Chapter 23

V iolet delivers the boy, washes her hands, and immediately leaves the cabin without a word.

I look over at my closest friend, who just somehow gained a mate and a child in a matter of moments, and he looks happier than I’ve ever seen him.

“Tell her I said thank you,” Jonas says, touching the massive newborn and his new mate.

I nod and go outside, expecting her to be gone, to have popped out of existence, and headed back to her large, lonely home.

Instead, I find her on the edge of the woods, her hands shaking as she holds her head in her hands and sits on the bark of a fallen tree.

I sit next to her, and as soon as I do, the dry, rotted bark breaks and sends us crashing to the ground. I fall on my ass and knock the air out of my lungs, but when I glance over at Violet, she’s laughing with tears in her eyes.

“You’re so big you broke the tree,” she says, wiping the tears away and letting out a breath of air as we stare up at the tree covered sky. A good number of the leaves have fallen, but it’s nothing like the crunchy leaves you see up north.

We don’t even bother getting up from the forest floor.

“You did good back there. Thank you,” I tell her and she looks at me with an expression I wish I could read.

“I’ve got to say, that is by far the most dramatic, intense birth I’ve ever seen. Not to mention the first boy, and the first one over nine pounds. That poor woman.”

“Witches only have girls?” he asks.

“It’s our blessing,” she says with a smirk, and I shake my head. “So, are we going to talk about the fact that your best friend found his mate while she was giving birth?”

“What’s left to say?”

“His devotion toward her was instant,” she says and I nod, trying to fight my own instincts and devotion toward the witch next to me. Her coming here and helping my pack has unfortunately only endeared her to me more.

“That’s typically how matings work.”

“Do all wolves have a mate?”

“Yes, and no. I suppose we all have a mate. I’d say about a quarter or so find mates. Others have chosen mates.”

“So you have a mate?” she asks, and I brush it off.

“It doesn’t matter, being the Alpha these people need is more important. What you saw today was a small portion of it. We can go to human doctors for most things, and we heal incredibly fast naturally. But taking Paige to the hospital would have exposed us, which, as you know, can’t happen. These people deserve more than just making ends meet. They deserve someone who will stand up for them. If I have to give up my own wants and needs for them, I will. That boy you just brought into this world should grow up knowing how to be a man, not scraping by and figuring it out as he goes.”

Violet looks at me like she understands completely and goes back to looking up at the sky.

“You turned out pretty okay, Silas.”

“You turned out pretty okay too,” I tell her, grabbing her hand against my will and squeezing. She doesn’t shrug me off and I realize if this is the only touch I ever get from her, then I’ll cherish it for the rest of my life.

Despite having had time with Violet today, my body still demands that I go to her house, so I do as I have the nights before and pack a bag and make the drive to the massive purple home. I park my bike in the same spot, and it immediately disappears before my eyes.

All the pumpkins on her porch are already lit and before I can knock on the door, it’s swinging wide open on its own accord. No Violet insight.

Just her demon of a cat, who blinks at me with its yellow eyes.

“Hello, Walter,” I tell him and he hisses, before retreating upstairs.

I walk back into the kitchen, the dishes are being washed with no one in sight, just a sponge in midair with a plate, before a rag dries it and it is placed on a drying rack. A timer goes off and I watch in complete fascination as the oven turns itself off and the door pops open, a tray of muffins floating on top of the stove.

I can’t deny that the magic is impressive and captivating.

She’s not in the living room or dining room.

Instead, I look out the back window and find her barefoot, wrapped in a blanket, sitting on the ruins of what was a gazebo from the photos we found. The moon is in its last quarter, but the glow of solar or magical powered lights leads me down the path.

The frogs are croaking obnoxiously loud near the water, but I can see why sitting out here would be peaceful.

Violet glances up at me, but doesn’t speak. She looks pale and worn out and I can’t stand it.

“Are you okay?” I ask, not knowing what else to say.

She sighs and puts the necklace that’s wrapped in silk on the ground of the wood base, that I’m not one-hundred percent sure can hold my weight. I look down at the familiar necklace and back up to her.

“You haven’t put it on yet?” I ask her.

“It’s not an amethyst,” she says matter-of-factly. “I wondered how it was so bright, and the more I looked at it, the more I realized it's moonstone covered in magic.”

I furrow my brows and sit down, the wood complaining as I plop my weight down.

“I mean, I don’t think either of us is surprised it has some magical qualities?” I reply.

“No, I just—I feel like when I put this on, everything is going to change.”

