her enchanted

by Hartley, Emilia

  All he knew was the gray-green of her eyes and the tiny pout of her lips. He felt assaulted by her presence. He was unable to look away as he walked past, spinning to maintain eye contact. She reached out for him. Her lips widened, as if she shouted something. He lurched away and turned back to his task.

  She was nothing.

  She was no one.

  He needed to protect his mate.

  Mate.

  The gray-green eyes filled his mind again. The corners had been sad, but her irises had burned defiantly. He wanted to hold onto her, but each step blew away another feature until there was nothing more than that color in his mind.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Her heart was smashed. It was a million tiny pieces on the sidewalk. Caz had looked right at her as if he’d never seen her before in his life. Nessa wanted to scream. In the end, she’d reached for him. She didn’t know what she would do once she grabbed him. Maybe a true love’s kiss could have broken Hillary’s curse. Maybe she could have shaken some sense into him.

  It was too late now. Caz turned away from her and walked on. She could run after him and try to take him home, but that wouldn’t end the nightmare they were living. Hillary would still come running back to him. The warlock told her that Hillary was trying to use the pack as a shield against him. The witch thought that if she amassed enough shifters that he wouldn’t think about coming after her.

  It was only a matter of time until she found a way to sink her claws into the pack. If Nessa could stop Hillary, she could save everyone. She had to focus on that to keep herself from running down the street to catch Caz.

  She slipped through the front door of the hotel, her chin held high as if she belonged there. Chandeliers of crystal hung from the ceiling and ornate rugs directed the flow of traffic from door to desk and desk to elevator. It was an old hotel, and a pricey one. Of course, Hillary had stationed herself here.

  The elevator doors gleamed stainless steel as Nessa approached. They reflected a face of confidence and eyes that knew the cost of failure. The elevator glided soundlessly up several floors. Nessa stopped it before the fifth floor where she’d seen Hillary’s face. On the fourth floor, she stepped out and peered up and down the hall.

  The smell of carpeting and a million bodies tickled her nose. Humans covered everything that smelled slightly offensive with other, heady scents. To shifters, that meant layers of head-spinning odors. The chemical smell of air freshener and cleaning products barely covered up the sweat of human bodies. There was even the smell of chlorine from the first-floor pool and jacuzzi, dotted along the hall like the ghost of footsteps.

  Her mission was to find the pouches Hillary used for her magic. The warlock said there would be a number of them hiding around Hillary’s room. He was woefully unhelpful when she asked where Hillary might have hidden them. He’d only shrugged and gestured up at the hotel before telling her they could be anywhere from the fourth floor to the sixth.

  Nessa had sighed in his face, clearly annoyed with his inability to be exact. He hadn’t taken it personally. Instead, he’d waited for her to get moving with an expectant look on his face. Later, she would shower and scrub her skin raw. She even debated burning Regina’s dress.

  While the enemy of an enemy was supposed to be a friend, it didn’t mean she could trust the warlock. He might have promised not to enslave them, but if she proved useful, he might try anyway. It was clear from the beginning that he liked cat shifters. How many others had he tied to him?

  Nessa wouldn’t be the next.

  She padded along the hall, searching for that sour scent that clung to everything Hillary made. It was hard to detect among the noise that was the smells of humanity, but eventually, Nessa found the first pouch. Tucked between the ice machine and the floor was a little, burlap pouch. The smell of it made her gag as she stepped closer. She managed to keep her coffee down as she tugged the strings keeping it closed.

  The pouch released tiny bones tied into the shape of a sigil and a handful of herbs. They made the skin of her palm tingle. She jerked her hand back as if burned. The contents fell to the floor where she ground them beneath her heel. Nearby was a maid’s cart. She chucked the pouch into the cart and felt the air clear around her.

  Hillary’s first protection spell was gone.

  She only had to find four more between three floors. It was no easy feat, but she felt like the heroine of an old Greek myth. If she could complete this task, she was one step closer to freeing her mate from the hands of a witch.

