Chapter Two

Sheldon

Click-click.

Click-click.

I let out a long, slow breath and turned my attention back to the numbers on the page. I’d done the books for the Lost Fang Coven for the last seven years. My eyes did math before my brain caught up to it.

Click-click.

Click-click.

Click-click.

“Maxen!” I snapped over the family link.

Click-click.

Click-click.

Click-click.

Click-click.

“Maxen! I’ll toss that fang-damned pen out the window!”

Click-click.

Click-click.

Click-click.

Click-click.

Click-click.

I shut my eyes and let go of my irritation. My magic stirred.

“DAMN IT, Sheddy! This is a new shirt.”

“I warned you, Maxen!” I shouted back, shaking my head, the Click-click still sounding off with phantom sounds behind my eardrums.

My elder brother stormed into the room, all furrowed up eyebrows and fangs. His green button down was redesigned with splatters of black ink.

“What? You wanna fight?” I stood up.

“Sheddy!” Maxen sighed.

“What?” I snapped and the drapes fell shut across the room blocking out what little late evening sun came through the window. “It’s too early for all your noise. I come to the main house early to do my job and go home.”

“You have to stop being so fucking weird. People make noise. Life vibrates. Get over it.”

The magic pulled tight inside me. Irritation always stroked it awake and left it a little unpredictable. The world was a place I didn’t particularly like to be. Noises grated on my last nerve and no amount of ear plugs changed that. All the doctors claimed they never encountered someone who surpassed their hearing tests as I did.

“I’m not going to fight you,” Maxen shook his head.

“Because I’m an omega?” I huffed and stepped closer to him.

“No, because I have a mate and baby at home waiting on me and you have a medical condition that turns you into an asshole. I didn’t even hear you until the pen exploded. It’s nice to see you out of your house.”

I didn’t say anything. It felt like a jab at saying I never hung around the family. He was right, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

“I meant that, Sheddy,” Maxen said, turning to leave.

“Nice to see you, too,” I mumbled before he disappeared from the room.

I sank back into the chair and finished up the numbers. The Lost Fang Coven was as well off as I’d ever seen it. We were in the black and the numbers kept going up. I closed up the paper book. Someone else would add it all to some official computer-kept record later. I hated the buzz most electronics gave off. It vibrated my magic in all the wrong ways. I curled and uncurled my fingers a few times, willing my magic to settle back down. Maxen most likely wasn’t trying to be an ass. He wasn’t usually in the main house this time of evening. He probably didn’t even know I was here, but the irritation came from the sound, not from my brother himself.

Coven members trickled into the main house and I slipped out the office window leaving behind the plush carpet and stepping out onto the well-manicured lawn. The sun was nearly gone. It was the time of night that belonged to evening hunters and blood drinkers. The forest around our stronghold was filled with life. Some lucky owl snatched up some unlucky vole as he tried to duck into his hole-home. A herd of deer grazed, ever alert. Hell, I could nearly hear them thinking about what predators might be around. I was around. I was a predator. Deer were my preferred animal to hunt. After you drank their blood, their meat made for several good meals. Waste not, want not, and all of that.

I took a running jump and scaled the wall surrounding the stronghold. Technically, it was against coven law to jump the wall. We were to use the entrances like civilized people, but the guards never bothered with me. They had better things to do than chase me around. Besides, my magic was a better shield and weapon than any of them could ever train to be. That wasn’t bragging. That’s just how my magic worked. It was a double-edged sword. I heard everything too well and too soon before others picked it up. The ability or disability, depending on who you asked, was a double-edged sword, but one I learned to live with. Sometimes I lost it and lashed out at pointless noises like the click-click, click-click of Maxen’s pen.Most of the time I was fine.

The deer scattered when my boots hit the grass and I almost gave chase. Occasionally, I’d chase them around even if I didn’t plan to take one of them back with me. Sometimes I imagined in another life I was a deer or a horse. I was something that could run fast as I did, but on four legs. I imagined being a wolf or a dragon as I sprinted through the woods. Maybe a bear. I liked the bears in the woods surrounding our house.

