by Erin Hayes
Anastazie beamed up at her. Both familiar and unfamiliar faces stared at her from around the room. The hushed whispers began to fill Adira’s stomach with dread. Her embrace on Anastazie loosened.
“Where’s Dvorak?”
Constantine tipped his head to Adira. “Awaiting a fair trial, as Alec insisted.”
She stepped away from the small girl and closer to Constantine. “And where’s Alec?”
“He’s…” Constantine dropped his gaze. “I’m sorry, Adira. Alec’s gone.”
“What do you mean he’s gone? Is he—”
“He’s not dead,” Constantine said, putting up his hands. “Or he wasn’t the last I saw him.”
“Then where is he?”
Constantine looked past her now. “The outlands.”
Adira shoved the large man. “The outlands? How could you let him do that?” She pushed him again. “He’ll die out there!”
“There was no stopping him,” Constantine said, unmoved by her outburst. “You know how he gets.”
Hot air pushed through her nose. “I do,” she said. Then she turned on her heel and headed toward the castle doors.
“Wait,” Constantine called, darting into her path. “You can’t go. The people need you.”
“And I need him. Move.” When Constantine didn’t budge, she lifted her hands and used her magic to move him to the side and hold him there. “I’ll be back soon. With Alec.”
As she stormed off the castle grounds, her mind swam, trying to think where he would have gone. It didn’t take her long to figure it out. He would have gone back to where it started.
His family’s farm.
She broke into a breathless jog and did not stop until she arrived. He was sitting outside the crumbling barn, sword in hand.
“Alec,” she called.
He stared right through her.
“Alec!” She ran the rest of the way over to him. “The Sector needs you.”
“They needed their Queen,” he said bitterly. “You left us.”
She walked up to him and pushed the sword from his hand with her mind. Then she wrapped his fingers in her own. “I’m here, Alec.”
His gaze lingered on her lips, then lifted to her eyes. His mouth fell open.
She smiled and gave his hands a gentle squeeze. “It worked, Alec. The Origin spell worked. I can feel it.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed, and tears glazed his eyes. “It killed you. I saw you. You were dead.”
“But it brought me back. And now I need to bring you back, because I can’t do this alone. There’s a whole Sector of people who need you right now.”
He pulled his hands back, his expression turning stony. “No, Adira. They need you. This,” he said, waving to the land around him. “This is where I belong. I failed to protect you before. Failed to protect the Sector. I won’t fail again.”
Adira placed her hands on the sides of his head and stared into his eyes. They still had so much to learn about each other, and yet, she knew everything about him she would ever need to know.
“You didn’t fail,” she whispered. She leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to lips, pausing until she felt his tension melt away. “Now come on. We have a Sector to rebuild.”
“But if the borders fail again—”
She shook her head. “They won’t. Do you trust me?”
“Of course.”
“Then it’s time to go home.”
When the pair returned, the room was even more silent than the first time. Adira leaned in to Alec and whispered, “Why is everyone so quiet?”
“I believe,” Alec whispered back, “that they’re awaiting a statement from their Queen.”
She gave a firm nod, then stepped forward, closer to the center of the great room. “We’ve returned,” she said, and for some reason, that was all it took for the room to erupt into cheers. She raised her hands. “Quiet down,” she ordered, her voice pushing out an authority she didn’t know she had. The energy of the Original Sixteen buzzed through her. “It’s time for change. And this time, we are doing it together.”
And they did.
Adira stepped into her role as Regent, and Alec at her side as King. Dvorak, although exiled from the Inner Sector, was put under the protection of new borders created by Adira with recreated runestones. Anastazie grew up to be the Sector’s healer, and for the first time in a very long time, Sector One’s Regent brought forth an heir:
Arcadia.
About the Author
Rebecca Hamilton is a USA Today Bestselling Paranormal Fantasy author who also dabbles in Horror and Literary Fiction. She lives in Florida with her husband and four kids. She is represented by Rossano Trentin of TZLA and has been published internationally, in three languages. You can learn more about Rebecca and her books below.
Moon Coven
Conner Kressley & Rebecca Hamilton
Moon Coven © 2016 Conner Kressley & Rebecca Hamilton
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
ISBN: 978-1532848797
Moon Coven
Julia's coven has been at war with Roman's for generations. Now their love for each other may be the death of them both.
An arranged marriage with a warlock from a new startup family of witches will finally cement the Fairweather coven’s reign over Savannah and thoroughly crush those pesky Blackwoods once and for all. And it’s up to Julia Fairweather to play the bride.
That proves to be difficult, though, when there’s Roman Blackwood to think about. Julia has never felt a connection like she does with the smug warlock from her coven’s rival family. The heat, the passion—it has no place in a family feud that has stretched on for centuries, and yet, it’s undeniably there.
