by Brea Viragh
And when the magician threw her down again, laughed at her with a spider’s smile, Odessa thought of Calen, of his light-and-crisp scent like the winter moon given form. She held onto his memory as though it were the rock keeping her from surging down the river.
“You will stay in this place until you learn. The way the others have stayed. You better get used to seeing me, Princess, because mine may well be the last human face you see.”
“Unless—” she began, and the man cut her off.
“Yes. Unless. There is always a slim possibility I will be lenient. I let you have your friend.” He used his nose to gesture to Jean. “A small mercy.”
“A piddling for what you did to the others.”
Odessa thought about what Calen had told her, on how the bodies of her friends, her packmates, had been discovered. Discarded like roadkill and left for the carrion, their majestic pelts strung between trees. No one deserved that kind of torment. That kind of torture.
“Don’t try to fight,” the mage cooed, drumming his fingers on his thighs. “Your body is not built for combat. Although I have heard much of your dancing. Perhaps, one of these evenings, you would grace us with a performance. It would be a distinctive pleasure.”
“I would rather chew off my own leg,” she declared.
“Something that could have been arranged, were you allowed to keep your wolf form. Sadly, she’s been destroyed. A new form has been set in her place.” The mage ripped the cape from her shoulders, leaving her naked and shivering as he adjusted the fabric on his own frame. “You’ll get used to it eventually. The feeling of utter and absolute helplessness. Especially as your human awareness of your daytime plight begins to grow.”
Grow? How could it possibly grow?
Until this point, Odessa had only been dimly aware of her time as a swan, those base animal instincts overriding everything.
She wondered if the mage noticed how often she grabbed onto Jean for comfort. If he would begin to think of using their friendship as a weapon against her—he saw everything, she knew. Was aware of her every breath and movement. Trained for observation.
He had to be, if he’d broken into the engagement party to capture her.
“Do whatever it is you normally do when I am not around,” the sorcerer bid. “Plan and scheme and bide your time until you think you can overturn me. It would be nothing new, but I have other places to be.”
As he left, Odessa attempted to unspool her magic. The gentle thread that had wound through her since birth. The same thread that allowed her to change shape. She sent it seeking, seeking toward the man who had done this to them.
Biting cold slammed into her with spikes that tore through blood and bone. Odessa reeled back as though the magic had taken on physical form. A blow to her earthly body. She sensed dark and anger and pain...
Her jaw clenched, fighting past the sense of despair in that thread, probing a little further into the darkness with whatever shred of magic she had left within her. Pushing past the pain and cold straight into the oily wrongness of the man.
Not natural magic, her senses whispered to her. Nothing she had ever dealt with before.
She snapped the connection before it could take her under, and together with Jean, they watched him go, using each other to block their nakedness from his sight. Not that he seemed particularly inclined to bother them.
The second the man was out of range, Jean let out a sigh. “Whatever the hell he is, I don’t need my wolf form to sense the incredible pressure rolling off of him.”
“Neither do I.”
Odessa hung her head, letting the limp strands of her hair drip forward to hide her features. No way out. No way to break the spell. Not even the benefit of a name, because everyone knew that true names held power.
Fuck. What was she going to do? She couldn’t leave the lake without risking harm to herself and potential death.
“I just gotta know,” Jean continued, rising. “This dark magic. What did we do to anger someone like that?”
“Someone with a vendetta,” Odessa posed. Unforgiving resolve filled her face. And they’d need to find a way to get to the bottom of this. Before their time ran out.
Chapter 7
Calen struggled through the underbrush, trying to remember the exact path he’d taken to get to the crumbling stone ruins in the first place. The lake holding a thousand dark secrets and more. He’d been following intuition when he arrived there, following a vague and nagging sense that he needed to push through and keep going.
How did one recreate that? Especially in reverse. He had no pleasure in returning to the Taunway Lake manor house. Not when he knew there would be questions and disbelieving, scoffing wolves on the other end of the conversation. Why would they trust him? He was nothing. No one.
And a little stupid to boot. He should have brought something to mark the trail. Some kind of spray paint like a beacon drawing him to and from. Instead, he lifted his nose into the air and ended up cursing himself when he sensed nothing. What good was it, being a werewolf, if he couldn’t change his form to save the woman he loved? If he couldn’t use his gifts to protect the people he cared about?
Instead, he was useless. Nothing but a tool for the pack to use when they needed a punching bag for a verbal sparring match. Or a batch of lemon tarts to fill the bellies of their important guests.
He’d been put through the wringer from the day he moved in with Alex Darrow and the rest of them. Used to scrub floors, rearrange and dust shelves, whatever menial tasks the higher-ranking wolves could think to put on him before Bozart claimed him for the kitchen. An act of pity, perhaps, or because he recognized a little boy who needed direction.
It took Calen another day to reach the edge of the pack territory, his nose picking up the distinctive scent of the sentinels before the welcome party approached.
He allowed his chin to dip for a fraction of a second before forcing it to lift, his shoulders squaring. They might be better than him in every way, but he had a mission and would not falter. He was hungry and hadn’t eaten. Of course these two would want to stop for a little impromptu interrogation.
