Cocktales

by The Cocky Collective

  Tatiana

  Dax Cohen was the bane of my existence. That smart-mouthed asshole came into my shop every new moon, and it took everything in me not to throw a penis shrinking spell right at his crotch. He was the cockiest alpha male I’d ever met, and that was saying a lot for a witch who ran a supernatural spell shop. I’d met them all, been hit on by them all, but Dax Cohen really grinded my gears. He stood at over six foot six and looked as if he was chiseled from stone by the Goddess herself. He was a living, breathing Adonis… and he knew it. He’d slept with half the witches in my coven, and if rumors were true, he had a thing for red heads. I grinned, twirling a lock of my glossy long red hair. Tonight when he came in for his shifting potion, I was going to make him beg for it. Payback for that prank he’d played on me last week. Sold me what he said was a werewolf’s tooth when in reality, it was a kitten's. My entire spell exploded in my face.

  “You’re stirring that too quickly,” my high priestess admonished me. I nodded to Rowena. She was a good coven leader, and I enjoyed working underneath her.

  I slowed my stirring and called out to her. “Must we supply the wolves with this potion for the rest of our lives? Surely our ancestors put an expiration date on the contract?”

  Rowena’s lips curled into a grin. “They did not, and you know that—it was your own mother who signed the deal with him after all. The wolves did us a favor many years ago and it’s our duty to repay them.”

  Easy for her to say—she wasn’t the one making the potion every month. Cat Tails And Other Magical Things was handed down to me by my parents. It had been in our family for generations. And the spell that kept a werewolf from shifting on the full moon and pillaging the town in a blood thirst, rested with me and me alone. I’d only moved here to Rock Springs, Wyoming when my mother died, to carry on my magical lineage and all that jazz. Before her, my grandmother owned the shop, and I had a handful of memories coming here as a child.

  Rowena trailed a finger across my cheek. “Where you feel anger, I sense passion,” she said and then grabbed her purse and left the shop for the night.

  I raised an eyebrow. Rowena was full of random Yoda-like sayings like that. My eyes flicked outside, and I noticed the sun was just about to set.

  Sigh.

  Dax would walk in any minute and would attempt to charm me. I would tell him to shove his charm up his ass and then up-charge him ten percent, and he would leave in a huff. Typical new moon night.

  The man had been trying to sleep with me for two years. Poor guy couldn’t take a ‘no.’ I was just pouring the contents of the spell into the copper jar, when a sharp pain sliced into my chest. Dropping the jar onto the counter top, I stumbled backwards.

  No.

  “Rowena!” I shouted, as I gasped for breath. The searing pain did not abate, and I knew then that my high priestess had sustained a mortal wound.

  Tears trailed down my cheeks as I reached shakily for my wand. Whatever killed her was close by, as she’d only just left my shop. The pain ripping through my chest had turned to a warm tingle as my coven leader’s magic left her body and filtered into me. I gasped as the purple mist fell from the ceiling and coated my skin, making me feel like I was holding onto a live wire. As second-in-command of the coven, it was my rightful place to inherit her magical linage in the event of her death. I just hadn’t expected it for another decade or so.

  I stumbled forward, wand outstretched, ready to avenge my coven leader, when a flash of muscle and black hair dashed through my doorway.

  Dax Cohen, covered in blood, had fallen through the entrance of my shop. His forearms were glowing with protection symbols. Rowena’s magic.

  His abdomen was leaking blood and upon further inspection, I noticed a gash. It looked deep, and he held the wound with one of his massive hands. At his heel was his pet dog, a Cocker Spaniel aptly named Cocker. Why the alpha of the most powerful pack in the Northwest had a tiny adorable dog, I would never know, but he took him everywhere. That mutt was like a child to him, and he whined and jumped up on Dax’s leg as the werewolf fell onto me, resting his two hundred pound weight on my small frame.

  “What happened? Rowena!” I rasped. I was still in shock, complete disbelief, but the power that flowed through my veins did not lie. My priestess had ascended, she was with the Goddess now.

  Dax breathed in slowly, wincing at the pain. “Nyx.”

