Chapter 15
“ Submit .”
Ignoring the hot rush of power thrumming beneath my skin, I shoved to my feet and followed Ronan into the Indian laurel bushes behind the eucalyptus tree. A male wolf in hybrid form was pinned to the ground, his head under Ronan’s boot.
The man’s furred hand slapped the ground as if he were a wrestler tapping out. Ronan took a step back but looked no less dangerous for having backed off. He remained in hybrid form. Close up, he still looked human.
A little hairier, bulkier, toothier…
The wolf lifted his head, spat out a mouthful of leaves and dirt, then rolled onto his back. He tipped his head back, showing throat. Although he was filthy and half-shifted, I could tell he was a white guy with brown hair and eyes. He was a little taller and rangier than Ronan but had to be around twenty-two, tops.
“Third Alpha, please don’t kill me.”
“Lower your voice,” Ronan said. His expression and voice were flat.
“Yes, sir.”
“Who sent you?” he asked the wolf, kicking his head back to the ground when the guy tried to rise. “Stay.”
Ronan had definitely pulled that kick. If he hadn’t, the wolf’s head would’ve caved in, and that had nothing to do with the boots he was wearing.
“I was instructed to follow her .”
I squinted down at the guy. He wasn’t my stalker, wasn’t anyone I recognized. “Is he pack?”
“Yes,” Ronan said. “Trey’s loyal to Hartman.”
“I’m loyal to my pack.” Trey started to sit up again, seemed to come to the conclusion it was a dumb idea, and flopped back into the dirt again. “That includes Alpha and you.”
Ronan glared down at the young wolf. “And yet here you are, spying on me.”
“Not you, sir. Her. The witch .” The disdain in his eyes brought prickly power to every pore in my skin. I throttled it, pushed it back.
Breathe. Just breathe.
I had no idea what this kind of power could do if I found a way to release it.
“Show Ms. Lennox respect.” Ronan didn’t threaten him with violence or change his tone, but the kid nodded and ducked his head.
“Sorry.”
“How long have you been following her?” Ronan asked.
“Just today. I picked up her trail at your place and followed you here. I wouldn’t have come so close, but I was waiting in the lot and neither of you showed up, so I thought she might’ve cast some kind of spell or curse on you or something. I wasn’t spying on you, sir. I swear it.”
The kid was so earnest, I almost bought it. Except …
He was lying. It was in the smirk that teased his mouth. The way his gaze kept darting around. And it was in his reasoning.
“Why don’t you tell the truth about who you were following?” I asked. “Because if it was me, and you staked out the bar instead of my trailer, you’re the worst stalker I’ve had this week. Even the guy whose car blew up had better game.”
“You blew up someone’s car?”
“Not me, personally, no,” I replied, not elaborating any further.
He scooted slightly away from me and addressed Ronan. “I’m not lying. I was told she’d be coming to you.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
“I’m not lying, witch .”
Ronan shook his head. “Respect.”
“Sorry,” the kid said, with absolutely zero sincerity. He wiped a line of blood from his temple. It had mingled with the sweat on his face and turned pink. “I’m only following the pack’s orders, sir.”
“Get up. Shift all the way to human or I’ll force it on you.” Ronan sounded bored, but rage radiated off him as he came to stand beside me. “And tell me why you’re really here. If you lie again, I’m going to make you very uncomfortable.”
Trey shifted as instructed. It was fast, which told me he was not only an alpha but a strong one. Not in the same league as Ronan, but not someone to dismiss.
“Sir, I told you, I?—”
Ronan gripped him by the throat in a move so swift my eyes didn’t register it. He was next to me and then he was five feet away. Power threaded his voice as he said, “ The truth, wolf .”
The kid coughed. Ronan released him and watched emotionlessly as he crumpled.
It was no secret that Ronan was strong—my first good look at him in his pub had told me that. Still, even after he’d shared what he and his mother had done to the pack that killed his stepfather, I hadn’t truly seen the cold-blooded beast he could become if pushed far enough.
I caught a glimpse of it now. An eye blink of a moment that had the magic in my blood powering to the surface to protect me.
“I th-think the second alpha is missing.” Trey coughed and spat in the dirt. “He was supposed to meet me for a debrief this morning and never showed. He’d have messaged if he was going to miss it. His phone goes straight to voicemail, but worse, I can’t feel him through the pack bonds.”
