by Lola Taylor
Keep dreaming, girl.
She thought she had an advantage to keeping her inner wolf in check, considering she was used to dealing with her powers. Well, at least for the past month. When she’d been a dabbler, a clever little witch who happened to be good at spells, curses, you name it, she hadn’t had to worry much about power supervision. Now, with this darkness inside her swirling, changing, and growing, every day was a constant battle to keep it in check.
Sunlight hit her face as she stepped out onto the pea gravel pathway Alara had spoken of. The gravel was a nice beige color that complemented the vibrant brick-red tiles of the veranda flooring. The air was perfumed with the sharp musk of roses and the sweeter tones of lavender. The air had that cool crispness to it that she’d always loved about fall. Unfortunately, it also had a smattering of dust, thanks to the surrounding forest, the trees of which had begun to shuck their leaves. Her nose started to tingle.
Verika admired the garden as she walked. It was immaculately kept, with tall hedgerows dotted in petite white flowers lining the path. At the fork, Verika took a left as instructed, and she found herself in a rose garden. White, yellow, red, pink, burgundy, blue, orange…the full blossoms danced in the chilly fall breeze, reminding her of home and her mother’s love for flowers.
A pang of homesickness went through her. It had crossed her mind more than once that she might not ever get to hug her mother or father again before this all played out.
Don’t think like that. You’ll make it. You all will.
At least, she hoped so. Prayed so.
After a few winding turns of lovely rose, lavender, and baby’s breath flower beds, the stone angel came into view. Centered in a courtyard of pearly tiles, the angel looked down on the earth with a benevolent smile, her long hair flowing over enormous tucked-in wings. Her dress looked like that of a goddess, flowing to the pool of water at her feet and disappearing beneath the gentle waves of the fountain. Three pea gravel paths adjoined the courtyard, leading off to different flower gardens, it looked like.
The courtyard itself was surrounded in lilies: wild, tall blossoms of vibrant orange and pink that rose to Verika’s hips. Pastel-colored pink and white water lilies floated in the fountain. Which, she noted upon inspection, was filled with koi; their orange, white, and black scales shimmered in the sunshine speckling the water.
“Peaceful, isn’t it?”
Verika jumped and whirled. A little yelp flew out of her mouth. She’d been so focused on the beauty around her that she hadn’t felt Alara’s signature until now.
Reckless. What if it had been the enemy?
Silently chastising herself, she smiled sheepishly at Alara as heat crept into her cheeks. “Yeah, it’s pretty, um, private. And quiet. Like your own little secret garden.”
Alara sat on a wide stone bench adjacent from the fountain. She patted the seat next to her.
“It is,” Alara said as Verika stiffly walked over and sat down, keeping a good foot between them. “I come here often when I need to think. Or be alone. Usually with a journal in tow.” She smiled softly.
Verika hesitantly smiled back, fidgeting with her hands on her lap. “I don’t blame you. It’s nice.” She winced. Why was it that everything that came out of her mouth sounded lame? At least where the werewolf princess was concerned.
A moment of silence passed, filled with the music of the babbling fountain. “I don’t expect us to be best friends,” Alara said at last, eyes fixed on the angel. “But I want us to at least make an attempt at liking each other. Our mates will need our strength. And if we’re quarreling over things that happened in the past, we can’t give them our full support for the battle that is to come.”
Verika’s lips turned up slightly. “You remind me of Elijah. He likes to get right to the point.”
Alara barked a laugh. “Probably because I’ve been hanging out with Nik for too long. I never used to be so blunt.” She blinked suddenly. The laughter died on her face as she looked at Verika in question.
“It’s okay.” Verika waved her hands. “I don’t mind you talking about him. Believe me, one Johnson is plenty enough for me to handle.”
Alara’s lips cracked a smile, her shoulders relaxing, and she looked again at the fountain. “I never thought I would find a love so pure as this,” she said quietly, as if afraid to speak about it for fear it would vanish. “I always thought my father would marry me off to some nobleman for power, money, influence, whatever suited him best, the mate-bond be damned. To have found Nik… I still can’t believe how lucky I am.”
