Sixteen
Riley
Watching Gareth perform magic was incredible.
He held so much power! At the same time, a knot grew in my chest over how much he had.
Gareth was vital to Greyhaven. He had a home, something I could never have unless I broke this curse.
Watching him reminded me that once my time in Greyhaven was up, I’d be alone again.
There was no way I could take him from the town.
They needed him. Okay, I needed him too, but their claim on him was stronger.
I couldn’t ask them to put my happiness above their safety.
It only took a minute for Gareth, Hestia, and Tatsuya to fortify their ward stone. I watched Hestia sway when she pulled her hand back. “I’m fine,” she reassured me. “My magic will replenish during the festival.”
Gareth and Tatsuya weren’t nearly as affected. I wondered if it was a sign of how much magic they held, or if they had kept something back just in case. The talk of attacks was worrying, though selfishly I was more focused on my mate’s safety rather than the town’s.
My stomach rumbled, reminding me that we never actually ordered breakfast.
“Gar, you’re neglecting your mate,” Tatsuya chided almost playfully. It was hard to tell with the stoic man. “Can’t you hear his stomach?”
“Not all of us have dragon hearing, Suya,” Gareth shot back. He took my hand in his. “I need coffee. Are you a coffee drinker, or do you like leaf water?” His eyes danced with mischief.
“Will you reject me if I like tea? Is coffee the other partner here?”
He laughed. “For you, I’d learn to live with the smell.”
“Luckily, you won’t have to. I like my coffee as black as my soul.”
It was Tatsuya’s turn to chuckle. “A black soul. Sure thing, Kitty.” He turned and headed back down toward the town, letting me and Gareth have a private moment.
Gareth’s hand tightened on mine. “I think he likes you.”
“No I don’t!” Tatsuya called from a distance.
“Dragon hearing is pretty good!”
We returned to the same booth as before and finally ordered some food. In our absence, the town had continued with the preparations for the festival, though there was still plenty to do.
My mind kept returning to what Tatsuya and the mayor had said about my curse.
Only a warlock. The idea of one using magic on me, even if they were trying to help, sat like a weight on my chest. I ate breakfast quietly, as Tatsuya kept up a flow of conversation with Gareth over what was needed for the parade.
I guess I had always known that only a warlock could end a warlock’s curse. It was only logical, really. I hated it, though. Hated Boyce, my stepfather, more than ever. I felt trapped and alone, even with Gareth by my side.
If Gareth couldn’t break the curse, what was I going to do?
There was no way I’d allow him to go up against Boyce.
The older warlock had power, connections, and experience.
Gareth was no match for him. He was far too gentle for a battle with the much older warlock.
Not that I’d let him leave Greyhaven vulnerable.
He had to have connections, right? Maybe we could find some other, more sympathetic warlocks to help me instead.
For the rest of the day, I followed Gareth around as he helped out all over the place, using his magic and knowledge to make the parade a success for the people of Greyhaven. I did what I could to make things easier. Usually, that was just doing the heavy lifting. Shifter strength came in handy.
Just being with Gareth was enough to make me happy, as strange as that was considering our start. We could afford to give one day to spending time with friends and getting to know each other better.
All day he told me stories about the town, his parents, and friends.
There was a lot to learn about Gareth Bowen, not just his middle name—Rhys—or that his family originally came from Wales.
I already knew he taught magic studies at the college, that Tatsuya was his closest friend, and that he was an only child, which he was grateful for.
No, it was learning about him as I watched him with the people of Greyhaven.
He put everyone else’s needs before his own.
He never had a bad word to say about anyone, even when his patience was wearing thin after explaining things for the third time.
I found out firsthand that he couldn’t say no to anyone, and I had to put that boundary in place for him many times, or he would have worn himself out trying to keep everyone happy.
His magic was only just replenishing. He needed to rest, not work himself to the bone.
Being the bad guy was sort of funny. While I wanted the residents to like me, what was more important to me was Gareth and his health.
He was all too happy to push his magic for anyone.
It didn’t matter if they could do it another way that would take longer, he would just fix things with a flourish of magic, exhausting himself.
