes widened and the others took a step back.
I turned fully toward him, forgetting how tall he was and coming face to face with his mighty pecs.
I lifted my gaze slowly to meet his golden eyes.
“I told you to stay in the tower,” he roared. “It’s dangerous out here.”
He was shouting at me in front of my friends. Humiliation threatened, but I tamped it down, deciding to get angry instead.
“I’m the most dangerous thing out here,” I told him coldly.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he sputtered.
“Then don’t patronize me,” I said. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
I turned on my heel, expecting my friends to be super impressed with the way I handled him.
But they were all slinking away like he’d just caught us shoplifting or something. Anya gave me a weak, half-wave as she turned away and headed back toward the school. I didn’t blame her. I kind of felt like doing the same thing.
“I’m just looking out for you,” he said in a voice so calm I was very sure he wanted to kill me. “That’s what guardians do.”
“We should gather some of that ash,” I told him, deciding not to indulge his bad behavior.
“I want you home, now,” he said.
I ignored him, marching toward the moat as if he didn’t matter at all. But I was secretly relieved to feel the rhythm of his footsteps stalking up behind me.
On top of the normal burned wood, the scent of sulfur floated on the air. It grew more noticeable as I drew closer to the trench.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I gathered up my skirts, took a deep breath, and jumped across the dark water, landing on the other side in a crouch. By the grace of God I didn’t slip on the mud and fall into the moat butt first.
I headed up to the smoldering black skeleton of the oldest tree in the forest. Behind me, I heard Reed’s massive form hit the ground on the other side of the moat, somehow making less noise than I had.
He was sticking close to me.
I smiled, in spite of myself.
Hold it together, Cori. Do what you came here to do.
But as I approached the tree, I realized I didn’t have any kind of vessel.
“We were wrong,” I said plainly. “The Order of the Broken Blade was after ash from the oldest tree. And now they have it.”
I hurriedly scraped some of the ash from the trunk and dumped it unceremoniously into the pocket of my gown. It was unscientific and smelly, but I needed to get the ashes back to my friends so we could talk about the spell and what to do next.
“Why are you so mad at me?” Reed growled from behind me.
I spun around, frustrated with both of us now.
“You just yelled at me in front of my friends,” I shouted.
He opened his mouth and closed it again.
“You shouldn’t yell at me at all,” I went on. “If I’m your mate, aren’t you supposed to cherish me?”
“If I’m your mate, aren’t you supposed to trust me?” he growled, stalking closer. “I told you to stay in the tower for a reason.”
“How can I trust you?” I demanded. “I barely know you. All I know is that you’re loud and bossy and embarrassing.”
I had crossed a line somehow. The air went cold between us and I could see his eyes go from warm honey to flashing white gold.
“You have only three nights to spend with me,” he said coldly. “And one of them is already done.”
He pointed to the pale pink of the horizon where the sun was beginning to rise.
I felt a pang of pain in m
y heart. Hot tears prickled my eyes though I didn’t know why.
I buttoned my lip and marched past him, back toward the school.
13
Reed
I made my way slowly through the woods as the sun reached its highest point, adding just a hint of warmth to the cool autumn day.
My human form usually felt too weak and sluggish for a trek through the forest, but I needed time to think as a man.
The bear relied on sounds and scents, but focused less on what he could see. The forest seemed almost new to me, now that vision was my strongest sense.
Fallen leaves sparkled in the sunlight that filtered through the canopy to illuminate the tiny, dewy puddles in the leaves below. The soil beneath my feet was dark and lush. Even the tree bark took on more dimension, and I noticed face-like arrangements among the knots and branches here and there.
Was this the way the world looked to my brothers? To my mate? Did they always experience life at this dreamy pace?
I cast my mind to Cori and tried to imagine things from her perspective, everything unfolding with majestic slowness.
But I still couldn’t fucking figure her out.
I was her mate, sent by fate to protect and pleasure her. She was my mate, sent to love me.
But I had already failed to protect her in a crux. And she had shrugged off my concerns as if they were a mere annoyance.
The pang of her rejection cut bone deep.
At last, I reached Luke and Bella’s cottage. The whole place emanated a homey glow of satisfaction. It made me want to punch Luke in his handsome mug.
I knocked on the door before I could lose my nerve.
“Reed,” he said, his eyebrows lifting.
He wasn’t used to seeing me wandering the woods in human form. Nobody was.
“Hey, man,” I said. “Can we talk?”
“Sure, sure, come on in,” he said, recovering and stepping backward to let me inside.