  When she was done, and Caz was himself, he was getting a lecture on sleeping with witches. It wouldn’t be an issue, but Nessa needed to get it off her chest. After all she’d done to free him from the witch’s clutches, Nessa figured he owed her coffee and sex every day for the rest of their lives. Maybe not in that order.

  Also, maybe in that order.

  A familiar voice filled the hall. Around the corner, Hillary screeched at a maid, and Nessa’s heart leapt into her throat. The sound grew closer. She scanned the hall. There was nowhere to hide. She was caught in the open. Hillary would see her if she stepped around the corner.

  But, she didn’t. Nessa was grateful Hillary didn’t have the olfactory senses of a shifter. The witch would have noticed Nessa’s presence almost immediately. Her heart thundered as she pressed her hand over it. She could hear nothing above the roar of it as she pushed forward.

  Nessa was confident that Hillary would not risk enslaving her the way she had Caz. She would not keep a pair of mates for fear of the bond breaking whatever magic she used to hold them. Should she catch Nessa, it would come down to a fight. Trying to avoid the witch altogether, she stepped back toward the elevator and took it up to the sixth floor.

  There, she sniffed out two more pouches. They were filled with the same contents. How many tiny creatures had died to create the bone sigils? The power Hillary and her warlock husband drew upon was tainted with death. Nessa wanted neither anywhere near her home, or those she loved. She prayed to whatever higher power might be listening that this would end quickly.

  All she had to do was find two more of the pouches. Two more and the spell would drop, allowing the warlock to enter the hotel. Then, he could deal with his wife and this would be over. She repeated the words like a mantra. The scent of the pouches was making her stomach uneasy. Bile burned her throat and rose to sear the top of her mouth.

  There, taped beneath the windowsill at the end of the hall, was the fourth pouch. Nessa snatched it just as a family of four left their room. She hid it behind her back as they passed. The pouch made her hand numb, and the wife of the family gave her an odd look. It wasn’t like Nessa could open and spill the dark magic in front of the woman’s toddlers.

  They lingered near the elevators, waiting for the doors to open. Unable to wait, Nessa ran for the stairwell. There, she struggled to open the pouch. The small area seemed to spin around her. The stairs loomed before her. They threatened to gobble her up.

  She stumbled back just as the pouch opened. Her head still spun, but she managed to dump its contents and break the bone sigil inside. Just like that, the room snapped back into place. Still, her stomach churned, and the front of her head ached.

  The beast inside her made sounds of concern. They begged her to stop, to sit and breathe. Hillary’s magic had a stronger effect than she’d considered. Nessa managed to drop onto the top step. There, she waited for the pain in her head to fade, but it still pounded with a furious rhythm.

  The spell could be broken, but it would hurt her. No—it was going to kill her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Nessa let her head fall against the kitchen counter. She’d failed the task the day before, missing one of Hillary’s protection pouches. Yet, the cost had still been high. Her whole body ached with a throbbing pain she was unaccustomed to. When she’d looked at herself in the mirror, her skin was waxen and the circles beneath her eyes were nearly purple.

  The warlock had been unable to enter th
e hotel at all. She’d watched him try for at least an hour, his hand red and swollen as if he’d stuck it in a wall of fire. He’d gone off on her for being unable to find the last pouch, when in truth she hadn’t even tried. Nessa had barely been able to direct herself to the elevator, fearing that she would tumble head first if she tried the stairs.

  Now, the warlock stood in her living room. He clasped his hands behind his back and studied the photographs on her wall. Upstairs, she hung artistic photography. Lia had teased her for the lack of sentimentality, but Nessa was grateful in that moment. It gave him no clues to her life or the people she loved.

  “What do we do now? Do you have any better plans?” Nessa pressed the issue, eager to get this over with. She didn’t even want him in her house, but she would keep paying the price as long as it meant getting Caz back.

