8. What is Magic?

8

What is Magic?

brAND

I went from the cell straight to my father’s office, not checking on Flor. I didn’t have to anymore. More than just my eyes had been altered. I hadn’t told her, though I knew I would need to, but the nature of our mate bond had changed entirely.

Instead of having a vague sense of her emotions, I now had a direct line to her thoughts. I could hear her speaking, though perhaps I only heard her thinking of what she might say. I knew she was with my grandmother in the library, which pleased me. After my mother’s death, Grandmother had closed herself up with her books and stopped interacting with most of the pack.

I could feel that Flor truly liked her, and was… reading stories aloud to her? Yes. I could also sense that my little mate was feeling strong, fully healed. It was the perfect time to plead my case—and Glen’s—with Dad.

He was on the sat phone when I stepped into his office, really a sitting room with a large desk for the paperwork that came with being an Alpha of one of the largest packs in the world. While he spoke, I took a seat on the firm leather sofa and waited.

It was beyond rare for him to take calls. Dad hated technology, and only allowed a few vehicles on our land, as well as one satellite phone for the Alpha’s Den and one for the medical outpost. Most of our six thousand shifters lived in smaller sub-packs in the forests that stretched from Southern Wyoming, across Colorado, and down to Northern New Mexico. I had a feeling some of the ones closer to the border had scavenged some televisions and other tech, but for the most part, our pack lived like shifters had for centuries before: hunting, fishing, growing crops and herbs, making art, and running together under the moon.

Dad’s voice on the phone was a snarl. “Aidan, you can’t be serious. You’re calling for the execution of one of our sons. An Alpha Heir. With no hearing, no special meetings—” He went silent, but his face grew flushed. “Of course I know you’re the interim Head. Listen, Margarette and Bradley are on their way to you. I’m not making any decisions until you hear them out.” A long pause. “Yes, he’s in a silver-barred cell. I know the law better than you do.”

He slammed the phone down on the desk after he hung up and stood, pacing. I waited for him to speak, knowing there was no need to plead my case. We both knew what was at stake.

“Brand, don’t ask me to let him out,” Dad grumbled. “You know I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t.” His nostrils flared, and his ears grew tufts of hair at the edges. I gaped at his unusual loss of control. He paced for another moment before he faced me, regret etching his features. “To take my place on the Council, I had to submit to an Alpha command from Bradley. You know that. You know why.”

I nodded. I had been a small child during the war, but had overheard more conversations about strategy and battle plans than a child should. Flor hadn’t known anything about the causes of the war that had ended before she was born, but the other packs had better schooling. Even if the lessons weren’t complete.

Everyone knew that Russian shifters had decided to invade North America twenty-four years before. It was common knowledge that rogues in our own country had joined them. But no one talked about where those “rogues” had come from.

They had been the Western pack, or what remained of it after they were disbanded, their Alpha executed at a Conclave around forty years ago. I rubbed my temples, my head aching even thinking about that pack. They had been punished for crimes against the moon, for using magic against the other packs at that Conclave, or at least that’s what my grandmother had taught me. And it may have been the truth.

They had been cut off from the other packs forty years ago. But they were eradicated after the war, because they had enlisted the Russians to help them with their true goal: to regain the power that had been stripped away. They’d shown they would use any means to do so. Theft, betrayal. Even magic.

Their crimes during the war had been severe, but my father had confided once that he believed the response of the other packs had been equally heinous. His elders’ roles in the extermination of an entire pack was only one of the reasons that after he came to power, Dad had tried to have as little to do with the outside world as possible. With any of the other packs.

When the war ended, all the mature shifters left alive gathered under the War Council’s authority, and every mature wolf made a vow not to speak of the eradication. It was the strongest Alpha command that had ever been given, carefully constructed, and then repeated by all the gathered Alphas simultaneously. With none of the older shifters able to speak of that pack, none of the younger ones learned of it. In another two generations, it would be as if the Western pack had never existed. That communally accepted command had worked to make our kind nearly forget what had happened.

