by Casey Hagen
“Sure. So, uh, I guess I’ll meet you back at your place?”
“I’ll see you there.” She turned to Orion. “Thank you, for everything.” She reached out a hand to him, and waited while he hesitated to return the gesture.
Finally, manners won out over whatever aversion he had to touching her, and he took her hand, but winced as though in pain.
She hadn’t shifted, so she highly doubted she had the strength to hurt him. Her muscles hummed beneath her fevered skin, telling her that she didn’t just want to run, she needed to.
“You’re welcome, Maeve,” he said.
She left them standing there as she headed for the edge of the trees on the other side of the road.
She had no idea how to go about this. Barbara said she would know, and right now her body screamed for her to take off and feel the wind rushing through her hair. Did they undress before they did this? If she didn’t undress, would her clothes be trapped on her as she tore through the woods?
An image of the bear from The Jungle Book with his grass skirt swinging as he danced popped into her mind, making her burst out with a giggle.
But if she took off her clothes and left them in the woods, took off running, and nothing happened, she would just be a jack nut running through the woods bare-assed.
Wolves should come with manuals.
She ducked behind the trees and decided to shed her clothes. She glanced down at her body, the shape a bit different than when she arrived. Her hips had widened, her breasts swelled and grew more rounded.
Maybe that and the streak of gray were signs she was ready to shift. Could be that all wolves went through body changes beforehand. She would have asked Barbara, had the changes started before she arrived at Silver Meadow.
She kept her sandals on since she wasn’t confident in her ability to run on rough ground. With a quick prayer for courage she took off, following a rough trail. Within seconds her muscles tightened in a way she’d never felt before. For the first time in her life she felt the flex of her skin over her ribs as her body shifted. Her vision grew crisp in an inhuman way, and her sense of smell almost overwhelmed her. The flowers, each of them, with their individual scents and the pungent scent of all of them combined, assaulted her nose as she sped up.
She blinked, and in that moment her arms elongated. She fell to her front paws as fur burst through the hair follicles under her skin.
Panting, she took off even faster, trying to memorize every sensation: the ground under her rough paws, her claws digging into the forest floor for purchase, bright colors, sharp scents, speed unlike anything she had ever known without being in a vehicle—all of it thrilled her to her core.
With every intention to release an excited scream, she opened her mouth and shocked herself when a howl came out.
She no longer feared who she might be. Instead, she let her new abilities embolden her for the fight to come.
She’d find her mate.
She’d reunite with her sisters.
She would avenge her mother’s death and crush Belen beneath her powerful paw.
Chapter 6
Orion waited for Courtney to pull away before he jogged to his bathroom in the trailer. He dug through the drawer and pulled out a handheld mirror. The sound of cotton tearing filled the small room, mingled with his harsh breathing as he rushed to get the shirt off his back.
He turned and adjusted the mirror to aim at the other and give him a view of his back. There, between his shoulders, the everlasting love symbol rose from his skin, the lines in his flesh white and raised, as though burned.
It sure as hell felt like burning. The symbol spread about a foot wide, reaching out side to side toward his shoulder blades.
He was her mate.
Why else would he have the symbol Brigid wore, that her daughter now carried around her neck, appearing across his back?
He understood why this land drew her. Her mother was here, but why did this land call to him? Was it for her?
If he was her mate, and she was no longer here, why did the incoherent, seductive whispers remain?
He dreaded the answer.
The time had come to dig through the histories.
He grabbed a fresh shirt and headed for his truck to unload what he had brought with him. Lugging box after box to the trailer he laid everything out by generation, starting with his grandfather.
His grandfather had used his powers for the speed-healing of his many patients as a famous surgeon. Performing operations in the 1950s, he’d used his abilities to calm the fear of his patients and to ward off infection and scarring while the patient healed.
His journals included hundreds of spells for all different kinds of procedures and illnesses, each similar, with variances depending on the needs of the patient and their injury.
Orion set the book aside, wishing that he had chosen to do this sooner.
He took a long gulp of his beer and pressed on to his great-grandfather and great-great- grandfather.
One had been a vet, using his abilities much like Orion’s grandfather, taking away the suffering of animals.
The other had been a farmer, casting spells to bring rain and favorable conditions for all the crops in his area, not just his own.
So far Orion’s past revealed honorable men who hadn’t abused their power, and nothing about the Moonstone Guardians or the everlasting love symbol rising from Orion’s skin.
Proud of his honorable ancestors, but also bored to tears, Orion pulled out the family tree and scanned his ancestry all the way back to the 1650s, when the tradition of Greek first names had been implemented throughout the family.
How else could he explain the name Orion?
Certain members of his family, but only a select few, had an ankh next to their name. Declaring them immortal. However, Orion didn’t know enough about his family to understand why certain members were immortal, and he could kick his own ass for not getting more involved in this when he’d had the time. He had questions, seven boxes, and hundreds of thousands of words before him that may hold the answers.
