Shadow's Howl

by Riley Storm

  “When everything was on the line tonight. You just reacted. You knew what had to be done, and you did it. Without thinking, without waiting for permission. You took initiative, and you went after it.” He smiled, the words feeling right. “Not only that, but you were willing and ready to sacrifice yourself for it. You didn’t care that by showing that you could cast blue magic, I might feel compelled to report you, or to kill you myself. You thought of saving me and the others on the farm first, and then you’d worry about yourself.”

  “Oh,” she said in a small voice. “I…I didn’t see it like that. I just…I screwed up. I needed to fix it.”

  “And that’s exactly why I trust you. Why I believe in you, Jennifer. Because you are a good person, and you don’t want to do evil things. But also, because you’ve shown you have what it takes to work on the fly.” He laughed. “That was a pretty bad-ass display of magic there, I’ll tell ya.”

  She blushed. “Thanks. Sort of. If I were more, um, ‘bad-ass’, at controlling my magic, it wouldn’t have been necessary in the first place.”

  “Maybe. But you have to learn somehow,” he pointed out.

  “I guess. I was scared.”

  “I wasn’t. I believed in you, trusted you, to stop it.”

  Jennifer bit her lip, nodding, but not meeting his gaze. She didn’t like the compliment, but she needed to hear it.

  “And now I need you to believe in me,” he continued quietly, taking a small step toward her. “To trust in me enough to reveal what’s really going on. What is truly driving you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m scared. I can’t, Liam.”

  “Yes,” he said, taking another step. “You can. I believe in you.”

  Words a wise person had spoken to him a short period of time ago came to him. “Sometimes you need to extend trust to someone, even if you don’t know if it will be reciprocated. But if you never open up, you’ll never know what you’re missing,” he said, paraphrasing Alison and Chloe’s words a bit.

  If this works, I’ll have to make sure I buy them a beer.

  Jennifer shook her head, but she didn’t say anything. Staying quiet, Liam watched her face, noting the various emotions and thoughts playing across it. There was quite the war going on within her about whether or not she should reveal it to him. For the longest time he wasn’t sure which side was winning, but eventually it became clear she’d come to a decision.

  Steeling himself, he waited for her answer. Would she finally open up to him, or had recent events scarred her too badly?

  “Okay,” Jennifer said softly. “I’ll tell you.”

  30

  “This isn’t easy for me,” she said as a preamble, stalling to give herself more time. “It’s shameful. Embarrassing really.”

  Liam nodded. “I’d like to come closer, if that’s okay. I…I want to hold you, if that will help.”

  Jennifer felt her face curve upward in a smile for the first time in far too long. “You’re sweet,” she said. “But…right now I don’t trust myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, that’s all part of the story,” she said.

  Suddenly unable to stand still, she started to pace back and forth through the field, idly kicking at bits and pieces of dirt, watching the hardened clumps explode into a finer powder.

  “It’s okay,” Liam told her. “I won’t judge you.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed. “But then, maybe not. You don’t know. Besides, I’ve already judged myself plenty, and that’s what really matters.”

  “No, it’s not. I’ve seen enough of you to know whatever you may have done in your past, it’s more what you’re doing right now that matters.”

  Shaking him off, Jennifer brought her pacing to a standstill, almost exactly back in front of Liam. “It’s not me,” she said. “I’m not ashamed of myself. Well, only in that I didn’t do something about it, I guess, but it doesn’t revolve around me.”

  Liam frowned. “I don’t understand. Who does this revolve around then? That random mage guy. Adrian? That’s so flimsy, why would you be ashamed of that?”

  “Because,” Jennifer said quietly. “He’s not random at all. After all, how can you not be ashamed of something someone you’re related to does? It’s your blood.”

  The big shifter said nothing, but his eyebrows rose quickly, wrinkling his forehead.

  “What?” was all he could say.

  “The mage’s name was Adrian Shaw,” she said quietly. “And he was my father.”

  Silence echoed out over the field. The bright moonlight was all she had to see his face with. Deciding that wasn’t enough, she called for a bit of magic, carefully keeping the power level low, just enough to light a circle around them, so they could more easily see one another.

  “Your father,” Liam echoed, his eyes darting to the ball of magic for a moment then returning to her. “That…explains a lot, actually.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He lifted a hand immediately. “I meant in terms of why this is so important to you, and why you were so adamant in helping.”

  “Oh,” she said, understanding, forcing herself to calm.

  The ball of magic dimmed as well. Oops. Apparently, she’d fed energy into that when her anger spiked.

  “Alright. So Adrian was your father. You’re embarrassed because he went rogue to help the Tyrant King, who is a bad, bad man. So, you came to us, to try and atone for what he did. That about sum it up?”

  “Sort of,” she said quietly. “Except my father wasn’t a bad man. Not always.”

  “I never said he was,” Liam told her, his voice soft, gentle.

  “We both know what he did. What he was scheming to do against House Ursa. Don’t act like you didn’t think it,” she said hotly.

  Liam didn’t speak, simply inclining his head in her direction, his way of admitting the truth of her words.

