Claws and Effect

by Amanda Arista

  “You’ve done patched up those boys,” Iris said. “Given them something to believe in.”

  “I’m no goddess, Iris.”

  “This ain’t about you,” she slapped at my arm. “They believe in themselves, Violet. That’s more powerful than anything else you could have done to them.”

  I sighed. “Didn’t happen to write an idiots guide to being a Prima, did ya?”

  “It’s different for each person. Got a few basics.”

  “I’d like to hear them.” The panther stirred in my chest and pushed up my neck. “But not tonight.” I looked down at Shadow. “Come with me.”

  He sat down at Iris’s feet.

  “Suite yourself.”

  I closed my eyes as I pulled at the robe’s belt. As slunk down into the inky darkness of the panther, the pink terry fell around me.

  Iris took it from my back and I trotted down the stairs. I stretched, paws out front and then one leg back at a time. I twitched my tail, just double-checking everything.

  Then I stuck my nose up in the air and took in a lungful. Myers was in the woods, probably waiting.

  Let’s go play.

  THERE IS NOTHING more freeing than a full moon. Nothing makes the skin a little tighter and the strides a little longer.

  He ran, with the power of four Biggers within him, he darted through the fields. Demon dimension or not, this was heaven. He could release his inhibitions and be him.

  As he hypnotized himself with steady pattern of his paws on the rough earth, he thought of her. He remembered her smooth form, her bright yellow eyes as they glowed with a power all her own.

  As if on cue, she was with him, her sweet scent surrounding him. She was wild tonight as well. If it was a full moon here, it was a full moon over Dallas. He knew that now. The memories of the Biggers were open to him.

  The location of a city with purebreds and demons.

  The terrain of good hunting.

  The way to smell out a portal where the pickings were good. The half-breeds stumbled through rips and were always so innocent. And their innocence tasted sweet.

  And as he ran with her across the fields, he could almost feel her excitement in the night as well, in the freedom of the panther’s form. And there were others around.

  Her little pack. His cast offs. He could feel them, or feel the holes that they’d left. It was all right here, spinning around in her brain, his brain. He loved the confusion of it all. The chaos of her.

  He felt the long lines of her body as she leaped over the two black dogs. He could feel her hot blood pumping through her sleek muscles, the perfect balance of her as she landed and rolled with the spotted hound.

  They loved her. He could see their beady black eyes as they danced around her, leaped with her through the fields. He felt her connection to them.

  And then he saw another. The long line of the panther ran beside her. As he looked at the other, he saw an awareness there. Another potential mate.

  He felt his hackles rise. Why was there another panther there? Was someone trying to take his place? Was someone trying to steal his legacy?

  He didn’t recognize the beast that ran beside her. But he did know the excitement that chilled through her, the hesitation that she took as she led him through the tall grass of the Texas countryside. He felt the surge across her body as its lithe body brushed against her.

  She had never looked at him like that.

  Anger sizzled through their connection. Even as close as they were connected in this moment, she was still not there with him, only him.

  I will never be yours. Her power, her panther screamed into the night.

  He locked himself in place, locked himself within her. She was his. Would always be his to create and destroy. And her power would be his too, and she would fall to her knees before him and beg him to take her into the fold.

  A heat seared across his brain as the Legacy flared between them. His father’s power, what he had bestowed upon the youngest of his children, burned him, pushed against him. She was using it against him. The Legacy was protecting her and not its true master.

  But he held on, through the pain. She was his.

  In an explosion of anger and defiance, hellfire burned through his connection and he was thrown backward and away from her into the darkness.

  He awoke, naked, and alone in the field just outside his lair. He tasted magnolias in his mouth and smiled up at the full moon. He would get his Legacy back if it was the last thing he did.

  STRAW POKED ME in places that straw shouldn’t poke a woman. I sat up quickly, a rain of grass falling from my head.

  Black out. Again. I smacked my lips and searched through any memory and only one word came out. “Spencer.” My mouth tasted like ash just saying it.

  I searched around for anything to cover myself up, but it was a barn. What did I expect?

  I stood. I was in the little cage where I’d first shifted. Why here? Why was this my safe spot? This is where I’d gone when I was dying too.

  This was where Chaz saw me for what I really was and loved me anyway.

  Until he decided to love on someone else. Nice little stabby feelings filled my heart, and I didn’t know if giving him little stabby feelings with a real knife would even make me feel any better.

  Tears burned hot down my cheeks. Why again?

  “Violet?”

  I wiped my face from the wetness. “Don’t come in.”

  The pink robe was thrown through the door of the barn.

  I scurried out of the cage and plucked the robe from the floor and shook it out. I wrapped it around me and then ran my fingers through my hair.

  Myers stood outside as I exited. “Are you okay?”

  I headed straight for the house. “Friggin peachy.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder and stopped my march toward the house. “What’s wrong?”

  I licked my lips. What could I tell him?

  His hand stayed there as he squeezed softly. “Tucker and Tyler have been looking for you all morning. They said something happened last night.”