  She noticed that his hand had healed. It was smooth, and his nails were neatly manicured once more. Who paid the price for his healing, she wondered? Did he have shifters chained to him, the way Hillary chained shifters to herself? Nessa wanted to hate this man, but his cheeky grin slipped away, and he let out an exasperated sigh.

  She could see the dark circles beneath his eyes then. His shoulders sagged, and he stepped closer to claim a stool on the other side of the counter. She felt sorry for him, but she didn’t know why. This problem was between Hillary and her husband, yet it had spilled out and affected others.

  “I’ll trade you a tall glass of iced coffee if you tell me the story behind your disaster marriage.”

  He gave her a small smile. The centers of his irises weren’t cinder-red, like she’d expected. If there had ever been a fire in them, it was now dead. “Sure. We can do that.”

  Nessa took a long moment, filling his glass with ice and pouring the black cold-brew over it. When she passed it over to him, without a silly straw, she gestured to the cream sitting on the counter. He drank it black, throwing back half of it before shifting his shoulders.

  “Hillary and I discovered our powers together. It was fun, to play with the threads of the universe with someone like her by my side. She was exciting and daring. There were things she would do that I would never dream of. Before long, I fell in love with her. When I proposed, it was her idea to make it a magically binding ritual.

  “I didn’t realize she was trying to use it to steal my power, fool that I was. The first year was marital bliss. Then Hillary started to pull on my magic. It was small, then she reached deeper and deeper until I thought she might kill me. It hurt the whole time; it hurt like hell. Felt like she was ripping my soul from my body. Maybe she was.

  “Well, I got smart and figured out that she screwed up the ritual. The power draw went both ways. I learned how to fight back. I stopped her from hurting me, but she got a taste for the power and she turned to hurting others for it. You could say it was a slippery slope, but I think it was always in her nature. I was just blind to it for the longest time.”

  His story wove a tapestry of pity in Nessa. She wanted to hate him, but the words he spilled before her felt like the truth. She couldn’t believe what Hillary had put him through. When she spoke, her voice was small. “What will you do when you find her?”

  He straightened his spine, eyes still on the half-full glass of coffee before him. “I’m going to bind her power. It might bind mine, but it’s the only thing I can do to stop her from hurting others.”

  He was right. Nessa was touched by his sacrifice, even if it might not end up as one in the end. He was willing to do what was right, even if it meant losing his own power. Nessa couldn’t imagine losing the beast inside her. She thought she would do anything to keep it, but the longer she thought about it, the more she realized that was a lie.

  She’d give it up to save Caz.

  The beast nodded in agreement. She was fine with that trade, should it ever some to that. The life of their mate was far more important than any magic. Nessa could feel a hot tear drip down her cheek. She turned to hide it from the warlock at her counter.

  Don’t trust him, she told herself. There was a possibility that the story he’d strung together was a lie. Yet, she ached for his cause. Either way, they were going to stop Hillary from hurting anyone else. She would see to it personally.

  Nessa had always let the world move past her. She’d slept half her life away, unable to catch up with anything that happened around her. Since she’d met Caz, it felt as though she’d jumped into the middle of a raging river without a raft. Somehow, perhaps through conviction, she’d managed to keep her head above water.

  “What do I have to do today?” Work was a distant memory. She’d given up on calling in. She couldn’t count the number of days she’d missed at this point. She decided that if she could get Caz back, they would go somewhere. They would see the world like they both wanted.

  No, not if.

  When.

  She was going to get him back. It would happen, because she would let no one stop her.

  “If we can’t find all of her protection sachets, then we will have to draw her out. You aren’t going to like my idea.”

  Cold pooled in her stomach. What would she do to rescue Caz and stop Hillary? Anything. After a moment, Nessa nodded for him to keep going.

  “I have to take the thing that she wants from her. That means I’ll have to enchant the pack. It’s the only thing that will draw her out into the open.”

  Her stomach churned. “You think she’s brave enough to challenge you if you take this from her?”