Verika smiled. “He needs someone like you. Someone strong yet patient. I can already tell you’re rubbing off on him. He seems more stable. In the office while he was questioning us, I could tell by the way he looked at you how much you mean to him. You steady him.”
Alara’s eyes turned shiny. Blinking, she quickly looked away, though her nails dug into the bench. “I’m…sorry I was so cold to you.” A long sigh. “I knew how much you meant to him—still mean to him—and it intimidated me. Like I could never measure up, somehow.”
Verika was about to insist that was ridiculous, but instead said, “If it’s any consolation, you’re pretty intimidating yourself.”
“How so?”
“Well, you have this whole princess thing working for you. You’re poised, regal. Things that look goofy on me, even when I’m trying.”
Alara pursed her lips. “I suppose that’s one thing that hasn’t worn off in my time away from court. Poise was something my mother and etiquette instructors drilled into me from the time I was old enough to walk.”
Verika tensed. Uh-oh. Was it a sore subject? Crap. She was having a hard time reading this woman.
Talking about anything princessy makes Alara a dour wolf—got it. Add that to the list of topics to avoid.
She didn’t mind having to take extra care with her words. She was used to having to tiptoe around specific topics with certain people at work. Some people didn’t mind opening up about things, but others were more sensitive. Clearly, Alara didn’t think fondly of her time at court.
Or of her family, it seemed.
Verika inwardly frowned. What kind of a family life did Alara have growing up? Something told her they didn’t have many—if any—family nights, where everyone would get together and play board games or charades. She imagined cold, imperial parents who saw not a little girl but an heir to carry on their legacy, to ensure power remained within their line. It made her sad to think someone could grow up with such a distant family when Verika’s childhood had been filled with memories of baking cookies with her mother, watching football with her father, and magic lessons spent with the ever-patient Satine.
Verika winced, thinking about her.
“What’s wrong?” Alara asked, watching her carefully.
Double-crap. She hadn’t realized she’d outwardly winced. Alara had a way of frazzling her—and making her feel like a clumsy country bumpkin. She was so cultured, refined. And Verika was, well, not. “My mentor was murdered,” she blurted.
Alara’s eyes widened in shock.
“It was by a werewolf,” Verika went on quickly. “A man named Gerard.”
Verika swore the other wolf’s spine snapped straight, and she stopped breathing altogether. “Where did you see him?”
“In Florida.” Verika leaned back slightly as Alara leaned in. “He kidnapped my parents and tried to kill Elijah.”
“What happened to him?”
Uh-oh. Now it was her turn for a topic she wanted to avoid.
When it became clear Alara wasn’t going to drop it, she simply told the truth. Filled with dread that Alara would look upon her with loathing for the murderer she was, Verika braced herself.
“I killed him,” she whispered.
A dark, lovely smile seeped across Alara’s mouth as she gazed at Verika with cold satisfaction. “Verika, I believe you just became my favorite witch.”
Elijah stared at the brand in the b
athroom mirror. A tattoo artist would have been drooling over it. Whorls and knots and writing too small for him to read wove in and out of the design, looking like a coiled serpent.
A masterpiece made of blood and magic.
Even he had to admit—it looked cool as shit. Coupled with all the scars marring his body, the brand definitely brought up his badassness on the Badass Meter. But the way it shimmered faintly in the light, the subtle heat it put off…
Shit.
Elijah dove for the toilet in time to hurl his guts. Of which there wasn’t much left to hurl, considering he’d spent the past fifteen minutes since Verika had been gone doing just that.
Groaning, he flushed the spittle and sat up on wobbly knees.
Magic, magic, magic…
Swearing, he went to the sink and splashed cold water on his flushed face. He’d noticed the subtle rise in his temperature when he’d woken up, an ache settling into his muscles that heralded an oncoming fever.
You’re just exhausted. There’s no such bullshit “brand infection” or whatever the hell she called it.
