Aaron
I’ve been standing out here long enough to count every dark window in the Academy, and I’m no closer to a plan than I was when Mara went inside.
The Glen is the whole problem. My mother’s set herself dead against it, and there’s nobody in any world harder to move than Angie Blackwood once she’s dug in.
Mara’s still inside with Headmistress Ebony, breaking the news that we won’t be back to teach for a while. I keep watch on the door and wait on her, magic flickering idle at my fingertips. Then something moves in the trees on the far side of the building.
I turn toward it, magic already gathering hot in my palm, and look hard into the black between the trunks. For a moment, there’s nothing. Then a pair of eyes opens in the dark, blue and burning, throwing their own light, and the rest of the trees fall away around them. I’d know those eyes anywhere.
I slide my hands into my pockets. “Please don’t tell me Mom sent you.”
Seth steps out of the treeline, chuckling, and jogs the rest of the way, skidding to a stop a few feet off, bare feet sliding in the wet grass. “Naw. Ma didn’t send me.”
“Okay.” I look him over, waiting on the catch, because Seth doesn’t come find me without one. “Then what do you want? Our sisters send you? Jacob?”
“Damn, man.” He spreads his hands wide. “A brother can’t care about your well-being?”
I just stare at him. “Since when have you ever given a damn?”
The humor drains right out of his face, and I know I’ve cut him. He frowns and holds a hand up.
“That. That right there is your problem. You’ve always seen me as the outcast. I’ve never been part of what you, Tiana, Kiara and Samara have. I’m just the brother who stands off to the side and watches the rest of you shine.”
“What are you talking about?” The old anger comes up.
“You stood off to the side and watched us shine? I stood off to the side and watched our mother build a whole new family. A mother and a father, both, under one roof. The thing me and my sisters wanted our whole lives and never got to have. So don’t tell me about watching from the outside, Seth.
I know exactly what it looks like from there. ”
“My dad did nothing but try with you.” Seth’s chin comes up. “Every day. And it was never enough for you.”
“Because it can’t be.” I let out a slow breath.
“I know Jacob tried. I love that wolf. I’ll always see him as the father who stepped up when mine didn’t.
I’ll never forget the way House of Zorah took us in.
Hell, all of Wintermoon did. But you have to understand it’s different, Seth. It always will be.”
He shakes his head, but I keep going, because if I stop now I’ll never say it right.
“Jacob loves you in a way he’ll never love me, and that’s not bitterness, Seth.
It’s just true. You’re his blood. He lost his whole bloodline and grieved it for years, and our mother put it back in his arms the day she had you.
You’re everything he thought he’d lost. I stopped trying to compete with that a long time ago. ”
Seth’s eyes go soft, glassy at the edges, and I’m sure he’s about to cry right here in the dark. I look away. I can’t watch my little brother come apart and keep my own voice steady.
“I don’t want it to be this way. It’s just the hand I got dealt. My sisters found a way to make peace with it. I never could. But that was mine to carry, Seth, not yours. You never had a thing to do with any of it.”
“Well, I hate it.” It comes out cracked, and he won’t look at me.
“I hate it too,” I tell him.
And there it is, the thing I should’ve said to him years ago and never had the nerve to. I say it now, out loud, while I’ve got the chance.
“I’m sorry, brother.”
Seth’s head jerks up, his brows pulling together. “Huh?”
“I should’ve been there for you, and I wasn’t. I should’ve been a better brother.” He looks at me, surprised. “I was selfish, Seth. For years I looked at the three of you and let myself feel robbed of something that was never yours to take. You didn’t deserve any of that from me. None of it.”
He searches my face for the lie in it. “You’ve never been this nice to me.”
I take a step toward him. He steps back and shakes his head, and I stop. I wish, for once, I had Mara’s nose. I wish I could read whatever’s moving through him the way she’d read it off the air. But I don’t need it. His face does the job fine.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
He looks off into the trees instead of at me. Then he pulls in a breath and squares up. “I came here to help you.”
That gets a smile out of me. “Help me how?”
“Well. I can distract Ma.” He scratches the back of his neck. “You know she’s waiting on you in the Market, right? She got a stick. Said she’s gonna beat you with it when you show your face.”
I keep the grin on for Seth, but my mother with a stick has never once been bluffing. “Course she did.”
“I know exactly what’ll keep her busy long enough for you to slip through.” He shifts his weight. “What do you even need to go in there for?”
“I can’t explain it.” I shake my head. “I just know there’s something in the Glen that can help us. With Eric.”
