by Casey Hagen
“You’re twenty-five today, which puts you at the right age. You’re having memories—”
“Visions,” Maeve interrupted.
“Fine. You’re having visions. And you’re speed-healing. What is your instinct right now? This is a high-stress moment for you. Any urges?”
“What kind of urges?” Maeve asked, glaring at the phone as if it were a snake about to strike.
“Why, that’s simple, dear. To run.” The words rolled through the electrified air.
Maeve shot to her feet, her chair scraping behind her before smacking into the wall with a hard thud.
“How do you know that?” Maeve demanded.
“Wait. Hold up. What are you saying, Barbara?”
“Brigid O’Rourke died in that meadow, at the base of that very tree, on this day twenty-five years ago after giving birth to The Tetrad. I suspect Maeve is the oldest daughter. The oldest of the four remaining members of the Moonstone Guardians Pack.”
Courtney furrowed her brow. “So, if that’s true, what would that mean for her?”
“According to the legend, Brigid knew she would die, so she cast a spell—”
“Wait, I thought you said she was a shifter. Witches cast spells,” Maeve interrupted.
“Yes, but in this case she’d enlisted some help from a local healer. She cast a protection spell for her daughters to last exactly twenty-five years. On that day, the oldest would wake up to her identity and seek her mate. Once she’s mated she finds the next sister, to spark her awakening,” Barbara explained with great patience.
“What was this spell supposed to protect The Tetrad from?”
“From the warlock, Belen, who sought to control them. He’s evil through and through. The Moonstone Guardians are an ancient and rare pack. They only mate with warlocks who bear the moonstone.”
“Okay, this is starting to sound like something out of a children’s book,” Maeve interjected.
“You’re right. This is the legend, so there can be inaccuracies; it’s going to be up to you to find out what’s real and what’s just fable, I’m afraid.”
“And if I don’t want to?” Maeve asked.
“Well, then, I imagine your destiny will catch up with you soon enough. You’d be better off finding it before it finds you, dear.”
“Where’s the damn tree?” Maeve said in a low growl.
“I thought you’d never ask…” Barbara said in a sing-song tone, as if she knew Maeve would come around.
Barbara gave them directions that Courtney jotted down while Maeve paced the kitchen.
“Call me if you need anything else. I’d be interested to find out how it all turns out.”
Maeve scrambled for the table and slapped her palms down on the wood. “Wait! The shifter thing. How would I go about doing that? I mean, shifting?”
“Follow your instincts. If you feel the need to run…run. It’ll happen.”
The line went dead. Maeve’s gaze shot to Courtney. “This is insane.”
“This is about the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. I mean, you’re a freaking wolf. I can’t wait to see what you look like with fur,” Courtney said, bouncing in her seat, the ends of her bob dancing about her chin.
Maeve crossed her arms. “She could be wrong, you know.”
“Can you think of any other explanation for speed-healing and your newfound urge to head for the hills?” Courtney said, a knowing tilt to her head.
Maeve just stared at her, her mouth opening and closing, no sound coming out.
“There’s one way to find out just how right she is. We can head for Silver Meadow. It’s probably only a forty-five-minute drive from here,” Courtney pointed out, holding her cell phone up with her navigation map open.
“I feel like shit,” Maeve argued.
Courtney shrugged while she punched in the exact address. “You can feel like shit in the car. I’ll drive.”
“But—”
Courtney dropped her phone to the table and pinned Maeve with a hard look. “What are you so afraid of?”
“That it’s true,” Maeve murmured. “I just got my shit together. Literally, two days ago. It’s my one day off a week, now that I can actually start taking days off that is, and I’m heading to a meadow to find out if I’m a wolf, who was raised by adoptive parents, and who needs to mate with a warlock, find her sisters, and hook them up with more warlocks. I think that’s plenty to be afraid of.”
Courtney stood and took Maeve’s arms in her hands. “I’m going to be by your side the whole way.”