Forbidding the sharing of books that contained knowledge of magic, and the Western pack, had done the rest. Grandmother had found a way around that rule, of course, deciding on her own that locking those books away counted as “not sharing” them.

Maybe Grandmother will loan those books to Flor. She needs to know the truth, and there’s no place else to learn it.

But Dad was speaking of another Alpha command, one that each member of the Council had to agree to, in order to take their place. “Is the command that strong?” I asked quietly.

His brow lowered. “I promised to follow pack law. Even though I can interpret that to suit our pack in many things, I cannot subvert a direct order from the Council Head.”

“The Council Head was Bradley when you took that oath. You had no way of knowing, no way of thinking the position would shift to Aidan McDonnell,” I murmured as he paced. Finn’s father was more snake than wolf, slick and polished and deadly, and to my wolf, he stank of dishonor and deception at the best of times.

Dad stopped, hanging his head. “I know that now, and knew it then. I should have taken the position, instead of letting him have it, even for a day. The old ways are clear; only the strongest Alpha holds the right to lead.”

I nodded grimly. Our family had always taken the old ways of shifters to heart. Physically weak challengers to an Alpha’s position were easily defeated in combat.

Morally weak ones were more difficult to remove from power. That was why our pack held so closely to the law. If an Alpha were to break or bend pack law, it was far more dangerous than a lesser wolf’s transgression. It led to Alphas drunk on power, ruling as tyrants. This was how many of our worst wars had been started over the centuries. How whole packs had been lost, and not only on this side of the globe.

Dad went on. “I’m far stronger than Aidan has ever been. I should have known better than to allow him to grab the reins of power.” He scowled at the floor. “At least Bradley had honor. Aidan…”

I hadn’t questioned him before, but I had to know. “What happened, Dad? After the battle at Southern two months back, when he was given the role.”

“I wanted to invite you to listen in, son. But it was an emergency Council meeting.” That meant only the ruling four Alphas and their Head Enforcers had a vote. I nodded my understanding, and he continued. “Calvin had fled. Only a few of us were there to vote: Aidan and Torran from Eastern, Margarette from Northern, Dean and me from Mountain. I wanted to go home. Even though Margarette had reservations, the rest of us agreed. Aidan would hold all the rights Bradley had as Council Head, until Bradley was well enough to return.”

“Bradley is well, though.”

“But outside of a called Council meeting, Aidan is the one who gets to make that decision. Bradley and Margarette are on their way there now, but I don’t expect Aidan to hand over power easily.” He dropped his head. “My guess is that Aidan will find some way to deny Bradley’s fitness. I’ll need to go to the city, too. I was an idiot, turning down the spot as interim Council leader. I knew Aidan would be a shit leader, but I wanted to get back to our pack.” His voice was filled with shame. “I didn’t think he could do much damage. I couldn’t imagine he would go this far.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “How far has he gone?”

Dad’s bloodshot eyes met mine. “He’s calling for Glen’s immediate execution. He tried to give me an Alpha command over the phone.” We both chuckled darkly at that. “I can ignore that. But the law regarding rogues was put in place long before him, as were the regulations on Alpha Heirs moving outside their packs without permission. At the least, according to Aidan, Glen is a rogue who needs to be punished for his crime.”

“Aidan’s worried we’ll come to his packlands and get Finn out from under his thumb.” I’d already shared my concerns about Finn’s coerced return to the fold. Dad had not been all that surprised.

“Or that you’ll go to Southern and rescue Luke,” he replied. “The reports from our Enforcers who stayed behind—until they were evicted by Aidan’s Council troops—were grim. They’ve done something to Luke.”

“He almost died, Dad. He was dying, and Flor as well. And me...” I took a deep breath. “And Finn would have gone, too. Glen might still be safe, but I’m not sure.”