  That one word flushed complete terror through my veins. With one flick of my wand, my shop door slammed shut and the lights outside turned off, two more flicks and I’d thrown up enough magical wards to keep the entire town out. It wouldn’t keep Nyx away but it would buy me some time.

  Nyx… it wasn’t possible. The most vile witch I’d ever learned about as a child who’d been put into a five hundred year sleep by my own mother, had awoken?

  I dragged the big ass werewolf behind the counter to my back room and lowered him onto the couch in my office. Cocker leapt up onto his legs and whined while pawing at his jeans.

  I rubbed the mutt’s head, infusing his aura with a calming spell, and his whine died off as he lay on the alpha’s lap and rested.

  Peeling back Dax’s hand from the wound he was staunching, a spurt of crimson gushed out into the room. I tore open his shirt to get a better look at the wound and the dark magic imbedded in it.

  “You trying to kill me woman?” He growled as his wound continued to leak blood all over my clean floor.

  I thought about that. I could let him bleed out right here and be done with making his potion every month. The contract only said I had to make it for him, not his pack.

  “Tatiana!” he scolded me, and I rolled my eyes. Pointing my wand at his stomach, I uttered half a dozen healing spells and he finally sighed in relief.

  “Tell me what happened,” I demanded.

  He grimaced, sitting up to rub behind Cocker’s ear. “I was coming to the shop to get the potion when I felt… a darkness.”

  My brow furrowed. Yeah, if Nyx had been resurrected, darkness would follow everywhere she went.

  He continued, “I turned the corner and saw Rowena on her knees, black tendrils of magic around her throat. Standing before her was… Nyx. In the flesh.”

  I frowned. “That can’t be! She’s supposed to sleep another hundred years at least!”

  He shrugged as the wound on his stomach stitched itself before my eyes. Werewolf healing. I only needed to remove the black magic, and his body did its thing. I tried and failed not to notice the way his heavily defined muscles looked enticing.

  “It was Nyx alright,” he confirmed. He was old enough to know, so I’d have to take his word as I’d never met her in the flesh, thank God.

  “And how did you survive the blackest witch to ever live?” I raised one eyebrow at him.

  He reached out and fingered a lock of my red hair, giving me a cocky grin. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t want to kill something so beautiful.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  He sat up, slowly putting Cocker on the ground. He was in my personal space and not backing down, just staring at me with dark green eyes, threaded through with bolts of orange.

  “You need to stop her or she’ll pillage the whole town, killing your entire coven in revenge,” he stated.

  I exhaled, feeling the tension build in my shoulders. “I know that.” I growled.

  If someone had resurrected Nyx early, she would be fueled by vengeance. It was my coven that put her into the night sleep in the first place, led by my mother with Rowena as her second. With Dax’s pack having helped… That was over a hundred years ago, before I was even alive, but they’d done us a great favor by helping, which was why we owed them the moon sleep tea every month. With Rowena dead, I was sure we couldn’t do it alone. I had the power of a high priestess now but not the training. I was only two years into my education as a high priestess’s second hand. Something most witches did for a good fifty years before they took on the title. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. Th
e last thing I wanted was to look weak in front of an alpha.

  “Dax Cohen, Alpha of the Moon Called pack, if your werewolves help us, then I, High Priestess of the Lightwood coven will owe you a debt. Name your price.”

  My hand lit up with blue magic as I held it out to him. He would name his price, such as moon sleep tea until the end of time, and we could shake. Then that would be it. Magically sealed forever.

  A sly grin crept over his face, and I should have called it off the moment I saw those dimples form in his cheeks. “I pledge Moon Called Pack to help in this deed if you Tatiana Ravenwood will go on a date with me when it’s done. Dinner, movie and a nightcap, at my place.”

  “A powerful witch offers you any favor you can think of, and you want a date?” He couldn’t be that stupid.

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation.

  He was that stupid. I rolled my eyes and extended my hand further. “Deal.”

  Cocky idiot.

  We shook on it, and magic zipped up my arm and tingled along my elbow. It was law now. If we survived this, I was going on a date with Dax Cohen. I could only hope he would die on the quest so I wouldn’t be put through such an atrocity.