  “He used to be a teacher at the academy. Just like I am. Was,” she corrected, changing the tense. There would be no returning to her old life, to her classrooms and students. That life was now taken from her by her own hand.

  “What changed?” Liam asked.

  “I don’t know. He was a loving father growing up as well. A good husband to my mother. But then, something happened to him. I didn’t know what at first, but I know now,” she said, lifting her hands in front of her, turning them over, remembering in her mind’s eye how they had looked just minutes earlier.

  “Blue magic.”

  She nodded at the shifter. “Yes. It must have been. But what I don’t understand, is how he learned to control it. Or even to tap into it. I think someone was guiding him.”

  Liam stiffened. “Who?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t even have proof, but I mean, it just fits. Someone must have been guiding him. Whatever they were doing with him, it corrupted him. Turned him into a different person. One that wasn’t a fit at the Academy.”

  Liam nodded, thankfully doing very little in the way of speaking. She appreciated that about him. He knew when to shut up and let someone else talk. This was hard enough as it was, but having to stop and restart every time he asked a question or tried to assure her it would be okay would have made it ten times worse.

  “When that happened, he left the Academy, started selling his services.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “There was…a lot of blowback at the Academy from it. I had a hard time.”

  “I can imagine,” Liam said. “But you aren’t your father.”

  Sometimes though, he knew just what to say.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I know that. I may not be him, but I am like him. You saw it tonight. The same power that was in him, is in me. And it’s tempting, Liam. Oh, so tempting. You don’t understand power until you’ve felt it coursing through your body. You feel like you can literally do anything. You’re unstoppable. I hate it.”

  Liam shrugged. “Maybe. But I suspect you’re stronger than he is.”

  “Then why did I sit idly by while he
inflicted so much damage on our world?” she asked bitterly, letting her own self-hate show just for a moment. “I could have stopped him. Could have done something to prevent him hurting others.”

  “Maybe,” Liam agreed. “Maybe not. You have no idea what he may have done to you in that state. If he was no longer the same man, then he was no longer your father. If it had corrupted him so thoroughly, or if someone else was guiding him, then they may very well have struck you down.”

  “He’s my father though,” she protested.

  “Was your father,” Liam correctly gently, taking a step closer to her. “Whatever happened, it changed him. That wasn’t the same person. I was there during that time. Adrian was a nasty, nasty person. I’m not sure there was much left of the real him at that point.”

  “Maybe. But I should still have done something.”

  “You are doing something. That’s what matters. That you acted at all says mountains about who you are.”

  Jennifer nodded, shrinking slightly into herself. “But I’m scared, Liam.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, coming closer still.

  “Of what I’m going to find. Of what I might learn to like. I am my father’s daughter after all. The same power flows through me, and now I’ve had a taste, I can feel it.” She looked up at him, momentarily surprised at how close he was. “All my life, I’ve used my magic to create. To build. To bring things to life. It’s what I believe in.”

  She shivered, and Liam was there, wrapping his arms around her, though this was a cold even his prodigious heat couldn’t banish. This was born from inside her, not the air around them. It came from a dark spot, something deep inside her.

  “Blue magic is the opposite of life,” she whispered. “It’s cold, hard, death. It’s chaos. It tears down, it kills. And part of me likes it,” she said, finally admitting it. “It lives in me, I can feel it, and I’m tempted to use it again.”

  “You won’t,” Liam rumbled, his voice deep and filled with a confidence she couldn’t begin to understand.

  “What if I do?” she asked, leaning into his chest, feeling his strength.

  “You won’t. Two reasons for that.”

  “And those are?” she wanted to know.

  “First, your father didn’t have me,” he said in a half-joking half-serious tone, continuing on before she could address the comment. “And second, you aren’t your father. You are your own person. You’re far stronger than you believe. If anyone can resist, it’s you. I believe in you, Jen.”

  She didn’t fight the flutter of butterflies in her stomach at his use of her short name. It felt nice, a change from the solemn nature of their conversations lately.

  “Thank you,” she said, tilting her head backward, opening her body up to him, so she was no longer closed off.

  Liam saw that and he reacted accordingly, taking her chin in one hand and tipping it upward, before crushing her lips against his own.

  A hunger filled her, one awakened by the heat of his mouth, and not by magic of any type.

  31

  “I thought…” he said awkwardly as Jennifer pulled away from him.

  “Not here,” she said. “Come on.”

  “Back to the farmhouse?” he asked, looking out over the fields.

  “I have a better idea,” she said, taking his hand. “Do you trust me?”

  “Totally,” he said without hesitation, staring into the jade circles of her eyes as he spoke.

  “Good.” Jennifer slashed her hand through the air and another portal opened with the accustomed pop of air. “Follow me, if you want to live.”

  He groaned at the reference, but he sucked up his courage and dignity, and plunged through the hole in reality, following the incredible mage woman to wherever it was she was taking him.

  They were in a room. It was larger than anything at the farmhouse by a good bit, but still much smaller than the set of quarters he’d had back at Moonshadow Manor. About the size of a small hotel suite, if he had to guess.