“All of you?”

“All of us, Dad.”

Startled, he met my eyes, and for the first time in forever, dropped his gaze first, though I didn’t think he realized what he’d done. “They can never know. If they find out, they’ll have you all executed.”

“For what?”

“For witchcraft. Or worse.”

“We’re not witches.” I hesitated. “At least, none of the Heirs are.”

His eyes grew wide. “Are you saying?—”

“No,” I interrupted. “I’m not. But Dimitrivich was there in Northern, using magic. Saving her with it. I think... I think he was there, his spirit was there, when Luke was dying. I recognized his energy, when I went into her soul and?—”

Dad was across the room, with a hand over my mouth in a heartbeat, stopping me. His eyes blazed fire, and he infused his voice with Alpha power. “You will never tell anyone how you saved her. Not a word of going into her soul. Only the moon has the power to do such things. Not you. Not your mate. You will never speak of what happened to another living creature—never, do you hear me?”

I waited for the Alpha compulsion to take hold, but it didn’t. It felt like his command slid off me, albeit slowly, like sap dripping down a trunk. But I nodded, and he pulled his hand away. I managed to find my voice again, but only asked one question. “Why?”

His eyes were filled with fear when he replied in a whisper, “What do you think magic is, son?”

“How would I know?” I stood, anger making my limbs tremble. One of the only times Dad had ever shouted at me in true anger had been when I was young, asking about magic. I hadn’t understood how the Russians could have killed so many of our strongest shifters. I’d shifted the week before that, and had scented something peculiar on a run. Following my nose, I’d found a gentle woman living in the center of our packlands, who never spoke, except to plants. She’d looked young, but her eyes had been ancient. She’d made me tea, given me my first carving knife, and then I’d watched her use magic to heal a sparrow’s wing.

When I’d asked Dad about her, he’d warned me not to speak of it again. So I’d snuck into our pack’s library and looked for books on magic. When Dad caught me there, trying to get into Grandmother’s locked bookcase, he’d ranted about dark magic and how many friends had died because wolves had allied with witches.

He hadn’t needed to teach me about that. I had grandparents left alive, but many of my friends did not. At Northern, that generation had been killed almost entirely, the loss of their wisdom almost as painful as the dwindling numbers of children.

What did I know of precisely why they died, though? Of magic? Close to nothing. I’d been sheltered, I realized, in a way that weakened me. Perhaps all of us had.

“Nothing,” I admitted at last. “No one speaks of it. I saw it used at Northern, by the Russian Ivan, but if there is more than one kind… How would I recognize it? How would I know what it looks like?”

Dad bared his teeth, a fierce smile this time. “I can’t answer that. But I know where you can find out.”

I said it for him. “The library.”

Grandmother was chiding Flor as we pushed open the thick, hard-carved door of the room that had always been one of my favorites. “Listen, girlie, you need to put your whole name here in the book. It’s our family tree, and you’re in it.”

I bristled at Grandmother’s tone, but when the door was wide enough, I relaxed. She was standing in front of Flor, who was seated at one of the library tables with her back to the door. As Grandmother placed a pen on the table, she graced my mate’s lowered head with a smile.

A smile. Dad and I both stopped in our tracks and exchanged glances. Grandmother almost never smiled, not after my mother’s death.

I could tell that in our bond that Flor knew I was there, but neither woman so much as turned to acknowledge us. “I hate my middle name,” she grumbled, ignoring the pen. “No one ever knew it besides my mom and my… my old piece-of-shit Alpha. This can be a fresh start, right? If I don’t write it here, it doesn’t exist.”

Grandmother spoke softly, glancing up at me. “Names have power, Flor. Those who follow the old ways know more about that than you young, restless shifter packs.”

“The old ways? I keep hearing vague things about those, whatever they are.” My little mate sounded suspicious.