  Two

  Dax

  Tatiana Ravenwood was the most uptight woman I’d ever met, and she hated me. Absolute hatred. So, naturally I wanted to sleep with her. Not just sleep with her, I wanted to take her out and show her I wasn’t the cocky asshole she’d somehow believed I was. I wanted to, needed to, change her opinion about me. Maybe it was the alpha in me, brother wolf's need to control everything. I wanted to control the way she thought about me. I wanted her to beg me to kiss her. I wanted what I couldn’t have. That red head would be mine.

  “Are you coming?” she snapped, annoyed, as we exited her shop.

  I reached down and pet the spot between Cocker’s eyes. ‘I’ll be back for you later,’ I told him.

  ‘No. Cocker go with.’ He growled.

  I chuckled. My thirty-five pound dog wanted to take on Nyx, the darkest witch I’d ever met. ‘Not safe buddy. Stay here.’ I gave him a little shove and shut the door, locking him inside. He’d be okay in there as long as he didn’t eat any of Tatiana’s weird witch shit. That woman had threatened me with so many potions in the years I’d known her, and I had no doubt she could make my dick fall off and render me impotent for life. God knows what Cocker would find in there.

  ‘Don’t eat anything in there.’ I told him through the door.

  He ignored me. He was mad. I’d have to bring him a double cheeseburger later to make up for it.

  When I turned around, I nearly slammed into Tatiana. She was watching me with wide, green curious eyes. “Did you just speak into his mind?”

  I flinched. “How can you tell?” That was one of my secrets. I didn’t tell many people I could speak to the mind of any animal.

  She reached past me and locked the shop door, leaving the scent of vanilla and sage in her wake. “One of my new gifts as high priestess I guess. I dunno, I saw it,” she answered, seeming flustered.

  She glanced ahead on the sidewalk. Rowena lay on her side, dead, black bands of magic tightened around her neck giving her a pale, ghoulish look.

  Tatiana choked on a sob as she stared at her fallen high priestess.

  Shit. I wasn’t sure what to do. If I tried to comfort her by patting her back or something, she might rip off my hand.

  Instead I ran my fingers through my hair. “Ah, I’m sorry about Rowena. She was a good witch. I knew her a long time.”

  Tatiana nodded. “Thanks.” Then she pulled out her wand and I stepped back a pace. I was peaceful with the witches but I didn’t like their magic. It was unpredictable and made my hackles pull up.

  She flung her wand towards Rowena’s body and muttered a few words. Suddenly, like an invisible blanket had fallen over the witch. She was gone.

  “I’ll deal with that later,” she said.

  I was going to comment, ask her what the plan was, when I felt them. Lines of power coming at me like a flashlight searching in the dark. My pack.

  Two black SUVs turned the corner and pulled up next to us.

  “What’s the emergency?” Brayden, my second-in-command, asked. I’d asked him to bring all of my dominants and meet me at the witch shop. I didn’t want to say what it was about over the phone.

  “Nyx has awoken early, and we need to shove her back into her grave before all hell breaks loose,” I stated.

  Brayden didn’t cow, but lines of worry crossed his face. He was old enough to remember the days when Nyx ran rampant across North America, conjuring demons and making my life a living hell.

  The back seat window of the SUV rolled down, and Nick Pichette looked Tatiana up and down like she was a piece of meat. “We’re partnering with the witches?” he asked seductively.

  ‘Look at her again and I’ll kill you.’ I told him, infusing alpha power into my command. He lowered his head then and rolled up the window. Nick was a little, twenty-year-old punk who needed to learn his place with women. He would not be doing that with Tatiana. She was mine. If he weren’t so dominant and such a good fighter I wouldn’t have allowed him to come.

  Brayden grinned, he knew I’d just bitch-slapped Nick. “Do you know who woke her?” my second asked Tatiana respectfully, keeping his eyes above her neckline where they belonged. For a woman who claimed to not like getting hit on, she sure liked to wear cleavage popping shirts and tight jeans a lot.

  Tatiana sighed, and it puffed out her already plump lips. “No one but a very, very powerful witch could have awoken Nyx early.”

  My head reeled in her direction. “What are you saying?”

