Chapter 7
TIPPY
I’m woken by the sound of the phone ringing.
Bleary-eyed, I get out of bed and grope my way down the corridor to pick it up.
“Tippy, it’s Aunt Felicia!” announces a brisk voice.
I wince as my head throbs, reminding me I drank alcohol last night, which is not a good look for a wixen.
I blew it. In more ways than one.
“Hello Auntie,” I mumble thickly.
“You’re late, Tippy-Anna.”
Shit. It’s Wednesday, which means I have wixen training. “Sorry, I must have slept through my alarm.”
“Are you alright, darling?”
“Yes, why?”
“You sound groggy. Not getting a cold I hope?”
I force a bright tone. “No, no, I’m absolutely fine.”
“Good, because I have someone I need you to meet.”
The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “Who?”
“You’ll find out when you get here. And hurry, darling. You don’t want to keep them waiting.”
“Keep who waiting?”
“Questions, questions. You’ll find out soon enough.” Aunt Felicia is using her sing-song voice, which usually means she’s planning to spring something big on me. Like new runes to try and decipher, or a complex recipe to work on.
I’m so not in the mood for anything more complex than a cup of strong coffee right now.
My bad, I guess.
I take a lightning-fast shower then survey my face in the mirror. My ears are wilting, my hair looks limp. I spray my homemade spray into it to give it bounce, then stroke lavender oil onto my ears to perk them up, and put concealer under my eyes and outline them with liner.
I throw on a casual pair of jeans and an old t-shirt. It’s what I usually wear when we’re experimenting with new potions, and I know I’ll get covered in splashes. I’m not going to dress smart just because Aunt Felicia has asked someone over.
There’s no time for that much-needed coffee. I slide on my sneakers, grab my purse and head for the door. My little red scooter sits waiting outside, and soon I’m wending my way through the tunnels toward Aunt Felicia’s apothecary on the other side of level one.
The markets are opening up, and my nostrils twitch at the delicious smell of the pastries. But there’s no time to stop.
As I ride past Bait and Tackle, my stomach clenches.
I never want to go back to that place.
I hope Larry doesn’t come into Digger’s in the near future. I don’t want to face him.
But worse, I don’t want to face Jax.
He was just trying to help, a placatory little voice inside me says.
No, No, NO! That was not a guy helping a damsel in distress.
That encounter was so hot it nearly burnt a hole in the gusset of my panties.
Truth is, last night Jax was so… so possessive and…
physical. He’s barely ever touched me before.
On the few occasions in the past when I’ve dared give him a quick hug, he’s always frozen, like he honestly didn’t know what to do.
I wondered if he was ashamed of his scars, or perhaps he was too damaged by being programmed for so long.
But now…
The touch of his hands, those sensual lips so close to mine, those eyes promising dirty, dark pleasures.
Despite my throbbing head, my body responds to the memory by lighting up like a thousand lumen lamps.
I turn the throttle and speed up, feeling the tunnel breeze blowing my ears against my skull, but still my internal turmoil continues.
He deserved to get his face slapped, what he said was gross.
Yeah, and you loved it.
Truth is, I’d been dreaming of the moment when Jax would drop his facade and show me his true feelings.
So how can I be angry that he did?
Because he’s a werewolf, dummy, that’s why.
But goddess, his body felt so right, pressed between my legs. A place no guy has ever got close to before.
And there was more than that.
His cock.
I may be a virgin, but I know about male and female anatomy from my anatomy books.
And Jax’s cock was huge and rock-hard, right against my pussy. With nothing but his zipper and a scrap of silky panties stopping us from… what?
Oh, goddess, help me.
If we hadn’t been in public, I might have handed over my virginity on a platter, just like Leonora gave hers to Agdar in the legend we pretend was never told. Except the whispers are still out there, even though no vixen shifter will speak it out loud.
The story goes that a wolf mage wooed and mated with a vixen shifter soon after the apocalypse, and it was this bond that first activated the wixen gene in our species.
Leonora was a beautiful vixen shifter. Agdar was a handsome wolf mage.
They were supposedly thrown together in a cage during the incarceration of monsters when the Labyrinth was formed.
But they escaped, and birthed a youngling.
For a period of maybe a century after, it is believed that wixens were quite prolific in the Labyrinth, and worked with wolves on deciphering the runes.
But after the rebellion, wolves and wixens fell out, blaming each other for the rebellion’s failure.
The Silver Book of Runes went to wolves, the Red Book to wixens.