“The old ways are how the pack was meant to be structured. When shifters follow the old ways, the pack as a whole thrives. It’s why our pack still has children being born every year, why we haven’t lost the moon’s favor like the others.”

Flor sniffed. “Beggin’ your pardon, but I’ll withhold judgment. The last time a pack bragged about its amazing structure, it turned out to be Northern. The unranked there were treated like trash.”

“Until you arrived,” I agreed, crossing the room and greeting Grandmother with a kiss on her cool cheek. “Where’s Grandfather?”

“Out teaching the young ones how to track,” she replied, then turned, giving a slight bow of the head to Dad. “Why have you come to the library, Alpha?”

Grandmother hadn’t always been formal around Dad, but since Mom died, she’d changed. I was almost certain it was her way of keeping her grief from showing. Grandfather coped with his by vanishing into the woods.

“Brand needs to read everything our library holds on the… forbidden topic.” He had to work his mouth to get the last two words out.

Grandmother hmphed and stalked across the room, opening the locked case I’d tried to open all those years before, and pointing imperiously at the books and objects behind the doors. A faint scent of silver drifted out of the cabinet.

Dad obediently went to gather the books Grandmother indicated, then carried a small stack back to the table. He set them down as if they were venomous snakes instead of three dusty books.

“What are those?” Flor asked as I wrapped an arm around her. Not touching her felt wrong. In fact, as soon as I felt her skin under my hand, a surge of strength raced through me, as if I’d just shifted into my wolf form.

Hmm.

Flor shivered, but moved closer into my embrace. “The titles of them, I mean.”

Dad’s mouth slammed shut, and he shook his head silently, furious.

Flor hissed. “ He’s under a command? An Alpha?” Our eyes met; she’d seen this before at Northern, with Alpha Hillier. I wasn’t sure if she understood this was the same command, affecting another Alpha. Dad grumbled under his breath.

Grandmother sneered. “Flor, they all are. Every Alpha in North America, and every mature member of all the packs. Nearly the only ones who aren’t bound are the rogues, and most of them are too feral to speak.”

Flor reached over to the stack of books and picked one up, her mouth moving to form a word. She let out the breath on a disgusted curse instead, and set it back down.

Grandmother went on. “It’s obscene. The old ways never provided for the sort of monolithic pack structure that strips our Alpha of his rights.” She spoke to Flor, but it was obvious she was dressing my father down. “My son-in-law chose to divert from the teachings of our pack when he took the oath in front of the Council. ” I flinched at how hard she spat the last word. “But the command you’re seeing was the most egregious abuse of Alpha power ever fashioned. Of course, it was done to ‘protect’ all the packs.”

“Good intentions?” Flor murmured. “I know about those.”

“Just so,” Grandmother said, opening one of the books. “None of us can read these aloud. You may find them difficult even when reading silently. Your head might start to ache, and your nose may bleed. Please read them with a handkerchief close by. We don’t want blood on the pages.”

Dad motioned to me to gather chairs around the table, and I did, making sure to pull a narrow loveseat over for me and Flor.

Grandmother had gone back to haranguing her about completing her entry in our pack’s lineage. “I’d let you read as well, but the only pack members allowed access to those books are immediate members of the Alpha’s family. Ones who have been recorded in this book. Take the pen, and write your full name.”

To my surprise, Flor acquiesced, accepting the feathered pen and scratching her name carefully on the page. Grandmother’s eyes went wide as she watched, but when Flor went to set down the pen, she added, “Now your parents’ names, of course.”

Flor’s shoulders slumped. “Do I have to?”

“You do,” Grandmother and Dad said at the same time.

Flor’s amber eyes met mine. Indecision and fear warred in her gaze, until I said, “My sweet mate. I already know. No one here will share the truth. I won’t let anyone hurt you, no matter who your parents are.” I hoped that was a promise I could keep.

Flor dropped her head, but then scratched a few more words on the page, a mulish expression on her face. “Fuck it. You’ll all know before long anyway.”