15. The Society & the Shifters That Hate Them
Chapter fifteen
The Society & the Shifters That Hate Them
KADI
E than and I both feel Shasta pass out at the same time. We run to the porch, Winnie on our heels, to find Eloise holding Shasta and crying. She has a letter in her hand that’s dangling, and I see a tattoo on her wrist that wasn’t there before.
“What happened? Is she okay?” Winnie asks in a panic.
“She put on the medallion her father gave her. There was a huge surge of magic when she did, and it just knocked her out. She’ll be fine, just give her a few minutes,” Eloise says quietly. She looks like she just found out someone died. I imagine if that was a letter from Shasta’s father, it may feel like someone did.
Winnie sits down next to Eloise as Ethan reaches over to grab Shasta. We walk back into the house and leave the two of them to talk.
I reach over and take the letter from Shasta’s hand and read it. She can get mad at me later if she wants but I need to know what kind of magic can make our already extremely powerful mate pass out like that. Ethan lays her down on the sofa and arranges her arms over her stomach.
Holy shit. The Society killed her father? Ethan is going to freak out when I show him this. After years of searching for his parents' murderers, the only thing we were ever able to find out was that they were part of the Society. Now here they are chasing after Shasta because she’s a Gods damned Demigod?
I silently hand Ethan the note and he begins to growl low in his throat. Before he gets to the end he is full on roaring. Shasta wakes up, holding her head and asks what’s happening.
Ethan shakes the letter. “The Society. Now not only did they kill my parents but your father too?” He’s panting with anger as he hands it to her.
“Oh Ethan, I’m so sorry. Looks like we have more in common than either of us realized,” she says, grabbing his hand and pulling him down onto the couch with her.
They hold each other for a few minutes, and I make myself busy getting a few bottles of water out of the fridge. Walking over to them, I sit down on the coffee table facing them both. They look like hell. The pain, sorrow, and anger I feel in the bonds is very overwhelming. I can only imagine how they feel.
Shasta wipes her eyes, and I see determination in her gaze as she says, “We’ll get them, Ethan. They’re going to keep coming after me. We know this now. So, we can set a trap for them instead. We don’t have to sit down and take it, and we don’t have to wait for them to come to us. We’ll take the fight to them. We need to gather any shifters that have been attacked by the Society.”
I share a look with Ethan. “A lot of the guys in the club have been affected by them in some way. All the shifters that we have and some of the vamps too. That’s one of the reasons we started the club in the first place. A lot of us lost people to the Society.”
Shasta’s eyes widen. “They’ve been doing this all over the world for so long. So many people have had their families torn from them. I never knew that they had anything to do with tracking and killing my family. I don’t know how we are going to find them all, but we will. I won’t rest until we do.”
Truth rings in her words, and as she says them, I feel something, like an oath was just made using magic. Maybe it was, because Shasta winces and holds out her hand.
“So, this is a medallion that has all my ancestors' magic in it. I may want to be careful how I say things from now on, because I just made a magical oath. My father put it in with his letter and when I wrapped it on my arm, this happened, just like he said it would. Though I was not expecting the immense amount of power I gained with it. He made it sound like it was something I would be able to tap into, and I can, but it’s the deepest well of power I’ve ever seen. And that’s only half of it. There’s the wand that was in the box too.”
Her voice shakes as she says it, almost as if in awe, or maybe even a little terrified.
“So, Winnie had the vision, and your father went to look into it and make arrangements for this to be delivered to you when something happened to him? Am I getting this right?” Ethan asks.
Shasta nods.
“So then, who sent it? It’s not like he could just take it to the post office and say: ‘Deliver this when someone breaks into my daughter’s shop’,” he says.
Shit, he’s right. Shasta looks confused and immediately steps out to the porch to grab the box. Her mother and grandmother follow her in. Eloise still looks very shaken, but I can feel waves of magic as Winnie tries to keep her calm.