Maeve dropped her forehead to Courtney’s shoulder. “You’d better or you’re the first person I bite when my fangs come in.”
“Ouch. For someone so doubtful, you seem to be making an awful lot of wolfey plans.”
“Maybe a few. Just put a stop to it if I start suggesting a line of dog collars and sweaters for the shop. This isn’t PetSmart. Now, how does one go about finding a warlock?”
“Who knows? Maybe he comes with the property,” Courtney joked. “Now, let’s go see about this piece of land.”
***
Just over an hour later, Courtney pulled her Subaru onto Spear Hill and followed the dirt road up.
“We have a half-mile. Feel anything yet?” Courtney asked.
“Nauseated.”
“Funny. Aren’t you just my little ray of sunshine today? You know, I think I’m going to start calling you Rufus. I think it fits a whole lot better than that matronly ‘Maeve’.”
“You’re getting entirely too much mileage from this,” Maeve muttered. Her stomach felt like she had swallowed one of those Jiffy pop pans, and at the pit of her stomach was a bonfire from hell setting the kernels to popping.
“Nah, I’m just trying to keep your mind off everything.” She leaned over and smiled. “And I’m trying to help. I’ve got a mind for details and I have a feeling, based on what Barbara said, that there’re going to be a lot of them to sift through and remember in the near future. Between that and your impending transformation into a shaggy allergen, your head might explode of you have to keep track of it solo.”
Courtney pulled to a stop along the side of the road, facing a short drive that spread to Silver Meadow.
“This is it!” Courtney said, jumping out of the car and crossing the drive, where she skidded to a stop.
A wave of trepidation threatened to keep Maeve’s feet planted to the floor mats before she thrust open her door and forced herself to catch up with Courtney, all the while wondering if, when she left this place, she’d be the same person as she was right now.
Stepping up next to Courtney, she took a deep breath and clasped Courtney’s hand next to her. In the next moment her gaze landed on the tree she had sketched on the napkin and her heart lurched in her chest, slamming against her ribs.
“Leaves no room for doubt, does it?” Courtney whispered.
“Yeah, no doubt. Yet all the doubts,” Maeve whispered back.
“Do you feel anything?”
“Other than the need to vomit? Nope,” Maeve said.
“Maybe if we check out the tree up close…”
“Yeah, you first.”
“We’re acting like grade school kids in a haunted house. Come on,” Courtney said, pulling Maeve along with her.
A warm breeze kicked up the minute her sandals hit the moss. Maeve dropped to the ground on her hands and knees, pressed her nose to the earth, and inhaled the clean, rich scent of damp earth, greenery, and something else. Something she had never smelled before.
It was clean air, mountain-fresh air, the salty tang of the coast, and citrus all wrapped up in one, almost as if the four corners of the U.S. had been pulled to the center and swirled together.
And it changed her.
Her skin grew sensitized, each fine hair on her arm dancing, sending tingles shooting over her skin. She’d swear her breasts grew plumper, like the blood flowed in a rush to her most sensitive spots.
She felt like she had ripened
in a way one would expect a goddess of fertility and motherhood to ripen with pregnancy.
She pulled off her sandals and held her skirt up high enough to watch her toes sink into the cool dirt.
Telling herself there was nothing to worry about, that it was just the magic of the spot and the effect would be gone the minute she was back in the car, she glanced up to Courtney and smiled.
“I take it you like it here,” Courtney said with a smirk.
“I do. I can’t explain it. It’s just…untouched. Pure.”
“Until you started rubbing your foot stank all over it,” Courtney said with a laugh.
“Funny,” Maeve muttered.
Courtney linked her arm in Maeve’s and they headed for the tree.
“Do you feel a little bit like you went back in time?” Courtney asked.
“Yup.”
“Okay, so not just me,” Courtney said before sliding to a stop about twenty feet from where the roots of the tree rose out of the ground. She lifted her sunglasses and her mouth fell open.
