CHAPTER TWENTY || JEREMY
“ J ust so you’re aware, I’m not angry,” the red-headed witch said to Thierry the moment we stepped into the room. Her vibrant green eyes narrowed. “I’m pissed off.”
“How nice for you,” Thierry said immediately, voice clipped, his defenses going up. “Though I’m fairly certain I didn’t ask.”
“You let me think the spell failed.”
The white-haired warlock with eerie purple eyes stood beside her. He exchanged a look with her before turning back to Thierry. “Poppy’s right—that wasn’t cool. You should have told us.”
“I wasted an entire month!” Poppy’s fury rolled off her in waves. “Perfecting a spell that was already perfect.”
“Poppy—”
“No.” She drew in a long breath, let it out slowly.
I was pretty sure she was counting back from ten.
Power gathered around her in a crackling halo, even though she hadn’t started casting.
When she’d cooled from rage to mere anger, she fixed my mate with an accusatory look. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“He needed time,” I cut in, stepping between them. I didn’t like that rising hum of power, like static-charged air about to become lightning. And if she was going to hit one of us, it was going to be me, not him. “We both did.”
Her expression flickered from anger to sheer incredulity. “Well, now. The universe has an odd sense of humor, doesn’t it?”
I raised a brow. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Poppy snorted. “I don’t know if you missed the memo, but the last person in the world who needs protecting—ever—is Thierry.”
My mate was ice and steel wrapped in crushed velvet, but beneath that… there was a deep wound at his core, outrageously vulnerable. Whatever it was, it had never healed right.
She was dead wrong. Thierry had to be protected at all costs. Poppy didn’t know him at all.
My vampire gave me a meaningful look, his mental voice brushing mine. If you can hear this, wolf, stop talking. Poppy is correct: I can defend myself. I’ve done it long before you, and I’ll do it long after you too. Besides, she has a right to be angry. I was selfish in how I handled this.
I scowled, but he was right—Thierry wasn’t some delicate flower. He didn’t need me to fight this battle. What he needed was backup. So that’s what I’d give him.
I gave him a sharp nod and stepped back, no longer shielding him.
Thierry’s brows drew together, eyes darkening with suspicion. As if I had surprised him. He had no idea that a wolf will do just about anything for their mate.
He’d learn soon enough.
“Your spell works,” Thierry said icily. “I apologize if I led you to believe otherwise.”
“If.” She snorted again, but the last of her anger seemed to bleed away at his words. “An apology from Thierry. Maybe having a mate has softened those sharp edges.”
Thierry’s smile turned saccharine. “Don’t count on it.”
“Who are you people?” Quinn demanded, his words wobbling.
We all turned. I had to admit, he looked convincingly frightened, bound in silver chains to a chair in the center of the vampire king’s dungeon. His eyes were wide and shining. “Please, please, just let me go. I won’t tell anyone you took me.”
It was a very good act.
He might’ve fooled my human self, but my wolf wasn’t buying it. It could sense the vast emptiness inside him. His eyes gave him away too—they were flat, cold, and calculating. The gaze of a great white shark. And the dried blood caked around his mouth didn’t help his cause either.
“Enough,” Thierry said, flashing fangs and glaring down at Quinn. “Drop the act. Let’s start with the basics. Your name tag says ‘Quinn’—but is that actually your name?”
Quinn’s gaze lingered on my mate’s fangs.
“I asked for your name,” Thierry said, dangerous now.
The attendant weighed his options, then said, “Quinten.”
Poppy’s brows shot up. “Your parents named you Quinten? No wonder you went evil.”
“Darling, don’t antagonize the murderous vampire,” Simone said mildly from beside her. Her posture was relaxed, but if Quinten so much as looked at Poppy wrong, I suspected I’d see a much darker side of Simone.
“There’s nothing wrong with my name,” the vampire bristled. “And everyone calls me Quinn. Or Q.”
“Hello, Quinn,” Thierry said, ignoring Poppy. His gaze was unreadable, his tone icy. But through the bond, I felt the desperate hope thrumming in him, even if his face betrayed nothing. “I know you’re still in there somewhere. Buried, perhaps. But still there.”
“Do you?” Quinn’s smile turned mocking. His empty gaze locked on Thierry’s. “I’m fine the way I am. Let me go and I’ll prove it. I promise.”
“Today is your lucky day,” my mate said softly. “Because we’re going to bring you back. You don’t have to stay like this. You can be yourself again.”
Quinn stared, his smile fading. “What the hell does that mean?”
No one answered him.
