Chapter 2

Winterlyn Brooks turned off her car in front of the garage and yawned. Her early shift at the coffee shop allowed her to be home before lunch, but that meant she had to get up at four a.m. to make it to the store by five. She was always glad to see the free-standing garage with an apartment over the double doors. She’d called the garage apartment home for the last few years when she wanted to get her own place but couldn’t afford the expensive rent in the neighboring areas.

Her parents were in the big house next to the garage and were happy she wanted to stay close. She was just glad to get out of their house.

Her parents were very protective of her, but that seemed to come with the territory since her parents were also alphas of their arctic fox skulk. At twenty-four, Winterlyn should have been mated with a few babies, but she was missing one thing: the ability to shift into her arctic fox. Her parents were both powerful shifters from long family lines of powerful shifters. As far as anyone knew, no one on either side of the family had ever not been able to shift until Winterlyn came along.

She could feel her fox, she just couldn’t turn into her.

That made her an outcast with the skulk, a weird member who wasn’t really a member, always on the outside of things.

She glanced toward her parents’ home and saw the circular driveway was empty, which meant neither was home. It was the day before the solstice and the skulk would hold a special celebration that included a big meal, a meeting to plan the events for the coming year, and a hunt once the sun went down. She knew that’s where her parents were, planning the big celebration.

Winterlyn hadn’t been invited to either the planning or the actual celebration, even though her parents were the alphas, because without her shift, it was useless for her to be there. She’d been on the outside of things with the skulk since her shift hadn’t come to her as a teenager. Ostracized and made to feel less-than, it was simply easier for her to not go to meetings and night hunts than it was for her to see the judgmental stares of the skulk and her parents trying to pretend as if everything was okay and that it was perfectly normal for her to not be able to shift.

It was anything but normal, of course.

Sighing, she grabbed her bag and headed into her apartment, the day stretching before her like the giant maw of some ancient creature.

Dropping her bag inside the door, she stood in the family room and wondered if this was just how her life was going to be forever. Part of the skulk but also not part of it, one foot in two vastly different worlds.

Her gaze landed on the small desk in the corner of the room, and she walked over to it. Sitting down in the hand-me-down desk chair, she wiggled the mouse to wake the computer and opened the internet browser.

She typed into the search bar: Would a shifter who can’t shift and a human have babies who could shift?

Pressing enter, she waited for the results to populate.

She knew the answer, though.

No one knew why she couldn’t shift. It was a freak twist in her genetics. Something that should have been turned on in her DNA to allow her to go from human to arctic fox hadn’t been tripped and that made her some kind of weird human-fox hybrid without the benefits of shifting.

Her healing abilities were accelerated, but otherwise she had no special traits.

No fangs or claws, no fur.

A human and shifter mating can produce children who can shift and those who can’t, the results depend on whether the child takes after the shifter parent or the human parent.

Which was not the question she’d asked. The results hadn’t included a shifter who couldn’t shift because it wasn’t really a thing. Shifters shifted, period. It was entirely possible she’d pass on her strange non-shifting genes to her kids, regardless of whether she mated a shifter or not.

She hit the wheel on her mouse and yawned, watching as the results scrolled by. As the mouse pointer stopped on a result, she hummed.

The link was for a chatroom on a website, and the question posed was: Can the Well of Magic help a shifter who can’t access their animal?

Annette Sheffield stared at the image of her grandfather on her phone, her heart in her throat. It was unfair that the last family member she had lay dying in her home, sent from the hospital to live out his last days as cancer ravaged him. She was a witch from a long line of powerful witches and couldn’t do anything to save him.

“Come in.”

The voice that had often been a balm to Annette during the stormy parts of her life now grated on her nerves. She knew what the head of her witch coven was going to say of her request, but that didn’t stop her from asking anyway.

“Hi, Morgana,” Annette said as she walked into her office, shutting the door softly behind her. The office was warm, done up in reds and ambers, and smelled of lavender and honeysuckle.

Morgana, a middle-aged witch with long black hair and a single, shockingly white lock at her left temple, gazed at Annette with kind, gray eyes. “What can I do for you this day, my dear?”

Annette didn’t sit and instead paced, the words flying out of her in a jumbled, rushed heap.

“Can you save him?” she pleaded. “He’s all I have left in the world, the last of my family.”

Morgana stared unblinking at Annette, and it seemed like she could see through her, although she knew that mind-reading wasn’t one of her magical talents.

“I’m sorry, Annette. I can’t intervene in your grandfather’s fate.”

“I don’t see why not! He’s only sixty-three. He’s too young to be taken by cancer.” Witches had healing magic. Annette had healed many things over the years. But curing cancer was not one of her abilities.

Morgana spread her fingers wide on her desktop as she rose slowly to her feet. She wore a flowy, flower skirt and dark blue top, and her hair hung over her shoulder in a single, thick braid. Her eyes flashed gold for a moment. “I cannot, and I will not interfere. The Fates have chosen his life to come to an end, and to try to stop his death through magic would throw the cosmic scales out of balance. It’s not going to happen. My advice, Annette, is to spend as much time as you can with him so you have no regrets.”