“I don’t know about you, Vi, but I’d say the last couple of weeks have been pretty wildly different from our normal life.”

“Part of me thought about tucking it away, forgetting about it.”

“You’re good at that,” I say, feeling like an ass as soon as I do. But Violet doesn’t argue, she just nods with a shrug.

“Compartmentalizing helps protect myself. I had to put you in a box, Silas. Or I wouldn’t have been able to live. I’ve kept my mother in a similar box, taking my grand-mère’s word, my coven’s word. I don’t know if it’s because I moved into her house, finding her, but both boxes I kept firmly shut have both exploded in my face.”

“You think this will explode in your face?”

“I can feel it. Maybe it’s a witch’s intuition. But this necklace, it’s more than jewelry. It’s not protective magic, it’s something else,” she says, glancing down at the hypnotizing purple and opalescent color of the necklace.

“Should you have a coven member here?” I ask, hating the idea, but if she’s that worried about the magic, there’s only so much I can do.

“No, I just need you to make me a promise.”

“Aren’t we in enough trouble for making each other promises?” I ask.

But she doesn’t laugh, doesn’t smile.

“You’ll subdue me if anything goes wrong,” she says, handing me three things. “This one is a powder, in case you can’t get close to me, it will knock me out. Enough time to take the necklace off and take me to Iris. This one is oral. If I’m with it enough, I can down this and it will do the same. But if things go really bad,” she says, pulling out the smallest little dart. “Hit me with this.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t put the necklace on.”

“I’m tired of not knowing the truth,” she says.

“And you think a necklace will give you this truth?”

“In her letter, she said the moon necklace will always protect you. I’ve got to hold on to that. ”

“ Is there something you’re not telling me?” I ask her, and she doesn’t look at me, so I grab her chin. Her soft skin feels like silk against mine. “Violet?”

She looks like she wants to say something, but tightens her lips.

“I just…I just need to know the truth, Silas. Promise me you’ll make sure I’m okay. I know we don’t always get along, that you’re still mad at me and we’re trying to figure out how to get ourselves out of this mess, but I know you’d never hurt me. So just promise me, that whatever happens when I put on this necklace, you’ll make sure nothing bad happens.”

Her mind is made up, I can read it in the seriousness of her face. She’s putting this necklace on no matter what I say. I mean, the thing looks harmless. Her mother gave it to her. Not that she knew who she was giving it to, or maybe some small part of her did. There was something intrinsic in the way she knew Violet needed this necklace, and she gave it to me to give to her.

“I’m going to be really pissed if I have to shoot you with this, Violet.”

She smiles and takes a deep breath. Her fingers shake as she grabs the chain, unclasping the mechanism before putting it around her neck and clasping it. The blanket falls, showing that she’s wearing a purple nightgown.

Fucking nightgowns.

“I like the nightgowns,” Thorin says, unhelpfully.

The glowing stone rests right above her breasts, and nothing happens. We both take a sigh in relief, and she picks it up between her two fingers and sighs.

“What did you think was going to happen?”

“I don’t know, some major magical power trip that leads to me destroying the world,” Violet says, and I can’t tell if she’s serious or not.

“Let’s go inside and talk about what I learned from Jonas.”

“Okay,” she says and we both stand.

We glance up at the disappearing moon and Violet stills for a moment before she collapses against the cold hard ground. Her nails dig into the dirt as I crouch next to her.

“Violet?” I say her name with panic as her body trembles.

It’s like she’s being possessed for a moment until a scream so intense rips out of her and her head arches to the night sky.

A scream I remember all too well.

Her bent over body trembles more as I watch the telltale signs of a first shift. Her nightgown rips down the back, exposing her spine that now ripples and repositions to that of a wolf.

What was once her unblemished skin now turns to fur. She cries out in pain again, but before the sound can finish, it’s cut off with a howl of frustration.

I blink twice as the small wolf in front of me cowers.

She’s smaller than some of the adolescent wolves in the pack, but completely unique in her coloring.

Her face is stark white, glowing bright blue eyes framing her face. The white is spotted with black on her neck, until the rest of her form is completely black, minus her two front paws.

The wolf whines and gets down close to the ground in fear and panic.

“It’s okay,” I say, going to stroke her head, but she backs away in fear. “Violet, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

The wolf yips and I sigh, knowing what’s about to happen.

“Finally,” Thorin whispers, and before I can even undress, he’s taking over, ripping my favorite pair of jeans in the process so he can meet his wolf mate he didn’t know existed.

Things just got fifty times more complicated.