Julia must move past the way she feels and follow through on what she needs to do for her family. But with Roman refusing to keep his distance, it’s more likely the two will embark on a heated adventure destined to destroy themselves and bring down the two greatest witch families Savannah has ever seen.
Chapter One
It’s strange what you forget, and stranger still the things you miss.
When Julia left this place eighteen months ago, it took all she had not to cry. Savannah was her home. Had been her family’s home before her, and her ancestors’ home before that.
At one time, Julia thought it would be her children’s home, too.
The Uber driver turned left on Abercorn, heading toward Julia’s family’s estate. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”
She didn’t answer. Being back here was too much…too much of everything.
“Oh, you’re ignoring me,” he quipped, finally getting Julia’s attention. “It’s like high school all over again.”
“High school?” she asked, lifting her gaze away from her hands.
From what she could see, which wasn’t much outside of the back of his head and a sliver of eyes in the rear view window, he didn’t look at all familiar. Shaggy brown hair, light blue eyes. He seemed pleasant, though apparently not pleasant enough for her to remember.
“You’re Julia Fairweather, right?” he asked with smiling eyes. “I’m Scott Parker. We had AP Applied Sciences together junior year. We dissected two ends of the same frog if, I re
member correctly.”
“Sorry.” Julia grinned, though inwardly, it was more of a grimace. “I must have blocked it out.”
He took the next left. Home wasn’t far off now. Her pulse raced. Why was she so nervous? This was her family after all, where she belonged. So why did she feel as if she was about to be marched out in front of a firing squad?
“Maybe,” Scott said affably. “Though I don’t think you were paying much attention to it in the first place. Not that I blame you. Who needs to know what the inside of a frog looks like anyway?”
“That depends on how often you use amphibian liver,” Julia mumbled under her breath. “I hear it’s the new eye of newt.”
“What’s that?” Scott pulled to a stop in front of the large white house that had served as Julia’s family home for the last two hundred and fifty years.
She blinked hard. This was it. The black iron rods encapsulating the grounds, the stone gargoyles and steel dragons that those who didn’t know better assumed to be simple decorations…
But Julia knew better. She had seen those trinkets put to use. Had seen them hurt more than a few people, including one person who meant more to her than she cared to admit at the moment.
She shifted her attention back to Scott. “It was nice to see you again,” she said. “Glad you’re doing well.”
“I wouldn’t call it well.” He threw his car into park and turned toward her. “I sort of flaked out after graduation, but I’m in night school now, working toward getting my real estate license.”
Now that she could see his face fully, she did remember him. Not by name, of course. Her sort didn’t socialize with baseline mortals much, not even as children. But she did get a sense that she had seen that face before and, at a time when she was feeling more than a little on edge, it helped calm her somehow.
“We all have different definitions of success,” Julia offered.
“I get that.” His face turned toward the huge house she grew up in, eyes going wide.
Julia smiled softly. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“I’d love to test that theory,” he said in the same voice everyone did when they saw this house but didn’t see the price you had to pay to live in it. “You know,” he said with a chuckle, “when we were kids, the guys on my street thought this place was haunted. They thought you guys were witches or something.”
“Imagine that.” She smirked, refusing to meet his gaze. “Well, I should—” The breath caught in her throat when she saw it. Faint red spots dotted underneath Scott’s right eye.
Blood vessels that had burst.
She shook her head, sighing loudly. They could have been nothing. They could have been just a result of a few late nights or a few drunken benders. Lord knows she wouldn’t have looked at them twice back in Iowa. But Julia wasn’t in Iowa anymore. She was back home. In Savannah. Back home with her family.
Back home with her coven.
“Really, Mother?” Julia said, sitting back and folding her arms over her chest. “You don’t trust me enough to let me take an Uber back from the airport?”
“What?” Scott grinned nervously. “I don’t think I understand.”
“I’m warning you, Mother. I will tell him.”
“Tell me what?” Scott asked.
When still Julia didn’t get the response she was looking for, she said, “Those blotches under your eyes are physical symptoms of a spell.”
“What’s that now?” He tilted his head to the side, probably thinking that she had lost her mind. But the other presence in Scott’s body knew better.
“A spell. As in magic—particularly witchcraft.” She rolled her eyes, growing more and more agitated by the moment that her mother was holding out from revealing herself. “You weren’t wrong about my family, Scott. You were just in the wrong place.”
“Ummm… Are you all right?” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I mean, I’d heard you had lost your mind or something, but I figured that was a rumor.”
Julia winced. That hurt more than a little. She had hoped she’d been gone long enough that her little ‘incident’ might have been forgotten. Apparently, she’d been wrong.