“I…why can’t you?” Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over, her voice cracking as she pleaded with the head of the coven to use her magic to heal him. “He just needs more time. Give me more time, please! Heal him, it’s in your power, I know it is!”

“I’m sorry, truly,” Morgana said. “Go to your grandfather and be with him. Don’t mar the last days you have with him on a fool’s errand.”

Her tone was kind but dismissive, and Annette knew she’d reached the end of her time with the head of the coven. Without a word, she turned and opened the door, the knob blurry as tears burned in her eyes.

She didn’t stop walking until she was down the dirt road that led to Morgana’s private residence which doubled as an office.

What the hell was she going to do?

She stumbled and nearly fell over, when strong arms caught her and steadied her. She brushed at the tears to clear her vision and saw a handsome man with pearl-white translucent wings stretched out behind him. His ears were pointed and his skin glittered in the afternoon sun.

“Wh-who are you?”

“My name is Gentry, I’m fae. I heard your crying as I flew above on my way home, and I wanted to see if you were okay. What’s troubling you?”

His voice was calm and soothing, a balm in the tempest of her ruined life. She trusted him immediately for a reason she couldn’t really fathom and spilled her story to him as quickly as she had to Morgana. But where the head of the coven turned her away, Gentry lifted a pale brow and said, “I can help you.”

“You can?”

“Of course. Fae can move the hands of fate.”

“Then let’s go right now!” Her heart pounded in excitement.

“Hold on,” he said with a low chuckle. “I can’t help your grandfather until you help me.”

“What do you mean?” She took a cautious step back.

“You help me, and I’ll help you. That’s how favors work, my dear witch. If you want your grandfather to live, then you’ll help me take care of something.”

“What?”

He produced a wooden box and opened it. Inside was a knife that gave her chills just to look at it.

“Open a portal to Northernmost and stab Santa on Christmas Day at dawn. He has something of mine, and I need him incapacitated so I can retrieve it. You do this for me,” he said, holding the knife out to her, the blade glinting in the sunlight, “and I’ll ensure your grandfather lives.”

Winterlyn arrived at her appointment with the head of the coven a few hours later. She was surprised that she had been able to make an appointment with her online. The coven had a website with a schedule option, as well as directions to Morgana Quinn’s home, which apparently doubled as her office.

She was trying not to get her hopes up because she was pretty sure that the Well of Magic only worked for magical people, hence the name. It might work for shifters if it was called the Well of Shifters or the Well of Anyone Who Needs Help. But she’d tried everything else she could think of to make her animal come out, including human doctors, shifter healers, and a few online products that promised to bring any animal out of anyone’s subconscious. Nothing had worked, which was why she was walking into the house of a witch who may or may not be willing to help her.

Morgana Quinn looked exactly like Winterlyn thought she would, right down to the flowy, romantic clothes and the long, dark hair.

She sat in a straight-backed chair across the shiny desk of the most powerful witch in New York and tried not to be nervous. After telling Morgana what her situation was, she waited to hear her reply.

Morgana lifted a brow. “What do you think I can do for you, Winterlyn? I’m genuinely perplexed why you’d come to me about not being able to shift.”

“I’d like you to take me to Northernmost. Or one of your coven members if you’re not available.”

“Because you can’t shift.”

“Right.”

When Morgana didn’t say anything for what felt like an eternity, Winterlyn felt like an idiot.

“Today is a strange day,” Morgana mused. “But I have to tell you, in all honesty, that it won’t work. The Well is for magical people, and the magic only works for our kind. Shifters aren’t magical. I don’t know where you got your information from, but it was clearly not someone who knew what they were talking about.”

Her eyes burned a little from the press of tears, but she wasn’t going to cry. Really. At least not right this second.

“What would be the harm in trying? Maybe it would work. Maybe it’s never happened because everyone keeps saying that the Well is only for magical people. What if it fixes whatever’s wrong with me?”

Morgana opened her mouth, closed it, and then sighed. “I won’t take you there. I think it’s a fool’s errand. I’m sorry you’re in the position you’re in, but there’s nothing wrong with you, it’s just the luck of the genetic draw. However,” she said, putting up her hand when Winterlyn opened her mouth to argue, “if you can find someone in my coven willing to take you there, then all the more power to you. And I wish you well, whatever happens.”

Winterlyn hummed in surprise. “Okay, thank you.”

Morgana nodded.

When Winterlyn was out of the quaint home and standing on the porch, she debated where to find someone to help her. The witches had a store where people could buy knickknacks and charms, special teas that promoted healing, and even the ingredients for spell casting.

As she prepared to step off the porch, someone said in a small, quiet voice, “I can help you get to Northernmost. Tomorrow at dawn.”