  They weren’t going to find the source of the problem. It was far, far away. “It’s complicated, Myers. But I’m fine.”

  “Waking up in a barn is fine?” his bright eyes looked different this morning. Something was different about him, but I was still too frazzled to get into his drama when obviously I had some of my own to sort out.

  I looked back at the cage. “Actually, this barn? Yeah.”

  He turned my face back to him with the soft touch of his forefinger to my chin. “If you need help, Violet, I’m not one of the boys. You don’t have to keep things from me.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “I understand that you have to keep strong for them, but if there’s something you need help with, I’m right here.”

  He had been there. This whole time. There when I called. There when I needed help. He was here right now when I was scared that I might not be strong enough.

  I took his hand from my chin and pulled him towards the house. “Thank you, Myers. I might take you up on that.”

  THE SHOWER WAS heaven. I let the hot water wash away not only the aches in my muscles that never followed a shift before but also the grass from the barn and the ash from my senses.

  The dreams were getting worse and what had happened last night? Had Spencer jumped in? Taken control? Could he even do that?

  No, because I couldn’t. I remembered everything up to the pond. I’d taken Myers out to a pond to get a drink. That’s the last thing that I remembered seeing. Looking into the water and . . .

  A white hot image of Spencer burned across my eyes and I slapped back against the tiles in the shower. Eyes wide, I stared hard at Iris’s pink flowers shower curtain. My heart pounded in my chest . . . I think I just had Nash’s first research assignment: how to break the link with your sire.

  And I think the panther had fought him off. Had gone to my safe little spot in the barn when she won. And it
would explain why I was so ridiculously sore.

  I washed my hair three times until I smelled like Iris’s rose-scented shampoo, until I assaulted my own senses with perfume. I rested my head against the warm tiles and just wished for Chaz. The old Chaz. The golden warm Chaz that was there when I needed him, even if I didn’t want him there. The Chaz who would stroke my back and tell me that I was strong enough to do this.

  When I realized that the water falling from my face was not from the shower, I sucked in a deep breath.

  Maybe this was how it was supposed to be. Maybe this was why Iris never married.

  Maybe there was a deeper reason that I had never heard of a Misses Haverty.

  Maybe I was just supposed to be single.

  Maybe I should just get my ass out of the shower, stop whining, and see what happened next.

  IRIS WAS SITTING down in her front living room. I frowned. “I thought I smelled bacon?”

  “The boys decided to make breakfast.” She sipped her coffee cup and seemed surprised by the pleasant flavor.

  “Oh,” I said as I went to sit on the couch next to her. “And you let them?”

  Iris frowned. She wasn’t playing this morning. “What happened last night?”

  “Spencer,” I whispered.

  “And this isn’t the first time?”

  “I’m usually asleep when I dream about him.” I curled my feet up underneath me and rested my head on the back of the couch, still watching her. “This time I think the cat fought him off.”

  “There is something that you’re not going to like.”

  “Can you wait until I’ve had coffee?”

  Iris put her cup on the side table and turned to me. Her keen blue eyes were sharp and sparkled in the morning light. Her voice was low and quick as she spoke. “As a Prima, you gave them your power, they chose to accept it, but you didn’t take any back. You didn’t replenish what you gave them. He’s getting in through the holes you created in your own psyche.”

  “No,” I exclaimed sitting up. “I’m not taking anything from them.”

  “It’s how it’s done. How the bonding works.”

  “The bonding is working just fine.”

  “There a problem?” Tucker appeared in the doorway with his police tone and a cup of coffee.

  “No,” I said quickly.

  “Yes, and she’s being too pigheaded to admit it,” Iris countered.

  A dark furrow formed between his brown brows as he walked into the room.

  I avoided his concerned look and focused on the coffee. “Please say that’s for me.”

  “Not until you tell me why you’re yelling at Iris.” He was using the police voice on me. How dare he use his police voice on me.

  “She thinks that I’ve not completed the pack bonding.”

  Tucker turned to Iris to get her side of the story.

  “She’s only done half of it and it’s weakened her. And she’s too damn stubborn to admit it.”

  Tucker looked back at me and licked his bottom lip. “That’s what happened last night.”

  I glared over at Iris. I didn’t want Tucker to know.

  But Iris didn’t understand the ‘tell him under penalty of death’ glare. “Her and Spencer share a connection and last night, he was able to influence her.”

  I ground my teeth together so hard that I felt the tension all the way to the top of my head and was pretty sure that I’d broken a filling. I kept my eyes on my tennis shoes.

  Iris, being Iris, and unable to stop making my life worse this morning, kept going, mostly talking at Tucker. “But if you were really bound to Jovan, and that bond is now broken, it would take even more power than just a pack bonding.”

  “It wasn’t a spell,” I grumbled.

  “There was your will, and I think we all know just how willful you really are. Subconscious or not, you’ve broken their bond with Jovan and bonded them to you and if you don’t get a little back, Spencer will keep getting in and there’s no telling how powerful he’s getting on the other side.”

  “Spencer’s getting in because we’ve weakened you?” Tucker asked, his voice tight.