Maeve followed the direction of her gaze and her breath whooshed out of her lungs.
He stood along the tree’s edge, his cropped, golden-brown hair shimmering in the sun as he hit the ground over and over with a pick-ax. Sweat shimmered on his bare back as the muscles bunched and flexed with his frustrated swings. Faded blue jeans hugged his muscular backside and thick thighs. And for the first time in Maeve’s life, she found it impossible to resist gawking at all well-over-six-feet-tall of absolute male perfection.
Courtney sighed. “You know, I was only kidding about your warlock coming with the property.”
Chapter 4
Orion threw the pick-ax to the ground, picked up his cold beer from the boulder, and tipped it back for some sweet relief.
He closed his eyes, appreciating the cool bubbles sliding down his throat as hot sweat ran over his temples.
It had been pointless to try to breach the ground, but it was a hell of a great workout smacking at it mercilessly, and right now he needed to burn off some nervous energy.
He’d gone so far as to dig out the boxes of materials he’d acquired from his family over the years. Books, journals, notes, all used by the men in his family from generation to generation. Once they studied them, learned the ways, and began exploring new spells and doing new research, the books were handed down to the eldest son to continue the tradition.
Orion, after years of avoiding the ways of his family, planned to dive headfirst into the abyss.
The thought made him itchy.
He considered asking his father about the ground, but wondered if the old man would even know. He’d never said a word about Orion’s buying land and breaking ground to build a house, but then Orion hadn’t told his father exactly what ground he had purchased other than on Spear Hill.
He’d sift through it all tonight, after he burned off the tension and worked toward getting his buzz on. If he didn’t find anything, he’d tell his father what land he’d purchased specifically and see if he could gauge his father’s reaction.
He bent down to pick up the ax again, when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
Two women, women who couldn’t look much more different from one another, linked arm in arm, crossed his property, heading toward the tree. The first one, with sleek black hair that teased her chin, appeared to be almost six-feet-tall. Tight jeans hugged her long legs, and she exuded attitude with every step. While striking and sexy as hell, it was her companion who had his mouth running dry for the first time in his life.
The spring in her barefooted step had her practically prancing across his property, her sandals dangling from her fingertips. At almost a foot shorter than her friend, she held her long, flowing white skirt up off the moist ground as she made her way. Long red locks that would make even Ariel from The Little Mermaid jealous cascaded over her bare, sun-kissed shoulders. The breeze caught wisps of the flowing flames and flitted them against her pale cheek.
Her eyes glowed green in the bath of sunlight on her delicate, heart-shaped face. Her creamy skin, her pint-size, and the way she practically floated on air gave her a youthful exuberance that held him enthralled.
Had he ever been so carefree a day in his life?
And even with that playful part of her out there for the entire world to see, it was the set of her shoulders, pulled back, held high, her spine straight, which told the whole story.
For the first time in his life, he bore witness to the single most feminine woman he’d ever seen, with a foundation of solid steel.
He pulled his T-shirt over his head and wiped his brow with the towel next to him before heading over to meet them.
At the base of the tree, where the biggest root disappeared into the ground, they stopped and he joined them.
“Can I help you ladies with something?” he asked.
The brunette eyed him with keen interest. He’d seen that look before. She was trouble, and he wasn’t interested in complications.
“My friend and I—well, we had heard about this tree and wanted to come see it in person. I’m Courtney. This…” She gestured to her friend, who dropped to her knees before them and flattened her palms against the moss. “Um, this is Maeve. Maeve! Get up,” Courtney said, tugging on Maeve’s arm.
Only, Maeve lowered herself even more and pressed her face to the moss, a tear sliding down her cheek.
Orion crouched down and tried to get her to meet his eyes, but she stared off past him, gazing into the distance, as if whatever she saw in her view lay in another time, another place.
“Does she normally do this?” he asked, glancing up at Courtney.
Courtney knelt next to Maeve and smoothed a hand over her hair. “Um, well, she’s kind of been dreaming about this tree. Having visions. I imagine this is another one.”