“So you’re following me because you think I did something to him?” Ronan asked in his dark alpha voice.
The kid shook his head. Looked at me.
“You think I’m capable of taking out Mason Hartman?” I laughed. “You think highly of me.”
“You’re a witch .” He spat out the word like it tasted bad. “You have ways of killing us that we can’t fight.”
I debated telling him that I was as vulnerable as anyone when it came to slashing claws and sharp, gnashing teeth then thought better of it. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing for him to be afraid of me.
“So you followed Betty here to what? Confront her?” Ronan asked.
“Well, yeah. I was watching you when I saw the wi— Ms. Lennox show up at the bar. I was worried you were next.”
Ronan glanced at me over his shoulder, a half-grin twisting his lips. “Good call. She’s not someone to be taken lightly.” He looked back at the young wolf. “Have you reported this to Alpha?”
“No, sir. I came to you first.”
Ronan stomped around in the dirt, covering up the evidence of their scuffle. Dust billowed up and coated my skin. Once more, it heated, vaporized, and was absorbed. It supercharged me, raced through my bloodstream and throughout my body, filling me with hot, concentrated power.
It was the most magic I’d felt in ages, and it was glorious . Was I finally healing? It felt strange to have hope again.
I thought of something Ida had said to me not long ago.
“You’re holding onto a belief you should’ve outgrown years ago. I could tell you no one thinks you’re less of a witch than Lila. I could tell you that power emanates from you like heat off a radiator. But you won’t believe me, because you’re holding onto a lie you told yourself…”
A lie I’d told myself.
“Were you eavesdropping on our conversation?” Ronan asked the wolf, bringing me out of my own thoughts.
If Trey had looked worried before, he appeared positively terrified now. “Yes. I-I’m sorry, Third.”
He didn’t ask how much the kid had overheard. It was obvious he’d heard enough to be afraid.
Ronan proceeded to tell the kid to keep what he’d overheard today to himself, and the younger wolf nodded like a bobblehead statue in a truck with bad shocks.
With his entire focus on Ronan, Trey didn’t notice when I stepped up and gripped his head with both hands. I looked him straight in the eyes and chanted the word silence in Spanish and Latin.
“What are you?—”
“If you say one word of what you heard here to anyone, the curse I put on you will cover your head with painful boils that’ll burst and shower you with pus and blood. You’ll be unable to shift to heal them, too.”
Trey’s white skin went a peculiar shade of green.
“Go,” Ronan commanded. “Tell the Alpha you believe Hartman is in trouble. Say nothing about what happened here today.”
I raised my finger to my lips. “Shh.”
Trey stumbled back, falling once as he retreated, then running at superhuman speed out of the bushes, down the path, and into the parking lot.
“Was it necessary to curse the kid?” Ronan asked when he was gone.
“No, it wasn’t.” I lowered myself to the bench, shaking from the surge of magic and trying my best to hide it. “That’s why I didn’t. I don’t curse people, Ronan—I mean, I can, I just don’t. The kid believes I can, though, so that’s nearly as good.”
“Diabolical. I like it.” Ronan sat down beside me, glanced at his watch. “We should probably go to Calvin’s—we’re already ten minutes later than I told him we’d be.”
“Before we leave, I have a few things to ask you. If you don’t want to tell me, I understand, but I’m going to ask anyway.”
“Shoot.” He looked wary.
“What happened to your mom? You said she passed away.”
He’d told me that after he found out about my mom’s death. It was his way of showing he understood what I was going through, and though he’d lied about the other stuff, I was certain he hadn’t lied about that.
“She got sick. Cancer affects shifters differently, of course. We can last longer than humans without treatment, but humans have more treatments available to them, which evens it up. Our bodies tend to reject things like chemotherapy and radiation therapies. There are natural and magical treatments, but…” He sighed, his shoulders sinking into a curve that drew his body toward the ground.
I reached for his hand, and he let me take it. “They didn’t work?”
“No.” He didn’t elaborate. “When she began to weaken, I challenged her and took over the pack.”
“ You challenged your dying mom ?”
He nodded, misery in every line of his body. “There was no other way. The title of Alpha has to be wrested away—or the alpha can give it up and walk away from the pack, which she didn’t want to do, because it meant leaving the diner.”