  Iris spoke up. “More like left a door open that needs to be closed. There is power bonding, what a normal pack does, and then there is magic bonding, how you were connect to Jovan. You’ve bond to her magic and that needs to be given back some how.”

  “Then we do it.”

  My hands had clenched into the firm cushions of her couch. “Tucker, no. This is not your choice.”

  I jumped up and snatched the coffee from his hands and walked into the kitchen. With all the boy’s eyes on me, I kept walking until I was out on the porch, but I could still smell them, so I kept walking until the only thing that I could smell was the coffee in my hand and open fields around me.

  You really screwed this one up, Violet Jordan. Can’t even make a pack by the book, you have to bind them to your soul. No better than a demon, forcing your will on others. Burning through bonds only to replace them with a new chain.

  No wonder Chaz was hunting down pert little blondes. Bet she didn’t suck the life out of the people around her.

  I kicked at the dirt. But they were better. The men were stronger and more alive than I’d ever seen them.

  I still could not take from them. That made me no different from Spencer. I could do this on my own. Spencer figured out a way to get to me, I could figure out a way to get to him and with Nash’s help, I might be able to break the link between us without taking anything from anyone.

  I was done with the coffee when I felt Shadow walking up behind me. He sat next to my feet and stared out at the field that I had found particularly entrancing for the last thirty minutes.

  “You know, six months ago, I saw you and ran.”

  Shadow scooted closer to me. In his dog form, he didn’t have borders and I felt his soft warm energy press against my leg.

  “Six months ago, I used you for movie fodder.”

  Shadow reached his nose up and nuzzled my fingers. I knelt down next to him, smoothing my hand down his head. “Is this okay?”

  He nodded. Only my life could have a dog that understood me.

  I set my coffee mug on the ground next to me and sat. The dewy grass absorbed immediately into my jeans, but I didn’t care. It was literally the least of my worries.

  He set his head on my hands. I cupped his face in my palm.

  “I am still so sorry.” Tears formed in my eyes as I thought about his sacrifice.

  Shadow pulled away and trotted before me. He danced almost, jumping and running in circles. He tossed his head back and howled and then barrel-rolled across the grass.

  I laughed and wiped my eyes. “Are you trying to make me feel better?”

  He walked over to me and I looked into his still black eyes. He was still in there. The quiet one. The most damaged one of all of them but who trusted me so easily. Who saw something in me that I couldn’t see.

  I felt it. Felt his power pass into me and settle around my heart. My eyes closed as it burned for a moment and then just became another part of me, a thread that connected me to him.

  I opened my eyes, his head still in my hands. I spoke softly. “You’re a little spy. You overheard Iris and Tucker and I talking.”

  His tail wagged slowly and he quickly licked my nose.

  “You know what you’ve done?”

  He nodded. Shadow slipped away from my hand and sat down before me.

  “Guess we’re a real pack now.”

  In that moment, I was convinced that dogs had lips, because Shadow was smiling.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I ASKED IRIS AND Myers to leave the room as I wanted to talk to my boys. Shadow was proudly at my feet.

  “Shadow’s beat you to the punch. Sneaky guy overheard us talking and pulled one over on me.”

  Tucker tightened his arms over his chest. “Thought I felt something different.”

  “Iris called it closing the door. Completin
g the loop. Whatever you want to call it. It’s your choice. I will never take it from you if you don’t . . .”

  “How many times do we have to yes, Violet?” Tyler laughed.

  I stood slightly surprised.

  “Seriously,” Tyler said as he rose from the table. “You’re like a prom date. We are practically begging for it here.”

  I laughed. “I just have to be sure. I’m walking such a fine line here . . .”

  All three of them brushed me at once. There wasn’t a look, there wasn’t a codeword. It was just all three of them acting as one.

  As they left pieces of themselves behind, my heart burned. I clutched at it for a moment as the power fused, like with the Veil, leaving one solid piece that was distinctly not there before. It was like metaphysical acid reflux.

  I took a deep breath as it settled in and I stood up straight again, my hand still over my breast bone and I looked at them.

  All were different. I could feel the tug of heart strings toward all of them. Made me wonder if the person who had coined that term was a wanderer themselves.

  “Can we eat breakfast now?” Nash asked.

  “Lords yes,” Tyler said as he went back to the table and stabbed four pancakes off the top.

  TUCKER AND TYLER had been “volunteered” to help with the planks in the barn while Nash had been put in charge of driving Iris to the grocery store to replenish the food they had already eaten.

  It left Myers and I alone in the big house. I was beginning to like the feel of people in a house. Made it feel more like a home. And with more men running around here, I was less inclined to focus on the one man who was not.

  I was reading a book I’d tucked in my bag when Myers shuffled into the room.

  “Can I talk to you about something?”

  “What did I do this time?” I asked as I closed the book.

  Myers sat next to me on the couch, and I curled up and turned to face him.

  “When do I get to join the pack?”

  “Oh, well. I don’t know, Myers. I really haven’t thought about it the logistics of all this yet.”

  He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and rub his long hands together. “Do you want me in the pack?”