None of the people I said no to treated me badly for it. Some of them seemed to respect me for it, in fact. Gareth seemed to appreciate it too. He leaned into me more and more as the day went on.
We stood together under the stars, a light sprinkling of snow falling on us as the town celebrated the many winter festivals, giving space to people of every faith.
The attack came from nowhere.
One moment we were roasting marshmallows on an open fire conjured by a witch, the next a siren blared. Everyone reacted immediately. Children were handed over to teenagers and the elderly while their parents made for the boundaries of Greyhaven.
“East corner,” Fen yelled. “We need extra magic users there to patch the wards. They’re using brute force to punch through.”
Tatsuya ran over to us. “I’m going to shift and fly. Riley, want to fly with me?”
I gave a sharklike grin. “I think you forget I’ve got wings of my own. You can carry Gareth, right?”
Gareth clutched my arm before I could get two steps away. “Be careful of the barrier. I can’t lose you already.”
Leaning close, I pressed a kiss to his lips, then shifted, taking flight as an eagle. Even from a few meters above him, I could see the blush on his cheeks.
“C’mon. Let’s see if feathers are faster than a dragon.”
Being far smaller and more aerodynamic, I got there first. What I saw was chaos.
On the other side of the wards, a group of angels were trying to use magic and their considerable strength to break through.
I landed next to the ward stone, not daring to get any closer, but ready to shift and fight if anyone got in.
“Bring us the nephilim, and no one needs to get hurt!” one demanded.
“Oh, fuck no!” Fen, in his dragon form, yelled back. He flew right through the barrier, knocking several angels down.
It was as if his actions were a signal to the rest of our people. More followed him, each armed and ready to fight.
The battle was over in minutes. Gareth stayed next to me, his hand on the stone, shoring up the wards, after Tatsuya had dropped him off and joined Fen in the fight. The angels took flight with the dragons nipping at their wings.
“Do you feel like they half-assed that one?” Fen asked as he landed mid-shift next to me.
Gareth frowned. “Has anyone checked the other corners? Maybe this was a diversion.”
Sure enough, there were two other groups of attackers, all angels, in other parts of the town. Thankfully, Hestia was used to this tactic and always split her forces with a mix of fighters and magic users.
No one was injured, but no one wanted to party anymore either. When we returned to the town, the mayor was on stage.
“Thank you all for your quick reactions tonight. I’m only sorry that it has cut the festival short. Please return to your homes for now. Rest, check on your loved ones who are likely to be worried. We can clean up tomorrow.”
The town was safe once more, yet the attack had opened my eyes to how vital Gareth and his magic was to everyone.
“You don’t have to do this now. You were just using a lot of magic on the wards,” I told Gareth as we settled onto the sofa in the guest cabin.
Going to Gareth’s house was just… it was a step I wasn’t ready for yet.
Though if the heat kept playing up, I could be left with no choice.
Freeze or cuddle up in my mate’s house? Hard one.
“Not as much as I thought. Since you’ve been here, I feel stronger somehow. Maybe it’s our bond.” Gareth peeled out of his winter gear and dropped it on the side table next to the door.
“Are you sure about this? It can wait.” I paced next to the sofa, feeling agitated that Gareth was going to be using magic on me. Sure, it was to figure out this curse, but I was going to need more time to be really comfortable with his magic.
“No, it really can’t, Riley. Time is ticking down to your leaving.
Besides, I’m just going to pluck at the strands of the curse and see how far it’s embedded.
” Gareth took a seat on the sofa. He was studying me closely.
“I need you to tell me the details of the curse and why it was placed upon you.”
I winced. This was not going to be a pleasant conversation. “Right, so we got to where Mom was feeding vampires.” I tried to tell this as if the story was about someone else and not about my life. Getting into my feelings would stop me from telling Gareth what he needed to know.
“Yeah. If this is going to be too hard—” He tugged on my sleeve until I sat down next to him.