  The warlock nodded confidently when she turned around. “It’s the only way. Hillary has to be drawn out of her nest. Once we do that, she’ll be defenseless.”

  “What if she uses the bond to draw on your magic and gets control over the pack?” Nessa didn’t know how any of this worked. She prayed that Hillary wouldn’t be able to take them from him. She didn’t want to let him do this, but she had no other choices.

  She wasn’t even sure she could stop him if he set his mind to it. All she could do was break the spell he’d woven. She hadn’t seen him pull out any components or pouches. Did his spell craft work differently? Nessa knew nothing about witches and magic. The only magic she knew was the immutable power that turned her from human to cat with minimal pain.

  Her beast steadied her. They could undo whatever this warlock cast. Even if Nessa was unsure, it believed for her. It believed so resolutely that it felt like a fact. The faith of her beast gave her the ability to roll her shoulders back. She threw back the rest of her coffee and retreated to get dressed for the day.

  She donned a cute baby-doll dress that was easy to get in and out of, for shifting convenience, and imagined Caz taking it off her. The hem barely skimmed her thighs. She imagined his reaction to seeing her legs again, craved the hunger that would be written on his face. He might have been a brute on the outside, but there was a broken soul inside him that needed her.

  As she searched for a pair of slip-on shoes, a growl slithered up her throat. Caz might have broken himself, but he’d done it in the name of others. All the pain he’d gone through to protect not only his own pack, but the humans of Monterey had been selfless. Nonetheless, his actions created the fissure inside him, allowing Hillary a place to dig her claws in.

  Nessa would have words with Nikolai later. Most likely, he’d learned to pick up his messes after the incident with the last shifter his father made, but she still needed someone to yell at and Nikolai would let it roll off him.

  Back in the living area, she plucked her keys off the table and announced that they’d be taking her car. She would pretend it was broken again, a reasonable excuse to show up unannounced. The warlock folded his too tall frame into the passenger seat of her car. It would have been laughable if the aura of his power hadn’t hit her.

  Crammed into the small space, the power threatened to carve into her spine. It made her joints ache and her temples throb. It was almost as bad as undoing Hillary’s pouch spells. Her beast rose and pushed out its power to
create a bubble around her, but it didn’t stop her from feeling like she was suffocating.

  Thankfully, the garage was only down the street. In a matter of minutes, Nessa was parked and lurching out of the driver’s seat. The warlock, whose name she’d yet to ask, watched her curiously. She had no voice to tell him to mind his own business. Not when she thought she might vomit if she opened her mouth.

  As she suspected, all eyes grazed over her as if she weren’t there. Many of them lighted on the warlock. They rightfully identified him as a threat, their posture shifting into defensive stances. Nessa stepped between them to stem any fight that might have happened otherwise.

  She didn’t need any male posturing today. Her blood was seconds away from boiling. The need to go directly to Caz threatened to overwhelm her with each step toward the shifters in the garage.

  To her surprise, the young man Caz once yelled at stepped away from the pack. His brows were flat over his eyes, flicking from her to the warlock behind her every so often.

  “We don’t want you here,” he said, finally.

  She glanced back at the warlock, but he wasn’t doing anything offensive yet. “Just pretend he’s not there. I try to do it from time to time.”

  “I don’t mean him. Go home, kitty shifter. We don’t want you anywhere near our Pack.”

  Her stomach hit the concrete floor beneath her. That was not what she’d been expecting. Hillary had wiped their minds of her last time. She’d expected the same but was served with hatred. Slowly, she scented the air in search of another spell she could break.

  There was no hint of Hillary’s power.

  “Did you hear me? Run on home. Every time you show up, Caz’s life gets worse and worse. He handed over his role as Alpha and ran away to get away from you.”

  The beast inside her hissed in defiance. “Now you listen to me, boy. Casimir Frost is my mate and I will not have you placing blame on my shoulders. I am killing myself to get him back while you sit on your heels here. What have you done for him? Huh?”