Chapter 5
Five
Felix
He woke in a haze. A haze of delicious scents of cinnamon and wood fire invaded his senses. His eyes flew open—too bright, fuck, way too bright—before his cat vision adjusted.
Looking around, he realized he was in some sort of university dorm room.
That little witch.
His fur bristled along his back, his muscles coiling and tensing to strike.
She had brought him here. Wherever here was.
Rain pattered outside the window, hitting the pane in a peaceful rhythm.
But nothing about this was fucking peaceful.
The gray sun was high, the room drenched in light despite the curtains.
Given the angle of it, it had to be sometime in the afternoon.
Was it the same day? How long had he been out?
He studied the room. The dorm screamed wealth from every corner, the furniture embellished with golden features standing out against the dark woods.
The desk was lavish, its craftsmanship the finest one could own.
Witches always seemed to live lavishly due to all the money the human government paid them.
His body dragged as he stood on the bed, his paws sinking into the plush mattress.
That was his first red flag; whoever slept on such a soft mattress was, in his opinion, a psychopath.
A fireplace crackled and startled him. No one was here.
But that witch had been here. Her scent was over everything.
Which should be obvious given that this was likely her dorm room.
Still, it grated on him that the witch had somehow brought him here.
How his unconscious body had flopped in her arms. It sent shivers down his spine at being carried like some pet.
Above the fireplace was a coat of arms on a banner. He stilled.
CAERWYN UNIVERSITY.
Caerwyn University was somewhere in the Celtic Sea.
There was absolutely no way this witch had dragged him hundreds of miles from London.
It was impossible. What the fuck had she done?
Maybe it was just decoration, and they were somehow still in London?
To his knowledge, a witch wouldn’t be able to pull something off like this.
What did they want with him? And why in all fuck was he in a dorm room instead of a prison?
Panic clawed at his bones. He needed to call Ciro. He needed his other form. His muscles were primed to shift, but nothing happened.
He tried again. And again. Fuck. It was because he used his monster form; it always locked him to his cat form for a while. For now, it would have to do.
The bed dipped as he jumped to the desk, landing light on his feet.
Her desk was messy, strewn with textbooks and leather-bound grimoires with titles such as Summoning a Familiar 101 and Healing for Dummy Witches.
Nothing that screamed I kidnap shifters for fun.
On the desk lay a phone and a laptop. Why had she left her phone behind?
He pawed her phone, careful at first to sense if it was a trap.
But no—just a phone. The screen lit up with a picture of her smiling brightly with another witch.
He needed to get to Maps to figure out where the fuck he was.
He swiped up, but instead of it opening the passcode, it opened the camera and took photos of his black fur and mismatched eyes at an extremely unflattering angle.
Curse having no opposable thumbs.
His tail lashed behind him as he tried again. The same thing happened.
He took in a deep breath for strength, as he was so close to losing his shit it wasn’t even funny.
On the third try, it worked, and the passcode screen came up. With one extended toe bean, he pawed in the most obvious one he could think of: 0000.
It unlocked. No fucking way.
What kind of criminal mastermind had that for a passcode? Was this amateur hour? Unless this all really was some elaborate joke, none of this made any sense.
He opened the phone and clicked carefully on the Maps.
The blue dot indicating his location came up.
And lo and fucking behold, he was on Caerwyn Island.
His mind stalled in disbelief for a second.
You couldn’t just walk onto Caerwyn, let alone pull an unconscious shifter through its wards.
The kind of magic required to do that was far above his pay grade.
How the fuck had a student witch managed this?
Stacks of spare notebooks and what looked like a journal lay in the top drawer. He itched to flip through it, to learn the secrets of this witch, privacy morals be damned. He would call Ciro in a moment. First, he needed to find a weapon that wasn’t his own weak self. His monster had drained him.
He searched the rest of the drawers, finding mundane items like pens and a stray chip that had seen better days, nothing slightly usable.
Next, he went to her wardrobe. Perhaps she kept a weapon in here.
He filtered through the drawers of clothes.
There were shirts, tartan skirts, and, oh, Jesus Christ. With his paw, he picked up the hem of a pair of skimpy underwear.