  She put up her hands. “I’m saying someone in my coven probably woke her. Someone you’ve slept with I’m sure,” she added rolling her eyes.

  Ouch. “Hey, I’ve only slept with like, three people from your coven and I’m over a hundred years old so that’s one every thirty years or so.” I defended myself.

  She laughed wildly. “Don’t make me add them up in front of your boys.”

  Fear gripped me. Jane, Willow and Frannie. That’s it. Oh wait, Mariah. Four, only four and I didn’t just sleep with them, I dated them. I was a goddamn grown man—I could do what I wanted!

  “Adrianna,” she started to list and I’d totally forgotten about the New Years eve bash of 1993.

  I put my hands out to stop her. “Okay, we get it. You think I’m a man-whore. Let’s just catch Nyx already, because I have a hot date tonight.” I smiled smugly.

  She stepped off the curb and opened the back door, shooing Nick in order to scoot him over. “Take me to the cemetery,” she asked Brayden.

  “Is that where she is?” I questioned her rationale. For all I knew, she’d muttered some tracker spell on Nyx.

  Tatiana glared at me as I opened the door, making Brayden sit shotgun so I could drive.

  “Witch magic works similar to pack magic. She killed Rowena so the coven magic fell to me, if she kills me, the coven magic falls to her as third in line.”

  The very thought of Nyx trying to hurt Tatiana had my inner wolf rattling my skin like a cage, threating to break free. And the thought of Nyx ruling the Lightwood coven was beyond sickening.

  “So she’s after you?” I asked, looking at her through the rearview mirror.

  She nodded curtly. God, she fucking hated me.

  I was an alpha. I needed to know the detailed plan. What didn’t she understand about that? “So we’re leading her to the cemetery, where she’ll try to kill you and we’ll hopefully put her back in her grave?” I asked her.

  Tatiana clapped, looking around at my boys in the car. “He’s a genius,” she told the car.

  My hands tightened on the steering wheel until my knuckles were white. Shoving my foot onto the gas, I took off.

  Tonight might be the worst date of my life but I was determined to make this woman fall for me sometime this decade, and she was getting a spanking for that comment.


  Three

  Tatiana

  Dax was getting on my very last nerve with all of his questions. Acting like he cared what happened to me or my coven. He was the self-centered, hired muscle and he needed to act like it. I had enough on my mind with my life at stake I didn’t want to have to dodge his advances while I was at it. He’d literally been hitting on me since the day I moved here from North Carolina two years ago. On top of all this Nyx drama, I had to figure out which of my coven mates betrayed us and resurrected her, no doubt in a bid to become her second.

  When Dax pulled the SUV up to the cemetery, I saw that my coven was here, standing in a circle, looking up to the new moon for guidance. I’d have to tell them about Rowena, I’d have to appoint a second but I didn’t want to do that until I knew who’d betrayed us. My best friend Lydia was the only one I truly trusted but her lineage was not powerful enough to make second. She’d weaken the coven.

  “Can you have your wolves surround the place?” I asked the alpha.

  He nodded, and without a word his boys exited the car in unison and started stripping naked, shifting forms. Trading their lean chiseled human forms for their wolves. I never understood the werewolf male obsession, I was more of a vampire girl myself, maybe even a human before I’d date a were.

  I popped open the car door and got out, then I reached down to gather my wand and a few other items, and when I looked up, Dax was standing right in front of me, shirtless, in low slung jeans and no underwear that I could see. Desire flushed through me, and I scolded my body for betraying my feelings.

  “Would you like me in human form or wolf?” he asked in a husky voice.

  His eyes were glowing orange and I knew that meant his wolf was close to the surface.

  I cleared my throat. “Wolf. I’ll need all the teeth I can get.”

  With that, he grinned and in one swift motion dropped his pants.

  I swallowed hard, and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to look down at the dangling appendage I could see in my periphery. I hated Dax Cohen with every fiber of my being, but I’d always wondered what he looked like naked. Before I had to wrestle with the situation any longer, he started to shift, and I side-stepped him and began to walk to my coven. It took me a moment to catch my breath after seeing him naked like that. Cocky asshole or not he was nice to look at, even though I would never admit that out loud.