He prayed Mistress Black was staying true to form and just screwing with him. The body aches could easily be from overexertion while hauling ass across the nation to find his brothers. The low-grade fever could be some bug he picked up from one of the shitholes they’d stayed in along the way.
He cringed. One of the inns, some run-down roach motel in the Middle-of-Nowhere, America, had more insects staying at it than people. He could smell the filth a mile away, and had tried convincing Verika to reconsider the forest. At least the bugs belonged there.
But she’d insisted on sleeping in a bed at least one night, and so in the roach motel they went. He swore things were still crawling on him, climbing into places they didn’t need to be. Infecting him with God-knew-what.
So help him, he swore never again to subject himself, or his mate, to that kind of bullshit.
Glaring at himself in the mirror, he growled, “Come on, you ragged son of a bitch. You’re not sick—or scared of magic. Stop being such a pussy and suck it up.”
His spine straightened. Nothing like a little tough-love self-talk to get a wolf going.
He opted for a shower, turned the heat high, let the steam billow and build. He practically purred as the luxurious soaps and shampoos cleansed his body. Hot damn, it was nice to stay somewhere decent. More than decent—downright five-star-worthy accommodations.
The manor screamed “old money.” All the expensive furnishings and high-end knickknacks weren’t just the work of a handful of wolves—it had taken a few generations of packs living here to acquire this kind of moolah.
For a second, jealousy flared in Elijah’s chest. He’d chased money, had lost everything he had on some crack dream that hadn’t panned out. Dive in first, ask business questions later. Like how to actually run a business, for starters. And what a legitimate business actually looks like.
One juicy idea in particular had caught his eye a few years ago, promising him thousands of dollars a month if he would only do “this one simple thing.” The bills had been piling up, due in part to his inability to say no to his drug addictions. But rehab hadn’t sounded like much fun, and he was so wretched back then he preferred the dream world the drugs created over harsh reality.
At any rate, the phrase “thousands of dollars a month” made him salivate. The website he’d found the bogus offer on hadn’t looked very professional, but hey, he wasn’t one to judge. Maybe they were a start-up and had limited funds. Which, in hindsight, meant they weren’t even making those thousands of dollars with their own business. Lesson learned? Don’t be so goddamn gullible, especially when you were desperate. Maybe then he wouldn’t have blown his savings and maxed out his credit cards to make some scam artist in some remote part of the world rich.
Of course, it wasn’t ’til later on, after he was stealing chicken from the food buffet at the grocery store so he wouldn’t have to make a pit stop by the Dumpster drive-thru, that he discovered he was just another victim of a “get rich quick” scheme. But at that point in his life, he’d been so desperate for cash, so eager to have some funding for that next fix, that he’d tried and done just about anything to get it.
Which was probably why he ignored all the warning bells when Mistress Black had crashed into his life.
Mistress Black had the art of entrepreneurship all figured out. Fanning herself with one-hundred-dollar bills and handing out fifties as if they were candy, she’d easily been able to back up her promise to make him “wealthy beyond imagination.” What he hadn’t realized when he’d taken up her offer to come live with her was that he’d literally just sold his soul to the devil wearing Jimmy Choo and Valentino.
He’d just gotten out of jail—again. The police down at the local station had even gotten a name plaque for him made out of cardboard and Sharpie and had posted it outside his cell. “His” cell, because he practically lived there. Looting, stealing, fraud…they were all drugs to him, as potent as any smack he could find on the streets.
Get that next high, so he could feel alive, feel free, feel something other than regret for abandoning his brothers and resenting the lifestyle change becoming a werewolf had brought upon him. Stay doped up so he could ignore his quickly growing pile of problems.
Mistress Black had been an epic high. Sure, early on he’d convinced himself it was love, that she was his one and only and all that.
He snorted. His lovesick pup self hadn’t even known what real love was. What he’d felt for Mistress Black was foreign and shallow compared to the depth of emotion he felt for Verika. He thanked God every day she’d come into his life. It scared him to think where he’d have ended up if she hadn’t.
