Do You Even Shift, Bro? (Bros and the Witch #2)

Chapter 1 – REGINA

REGINA

The healer's name is Kara.

She's been with the coven for over a decade, her magic specialized in mending flesh and bone. And right now, Kara is unwrapping the bandages from my face with the enthusiasm of someone handling radioactive waste.

"Hold still," she mutters even though I haven't moved. Haven't been able to move much at all since they dragged me out of the fucking basement.

The infection set in two days ago. Werewolf wounds don't heal clean. There's something about the cursed bacteria that gets into the tissue. Because supernatural gangrene is exactly what I need right now.

Fucking thanks, universe.

Kara's been fighting it with poultices and healing spells, but even her considerable skill can only do so much. The fever is making my skin burn, my left eye is swollen shut, and the flesh around it so tight and hot it feels like it's going to split open.

The bandages peel away with a sticky sound that makes my stomach lurch. I can't see her expression from this angle, but I hear the sharp intake of breath.

"Worse than yesterday," she says, more to herself than to me.

I try to speak, but my throat is sandpaper. "How bad?"

She doesn't answer. Just reaches for fresh gauze and a jar of something that smells like rotting herbs.

"Kara. How bad is it?"

Her hands pause. When she finally looks at me, there's no sympathy in her weathered face. Just cold assessment.

"You're lucky Kyle hasn't thrown you out on the street." She resumes her work, pressing the poultice against my wounds with more force than necessary. I bite back a scream. "Going down to the basement. Touching things that don't belong to you. Do you have any idea what you've done?"

"I didn't know—"

"You didn't think," she snaps. "The Council has been sniffing around our wards for weeks. If they trace that werewolf back to us, if they find out what we were planning—" She stops herself, jaw tight. "That will be on your head, Regina. All of it."

The words burrow under my skin, joining the infection already rotting me from the inside out. She's right. I was fucking reckless. I heard the sounds of something suffering and I acted out of compassion.

And now I'm paying for it.

"I was trying to help it," I mutter.

"It was a weapon." Kara finishes wrapping the fresh bandages with brutal efficiency. "A tool for a ritual that would have benefited the entire coven. And you ruined it. For what? Some misguided sense of compassion?" She snorts as if the mere concept is pointless. "Compassion gets witches killed."

She gathers her supplies and heads for the door without a backward glance.

"Rest. I'll check on you tomorrow. If the infection hasn't spread further."

The door shuts behind her, and I'm alone with the silence and the pain and the crushing weight of my own monumental fuck up.

I shouldn't get up. Kara would probably kill me herself if she knew, and I probably shouldn't touch the bandages, either, even though it's the poultice that really matters here. But something drives me to move, some masochistic need to see how bad it is myself.

My legs shake as I push myself upright, the room tilting dangerously. I grip the bedpost until the spinning stops, then shuffle toward the small mirror mounted on the dresser.

The bandages are fresh, white gauze wrapped around my head like a mummy's shroud. My hands tremble as I reach up and begin to peel them away.

The first strip comes off easily enough. The second pulls at something, and I have to bite down on my lip to keep from screaming. By the third, I've stopped caring about the pain.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

The werewolf's claws carved a jagged starburst pattern across the left side of my face, radiating outward from my eye. The flesh is swollen, angry red and streaked with black infection, the edges of the wounds puckered and raw. My eye—what I can see of it through the swelling—is clouded over.

The worst part is my mouth. My lip is torn in a permanent partial snarl that exposes a sliver of teeth. I look… unrecognizable.

I look like a monster.

My knees buckle and I hit the floor hard, the impact sending fresh agony through my battered body. I don't care. Can't care. Can't think about anything except what's staring back at me from that mirror.

I curl in on myself, pressing my forehead against the cold wooden floor, and I sob until I can't fucking breathe anymore.

And of course that's how Kyle finds me.

"Regina?" he demands. "What the hell are you doing on the floor?"

I can't answer. Can't stop crying. Can barely breathe through the gasps and the tears and the overwhelming despair.

Strong hands slide under my arms, lifting me with surprising gentleness. Kyle carries me back to the bed, settling me against the pillows like I'm made of glass. For a moment, just a single moment, I let myself believe he actually cares.