“Well. This is the sorriest sight I’ve ever seen. Wouldn’t you agree, Ghast?” Nova approached from the left with a hunched posture and a cagey expression.
“I’d say he looks more like roadkill than an actual wolf. But I’d always wondered about his genetics.” Ghast grinned wickedly. “Tell me, Calen, did you come from a line of actual shifters, or crawl from the garbage heap? Right now, you definitely smell like the latter.”
He stopped walking a casual distance from the twin wolves, standing feet apart with matching body language. Tired, so tired. He didn’t have time for these games. Especially not with his head swimming and his stomach empty and eating away at itself.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He tried to push past them and stumbled.
The twin wolves let him drop to his knees, although he kept the hiss of pain to himself.
Knowing them, they’d heard, anyway.
“I need to speak to the alpha,” Calen grumbled.
“Not before we throw your ass in front of a hose.” Nova stopped him with a hand. “Do you really think we’re going to let you step in front of Darrow smelling like that? Or at all, for that matter?
“He’s a little busy right now trying to find his daughter and the missing pack members. Unless you’d completely forgotten, with your disappearing act. Where have you been, Siegfried? Running out right after the kidnapping seems a little suspicious, if you ask me.”
Calen bared his teeth in a snarl. “Where do you think I’ve been? Out looking for Odessa.” Unlike the rest of them, content to sit and ponder and pan instead of moving and raging and doing something.
“If you smelled like that, then no wonder you didn’t find her,” Nova commented.
“Who says I didn’t?”
That stopped the two of them in their tracks. The twins stared at him, their dark
eyes round orbs in the near darkness of twilight.
Ghast said quietly, “Explain yourself.”
They’d morphed from playful to business, their stances wide and broad shoulders tight. Yes, these were the black wolf assassins who had come to be known and feared in the region. When they shifted, they blended with the shadows, became part of them. Crushing the Taunway pack’s enemies.
Calen could have sworn the trees around them quivered in response to the sheer magnitude of their eyes.
“That’s a conversation for the alpha. Now take me to him.” Calen forced his spine to straighten even further in their presence, with their power pushing down on him. His baser instincts urged him to show them his belly. To bow to their dominance.
“No.”
Instead of being cowed, he stood his ground. “Are you going to let me pass?” The words were honeyed venom. Calen offered the men nothing more than a bemused smile despite the squirming in his insides.
“Why should we?”
He didn’t have the time to waste to convince them. Not when moments mattered, seconds mattered, in finding a way to break Odessa’s curse, and he’d already wasted time returning home.
If he were an actual member of the pack, instead of just their kitchen slop boy, he might have used the bonds between wolves to convince them of his sincerity. Every member of the pack had a connection they could use to communicate with each other. Nothing psychic; there were no words passed. But sensations. They were able to feel each other, to tug on the bond to convey emotions.
He’d never felt it before and knew only silence in his head.
Calen held their stares. A different sort of challenge. And he just didn’t care. He didn’t care what they thought of him, or how they teased and belittled him. He didn’t care about how easily they could tear him down if they decided he had outlived his tentative usefulness.
“Where’s Alex?” he continued.
It took a long time for them to consider him. To consider the situation and agree to escort him to their alpha.
A summer storm grew in momentum behind him, as though he’d been followed. Calen felt the shudder of thunder as the twin wolves escorted him toward the manor. A cool wind chased him, and occasional flashes of lighting slashed through the trees, ringing the property. Glass lights hanging from the arched porch ceiling swung and groaned with the force of that cool air.
They pushed through the front door, Ghast holding out a hand to stop Calen before he made a right turn into the alpha’s office.
“He’s in there with Baron.” The Evertooth alpha. “They gave explicit instructions not to be disturbed.”
Calen fought against the restraint. “He will want to know of his daughter.”
“We wait for the right time. Stay here,” Nova ordered. “Let us do our jobs.”
Patience did not come easily to him. Despite days of little food and less sleep, Calen’s limbs were filled with a sort of chaotic energy. Like the lightning outside pressing against his skin. Shockwaves of electricity. He needed to move. Needed to tell his alpha all that he knew and formulate a plan of attack. Through his wanderings of the past few days, he’d had ample time to think, to decide on the best course of action and he’d found nothing conclusive to help him.
He did not wait, instead moved toward the house when Nova and Ghast were out of sight. The front doors swung open easily and he cocked his head to the right, toward Alex’s personal quarters.
Interruption came in the form of a hand on his shoulder a split second before Calen found himself slammed against the mighty stone banister curving toward the second floor.
He whirled to face his attacker.
Van held a finger to his lips, his fist curling into the fabric of Calen’s shirt. He slowly pushed the other man toward the broom closet under the stairs. The handle turned without a whisper of sound and Van shoved him into the darkness. Then slammed the door behind him.
A WHISPER OF AN INCANTATION muttered under his breath and the closet door sealed, cutting off whatever sound might come from the man inside. Probably screaming his head off, if the rage in his eyes had been any indication.
