by Kat Bostick
“Is that what you were hoping for?”
“I was hoping—” Only the faintest tick of Charlie’s jaw revealed his annoyance with Mari’s challenge. “—that my new liaison would encourage Alexey to work more diligently to find the rogue wolf we’ve been hunting before he kills an innocent.”
“Then why did you send Jasper with me?” She repeated.
“To prove a point.” His tone gentled and he stepped away to fetch a neatly folded thermal shirt from his desk.
“What point was that?” Jasper cut in, not pleased with where this was going.
“Yeah Charlie, what point? This feels like a dishonest game and I didn’t agree to play it.”
“What happened during your meeting today?” Charlie turned to Jasper and repeated the question when Mari crossed her arms and remained stubbornly silent.
Shame made him feel simultaneously clammy and hot. “I nearly changed. Mari had to stop me.”
“In a public place? On a street where people could have witnessed?” He bowed his head, unable to meet Charlie’s brutal blue gaze.
“He shouldn’t have been put in that situation.” Mari stationed herself in front of Jasper, trying to shield him from Charlie’s disapproving view. He could easily see the alpha over the top of her head, but that didn’t stop her from trying to defend him.
This was why he fell in love with her. Mari was loyal to a fault, ready to bleed every last drop from her veins to protect those that mattered to her. She understood his need to protect his family, understood what it was to live with the hollow space in her heart where a person should have been. When Mari loved, she did it fiercely—recklessly, even. Most of the people who received that love—maybe all of them, himself included—didn’t deserve it.
“He should be able to handle himself in any situation, no matter how stressful.”
“I didn’t handle myself in that situation. If I was a shapeshifter, I would have changed too. Alexey is an asshole!”
“Most people are.” Charlie shook his head. A heartbeat of tense silence passed, then two. His countenance was anguished for only that long before his gaze hardened. “This can’t continue, Mari. That was the point I’m trying to prove. The last thing I want is to force your hand, but you have to realize how dangerous this is becoming.”
“Are you serious?”
“What if you’d been at the lodge and an overly friendly guest set him off? What if you hadn’t been able to reach him before he’d done something detrimental? He’s not only a risk to his family. He’s a risk to our kind.” The words felt like nails in a coffin when Charlie repeated, “This cannot continue.”
“Charlie.” The tension was so thick that his name was buoyant in the air. “You should be very careful about what you say next.”
Sparks of green and gold danced along her skin. It was as if someone lit up fireworks inside of her. Jasper had never seen such a display of power, nor such a display of control. Mari’s knuckles were white, the vein in her neck popping. He found himself struggling to breath, the hostility between alpha and witch so strong that it put pressure on his lungs.
“You will not threaten me, witch. I’m alpha here.” His eyes were beams of crystalline blue. Not once in ten years had Jasper seen Charlie so close to an unbidden change.
The voice that spoke was not the one he’d come to know as Mari’s. It was as if she too was moments from breaking apart and becoming feral. “You will be alpha of nothing if you ever threaten him again.”
“She needs to leave.” Charlie growled to Jasper. “Now!”
Jasper was already on it, gripping Mari by the shoulders and shoving her toward the door to the kitchen. Unsurprisingly, she resisted. Her boots skidded across the hardwood as she dug in her heels. When she whipped her head over her shoulder Jasper clapped his hand over her mouth to keep her from spewing whatever hateful words she planned. He was not at all interested in watching the two people he loved most destroy each other over him.
It took another good shove to get Mari over the threshold of the back door and into the snow. He didn’t give her time to turn her fury on him. “Run from me, Mari.” She didn’t immediately start moving. He growled, “Run, witch.”
Mari was fast in the best circumstances. She’d even managed to evade him once or twice. These were not the best circumstances. Snow captured her momentum, sucking her booted feet down every time they landed. She made a predictable dash for the trees, her straight line making it too easy for him to stalk after her. Within seconds Jasper was breathing down her neck.
He didn’t grab her yet. The pounding energy inside of her needed an outlet.
Some kind of escape strategy finally formed in her mind, but it was too little too late. Mari feinted left, trying to circle right around a thick oak instead. With a triumphant howl Jasper caught her around the waist. She shrieked when her feet left the ground, kicking wildly and taking them both down into the snow.
Then she was on top of him—kissing him. Her lips were almost violent in their bid for dominance. It was exactly what he wanted from her. By the time she pulled back, sitting up on his folded thigh, Jasper’s lips were throbbing.