Seth nods slow, looking at the ground. Then he gives me a look I don’t like.
“I saw what you did at House of Zorah yesterday. With your magic. What you can really do.”
“Yeah.” Something in the way he won’t look up has me watching him closer.
“So you can really take it? From other people?” He won’t meet my eyes. “Magic. You can pull it right out of somebody?”
“Where are you going with this, Seth?”
He lifts his head and looks at me dead-on. “What if I gave you mine? Would it help you stop Eric?”
I laugh, short and ugly, and it dies in my throat when I see Seth isn’t laughing. His jaw’s set, and he’s waiting on an answer.
“Seth, no.” I shake my head hard. “I’d never be that selfish. I would never—“
“What if I don’t want it?” He cuts clean across me. “What if I don’t want my magic and I want to give it to you?”
“Huh?”
He closes the distance I put between us, slow. “Aaron. I just want to be a wolf.”
“You’re more than just a wolf, Seth.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “You always have been, whether you see it or not.”
He shrugs my hand off. “You don’t understand.
I’ll never fit. Not anywhere. The wolves don’t want me around because I’ve got warlock in me.
The witches and warlocks won’t have me because I’m half wolf.
I was born into both worlds, and I spend every day trying to earn a place in one. Neither one’s got room for me.”
“I know it’s hard, Seth, but—“
“Aaron.” He says it raw, almost a whisper, and I can’t do what I’ve spent years doing and look right past him. “I don’t want it. Please. I don’t want it.”
I go quiet. He’s begging me for the one thing I shouldn’t do, and the worst part is how badly I want to do it anyway, just to make the hurting stop.
“Seth.” I keep my voice level. “What you’re asking for has consequences.”
He frowns, confused.
“We’re born with our magic. It’s not a coat you take off because it doesn’t fit. Mother Fate chose you for it. You don’t get to hand that back.”
“I don’t want it.” And then the tears come up into his eyes and stay there. “I don’t want it, Aaron.”
“Shit, Seth.” I close the space he won’t and pull him into my arms. He lets me, his face dropping into my shoulder. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Let me get through this and deal with Eric first, and when I come back out, I swear to you I’ll help you carry this any way I can.”
He pulls back and looks me in the face.
“The way to help me, brother, is to take my magic. That’s the only way. I don’t want it.”
I groan and drag a hand down my face. “I should’ve put the work in with you. Years ago. You wouldn’t hate it like this if I’d had more patience, if I’d taught you—“
“No.” He shakes his head. “That’s not it. I just want to be a wolf. With my dad.”
I level a look at him. “And what about Mom? You think about how this’ll land on her?”
His head drops. He looks at his bare feet in the grass, anywhere but at me. Whatever the answer is, he can’t say it to my face.
The Academy door opens behind me before either of us can say more. Seth’s head lifts toward it over my shoulder, and I turn to follow his gaze.
Mara steps out into the dark.
She’s in a fitted shirt and leggings, dressed for whatever we’re walking into, and Mother Fate help me, she’s a vision.
My lioness, ready for war. I have to make myself look away and remember why we’re out here.
Her tail sways slow behind her. Her ears are perked and turning, reading the night before her feet even clear the steps.
Seth backs off a pace, scrubbing at his face, and won’t look at either of us.
Mara reaches us, her gaze moving between him and me. “Hi, Seth,” she says, gentle as anything.
He doesn’t meet her eyes. She just smiles at him, warm and patient, and waits. After a moment he gives in and looks up.
“Hi.” Then he turns straight to me. “I’m gonna go tell Ma.”
“What?” I reach for his arm. “Hold on—wait.”
“It’ll get her out of the Market.” He’s already moving back toward the trees.
“So you can get into the Glen. Aaron, you can’t just crack the Glen open anywhere in Wintermoon.
There’s spell guardrails on it. I heard Tiana saying it to Kiara and Samara.
The only door is through the cottage.” He gives me a look.
Mara’s hand comes to rest on my arm, light, and I look down at her. “We don’t have to.”
But I turn back to Seth and groan, low, and I nod. Before he can break into a run I catch his arm and hold it.
“This isn’t over, Seth. When I get back, we’re working this out. You hear me?”
“Whatever, man.” He pulls his arm free and turns for the trees. Right before he goes he throws it over his shoulder. “You owe me for this. Ma’s gonna beat me with that stick she had ready for you.”
I roll my eyes. He breaks into a run and the dark takes him.
He’s gone, and Mara hums low in her throat. “Mmm. So that’s what I scented on him in the clearing.”
I look at her. “What?”