Van refused to take any chances. Refused to let anyone else find Calen before—
He bit his lip to keep the grin inside. His father could sniff out laughter and joy like a bloodhound on a mission, and shut it down just as viciously, going in for the kill without hesitation.
Straightening his posture, Van returned to the door of the office, Nova and Ghast exiting at the same time. Both looked around, searching for the wolf they’d left outside.
“Did you see a scruffy-looking asshole anywhere?” Nova began with his face tight and lips pursed. “About yay high, stinking like the devil’s backside?”
Van shook his head without a word, pushing past them into the quieted exterior of the office. He didn’t need to say anything to get his point across. The twin wolves might be bodyguards, might be assassins and spymasters and whatever other declarations Alex put on them, but they were lower ranking and they knew it.
He was obeyed without question or hesitation, Ghast and Nova bowing their heads and shifting quietly out of his way.
The gleam of sorrow in Alex Darrow’s eyes was not feigned as he spoke of the daughter he hoped to find. “I’ve dispatched half of my trackers to the north, and the other half to the south.” He pointed to a map of the area and the general directions. “So far they have all returned without so much as a scent to guide them.”
“My own have traveled east and west,” Van’s father put in roughly. He was shorter than Alex by a head, his own sporting a massive bald spot directly in the center of his cranium. But his tiny eyes held fire, held life. And a great deal of suspicion. “There are no signs of your daughter. No blood trail to follow, either.”
Baron offered the words as a small comfort, but Van noticed the way Alex flattened his hands on the table. The whisper of black smoke curling around his head in a clear sign—at least to Van, who saw things different than others—of shame and suffering.
A missing heir. Her packmates, her bridesmaids, slaughtered. He listened to the rest of the conversation with half an ear, the other alert for any noises from the outside.
He’d need to tread carefully. Whatever he was doing, he’d have to watch himself.
Dropping his chin, he cut into the conversation between the two alphas with a muted, “Forgive me for intruding during this difficult time, but I believe it would be better to focus our energies on maintaining order at the manor.”
Two sets of eyes slid to him, Alex’s weary and hard. “Why say that?”
Baron frowned at him for the interruption.
“Your people, our people, are in need of guidance and order,” Van argued. He barely paused long enough to draw a breath before continuing, “They need a steady hand to keep them in line in spite of the horrors we’ve all witnessed. Keep the full-scale scope of the hunt to ourselves, between those in this room. We must rally our clans together and make them feel they are safe. Make them feel the threat has been neutralized and there is order. I would suggest something to distract them. Some sort of way to rally, where they feel they are cared for instead of pushed aside.”
A jerk of his chin toward the shrewd-eyed Alex had the second alpha rolling the map up, tapping the top of the table with it. His smile told Van it would never happen. He’d take the words into consideration, perhaps, but the final word would be his own.
Van tamped down the flare of his temper.
“My focus remains on finding my daughter, whether alive or dead,” Alex stated.
Distant thunder rumbled through the thick silence that followed.
Van saw a man grieving for his lost child, and his own power rose in protest. He’d be a fool to push the issue now. Rude beyond measure.
Instead, he kept the words to himself and bowed his head, dropping his chin to his chest. “As you wish.” No epithets between them. If he were to one day step into the shoes of Alpha for his own
pack, as Baron expected, then he would call no one sir.
“We’ll adjourn this meeting once the storm has passed.” Nowhere near closer to a resolution, Alex set the map down and snapped his fingers. A dark calm settled over the room. “Bozart will have a meal prepared for us.”
Nova and Ghast appeared from the shadows at the command, Van ignoring the smirks twisting their faces.
“You two, make sure the windows and doors are secure. I’m taking my personal vanguard out in the morning to search for Odessa. I leave no stone unturned.”
If the alphas continued to ignore him, as he had observed over the past few days, then Van felt more at ease for pursuing other avenues of inquiry.
Other ways to gain support.
Alex and Baron would seek to manipulate in whatever way they could. Not out of spite or malice, but because that was how Lycans played the game. That was how each Alpha maintained control over their people. They saw others as weapons and pawns. Which apparently extended to their children as well, although Van had known it for a long time. His marriage to Odessa was nothing but the next step in a play that Baron had planned ten, twenty, thirty moves ahead.
He glanced at his father, who gave him a shallow nod. Magic curled between his fingertips in a single wave before disappearing, the hum lost in the last lightning flash.
Van found himself casually saying, “I heard you are known for your lemon tarts, Alex. There are none that compare throughout the local territories.”
“Just about the only thing my baker is good for,” Alex muttered half-heartedly into a glass of wine, earning a smile from Van’s father. “I only kept the welp around for my daughter’s sake. The girl has a sweet tooth like you cannot imagine. You’ll soon find out the extent, Van.”
“Might we have a taste while we are here?” He made sure to sound bored. To let the others know that service in that area had been sorely lacking.
“You might have had a chance at the engagement party, had the buffet line not been trampled in the panic. Now I can’t find the boy who makes them.” The complaint was offhand—a slight bother compared to their much larger problem. “I would think that he suffered the same fate as the girls in the woods.”