“I’m still angry with you.” She panted.
“You are a thing of beauty when you’re angry. Watching you is like watching a natural disaster unfold.”
“Emphasis on the disaster?” She asked wryly. “I’m serious, Jas. Still. Angry.”
His hand locked around her jaw. “Then consider us even.”
Hazel eyes narrowed to slits. “You’re angry with me?”
“No spell in the world is faster than a werewolf.”
“What’s your point?” The question was a huff of hot air.
“You threatened Charlie.”
She crossed her arms. “He threatened you first.”
“It wasn’t a threat.” No, it was just the harsh reality their kind faced. Control was a strength they had to continually build up and the balance of it was always delicate. Without it, a werewolf was an amoral beast with a bottomless hunger for blood.
“It was.” Flames licked at him through their bond, outrage burning so hot it hurt.
Jasper placed his hands on her hips, staring down at them as he murmured, “He’s not wrong. This can’t continue. I’ve been changing every day. I feel like I can’t control it.”
“You can. I know you can.”
For some reason that set him off. “I can’t! It’s not like I haven’t been trying, Mari. I’m losing myself.” It was humiliating to display his weaknesses, even in front of her. “I’m losing myself.”
Mari readjusted herself on his lap, rolling her hips. “Is this what you need to feel settled? Is it the bond?”
“I don’t know.” Not exactly the truth. It was the bond, just not in the way that she thought. Mari was shutting him out. He couldn’t say if it was on purpose or on instinct. She’d done it before. Something was bothering her, something big, and she wouldn’t talk to him about it. Until today, she hadn’t cast in over a month. How did she go from being so desperate to practice her craft to being completely detached from it?
Jasper couldn’t handle being on the outside. He felt abandoned by her, even as she was beside him. Mates couldn’t behave like islands. They couldn’t separate themselves so completely. It disrupted the flow of magic between them. Only now was Jasper realizing that it was the rebound of that blockage that was hurting him.
This wasn’t madness born of the curse that held him for the year he was alone. It was his own emotions pitching back at him when Mari shut them down. Anguish and rejection made him savage because he was scrambling to hold onto her, anxious to protect this fragile new relationship.
“When you’re out of control, what does it feel like? Do you feel…darkness?”
“Darkness?” What the hell did darkness feel like?
“Something outside of you—or maybe inside of you—that’s been fueling these outbursts?”
“What are you trying to say, Mari?�
�� Father Above, he was ready to beg her. Tell me what it is! Tell me what’s holding you back and I’ll fix it. Don’t hide from me.
He knew she wasn’t going to admit anything before she even spoke. “I’m just wondering if it’s because…because I’m all messed up about the Lyse thing. Our emotions are jumbled.”
“No, it’s not that.” It was whatever she wouldn’t say that was affecting him.
Her forehead pressed into his cheek. “I thought this was supposed to get easier.”
“Me too.”
Cold seeped into his bones. He didn’t know how long they’d been sitting in the snow but he could tell by the way she shivered that it was too long. Jasper lifted up from the ground, taking her with him. Hand in hand, they trudged back to the house.
“You can’t do that again, Mari.”
“Do what?”
He nipped her icy earlobe. “Threaten Charlie. A witch isn’t a match for a wolf.”
“Disagree.”
Jasper stopped on the stone patio and turned her to face him. “You have to be more careful about what you say and to whom you say it.”
Mari flicked his nose. “Hypocrite! You punched his lights out when he used me as bait.”
“You were dying because of him! It’s not the same.”
“It’s the same to me.” A flinty resolve glazed her eyes and he knew there was no more argument. “I won’t let anyone threaten you. Even him.”
Jasper decided in that very moment that he had to make it his number one goal to de-escalate the tension between Mari and Charlie. If it came down to it, he couldn’t say which of them would be the last man standing. He only knew that either way, he was the one that would lose.
He sighed, cracking the kitchen door and making sure they wouldn’t run into anyone while Mari was still worked up. “Taking a mate is supposed to bring you peace.”
She pushed past him, flinging open a cabinet and rifling through it until she found the bag of chocolate chips she was looking for. “Snore. You don’t want peace or you never would have picked me.” The bag flew through the air, almost hitting him in the face before he caught it. “Feed those to me while we watch an action movie and I’ll consider forgiving you.”
“Only if you keep the volume down.”
“Are you kidding? I’m really in the mood to hear violent sound effects.”
