Chapter 13

A door slamming jolts me awake, and I sit up straight on the too small couch. I rub a hand down my chest and frown.

When I pull back the sheet, I realize I’m completely naked. Definitely not the way I slept. Though, it’s my preference. I know for a fact I did not go to sleep nude, not here.

“What did you do?” I question Thorin.

He doesn’t answer, his voice in my mind completely silent. This fucking wolf is going to ruin my life.

I groan, my body aching from whatever Thorin did, or how I slept on this couch. When I blink away the grogginess, I’m greeted by Violet’s pissy cat.

“Did your mistress leave?” I ask him, and he blinks his yellow eyes at me. I already know she’s not here. If the slammed door didn’t give it away, this aching feeling in my chest would.

I go to grab my phone off the table, but the cat is faster, batting it with his paw, making it clink to the wooden floor.

“Of course, her familiar would be a crotchety asshole of a cat,” I mumble, picking up my phone.

I need to be on the compound in thirty minutes. Quickly, I grab the bag I brought and get dressed.

The cat jumps off the table and goes to sit on the stairs, watching my every move and almost ensuring I don’t dare go exploring upstairs.

“Tell your mistress to work faster on getting us out of this mess. Then I’ll be out of your matted fur,” I tell the cat, and I shake my head.

Great, now I’m talking out loud to a cat. Isn’t it bad enough I have a goddamn wolf I share a body with.

I grab my boot and slide my foot in. Groaning as my sock sloshes and pools with fluid.

“What the fuck?” I hiss, pulling out my foot. As soon as I sniff, the scent is undeniable.

Cat piss.

“Seriously?” I say, glancing up the stairs. Where this cat slowly blinks at me like he’s done nothing wrong.

I curse as I grab my bag and my boots. I flip them upside down once I’m on the porch, watching the liquid drip out.

Violet better be working hard today to figure out how to get us out of this clusterfuck. My back can’t handle that couch again, and I certainly don’t want another moment with her sadistic cat.

I grimace as I slide on my piss-filled boots, and throw a leg over my bike. There’s a sense of wrongness as I drive away from Violet’s home, but I crush it down. I have important pack business to handle today.

Jonas clears his throat next to me as I toss my boots onto the worn porch of the Alpha cabin.

“What the fuck is that smell, and where have you been?”

“Cat piss and it’s a long story,” I reply, turning the shower on and undressing.

Jonas and I have been friends for a long time, shifting for the first time together, taking Mander’s over together, and now running this pack. There’s no need for modesty or lies between us. Though, part of me wants to keep some things to myself. Jonas doesn’t need to know what a nightmare this all is if we’re going to resolve it swiftly.

“Thorin riding your ass about Violet?” he asks.

“Something like that.”

“I love that you’re so talkative. It’s probably your best quality.” I give him a shitty look before pulling back the shower curtain and letting the warm water wash away the smell and tension from last night.

“The new lawyer has everything written up. As soon as you sign, we own it. Honestly, can’t believe the witches fucked this up so bad. I guess they don’t operate all the business there, but still.”

I smile to myself as I wash my body.

Something tells me I’m not about to have a warm welcome tonight from my little wife.

I turn the faucet off and grab the towel, running it over my hair and beard before wrapping it around my waist and stepping out.

“Let’s go show them who owns this town,” I tell Jonas, who gives me a feral grin.

“Buy some new boots while we’re out,” he says, turning to let me get dressed.

The witches didn’t want peace? Well, maybe this will change their minds.

The documents are long signed, no doubt the news spreading through town that it’s no longer Wedington Properties who owns the main strip downtown. It’s Walker Industries.

There are four witch-owned businesses on the small strip. Goddess Apothecary, Lavender and Lime, Cora’s Bakery, and The Cauldron.

Perhaps the witches considered owning the building that houses another dozen businesses as a stupid move, or maybe their hatred runs so deep they only cared about buying out land so the pack couldn’t get their piece.

For whatever reason, their ignorance is my gain. They’re now my tenants and it seems like the price of rent just went up.

I’m trying to stay in my cabin. Desperately trying not to go to Violet’s home, but despite all my efforts, I wind up packing a bag and hopping on the back of my bike in the dead of night.

The night air has a crispness that the daytime doesn’t offer. I almost feel like I’m shifted and running freely. I sigh as excitement over the upcoming full moon fills me. So many years I’ve dreamed about what it would be like to run in a full pack. I’ve had Jonas all these years, and I’m grateful for him, but it isn’t the same.

I’ve finally found my family and I’m not going to let anything destroy it. Especially not a band of self-righteous witches who think magic makes them superior beings.

I’m barely off my bike when the large front door of Violet’s home swings open and she comes storming down the porch. Her wand is clutched in her hand, but she doesn’t raise it.

“You bought downtown?” she says, raising her voice.

“Seems your High Priestess might not have as much foresight as she thought.”

“Where did the money come from?” Violet questions, and I shrug. “You can’t kick them out, they’ve all worked hard to own and run those stores,” Violet says.