“I’ve heard of alpha leaders stepping down and remaining in packs,” I said, entwining my fingers with his when he made to pull away.
“And exactly how many of them are alive today?” His laugh was harsh. “If she’d stepped down and passed it to her son, not only would the pack have lost respect for me, but I’d have had to field challenges from every alpha within a thousand-mile radius.”
“Oh.” I felt ill. His mother had been dying, and he’d had to fight her in a dominance battle. He’d been forced to hurt her during a time when she was already hurting.
“I challenged her with the agreement that she’d serve as my second if I won. That sort of challenge is usually done as a punishment to the former alpha. A humiliation. But we twisted it.” He smiled, his gaze clouding over. “She came up with the idea. My mom was strong and shrewd. Everything I know about power plays I learned from her.”
“Did you leave after your mom passed?”
“Yeah.” He squeezed my hand. “I couldn’t stand to look at the pack after that. Even the ones who hadn’t done anything to Mom or Abel. I left to get my revenge on Floyd, but I also left to get my head on straight before I unleashed my anger on someone who didn’t deserve it.”
“Are you planning to return to your old pack?” I dreaded his response. Either way, his answer would impact me, and I didn’t like that it meant so much.
“That was the plan when I left,” he said.
“And now?”
“Now, I don’t know what I’m going to do. This town. This whole damn county. It pulls at you.” As if to emphasize the point, he stood and pulled me to my feet. “I’ve planned to leave so many times, and I keep finding reasons to stay.”
“Well, you did open a business almost as soon as you got here,” I said.
“Yeah.” He grinned. “I bought the property from a beta wolf who wanted to retire. Nothing about Ronan’s Pub was planned. Aurora suggested it. She thought I’d be good at running a bar, and something in me wanted to prove her right.”
“And you did,” I said. “You are good at it.”
“The place is coming along, but then I’m only a couple years in. I’d made some good investments, so I had the cash. Plus, I’d run Abel’s diner most of my life, so I already knew the ropes. California is different from Arizona, but most of the important things are similar enough.”
“Did you sell the diner when you left town?”
He shook his head. “I hired a property manager to rent it out. A young couple’s been running the place since. It’s doing well, and they’ve asked if I’d be willing to sell. I haven’t yet been willing.”
No, I imagined he hadn’t. That diner was a connection to his mom and Abel. But more than that, if he sold it, he was letting go of the past and accepting that his life was here.
My stubborn resistance to moving into Mom’s cottage came to mind. Gods, could I ever relate to this man.
“If I decide to make this place my permanent home,” Ronan said, his voice strong and steady, “I’ll have to take him down. It’ll be another war. People will get hurt.” He stepped onto the path, still holding my hand.
“You mean Aurora.”
He nodded. “And you. Once he’s lost everything, he’ll come for you.”
“Yeah, I know.” Floyd’s position was the reason my leverage against him had any power. If he lost it, he wouldn’t care if I revealed his sins to the pack. “Even so, I’d love to see you bring him down.”
“Good, because I need your advice on how to keep the coven at bay.”
Floyd having the coven on retainer was a real pain in the ass. Symbolically, it went against everything witches were supposed to stand for. Our goddesses, and their earthly counterpart, the witch council, were solidly against coercive authority from outsiders.
The La Paloma coven skated around this by charging the pack for their services, which was fine with the witch council and the goddesses. Trade within the paranormal world was allowed, which was good for my lineage since we’ve been charging for our services for centuries.
I stopped walking and ducked beneath a pepper tree. Ronan tilted his head, a smile teasing one corner of his mouth. He looked like the man I’d first met in his pub, the one who’d told me he understood how sad I felt because he’d lost his mom, too.
“You have it,” I said.
“Have it?”
“My advice. My help. With the coven and anything else you might need.”
The smile faded, and a new, intense look poured into his gaze. He slowly tugged me close. I let myself be pulled. “ Betty .”
The way he said it, more of a growl than a word, arrowed straight to the center of me. My heart knocked against my chest like it was trying to get my attention. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the party on the other side of the park heard it.
He let go of my hand and cupped the sides of my face. The second he touched me, a strange calm stole over me. My heart slowed, and the magic that had been roaring through my body a moment ago quieted.
