Shifters - The Jade Forest Chronicles 1

by Vivienne Neas

  Muriel called the meeting to order, and the room quieted down. My father was sitting at the table with the eight other council members, with Muriel at the head of the table. I was standing in the corner, hands behind my back. I was allowed to sit in on the meeting because of my going to Mr. Gray, even if Muriel had been furious at first.

  “First order of business, the cemetery,” she said. “I have received a considerable offer on the land.”

  “Who from?” A woman at the other side of the table cleared her throat after she spoke.

  Muriel lifted a page and scanned the next document. “Chandre Crowe.”

  Chandre Crowe was the high priestess. Everyone knew that. There was a collective gasp, followed by a ripple through the council members.

  Muriel glanced up at them. “She is an eligible member of society, and we can use the money. Selling the land will take the power and the war away from us.”

  “How?” I asked.

  Muriel paused midway through the start of her next sentence and turned to look at me. The other members did too. My dad’s eyes shot fire at me.

  I swallowed, realizing I was out of order. “I just don’t understand how selling to the witches will remove the power. From what I can tell, it’s drawing the fight to us.”

  Muriel shook her head. She was irritated with me, but she opened her mouth to grace me with an answer nevertheless. I glanced at my dad. He was watching Muriel, too, waiting for her to admonish me for speaking out of line.

  “It’s getting rid of property that, right now, we own. The power is drawing the fight to us because it’s still our land. Once we don’t own the land anymore, whatever happens on the land won’t be our problem.”

  No admonishing, then. My dad exhaled slowly.

  “But it’s right next door to us. It’s on the edge of the reserve. Do we really want a war between werewolves and witches right next to us?”

  Muriel narrowed her eyes at me. “Who said anything about a war with the werewolves and the witches?”

  I swallowed.

  “Why do you think there will be a war?” she persisted. “Why will the werewolves want what belongs to the witches?”

  I wasn’t supposed to know about the power in the ground. I wasn’t supposed to know that the werewolves would do anything to get it because it belonged to them – because the corpses had werewolf magic that drew them. No one knew what the power was.

  “I just thought that there’d be a war considering that they arrived when I was talking to Mr. Williams.”

  Muriel looked at me for a moment longer before speaking, like she wasn’t sure I was telling the truth. Then she laughed. It was a high-pitched, condescending laugh, the kind that you hear when you’re trying to be a grown-up but you’re just a child and you don’t know what you’re talking about.

  “You don’t need to worry about that, dear,” she said. “It was kind of you to inform Mr. Gray, even though it would have been wise to come to me first, but your involvement isn’t necessary from here on out. We know what we’re doing.” She turned her back to me, facing the council again. “We will proceed with the legalities.”

  There were nods all around, except from my dad, who was still looking at me like I was going to be in trouble later. After a moment his gaze slid to Muriel, and he nodded as well.

  “What if it does turn into a war?” I asked.

  Muriel’s back was to me, but I saw her stiffen. “What?” She didn’t turn around to talk to me.

  My father shook his head at me, trying to get me to stop.

  “What if a war does happen? How will that affect us? How will that affect the werewolves?”

  Now Muriel turned. She frowned. “Why does it matter what will happen to the werewolves?”

  My father went from shaking his head at me to looking at the table. He wasn’t going to get up and raise his voice. He wasn’t going to get involved. Wasn’t that just brilliant of him?

  “I’m just saying,” I went on, “that if we offer the witches power like that and it backfires, causing problems for other species, wouldn’t that be something on our conscience?”

  Muriel’s arms were hanging at her sides. I knew that she was accessing her element. Then her eyes changed. They had a glassy quality to them, and the atmosphere in the room became so heavy it was hard to breathe.

  “We do not involve ourselves with other species. We do not care for them. We look out for our own, and if the rest perish because of their ways, that’s not our problem.”