Static danced through the air and the deer froze in time with me. Their white tails all that was visible of them in the distance. The static clung to the air and I glanced upward looking for an incoming storm. Raw magic that buzzed like that in these parts usually came from storms. The darkening sky was cloud free and the first stars shined down.

I closed my eyes and let the buzz take over me. It shook my organs and rattled my skeleton around. I took a step in the direction of the sound and heard unfamiliar laughter. Voices and laughs were to me what faces were to most people. I didn’t need to see someone familiar if I heard them. Hell, footsteps were usually enough if their breathing patterns didn’t give them away first.

I didn’t call out. Unfamiliar voices didn’t come to our lands without bringing trouble with them. Sure, Terrick and Cardian ran off and found true-mates that weren’t from the coven, but I doubted either of them dragged their true-mates around the woods out here tonight. I pressed my back against the tree and waited for the laugher to speak. When he did, the words only vaguely wrapped around my ears. It was some dialect of elvish that certainly broke off from the same language tree ours did, but not close enough for me to understand all the words.

“Something – something – something -door- something – something – wolf. Something. Something.”

Methodically, I made my way toward the speaker and the buzz. I circled around, taking the long way and was careful not to snap or crunch anything under my feet. If my mother taught me anything it was that one should always have the advantage in a fight. The best advantage one could have was being the unknown, unseen, and unheard variable of the equation.

“Hello, traveler!” The speaker called out switching to the dialect that I understood the best. “No need to fret. You young ones are always fretting.”

I didn’t speak to keep my exact location to myself, but I wasn’t exactly what anyone would call a young one. I peered around the trunk of a fat tree to see two elves standing in front of a door. It wasn’t a life and death door. I’d seen those before, and they didn’t usually have guards. The door was an Other World gateway. Only there had never been one there before. The one we used was thirty miles north of the stronghold.

“What are you doing in our woods?” I called out, giving in when the elves didn’t offer any more information.

“Trespassing laws do not apply to the guardians of the gateways,” the other elf called out, tucking a strand of long platinum blond hair behind his pointed ear.

“Our gateways appear exactly where they are meant to,” the other elf called out.

“And why here?” I asked them, stepping past the tree.

The gateway looked real enough and they were elves. The door’s magic buzzed, and I shook my head.

“You can’t keep this door here,” I shook my head. “It’s too damn loud!”

“Sheddy!” Salta’s voice cheered from behind me in the woods. “You found my door! I don’t know who the first mate dragon over there talked to, but he got me one.”

“It’s too loud, Salta!” I curled my fingers into tight fists as my little sister came into view.

“I can’t hear it at all,” she said and cocked her head to the side.

“Well, I can. It’s too loud to keep here,” I shook my head.

The woods were the quietest place I had. These elves with their doorway could just carry on and set up shop somewhere else. If everywhere was loud, I’d go fangs first into someone’s eyeballs eventually.

“Calm down,” Salta sighed. “It’s in the woods. It’s not like they put it in your house.”

Salta was almost twelve and too young to understand what the real problem was. I was surprised she even knew my name. I’d hidden away long before she was born and followed Terrick around like a lost puppy.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I asked as she stepped toward the door.

“To see our nieces and nephews!” She cheered and I flinched against the squeak of her young voice.

“Shouldn’t you wait until you have a guard?” I asked her. “You can’t run off on Mom like this.”

“She knew the gateway was coming,” Salta sighed. “Look, I’m going to find out if Dakota had his baby yet. Probably not, but I like meeting them fast. They should know me because I’m going to be around a lot.”

“Salta, don’t,” I said and then stopped arguing with her.

She was a child after all.

“You’re not letting this little girl go through any door alone,” I said, turning my building ire toward the gateway guardians instead.

“She can come and go as she pleases,” the blond elf said. “We are not her parents. This gateway is meant to be a safe passage for a child and so it seems your sister is that child.”

“If you’re so worried, why don’t you come with me?” Salta asked. “I’m going either way.”

“Salta,” I said, reaching out for her hand, but she slipped through the door leaving me with no choice but to follow her into another noisy place.