Poppy scooped up the copper bowl from the table. “Yeah, enough of this. Time to begin the spell. We can question him afterward.”
“A spell?” Quinn’s voice spiked, his previous coldness vanishing into alarm. When you feel nothing, I guess it’s easy to switch gears on a dime. “You can’t be serious. Magic isn’t real!”
Everyone in the room exchanged a sidelong glance.
Simone arched her brows, serene. “Then you have nothing to fear. The spell won’t harm you. It won’t even hurt.”
“Well, actually—” Thierry began. Simone’s warning look cut him off. After a pause, he snorted. “Sure. Why not? It’s like a trip to Disneyland.”
Quinn seemed to realize we were serious. He stared at Simone, trying the puppy-dog-eyes routine. “Let me go. Please. I swear I won’t tell anyone. I’ll just leave, and you’ll never see me again. You don’t have to do this.”
“You’d stop killing?” Poppy asked skeptically.
Quinn’s lips curved, the gleam in his eyes chilling. “Of course I would,” he said, voice earnest, eyes lying. “Anyone I hurt was an accident. I didn’t know any better.”
“If we allow you to walk out of here, you’ll keep killing without a shred of remorse,” Simone said, her voice hard. “I think not. Be silent and behave while the love of my life gives you your humanity back.”
Power rolled off Simone at those words. Brutal, inexorable, it hit Quinn like a battering ram.
His mouth snapped shut. His eyes glazed.
I stepped back instinctively, alarm spiking through me. If I’d been in wolf form, my ears would’ve pinned flat.
No one else seemed concerned about standing beside a vampire goddess who could compel obedience without blinking. So they must’ve been used to it.
I sure as hell wasn’t. I gawked at Simone like it was, in fact, my first trip to the rodeo.
My next thought—once the urge to back away slowly passed—was that she had to be exceptionally ethical, or she’d already own the city. The state. Maybe the whole western seaboard. Mortal, wolf, witch… with power like hers, no one could’ve refused her.
“Just you this time?” Thierry asked, eyeing the bowl in Poppy’s hands. He seemed oblivious to my shock, frowning at the witch as though everything were perfectly normal. “Last time, you had help.”
Poppy shrugged. “Now that we’ve forced the spell into existence, it should be easier to cast.”
I tore my gaze from Simone to Poppy. For the second time in under a minute, disbelief crashed through me. I must have misheard her.
Daniel, the warlock who’d joined my pack, once explained that you can’t just mash together random words and hope they turn into a spell.
A true spell creates a pathway between the caster and the outcome.
You get there either by rote casting—repeating it dozens or hundreds of times, pushing magic through until the universe relents—or with raw power.
But the latter was almost impossible, because the universe is usually stronger than any one witch or warlock.
“How many times have you cast this spell?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“This version? Just once,” Poppy admitted grudgingly, as if it were nothing—even though she’d just confessed to being the witch equivalent of a nuclear weapon. “This is round two. But it’ll be no problem.” She shot Thierry another glare. “The spell obviously works just fine.”
Which meant she’d bent the universe to her will in a single casting. Witches like that were rare. They were the sort who could rewrite the rules of reality itself.
Who the hell were these people?
“We’ll be over there,” Ethan said, pointing to the far corner. “I’ve been practicing how not to mess up a spell just by existing near it, but let’s not push our luck.” He took Nathaniel’s hand and led him away.
Poppy drew a deep breath. “Okay. Here goes nothing.”
She closed her eyes and began to chant in a language I didn’t know. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then a subtle glow began in her core, as if light were building inside her and radiating through her skin.
It grew brighter with every word. My eyes stung with sudden tears. The raw power of nature—beauty and terror entwined—flooded the room. The hairs on my neck rose as awe swept through me.
Wolves can sense magic. I’d seen spells cast before. Daniel was powerful, capable of turning the tide of battle when necessary.
But his power was nothing compared to hers. A dim flashlight beside the sun.
It felt as if the universe itself had stepped into Poppy. Silvery light filled the room as she spoke, her voice strong and growing louder, surer.
Then my brows knit. Another voice was chanting with hers. Then several. Then hundreds. Until the chorus of her spell echoed endlessly, as if an infinite number of unseen beings were casting alongside her.
My lips parted in stunned silence.
A golden-white light descended from the ceiling, blending with the silver moonbeam.
From below, an angrier, atavistic force—blood-red—seeped upward.
Poppy caught all three powers, weaving them into one—every color and no color at all.
She walked in circles around Quinten, scattering flower petals that fell into a perfect ring.
The magic gathered above him. Then it descended through the crown of his head.