  I nodded, feeling like I was choking. I wanted to raise my hands to my throat, but they were pinned across my chest where I’d crossed them. I looked around the table, where the council was sitting quietly. They were frozen, too, but they didn’t look distressed. Just me, then.

  “That’s enough out of you,” Muriel said, the line that should have belonged to my father.

  The atmosphere changed abruptly, and a second later it was as if I had never been frozen. But I’d gotten the message. I groaned inwardly and left the room.

  They didn’t care about other species. They believed the way forward was to isolate the fae from those who were aggressive, to keep us all safe. But if we didn’t know how to defend ourselves, it was a problem. And I knew that we were all going to be in trouble if something wasn’t done soon.

  Besides, I cared about other species. About werewolves. About one wolf in particular.

  “Where are you going?” Fern appeared next to me.

  “I have some personal business to attend to.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder, stopping me from marching on. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, if I can help it.”

  She looked at me, her eyes deep green and expectant. I waited for her to tell me I was making a mistake. She was fae, after all, and fae stuck to rules. That was how we lived our lives. We were cowards, dammit.

  Of course, Fern wouldn't tell me something like that. She would encourage me. She was a hell of an influence. Just when I needed to talk sense into me.

  “And if you can’t?” she asked.

  “Then there’ll be a war.”

  “How do you know?”

  I hesitated for a moment. What was I going to say to her?

  I looked up at the sky. I was running out of time. I had to get to Balfour, and back before sunset. It wasn’t just because of my curfew. The magic coming from the cemetery was worse at night, and the witches weren’t going to wait for a legal document to claim it. Neither were the wolves. They didn’t sit around and wait for paperwork. Just the fae did that.

  Useless.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said. “I really have to go now.”

  “Let me come with you.”

  Oh no. “I can't. This isn't a game, Fern.”

  “Which is why you need backup.”

  I groaned on the inside. This was getting too big for me.

  “Stay here. Cover for me when you can. I need you here.”

  Fern opened her mouth to argue. I gave her a quick hug and walked to my car.

  I paused just before getting in. “If they stop me before I get to him, all hell will break loose.”

  An I-knew-it look came over her face.

  “Him?”

  I didn’t have time to explain. I got in the car and turned the key in the ignition. Time was running out, and I still had so far to go.

  I had never been to Milford. The human town was a place fae avoided. We knew where it was, and we knew what humans were, but we never went near them.

  The town was a lot like the reserve. It was laid out with the same kind of structure, but when I drove into town a sense of freedom struck me. The reserve felt restraining. Maybe that was because of my life and the fact that I was always just another number. We were all so damn equal, there was nothing about any of us that made us individual.

  Here, everything was different. The humans were rich and poor, well-dressed and ragged, upbeat or depressed, and they all
lived together in the big tangle that was life. And it was beautiful. I wanted it.

  But I had to focus. I needed to find Balfour.

  The wolves had to be here. It was the only place that offered accommodations, and I knew the wolves wouldn’t have gone back to the Jade Forest. Not yet. Not until the land was theirs. The upside of wolves being in a human town was the fact that they would be the only living creatures with a power signature. I would be able to find them with no interference at all.

  I pulled to the side of the road and closed my eyes, focusing on what I felt, what I sensed. The humans all felt like white noise – a great span of nothing. I picked up the wolves fast enough. They weren’t far away, either.

  I put the car in gear and followed my senses. They brought me to a building called the Crown Inn, a tall, beige structure with a red roof and narrow windows.

  I walked into the lobby. The desk clerk looked important behind a tall counter. I walked up to her.

  “I’m looking for… ah…”

  What was I going to say? Who was I going to ask for? The wolves kept low profiles around humans. Did they check in under different names? It would seem strange to ask for someone by the name of Balfour.

  She looked at me, frowning. Her fingers hovered over a keyboard, ready to type in a name.