“I meant it before. I want you.”
“ Ronan .” I swallowed but didn’t move away. “I do, too. Want you, I mean. It’s just… things aren’t that simple.”
“You’re wrong. The way I feel about you is the only thing in my life that is simple.”
I put my hands on top of his and slid them to my shoulders. “There are some big obstacles between us. Namely, a two-hundred-fifty-five-pound furry obstacle you share a bloodline with.”
His grin returned. “I’m not going to ask how, because I probably shouldn’t hear the answer, but why do you know Floyd’s exact weight?”
“Because fae wolfsbane is a weight-based poison,” I said with a smirk.
“Aren’t they all? ‘The dose makes the poison,’ and all that?”
“Not necessarily. But wolfsbane is, and I’d really hate to see him accidentally overdose. That would be simply awful .”
He slid our hands back up to my face and backward-walked me beneath the shady pepper tree. “You’re scary. It’s my favorite thing about you.”
“That’s sweet, but don’t be too quick to name a favorite. We haven’t even had sex yet.”
“ Yet .” The smile he gave me was worth giving away my intentions toward him.
As if anyone with half a brain couldn’t see the sparks between us when we were together. Wasn’t that how he’d ended up at this park pouring his heart out to me? Because he wanted me like I wanted him?
“It’s my fault Trey spied on us,” I said. “I shouldn’t have stood on your bar that night. It was a mistake drawing attention like that. It put you in a bad position with the pack.”
“Ah, Betty.” He lowered his mouth until it was mere inches from mine. “Why would such a smart woman say something so dumb? That night was one of the highlights of my entire life.”
Godsdamn the man for being so irresistible.
I closed the distance between us and kissed him. His hands wrapped around the back of my head; one of mine twined around his neck. The other broke away to play along the line of his jaw, glide down his chest, and dip under the waistband of his jeans. I gave it a yank and pulled his hips closer.
Ronan groaned into my mouth, angled his head to deepen the kiss. I walked my fingers into the warm crease where his hip met his groin, and he broke the kiss with a powerful exhale then rested his forehead against mine.
“Holy hell. I knew it was going to be like that.”
“Hot?” I asked.
“Explosive.” His breathing sped up, which was something, because he already sounded like he’d run a marathon. “We should probably?—”
I leaned into him so our chests touched and slid my hand even farther to the left, stroking him with the tips of my fingers. We were partially hidden under the tree, the draped branches cloaking us from the waist up, and had this side of the park to ourselves, except for a jogger, and she was half a mile up the trail.
His hands glided down my back to my ass. He squeezed me against him and growled, low and rumbling.
“We should probably what?” I whispered against his jaw.
“Huh?”
“You said we should probably,” I purred into his ear. “I’m wondering what it was you wanted to do.”
He fell back against the tree trunk, dislodging bits of bark. Twigs and leaves rained down on us in a shimmering shower. Here, the canopy was so dense it lowered the temperature by several degrees—or would have, if I hadn’t had my hand down the front of Ronan’s jeans.
His eyes glowed like candlelight in a dark room, and I remembered he’d left his shades on the bench with mine. It didn’t seem all that important right now, but maybe it should have. Because, if I’d been thinking about his sunglasses instead of getting handsy with the man, I might’ve picked up on the high school track team cresting the grassy hill north of us when they were five hundred feet away instead of fifty.
“Damn it.” I pulled my hand out of his jeans and started chanting. “ Don’t see us, don’t see us, don’t see us ,” I muttered, putting intention behind the words.
A cacophony of huffs and puffs and stomping feet passed the pepper tree. Not a single person, coach or student, glanced at us.
Ronan whispered, “Did you cast a spell on them?”
“Yeah. Though, it felt like more of a hope I sent out into the universe.” I dusted bits of tree off his shirt and out of his hair. When we went to dust me off, nothing was there.
Not a single leaf.
What in the goddess-blessed world was going on? I wanted to share my confusion with Ronan, but I’d have to start at the beginning and the time didn’t seem right.
Funny how time hadn’t been an issue when my tongue had been in his mouth a minute ago. Priorities?
He gave me a confused look. “Uh, thanks for protecting me, but I think you might need it more than I do right now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your eyes. They’re glowing.”