I take a few steps toward her, towering over her. She seems pissed, but tilts her chin so she can glare at me.

“It sounds oddly familiar. Do you know how many businesses your grandmother has torn out of the hands of shifters? Tell me Violet, are you happy to be a bystander to your grandmother’s hatred, or are you just as evil?”

“You don’t understand, you just got here. This is the way things have always been.”

“Been, how? Witches on top and every other supernatural on the bottom next to humans?”

“No,” she replies quickly and shakes her head.

“No? Then tell me why Moon Walker Pack has lost nearly one-hundred acres of pack land in the last thirty years. Tell me why our numbers are down, why every member fears your grandmother?”

She doesn’t back down, and I’ll give her credit for that.

“You heard her at that meeting. Moon Walker Pack killed coven members.”

“You’re so sure of that?”

She steels her spine and nods at me. “Grand-mère may be a lot of things, but she isn’t a liar.”

I sigh and bend down so we're at eye level. “I guess some things don’t change.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“That you’re still that desperate little girl who would do anything for a family,” I say, regretting the words as soon as they slip out.

She holds her wand to my throat, the cold metal pressing against my skin.

“What does that make you, Silas? Don’t come here degrading me for my loyalties. Not when you’re using this pack as some type of farce as a family. You’ve been looking for somewhere to belong just as bad as me.”

She doesn’t move her wand and in that moment, I see her grandmother’s teachings, not the sweet girl I met in treehouses who never had a mean word to say about anyone.

“I suppose we both got what we wanted, then.”

“You can’t kick them out of their businesses,” she repeats, threatening me with her magic, which I shouldn’t like.

It’s the first time Thorin wakes all day, his deep voice rumbling through my mind. “She’s so pretty when she’s mad.”

I shake him off and grab Violet’s wrist. “I’m not going to kick them out.”

“You’re not?” she asks, the pressure of her wand slipping.

“Your grandmother said I had no leverage for peace, but now I do.”

“That’s truly what you want? Peace?”

She lowers her wand to her side as I stare down at her, already mad that I told her I wouldn’t kick the witches out of their businesses. She shouldn’t be privy to that information or any of my plans.

“I wouldn’t have had that meeting otherwise,” I say simply.

She crosses her arms over her chest. Tonight she’s wearing a pink nightgown. Did they have a sale on these things and she just bought one in every fucking color? Who still wears a goddamn nightgown, anyway?

The bugs are loud and the moon is waxing gibbous, a promise of what’s coming in a few days.

“It will never happen,” she says, shaking her head and walking back to the porch. She flicks her wand, instantaneously lighting all the carved pumpkins onto her porch.

I have to hold back my surprise at how effortless that was for her.

“Let me ask you this, has anyone from the Moon Walker Pack ever done anything to you personally?” I ask her and she pauses, leaning against the pillar of her home. I crowd her space, my hand well above the top of her head. “Well?”

“Besides unkind words spoken, no,” she whispers and crosses her arms. “It doesn’t matter, though.”

“Why?”

“I know you want that pack to be your family so bad, Silas. But being in a coven? Those women? They mean everything to me and I’d rather die than betray them in any way. Just having you here is a betrayal, sharing coven secrets, talking about my grand-mère? It’s been generations of hatred between the Celestial Coven and the Moon Walker Pack.”

“Isn’t it odd that no one knows the origin?” I ask, tilting my head at her.

“History gets lost, especially when we’re all hiding what we are from the real world.”

“Or could it be something else? Magical manipulation?”

Her grip on her wand tightens as she glares up at me. “What are you insinuating?”

“Could be nothing. Could be everything,” I say, not wanting to show all my cards.

I’m not sure why I want Violet to see reason. It’s clear her grandmother has indoctrinated her to some extent. But what if she could see reason? What if everything was different? I groan at myself, knowing it’s a stupid idea, it will never happen.

“You ride into town, claim that pack, and you know everything, don’t you? Well, you don’t know shit about my family or me. It’s been a long fourteen years, Silas.”

“Very long. It doesn’t look like the years were hard on you,” I say, pointing around at her house.

“You don’t know me.”

“Clearly not,” I agree, which frustrates her more as she turns and walks through her front door.

Even though this is the last place I want to be, something beyond my control has my feet moving behind her. I do my best not to look at her ass swishing in her nightgown.

If you were to ask me if I glanced, I’d tell you that Thorin made me do it.

When I enter the threshold, her cat is sitting on the stairs, glaring at me.

“Your cat pissed in my shoe,” I tell her.

She walks up the stairs, scooping the cat up and kisses his old gray head. “Walter has a great judge of character,” she says.

“Any progress on the spell?” I shout as she stomps up the stairs.

“Go fuck yourself,” she yells as the front door slams shut, and I’m quickly covered in darkness.

I put the sheets on in the dark and wonder if maybe I can get Violet on my side after all. I mean, the marriage needs to be forfeit, along with the complications of this spell. But she is next in line to be High Priestess. Maybe there’s hope after all.