A third book, the Golden Book, has never been found.
It is said that the Golden Book holds the ultimate magic that will free all monsters from the Labyrinth. That it ties together the runes in the Silver and Red books. But it has been lost for a century. Maybe it doesn’t exist, maybe it’s been destroyed. No-one knows.
Whatever the truth, we cannot glean enough magic from the Red Book to increase our wixen powers beyond mixing health tonics and elixirs.
And sure, folks swear by their rejuvenating powers (except ungrateful Jax, of course), so I guess I should be grateful I can even do that.
My products are sought after on all ten levels of the Labyrinth.
I’ve worked out ways to treat the skin and scales of just about every monster that dwells here.
From this, along with my work at Digger’s, I earn a good enough income.
One day I hope to own an apothecary, just like Aunt Felicia’s.
I think about my business to cheer myself up. I’m usually a very upbeat, optimistic kind of girl, so I refuse to let myself dwell on last night’s episode.
I imagine how I will deck out my apothecary and what colors I’ll paint it, and before I know it, I’m in my aunt’s street. As I draw my scooter to a halt outside her purple front door, I notice a jeep parked outside. It’s the sheriff’s jeep.
My stomach clenches.
Why would Otis be here? Surely, he’s not telling my aunt about the dancing debacle last night? She’d not be happy that I did a wixen mating dance in a nightclub – and worse, I rode on the back of a centaur!
I try to dismiss the thought. Otis would never tell tales like that, I know he wouldn’t. He’s too much of a gentleman.
I’m just about to go inside when I do a double take. There’s another vehicle parked just in front of the jeep.
The signage on the side panel is a ring of fire. Where have I seen that before? Oh, of course, on Jax’s arm, the tattoo he got to hide one of his many scars. The same ring of fire. That’s peculiar. Then I freeze. In the center is a wolf’s head, its mouth open wide, its fangs bared.
My blood runs cold.
There’s a wolf vehicle parked outside Aunt Felicia’s place.
Which, by deduction, means there is likely a wolf inside.
Holy shitbags.
Aunt Felicia beams at me as she throws open the door.
She’s wearing a turquoise turban over her red hair, with two slits in the top for her ears.
Long golden hoops are looped all along the cartilage of her ears, in high wixen fashion.
And currently her ears are twitching with excitement, making all the little hoops shake in unison.
“Ah, Tippy, here you are, at last.”
Aunt Felicia is a stickler for time. I refrain from telling her how hard it was to get here at all this morning.
When she leads me through to the back of the apothecary, I put my helmet down on a chair in the hallway of her cottage and smooth down my hair and ears. Then I turn to her, frowning. “I recognized Otis’s jeep outside. Is he here?”
“Yes, Otis is here,” she breezes.
“Auntie, is that other jeep a wolf vehicle?” I ask, my voice rising with each word.
She puts a shellacked claw to her lips. “Yes, it is. There’s no need to sound so horrified.”
“You’ve invited a wolf into your home?” I hiss-whisper.
A little streak of pink rides my aunt’s cheeks. “It is unusual, I admit. But not unheard of.”
“Since when?”
“Since whenever.” Her tone gets even more breezy. My head is pounding now, and not just from my hangover. Wolves hardly ever come to level one, and certainly never to visit a wixen.
“Traggar, head of the Trojan pack, needs our help. And in return he is prepared to make us an unprecedented offer,” she says.
“W-what kind of offer?”
“I’ll let him explain.” My aunt takes my arm and sashays toward her parlor, dragging me along behind her.
When we enter the room, Otis rises. “How are you feeling this morning, Tippy?” He’s sounding serious, but his eyebrows give the tiniest waggle.
“Never better,” I lie, and flash him a bright smile that makes my head hurt even more.
Beside him, a tall, handsome, grey-haired male stands to greet me. His icy blue eyes are commanding, his beard is bushy and flecked with gray. His hair is thick and braided down his back.
“This is Traggar, leader and mage of the Trojan pack,” Aunt Felicia says.
Mage.
That word sends a strange little tingle along my spine.
The wolfman steps forward, towering above me. He smiles, displaying perfect white teeth and long incisors, and holds out a huge hand. Clearly I’m supposed to shake it, so I do.
An energy, steady and powerful, runs up my arm.
It bypasses my prejudices.
This wolfman is not just charismatic, he is good, I realize.
Which is confounding. After all this time of holding onto our grudges, it feels like the long history of wolf–wixen rivalry is evaporating right in front of me.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Miss Honeywell.”