“And people say I’m the twisted one.” He watched her sashay through the kitchen and to the staircase, temporarily mesmerized by her legs. The moment seemed too normal considering that less than an hour ago she was a magical stick of dynamite and Charlie heartbeats away from turning into a monster.
A terrible thought occurred to him.
Mari was the problem. All of his aggression and rage was triggered by her. And he wasn’t alone. If Charlie was struggling around her, they were in trouble. A Wolfseggner was supposed to bring calm and balance. But what did one do when she was out of balance herself? Unpracticed and shut down from her own magic? Did Mari realize how frequently that power was vibrant under her skin? Jasper felt it. Sometimes she was even lighting up in her sleep.
Charlie was right. This couldn’t continue. Whatever she was hiding from him was going to come to light. Secrets did nothing but fester. It was only a matter of time before hers rotted everything around them.
Chapter 7
Mari
The breeze was warm as it greeted Mari’s bare shoulders, bringing with it all the sweetness of summer. Moonlight lit her way through the meadow and up the hill, painting the world in hues of lovely blue. The silky fabric of a red dress flowed around her knees, caressing her thighs. Odd. Why was she wearing a dress in the woods?
A calloused hand brushed the skin between her shoulders, climbing up her back until it cupped her nape. It was a touch she had only come to know a short few months ago and yet, it was so familiar that it felt like coming home. Fingers combed her loose hair aside, opening a path for lips to move from her neck to her collar bone.
“Jasper.”
His answering hum of pleasure made her weak in the knees.
The wind kicked up for a moment, carrying a distant sound of music. String instruments echoed through the surrounding trees, haunting and sensual. Mari’s body moved on its own accord, whirling to wrap arms around Jasper’s neck and sway against him.
Around them the meadow was filling with a thick fog. More like storm clouds, actually. It moved eerily too, shifting the way smoke did.
Jasper drew her attention back to him, taking her wrist and pressing the champagne flute she didn’t remember having to her lips. Mari tried for a sip, but he encouraged more, tilting her head back until she swallowed half the glass. The heady effect of the alcohol was instant, warming her down to her toes. She finished the rest, swallowing greedily. Nothing had ever tasted sweeter.
There was something off about Jasper’s smile. Before she could place it, her body was moving again, hypnotized by that strange and alluring music. They began to dance, slow but sharp, choreographed steps that neither of them should have known.
Even more surprising, Mari was leading. It always bothered her that the man was the one to lead. In her experience she was the better dancer and couldn’t understand why the roles weren’t easily reversed. Jasper was stubborn and hated giving up control.
Here, she was in charge.
She required no words to instruct him. Each time Mari wanted Jasper to move, he did. There was barely a conscious thought behind their dance. They were fluid, moving exactly as she thought they should.
The fog curled around them, warm on her skin when she expected cool mist. It weaved between their legs and around their waists, nearly swallowing Jasper’s face before receding with a whispered question. “Doesn’t it make you feel powerful?”
It did. Jasper’s muscles flexed at her command, moving with all that animal grace and lethal precision because she demanded they do so. He was a creature of preternatural making and he was at her mercy.
“Imagine what you could do with such power.” The voice purred. It almost sounded like her voice, but the tone was wrong, greedy and edged with a hunger she didn’t feel.
Jasper pulled her up from a dip, their faces coming inches apart. For the first time she really looked at him. His face was the same—heart-shaped, almost cat like, his jaw strong and lined with stubble, lips perfect for kissing, brows a shade of brown darker than his vibrant red hair. It wasn’t until she met his eyes that she knew something was wrong.
They were the same green eyes she knew so well, yet they were missing that essential sparkle that was Jasper. The flirtatious mischief was gone, replaced by a blankness that she’d seen before. The last time was moments before his maw came down on her throat, ready to kill her at the behest of another witch.
The music lost its tempo, the notes becoming overly loud and grating. Trees became invisible behind an impenetrable darkness. Even the moonlight dimmed. Mari released Jasper and took a step away from him. He smiled at her, offering another flute of champagne.
“Who did this to you?”
“I did.” Her own voice answered from outside of her, sounding as gravelly and wrong as the music. “I can rule him. My song can make him bend in whatever way I please.”
“This is a dream.” She realized aloud. It was a sibylline dream—shown to her because of the power she inherited from her father. It had to be. What was being foretold here, though? Mari would never use her magic to control Jasper, or any wolf. Not without complete necessity.