“What is she?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Courtney said, not meeting his eyes.
He gave her a sharp look. “Don’t play with me. She’s not human. What is she?”
Courtney sighed. “She’s wolf. We think. Well, we’re pretty sure.” She rubbed her forehead and squinted. “Look, we don’t exactly know. This is all very new. She had a vision last night, cut herself, speed-healed, but she hasn’t shifted. Not yet anyway.”
Maeve sucked in a breath and her lungs froze. Reaching for her, her cool skin damp with tears, he cupped her cheek.
The minute his skin touched hers a searing pain caught him right between the shoulder blades, across his back. He gritted his teeth against the pain, his jaw clenched so tight his molars ached. A sharp hiss escaped his lips and his back arched.
“Oh, my God! Are you okay?” Courtney asked.
He puffed out a few breaths and gave her a terse nod. It was all he could manage as he waited out the sizzle across his skin.
He didn’t know what the hell was happening to the two of them, but he was confident he had just found a piece of the puzzle as to why he couldn’t breach his land. She lay before him, skin ashen, eerily silent, locked in some kind of haze.
“She died here,” Maeve whispered from blue-tinged lips.
“Who died here?” he asked.
“My mother,” she choked out.
Courtney sniffled. “Honey, you’re scaring me.”
“Her blood is in this ground. Right here…” Maeve said as she curled her fingers into the dirt, her eyes closing as she drifted off. A shuddering breath escaped her before she went limp in the grass.
He scrambled to find the pulse in her neck, relieved to find the beat, although frail, under his fingertips. “Okay, we need to get her warm. Let’s take her inside.” He scooped her up, shocked at how light she felt in his arms as a fierce urge to protect her, the way he would protect family, swept over him.
He’d never felt anything like it. It was as if something inside of him had fused to her, refusing to let her go.
She went still in his arms, her breathing stopped, and her body tensed.
“Don’t hold your breath, Maeve. Let it come,” he whispered to her as they raced across the field. “Get the door of the trailer for me,” he called to Courtney as she took the lead.
Courtney threw open the door and held it from the other side.
He pushed through to the back of the trailer, the part that hadn’t been modified into a business office, which he kept as a bedroom.
When he laid her down her head lolled to the side, sending a shiver of fear shooting through him. “Maeve?” he called to her. He brushed the hair away from her face. “Maeve, honey. Talk to us.”
“I don’t get it. Her visions before were always so…overwhelming. Not calm like this. Never calm.”
“Is this why you came here? To find out about her mother?”
“Yes, among other things,” she confirmed.
“And she’s never been out like this?”
“No. Last night she had a vision, but she was with it, breathing, crying even. She was never this still,” Courtney said, her voice heavy with worry.
“Something has her.” He pulled the knot of the leather cuff at his wrist and wrenched the moonstone from his skin.
Some of his energy slid away from him and stayed with the stone. He rolled Maeve flat onto her back and pulled her shirt down.
“Hey!” Courtney yelped, grabbing his wrist.
“For fuck’s sake, I’m not groping her. I’m a warlock and she needs help.”
She narrowed her eyes and pulled her hand away. “Fine, but I’m watching you.”
“Yeah, terrifying. I’ll be on my best behavior.”
He lay the moonstone over her heart and flattened his palms over the cloudy face of it. Closing his eyes, he focused his energy on the delicate beat of her heart. He schooled his breaths, keeping them deep and even as the visions she had seen played through his mind.
A woman with strawberry-blonde hair and Maeve’s green eyes lay bleeding as she sat propped against the very root Maeve and Courtney stopped at just minutes before.
She whimpered, but not from physical pain. Shock had handled that. It was crushing heartache.
He had no right to look, but something connected her to the land. He had an opportunity while he wound a protection spell into her heart and banished whatever clutched at her to find out what gripped the property. The information might well be just what he needed to solve his problems.