Its white lace was so sheer, he could see the drawers beneath it.
A primal sound tore through his throat. He bared his fangs at the thing like it had teeth of its own. The faint smell of cinnamon clung to the item, and his traitorous body pleaded with him to huff them like some deranged dog. His tongue traced his fangs, the urge overwhelming.
As if the bond had heard it, it awoke within his chest. Warmth spread across his body, the thread incessantly humming like the witch was close, or not close enough.
It invaded every part of him. No. No. Fuck no.
With a growl of frustration, he flung the underwear across the room.
Fucking witches. It was like she had enchanted her room to entice him.
There was nothing here; calling for help was his next best option.
Before he could go back to the desk, the door opened.
He looked around wildly. The nearest hiding place was—her underwear drawer.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. The irony was not lost on him.
Neither was the humiliation. This was what his life had come to.
No time to question it. He jumped in, but ended up standing in his evidence, so he flattened himself among the silky thongs at the back corner of the drawers within the shadow and tried to block out the torturous scent.
The witch walked through the door. She dropped her leather bag, a bag of kibble, and a mat with ‘Pawsitively Hungry’ in cute letters on the floor, then flopped onto the bed face-down with the grace of a sack of potatoes, a muffled sigh escaping her.
Because it was so hard being a witch with everything handed to her.
If he could roll his eyes, they would have fallen out of his fucking sockets.
He watched her flop her hand around on the bed like a dying fish, patting blindly at the duvet. What was she doing? Probably looking for her new pet.
When her hand found nothing but sheets, she propped herself up by the elbow, those blue eyes scanning the room.
Suddenly, she moved with a frantic energy.
The burgundy duvet was ripped from the bed and flung aside.
When he wasn’t there, she started looking under the bed, shoving furniture, straining against the wooden bed.
This is the witch who had summoned him? Pathetic.
Ten minutes of pointless effort left her panting on the floor, having checked every spot but this one.
Hair tangled between her fingers as she ran her hands through it, almost in a way to soothe herself, the echoes of her anxiety coursing through him.
“Here, kitty kitty,” she started to coo.
Once again, if he could roll his eyes, he fucking would have.
And then her deep blue eyes found his peeking out of the drawer.
Shit.
Smiling, she trudged over to her drawer of underwear and pulled it and him out with a thump.
She let out a relieved breath. “There you are!” she cooed at him. “Were you in my underwear drawer, you little pervert?”
He hissed, a clear warning, and if that wasn’t enough, he dug his claws into her underwear, but she only held steady, completely unaware of the monster literally in her drawer.
Humiliation simmered across his chest. Being looked at by a witch like a pet was almost enough to make him shift right there and then, just to stick a claw in her and rip out her throat.
She obviously thought he was her familiar, or she was just very, very stupid.
But he couldn’t kill her yet. He needed information on why this had happened. Then he would kill her. Slowly. So, he stayed in the drawer corner, calculating the many ways he would make her suffer for this.
And she would suffer. Every witch deserved to. As much as he was a monster to them, they had done far worse to his kind.
And then the witch did the unthinkable. She hoisted him up and out of the drawers, a pair of her underwear tangled in his tail coming with him like a silk-wrapped present.
He was definitely, absolutely, going to kill her for this.
She held him so close to her chest that he could hear her heartbeat thumping in time with his own.
The bond sang in response, a pleased hum that made him want to claw his own chest open.
She pulled him just far away enough from her that their eyes locked for a moment. Her innocent eyes were full of relief. His were likely full of rage.
Her voice pulled him from his thoughts. “I think I’ll call you Lucky.”
HAH. Just how wrong she was. If she knew what he really was, she would be down on her knees begging him for a mercy he wouldn’t give.
For some reason, she had taken his being in her presence as kindness and stuck a hand out as if to pat him.
Was she dumb? Had she not seen him hissing?
Over his dead fucking body. This witch would not touch him.
Once again, her scent overwhelmed him, as if her hand was casting a spell on his senses. He needed her away from him.
She moved her hand closer. He was going to lose it. So, he did the only logical thing he could think of to do in that situation.
He bit her finger, his fangs sinking down to the bone.