It hadn’t been her, though. Not really. But there was little need in explaining that to a mortal like Scott. He wouldn’t have believed what she was, let alone the reasons she left. No one could.
Julia pushed the emotions down and gave Scott a stony stare. “Be that as it may, you’re not exactly learned in this particular area.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Consider us on opposite sides of the frog again, Scott. And you have no idea what you’re about to find.” She leaned forward. “This particular spell you find yourself under has the curious effect of letting another person—a witch or a warlock—see through your eyes. It’s why you’re starting to blotch up under there. From all the pressure. Now, if the witch that spelled you also opted to use mandrake root—and since it’s my mother, I’m fairly certain she did—it would also give her added ability of taking control of your body for a brief time. So, you’ll have to forgive me when I look you in the eyes and say, woman up and talk to me, you bitch!”
The color and expression drained from Scott’s face and was then instantly replaced with the self-aware aloofness that was her mother’s signature expression.
“Oh dear, really now,” Mother said through Scott’s lips, forcing his voice up into an uncomfortable falsetto. “Must you be so dramatic?”
“I don’t know, Mother. It depends. Must you be such a stalker?” Julia shot back. “I guess we’re both going overboard today.”
She rolled Scott’s eyes and put on her best guilt face, which didn’t work as well in this particular visage. “Forgive me if I wanted to look after my daughter. You do know it’s been well over a year since I’ve laid eyes on you. Did you ever think I just wanted to see you sooner?”
Julia opened the door and stepped out. “There’s a thought…”
Scott’s body moved to follow her. “Believe it or not, I’m happy to see you,” Mother said, sticking Scott’s hip out in a way Julia was sure he never would have himself. “This place just hasn’t been the same without you.”
“And I haven’t been the same without it,” Julia answered. “Though I think that was the point.”
“You had a weak moment.” Mother scoffed. “Let’s not make more of it than it is. The important thing is that you’re back now. And not a moment too soon. I assume you heard about what happened?”
“Why else would I be here?” she asked, turning to face the house. “Now get out of that poor man’s head, Mother. You’ve put him through enough.”
“Enough is what you’ve put me through.” She huffed. “Imagine what I thought, finding you up and gone in the dead of night like that. And what I had to tell my friends. Why, they were looking at me with actual pity in their eyes. It was revolting.”
“I’m sorry my breakdown was so hard on you, Mother,” Julia answered. “I’m sure you’ll find a way for me to make it up to you. Now will you please vacate that man, or do I have to get the hose?”
“Fine.” She huffed. “I’ll see you inside. Don’t dawdle.”
After a moment, Julia turned back to Scott. His expression had returned to normal, except for that whole mouth-twisted-into-terror look people get about them after coming out of a spell like this.
“Wh-what on earth just happened?” he asked.
“Nothing you’ll remember,” Julia answered, sticking out her hand. “Do you have any gum?”
“Gum? I just got possessed and you’re asking for gum?!”
“Keep your voice down. It was barely an inhabitation.” She stuck her hand in his jacket pocket and fished around until she found a pack of gum. Pulling it out, she read the list of ingredients.
“Real cinnamon,” she read. “Fantastic.”
Scott stumbled backward. “Get away from me!”
“I will in just a minute,” Julia s
aid, plucking out a piece of gum, wadding it up in her left hand, and blowing on it.
She murmured under her breath, “Forget,” and just like that, the horrible memories that would have no doubt kept Scott up at night vanished forever from his mind. His body relaxed. His face reverted to a polite smile. If only magic were always so easy.
“Well it was really nice to see you,” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets.
“You too, Scott,” Julia said, pulling some crumpled bills from her pocket and handing them to him. “And keep the change. You’ve more than earned it.”
His face lit up freely. “Thanks so much! And have a great night, Julia. I’m sure you’re happy to be home.”
“Something like that,” she said, grabbing her bag.
Walking through the gate, she tried to keep her wits about her. This place could play tricks on you if you let it. God knows she learned that the hard way.
As she neared the house, the door—the one with the crescent marking—opened slowly, beckoning her back to it after all this time.
“Lamb to the slaughter,” she said, swallowing hard.
And then she did the only thing she could do. She went home.
The steps lay at her feet as she paused at the front door. Would this ever feel like home again? Would she ever feel like herself again?
Julia smelled the roses even before she heard her voice, which should have been a dead giveaway. Whether it was by power or preference, Cassandra always smelled like roses.
“There she is,” Julia said.
“My favorite cousin in the world,” she replied, a smile in her voice.
Julia turned to her, relaxing as her eyes fell on Cass’s brown curls and easy smile. She had always been Julia’s favorite person here, and the only one she’d ever dared tell about what happened last year.
About Roman.
“It’s not like the competition is very stiff,” Julia said, walking over and scooping into a hug the only person she had really missed.