Probably six feet under, by an unmarked gravestone. If he was lucky enough to get one of those.
A quiet knock came at the suite door as he was stepping out of the shower and toweling off. A moment later, the door opened. Sensing his mate’s signature, he smiled mischievously and set down the pants he’d been about to pull on.
“Elijah?” came Verika’s soft voice from the other room.
“In here,” he called, grinning. “Still trying to be polite, I see. You know I don’t mind you walking in on me.”
“What can I say? Old habits die hard.” She stopped in the doorway when she saw him, her eyes slowly raking over his body in a hungry way that made him harden.
He reciprocated the favor. Damn, did she look sexy. The outfit was a bit snug. Didn’t surprise him the spare clothes in the closet were made to fit slimmer bodies. Most she-wolves he knew were lean and muscular. Before meeting Mistress Black, he’d bedded a few of them, especially when the moon was full and his werewolf instincts were at their peak. But Verika’s curves and the softness of her skin were the first things he’d noticed when he’d touched her.
The curves and texture of her skin were not breakable but…nice. Feminine. Delicate.
Addicting.
And the more he touched those curves, the more he craved her.
His eyes rested on the thin material that covered her breasts. Those he’d especially come to appreciate, though every inch of her was beautiful. The tunic—wasn’t that what they called those things that looked like too-long T-shirts?—had a low neckline that immediately had him giving the designer props.
“My face is up here, you know,” she chided playfully, though her own eyes remained locked on his sex.
“Could say the same to you,” he purred as he walked closer. He let the towel fall out of his grip and raised both hands to her hips. He heard her heart speed up and her breath catch as he leaned in to kiss her.
Verika couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.
Elijah’s arresting touch had her pinned to the spot, her eyes lowering to his parted lips as he leaned in. Her eyes fluttered shut as their mouths touched, and he coaxed her lips open. His tongue slipped into her mouth, raking along hers and making her groan. She leaned into him as he
deepened the kiss, guiding her to the bathroom countertop. Grabbing her rear, he gently lifted her up so she sat on it, her legs straddling him.
His erection rubbed against her sex through the soft cotton leggings, making her core burn that much hotter.
When she’d walked in and seen him naked, the sudden need to mate with him had become unbearable. Even with their Blood Moon over, Elijah had said she might be a bit, well, hornier than usual.
Boy, had that been an understatement.
Her breath quickened as he broke the kiss to trail those sinful lips down her throat and onto her breasts. “Elijah,” she breathed, digging her nails into his biceps. Every inch of him was a weapon, a beautiful, scarred force of nature that made her pulse race and her breath tremble.
He paused just long enough with his barrage of kisses to give her a breathless, “Yeah?”
“I—we—Gage will be here soon.”
“But he’s not here yet.”
Damn good point.
He didn’t wait for an answer or another protest. Gripping the hem of her shirt, he pulled it up and over her head, where it then joined his wet towel on the floor. The bra came next. Her breasts tingled as they grazed his hard, bare chest; his mouth crashed onto hers once more. His kisses were hungry, demanding. She groaned low in her throat, feeling feverish all over.
Elijah’s hand trailed down her hips, cupping her sex. He rubbed his thumb against her most sensitive spot, which flared white-hot at his experienced touch.
Her back arched, and she rocked her hips against his hand. “Elijah…”
He at last growled a curse. “Damn tights.”
“They’re leggings, actually,” she started to say, when he gripped the pants and yanked so hard they ripped. The sound of tearing fabric—followed by shredded panties—only served to turn her on more. Which, considering her heightened state of arousal, she would have thought to be impossible.
“Finally,” Elijah grumbled, lowering to his knees. Gripping each thigh with those hot, callused hands she loved so much, he spread her legs wide and raked his tongue over her. A cry of pleasure burst from her lips, which she promptly silenced with a clapped hand over her mouth. His tongue became hungry, insistent. She gripped the edge of the countertop, moaning as he brought her to climax.