“No. We need to get this out there, so you know why I am the way I am. When I realized he was using my mom that way, I stopped doing jobs for him. He told me if I wanted to keep my mom away from the vamps, I needed to do bigger scores. Gone was the pretense that this was revenge or getting his shit back. I was to steal things he wanted from some pretty shady people, not all of them supernatural, and then he wouldn’t whore my mom out.
“I’ll spare you the details, but it went on for years. If I messed up, he gave Mom to a vampire for the night. Then I found out that she had a vamp regular who was hooked on her blood. Boyce was trading her blood for compulsion and spell ingredients I couldn’t get for him.”
Clenching my fists, I pulled back from the memories assaulting me.
“When I was twenty-eight, I finally finished the plan to escape. It had taken years of studying his magic and his routine. I’d had enough, but that made me sloppy.
I got Pax to come home a few months before we tried it.
My excuse? Mom needed one of us with her at all times to protect her.
Then Boyce got greedy, wanting us to work together on jobs.
This helped us, though. For every job we did together, we took a portion for ourselves.
We hid the money away and booked tickets.
Pax had grown up on the run, so he prepared as much as he could to get us out.
But it all went wrong. Or maybe Boyce had begun to suspect us.
Pax went on ahead, and he got free—well, at least it felt like it. ”
“What do you mean?”
“His curse is different. He’s an outcast. He can stay places longer than me, but no one ever helps him. It’s hard to explain.”
“Okay. Tell me more about him later. We need to focus on you. What happened after you tried to leave?”
“When I was taken back to Boyce, I thought he was going to kill me. Maybe it would have been better if he had. That was when he started the curse. I realized later that all he was yelling about—how his home, under his roof, was the only place I could ever call my home—was him priming the curse.”
“What does that mean?” A frown marred Gareth’s face. I stroked his cheek, loving the feel of his short beard against my fingers.
“Whenever I stay in a place more than two nights, that’s when the clock starts counting down. I get one full month in that place before I’m ripped out of there.”
“How?”
“I dunno what magic it is. It feels like my body is being torn apart and I get tossed out somewhere completely different. Sometimes it’s only thirty miles, another time it could be a thousand. It’s always toward Boyce, though.”
“Shit. That’s powerful magic.”
“Yeah. He’s unhinged. I didn’t understand a lot of what he was saying, since I was out of it after the beating his cronies gave me.
He kept me locked up for a long time. Didn’t trust me to go out on jobs.
It was only him, his niece Mira, and Mom who were allowed in my room.
One day, Mom came to me and said she’d gotten him to agree to let me leave.
Not her. Just me. A month later, I figured out why.
It took me so long to learn the rules of the curse.
I thought I couldn’t tell anyone about it until recently. ”
Gareth pulled me into his arms and kissed the top of my head. “You’re not alone. Never again.”
“It was easier when Pax came back for me. We couldn’t get Mom out.
Pax and I traveled a bit, but his curse even affected me after a while.
He admitted it made him feel like shit once because it was obvious Boyce valued me more than him.
His curse is just a punishment for nearly stealing me away, but he stole Pax’s ability to have a family.
“Fuck, that’s cold.”
“Boyce still thinks I’ll go back to him. That I’ll get sick of wandering and head back to the one place I belong.”
“You haven’t yet.”
“No. Not that it’s been easy. In my darkest days, I thought about going. He still uses Mom, but Pax destroyed the vampire that was feeding on her. She’s safe from that now. Boyce keeps her locked away, knowing that’s is more of a punishment than the feeding was.”
“Is it hard being away from your brother?”
I thought about my older brother, how much I loved him, and how guilty I felt about dragging him back to save me.
“Yeah, like I said, we stuck together for a bit, but I was broken for a long time. Neither of us was in a good place, and really, Pax was always a lone wolf, even before his curse. He started spending most of his time in fur rather than speaking to me.”
Gareth squeezed me tighter. “I’m sorry.”
“Nah, it’s okay. We’re better now. We both just had stuff to work out, and that was better to do alone.”
“So, what happens when we break the curse on you?”
“We break it on Paxton, get some allies, and then go kill Boyce,” I said matter-of-factly.
Gareth’s grin was feral, showing me another side to my sweet mate. “I like that plan.”