It could take him weeks, months even, to sift through the information, to decipher spells, to find the answers to all his questions. A sense of urgency welled up within him. As if something was coming, only he didn’t know what, and if he didn’t know he couldn’t begin to figure out how to fight it.
Time to call his father.
He dialed the number and waited, wondering if he’d get his voicemail since his father had a knack for getting so deeply involved in his current project that he missed just about everything around him.
“Yeah,” his father answered.
“Jesus, Dad. You’ve stopped bothering with a simple hello?” Orion said with a laugh.
“Sorry, son,” he muttered over the rustling of papers from his end. “Your mother has had me running around to church event after church event, and it’s left me scrambling in the scraps of time she leaves me.”
“Church? Really? She knows you’re a warlock, right?”
“Yes. I think she’s gets a perverse pleasure from walking me in there. The ladies go crazy over whatever food I make for potluck after the sermon, and your mother thrives on the fact that they’re gushing over a witch in their midst.”
“Mom’s sick,” Orion said.
“She is, but she’s cute, so I humor her.”
His parents had been together for thirty-five years. They’d struggled for four years to have Orion, and his birth ended with complications that left his mother unable to have more children. Instead of bitterness and anger that festered between couples after such traumatic events, his parents’ bond grew stronger than ever, and they never let Orion forget what a gift he had been to them.
Even when he told his father he had no interest in exploring the warlock lifestyle further than he had up to that point, his father supported him and never hinted that he found the decision disappointing.
“So, why don’t you get to why you really called, bec
ause I know it can’t be to talk about your mother,” his dad said with a laugh.
“Yeah. Um, well, I’m surrounded by the histories here in my trailer and I needed some help.”
“Huh, I thought you weren’t interested in that. What changed your mind?”
Orion leaned back in his recliner, took a sip of his beer, and swallowed hard. For the first time ever, he didn’t quite know how to approach a conversation with his father.
So he opted to test the waters. “I bought Silver Meadow,” he said.
The audible sigh from the other side of the line told Orion that his dad had some idea of its significance.
“Why?” his father asked.
Because it whispered to him. It had always whispered to him. “I’ve always been fascinated with it. Magic lingers here, and it drew me in.”
“It called to you,” his father said.
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees while he held the phone to his ear. “Yes, but I don’t know why.”
“And you wanted to find out if I do.”
“Something like that, yes. There are things happening here, and I’m not sure I have the time to go through all of this to find out what it all means.”
“There’s evil in our family. Chosen evil. We have ancestors who abused their powers, and every time they were successful their lust for more grew.”
“But they’re dead now, right? I know according to the family tree that we have a few immortals, but none that I’ve ever heard of, so I’m assuming at some point they became mortal again.”
“We have one immortal who traded in his immortality for the love of a human woman. He couldn’t bear the thought of watching her grow old and die, so he surrendered his immortality in a transformation ceremony. We have a few others whose immortality was revoked for using their magic to pit warlock against warlock in bids for power.”
Orion scanned the family tree, flipping through the pages, and tried to figure out by the branches which warlock gave up his immortality. He spotted the ankh symbol with no name next to it. “There’s a blank in the tree.”
“Uh, yes,” his father said.
“Why is there a blank in the tree?” Orion asked as he took a closer look.
“So his name will never be uttered again,” his father muttered.
“Belen,” Orion whispered.
“How do you know that name?” his father demanded.
It all became crystal clear. He was fated to mate and protect the eldest of the Moonstone Guardians from his own ancestor. How the hell could he tell Maeve that he descended from the man who likely caused her mother’s death, making it imperative that the girls be hidden, and a spell cast to protect them, so he couldn’t find them?
“Because he’s after my mate,” Orion said quietly. It was the first time he’d allowed himself to admit it one-hundred-percent. The idea crawled into his chest and settled there next to his heart.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t know her.
He would.
He had stirred at the sight of her. Her exuberance drew him in. He needed to be in her space, absorbing the youthful energy that oozed from her as she experienced new things, as she embraced the new world around her.
“The Tetrad,” his father whispered. “You’re one of the four Protectors.”
Orion’s mind snapped back to his father’s words. “What are the Protectors?”
“Before Belen was erased from the histories, a spell was cast by the eldest living warlocks. Only the purest of our kind can mate with The Tetrad.”
Orion paced his office, struggling to burn off the unsettling energy within him. “The purest? What does that mean, because I’m not a virgin if that’s what they’re thinking.” Not a conversation he wanted to have with his dad, but they didn’t have time for bullshit.
“The most resistant to Belen’s temptations.”
“Why wasn’t Belen’s immortality revoked?”
“He cast a spell to protect it. He cast several others, too. He can be invisible and he can take over bodies.”
Orion pressed his forehead to the cool wall as a woodpecker took up residence in his skull and pecked, pecked, pecked at him mercilessly. “How do I fight him?”