  “Where are we?”

  “My old room at the Academy,” Jennifer said with a mischievous grin, already untying the belt of her mage robe. “Think you can handle it?”

  “Don’t you think that’s a bit risky?” he asked, but his shirt was already coming off.

  “Yes, but I’m also feeling frisky,” she said in a husky contralto all but reeking of sexual desire. “This is one desire I don’t have to fight, and I intend not to.”

  “I don’t think I have much of a problem helping you indulge in that,” he chuckled. “But—”

  “The room is also warded so sound doesn’t leave its walls.”

  Liam’s pants nearly tore as he pulled them off in a hurry to an accompanying giggle from Jen. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?” he growled as her robe fell to the floor.

  He knew that this was partly an escape for Jen. That she was looking for a distraction from her brush with the powerful magic. But it was more than that for both of them, and they knew it. They had come closer than ever before, after their shared brush with her magic elemental, but also the developing trust between them.

  Covering the distance between them, he removed her shirt, and then her pants, his hands wandering across her bare skin, feeling every bump, ever curve. He loved the softness of her body under his fingers. It was a delight he relished.

  “Liam,” she moaned as he wrapped her up in an embrace, pressing his muscles against her.

  “How did I get so lucky?” he asked, running his hands up her spine, pushing fingers through her hair.

  Jen moaned again softly in delight as his fingernails scratched lightly against her scalp. He tightened his fist around her hair, pulling her head back firmly, but not too sharply, exposing her throat to his mouth.

  He wanted to take his time with her, but a sense of urgency arose that swept them both up in it. Remaining articles of clothing were hastily tugged, pulled and slipped off in a race to see who could be naked first.

  “I win,” Jen pronounced with a victorious fist pump.

  Liam leered at her, ogling her body with abandon, making it abundantly clear on his face, and with his cock, just how pleased he was with the sight before him. “No, I think I’m about to win,” he rumbled.

  Jen yelped as he picked her up by the waist and tossed her back onto the bed like she was a sack of feathers. He came right after, casually pushing her legs aside.

  “Look at you today,” she purred. “Mister aggressive.”

  “I want you,” he said, his voice a growl. “Badly.”

  Taking her arms, he pushed them together above her head, and using one massive hand, pinned them to the bed. Jen bit her lip, staring up at him wide-eyed, and he nearly lost it at that. She was so incredibly sexy. How had he gotten so lucky?

  His cock throbbed, reminding him of the here and now, and Liam yanked his attention back to the matter at hand. Using his free hand, he gently spread her open, wetness greeting his fingers.

  “Oops,” she said with a laugh at his mildly surprised reaction. “I guess you have that effect on me.”

  Anything else she was going to say was cut off when he found her clit, circling it with smooth motions of his thumb while he loomed over her, watching the reactions to his touch, every hiss, moan, lip bite and close of her eye. It was like sugar to him, he was addicted to it. Each one made him harder, increased the desire to slip inside her. But not yet. They still had some time.

  Jen squirmed and tried to pull away, but he held her down with ease. She was trapped, and at his mercy, and that knowledge heightened both their arousal.

  “Take me,” she gasped as he increased the pressure of his thumb slightly, tightening the circles it was making. “Please.”

  Moving his hips slightly, he angled them against her, so the tip of his cock was placed against her opening.

  “Yes,” she moaned, thrusting upward, trying to snare his cock, but also increasing the pressure of his thumb yet again, which had never stopped pleasuri
ng her.

  Liam felt himself biting his own lip, unable to control himself as her desire reached out and swept him up. He rubbed faster, while also entering her.

  Jennifer’s eyes rolled back into her head. “Oh shit. Oh shit. Fuck.”

  He pulled back out immediately in alarm. Green eyes flew open, looking up at him. “What are you doing? No. Don’t stop,” she moaned, still writhing under the attention he was giving her clit.

  “Oh. I thought that was a—” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

  Without waiting, he found her opening and slid back inside, an inch at a time. She could take him entirely, but he needed her to be ready for him. Just burying himself completely would be more than she could—

  Jennifer’s legs curled around him abruptly and pulled, exerting more force than he’d been expecting. There was no stopping it, and in one smooth motion the rest of his cock filled her insides.

  The scream that ripped from her mouth was loud, and wonderful all at once. A second later, her body contorted and nearly ripped her hands free even from his grip as she convulsed.

  “I’m coming!” she gasped, shuddering violently, her muscles contracting as she climaxed around his cock.

  It was the single hottest experience he’d ever had, to the point it took every bit of willpower, focus, and flexing of every other muscle in his body to stop Liam from spilling his seed inside her right then and there.

  “Holy fuck,” they both gasped at the same time.

  Liam let go of her hands and collapsed onto his elbows, still riding the high of watching her orgasm, while fighting back his own desire to do the same.

  Jen, meanwhile, lay limply beneath him, a satisfied smile seemingly permanently plastered to her face as she breathed heavily, skin flushed.

  “Wow,” he managed to find the strength to say. “That was…something.”

  “You’re telling me,” Jen laughed, reaching up to caress his face with one hand.