"Look at me." His fingers touch my chin, tilting my face toward his. I flinch, trying to turn away, to hide the ruined side from his view. "Regina. Look at me."

I force my good eye to meet his. Kyle's expression is neutral, but I can see something flickering beneath the surface, pulling at his lips. Disgust? Pity? I can't tell. Probably fucking both.

"You shouldn't have gotten up," he says. "Kara said complete bed rest."

"I needed to see." My voice cracks. "I needed to know."

"And now you know. Happy?" His thumb brushes my undamaged cheek, the gesture almost tender. "You should have thought about the consequences before you went down there."

Fresh tears spill down my cheeks, stinging my wounds.

The gentleness evaporates. His hand drops from my face, and he leans back, studying me with a cold look I know well. The one he wears whenever I fail to perform to his expectations.

"Why did you have a werewolf in the basement?" The question tears out of me before I can stop it. "How could you not tell me?"

His jaw tightens. "This. This right here is why I didn't tell you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you've always been too moral for your own good, Regina." He stands, pacing to the window, his back to me. "Too soft. Too concerned with right and wrong instead of what's necessary."

"Torturing a creature was necessary?"

He whirls on me, and for a moment, I see the real Kyle. The one that lurks beneath the charm and the perfect face. The one that makes lesser witches cross to the other side of the street.

"That creature was going to power a ritual that would have elevated our entire coven," he snarls, echoing Kara's words too closely not to feel the sting.

"Years of planning, contacts carefully cultivated, all of it building toward something that would have made all the work I've put into this coven worth it.

And you ruined it. Because you felt sorry for a monster. "

"I didn't know—"

"You didn't ask." He moves closer, looming over the bed. "You stuck your nose where it didn't belong, and now look at you. Look at what you've done to yourself. Do you have any idea what people are going to think when they see our Thirteenth looking like... like that?"

I flinch like he's slapped me.

Something shifts in his expression. The mask slides back into place, and suddenly he's Kyle again. Charming, attentive, everything I thought I loved. He sits on the edge of the bed, reaching for my hand.

"I'm sorry," he says, softer now. "That was cruel. I'm just... I'm frustrated, Regina. We worked so hard. And now..." He trails off, shaking his head as he produces a small book from inside his jacket. "I have a solution."

It's leather-bound, worn with use, and I feel the unmistakable prickle of magic in the air around it. A divider marks a specific page.

I open the book, jolting a bit when my fingers make contact with the page. This is old magic. And it's come at a cost. When I see the page he's marked, my heart sinks.

"A glamour spell?"

"Obviously," he says in a clipped tone. "I can't have people knowing my girlfriend, our coven's fucking Thirteenth, looks like…"

He trails off, but he doesn't need to finish that thought for me to know exactly what he was about to say.

"A glamour this comprehensive takes a lot of energy," I say quietly.

"I know." His hand covers mine, squeezing gently before standing. "But it's worth it. Especially in front of others. You'll learn to maintain it. I know you can."

Kyle has always been stingy with my magic. Always monitoring my energy expenditure, always ensuring the coven's needs come before my own. The fact that he's willing—eager, even—to have me spend significant power on hiding my face tells me everything I need to know about how he sees me now.

Damaged goods.

An embarrassment to be concealed.

Maybe he's even personally fucking disgusted by me now.

"Do you still love me?" I ask before I can stop myself.

He freezes at the door, his back to me. The silence stretches, seconds morphing into an eternity.

"Get some rest, Regina."

The door closes behind him with a resolute thud, and I'm alone again.

More than I ever have been.

I wake with a gasp, my face wet with tears and my heart tripping over itself.

It takes me a moment to figure out where the fuck I am. An attic with dusty bookshelves, artifact-filled trunks, and the familiar musty smell of old magic. I'm not in bed. I'm curled up on the reading couch, an open grimoire resting across my chest.

Right. I'm in the pack house in my improvised research station. I'm safe.

Three years removed from that nightmare, even if my subconscious hasn't gotten the memo yet.

Gods, I was so weak then. Blind to who Kyle really was and completely out of options after getting half my face ripped off. I let myself believe he still cared about me. Loved me, even.

I will never betray my instincts again.

Never. Fucking. Again.