“You have to mate. And you have to resist his temptations. He’ll call to you. The oldest is awake to who she is. The whispers will begin. He’ll try to use her against you. He’ll use anything he can to seduce you with his words to do his bidding. When the whispers start, you must resist.”
“Resist. Got it.” Except, for Orion, the whispers started long before his mate awakened.
“He’s going to try to catch you at your most vulnerable after you mate. With only one sister awakened, it’s the best time to come after you because, with each awakening, you become stronger. He’ll make his attempt, and if he fails he will have to take time to build his strength to try again.”
“Wouldn’t it be better for him to get all four? I mean, if his goal is to control them, wouldn’t he want to control all of them?”
“Not necessarily. If he only manages to take your mate…”
Just hearing the words had Orion’s lip curling and his shoulders bunching up.
“He can keep her, and impregnate her with the sperm of her mate until she gives him the pups to control.”
“That’s fucked up. Who even thinks up shit like that?”
“He did…when he did it to their mother.”
Orion slammed his fist against the wood paneling. “Fuck.”
“Yes, in this case, fuck is in order. Her sisters will never be powerful enough to fight him without her. They’ll eventually succumb. You have so many obstacles before you; each will be harder than the one before. The thing about Belen is, he’s cocky. He doesn’t come out of the gate with everything he has. He tries to attain his goal with as little effort as possible, so a few failures don’t matter to him. He’ll just drop back, build his strength, and go at you again…only harder than before.”
“Dad, can I do this?”
“You can. You have to. Because if you don’t and he gets his hands on the pack, he won’t stop there. He’ll grow bored with his conquests and go for bigger ones, and no one will be safe.”
“So, what you’re saying is I have the world in my hands? I mean, that’s what I’m getting here.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“The oldest was here. She found the clues her mother buried, and once they were out of the ground I was able to dig in. The minute I touched her, a symbol burned into my skin. Is that part of the mating?”
“Yes. The everlasting love symbol. When it’s finished, when you’ve mated, it will rise on your skin like a brand. It’s her mark.”
“So, she marks me…isn’t that backwards? I mean, I’m the man here, the strong one, the protector.”
His father’s grating laugh came across the line. “Son, you have a lot to learn about mating. You may be the man. You may be strong. But never underestimate her power. She’s an alpha. In your relationship she will be alpha, and you will stand strong with her, by her side, not in front of her.”
“I’m not sure I can do that,” he muttered, frustrated. Just by his very nature, building and running his own business, he was a take-charge kind of guy. How was he supposed to have the redheaded sprite standing next to him, fighting for him, as though he couldn’t fight for himself?
“You don’t have a choice. This is your destiny. You’ll make some missteps, but never fear, she will put you back in line,” his dad said before letting out a hearty laugh at Orion’s expense.
Of course she would. “Hey, Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For everything.”
“Don’t say it like I won’t hear from you again. I’m proud of you, son. For tackling this. And I have faith in you.”
“I hope I don’t let you down.”
“Never.”
Orion ended the call with the click of a button and stepped to the window. He didn’t
know what to do. He had Maeve’s number, but it’s not like he could call up and say, “Hey, let’s bang.”
He had his moonstone, which he’d used to cast a spell of protection over her. Maybe he could cast one to call to her.
Figuring it was worth a shot, he decided to go to the place she felt strongest.
To the base of the tree.
Chapter 7
“Wow, you’re glowing,” Courtney said when Maeve came down from her shower.
“Thank you,” Maeve said. She headed for the fridge. She’d been ravenous for the past hour, but before she could sit and eat she’d desperately needed a shower. She grabbed the tuna salad she had made the day before and a fork before taking a seat at the table next to Courtney. “Want a bite?” Maeve asked, holding up the first scoop.
“Uh, no. Thanks. So, spill. How was it?” Courtney asked, propping her chin on her hand.
Maeve smiled so big she saw the swell of her cheeks creep into the bottom of her vision. “It was glorious. The muscles, the power, the agility, and the stamina! I used to get winded on the treadmill warming up to lift weights, for God’s sake. But when I shifted, every last inch of me was ready—and I could have gone a whole lot farther than just the run home.”
Courtney gave her a wide-eyed stare. “Just the run home? It was twenty-five miles.”
Maeve nodded. “By car. I probably took off five miles just by running straight through the woods. There were a few areas where I needed to cross the road and didn’t know quite what to do. I mean, I would imagine I’m not supposed to be seen, right? It’s weird not having a parent here to teach me everything I need to know.” She closed her lips over a big bite of tuna, shutting her eyes and humming when the flavor of the chopped red onion burst on her tongue.
Courtney clasped Maeve’s elbow and leaned her head on her shoulder. “Aww, honey. I’m sorry. But you know what? I’m glad she left something behind for you. So, what are you going to do now?”
Maeve shrugged, and took a sip of water. “I have to find my mate.”