  A throat was cleared behind me, and when I turned he was standing at the bottom of the stairs, hands in his pockets, looking very casual. But no matter how casual Balfour tried to look, his eyes were sharp, blue like the sky, and intense.

  “Never mind,” I said, and smiled. I mentally checked my glamour just to be sure the person the desk clerk was seeing wasn’t the woman I really was. Then I turned away from her.

  “You’re here,” Balfour said.

  I nodded and stepped closer to him. The atmosphere changed almost immediately. I’d come here with the intention of talking to him about what was going on, but that all melted away. I was painfully aware of his body, the way his shirt stretched over his muscles. A shiver ran through me when his gaze slid from my eyes to my lips. He felt it too, then. My breath caught in my throat.

  “Why did you come?” His voice was hoarse.

  “I needed to see you.”

  That had come out wrong. I needed to talk to him. This was supposed to be about business.

  “Come up to my room?”

  It would be a mistake to go up there with him. The right thing to do would be to sit in the small seating area I’d spotted off to the side and talk to him there. Going to his room might make me do something I would regret.

  I swallowed hard. “Okay.”

  He held out his hand, an invitation. I took it. It was like I had touched a live wire. Electricity shot through my body, and I saw it reflected in his eyes.

  We barely made it into the room before his lips were on mine. The kiss was raw, full of forbidden passion. He stepped forward, guiding me until my calves hit the bed. We didn’t have much time, but we didn’t need it. His hands were under my shirt, and then he got rid of it. Somewhere along the line I lost my glamour, and then his hands were in my hair. His body pressed up against mine, and I felt the length of his hunger for me pressed against my lower abdomen.

  I wanted him. I wanted him to take me, all of me.

  He growled deep in his throat, as if he knew what I was thinking. His shirt was already off. I wasn’t sure when that had happened. I fiddled with his belt buckle and pulled down his pants, and his erection sprang free. He made quick work of my pants, too, and got rid of my underwear before he laid me on the bed.

  I didn’t have time to think, but I didn’t want to. He crawled over me, and my thighs fell open, and then he pushed against me before he slipped inside.

  I gasped at the feel of his sex, the size of it, the intimacy. He was so close to me now, his face right up against mine, his eyes boring into my soul, almost reaching deeper than his body did inside of me.

  For a moment I wasn’t sure where his body ended and mine began, and then he started moving. With the friction came the power. It built up in the room, hot and fierce, and I drank it in. An orgasm built inside of me as he moved his hips faster, pushing into me and pulling out, leaving me breathless and writhing.

  I was like a cup, filling up with hot water. He was going to push me until I spilled over.

  An orgasm shattered through me, and I dug my nails into his shoulders. That set him off, and he released inside of me. I curled around his body as my core contracted around him, and he clenched and grunted against me.

  And then it was over. He slid out of me, and we lay on the bed panting.

  “What was that?” he asked between breaths.

  I swallowed and tried to rebuild myself. “I don’t know.”

  Whatever it was, it had taken us by surprise and rocked through us.

  “Why are you here?” he asked.

  Right. “They’re going to sell the land to the witches.”

  Balfour propped himself up on one elbow and looked at me, his eyes searching mine. What was he looking for? Truth?

  “Why did you come to tell me?”

  Why, indeed. I wasn’t sure it was just because of the fae and their safety.

  “If the witches get hold of the land, we’re all in trouble,” I said. “I know the land rightfully belongs to the wolves – I’ve felt the power. Do with the information what you will.” Then I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “I have to get back before sunset.”

  I got off the bed and balanced on wobbly legs, getting my clothes together.

  “You’re like a furnace,” he said as I got dressed.

  I stopped and looked at him. “Fire is my element.”

  “I wasn’t talking about your power. I was talking about you.”

  I blushed. When I was dressed, I looked in the mirror and forced the glamour back into place so that I was the blonde-haired, brown-eyed girl anyone could forget.

  Anyone except Balfour.

  Chapter 6 -Balfour