“Ethan brought up a good point,” Shasta says. “Who sent this?” She looks down at the tattoo and gets a nervous look on her face. She rubs her finger over the medallion and closes her eyes as if she is trying to tap into the magic. After a minute or two she sighs with relief.
“What is it?” Winnie asks her.
“Just got nervous for a second that I put something on me that may have had dark magic in it. I’m going to check the wand out a little better before I do anything with it. I’m still trying to figure out what Joaquin was picking up from it that made him nervous. Doesn’t he know how to read emotions?” she asks.
“Yeah, let me call him and see if I can figure something out.” Stepping away I pull out my phone and hit the button to call him. He answers right away.
“What’s up?”
“Do you know why you were picking up a weird vibe off the box? It looks like it came from Shasta’s dad a week before he was killed back when Shasta was a little girl,” I ask him.
“Well, that can’t be true because the emotions I was picking up from it were very recent.”
Wait, what?
“How is that possible? The magic items that were in there so far are legit. At least one of them anyway. We still need to check the other one out.”
“Well, I’d make sure you do it in the basement because something in that box isn’t right and the emotions I got from it were something like coercion and guilt.”
“Thanks buddy. I’ll call you back when we know more.”
Shit. How am I supposed to walk in here and tell my mate that her father might be alive? Let alone his mate. But how has the mate bond been broken? That’s something that doesn’t make any sense. Eloise clearly behaves as if the mate bond is gone.
I decide to go to Winnie and talk to her first. Walking back in, I catch her eye and motion for her to follow me. She stands, telling the rest to wait just a moment and though I can tell that Shasta wants to argue, she finally nods.
“Can you put a silencing bubble around us? No one else can hear this just yet.” I ask her.
She looks at me like I have two heads but nods and creates the bubble. I can hear all the noise around us instantly go silent until all I can hear are our hearts beating and our breathing.
“What I’m about to say is going to shock you, but is there a way someone can break a mate bond and make it feel like the other person is dead?” I ask, watching her reaction closely.
She looks at me in shock, but I can almost see the gears start turning in her head as she starts to pace within the bubble. “Only witches can break a bond and it’s only the bond between a witch and someone that has forced a bond with them. There are no other exceptions. That said, I have heard of spells that can cut someone off from their bond, or if the person is being held captive in a cell that blocks all magic. Since the bonds are a form of magic this would cut off the bond as if they had died, similar to how the restraint chair in the basement works.”
She stops pacing and looks up at me and I see shock on her face as she realizes what I’m suggesting.
“Joaquin says there is a sense he picked up from the box of something like coercion and guilt and that whoever wrote that letter wrote it recently based on the power of the emotions coming from it. Is there a chance they are holding her father captive?” I ask solemnly.
Her hand raises to her mouth, and she gasps. “The car accident that he died in…,” she says. “The car and the driver burned beyond recognition. There wasn’t a way we could identify the body and there was only just enough of the car left to identify. The timing was also right when Eloise felt the bond break, so we never questioned it.”
Shit, how the hell are we going to do this and keep what’s left of Eloise’s sanity intact?
Almost as if she read my mind, Winnie immediately says, “We can’t tell Eloise. If something happens and he really does die, or if it isn’t him…no, we can’t tell her. Shasta can handle it but not her mother. She’s more herself these days than she has been in a long, long time. I can’t risk having her go back to that. If it wasn’t for someone from the Coven sitting with her every single day for the first three years, I don’t think she’d be here right now.”
“Okay, so can you grab Shasta for me and have her come in here with Ethan, if you don’t mind? Can you keep the bubble up for us?” I ask.
She nods. “I’ll take Eloise to her room as well so that she doesn’t see Shasta upset and start asking questions.”
“Good idea,” I say as she walks out of the bubble. She moves over to Shasta and points her and Ethan in my direction. Smiling sadly, I see her lead Eloise away. We don’t have a lot to go on, but one thing I know about Joaquin is that as long as he has been around and had his powers, he’s never been wrong. I let that thought lead me as I prepare to tell my mate that her father is most likely still alive.