Chapter 17
Seventeen
Felix
The little witch’s breathing had evened out. Felix had waited until she was asleep to shift back, and god, she had a great ass. Her ass was going to be a problem. It took everything in him not to start kneading it like it was dough and get on with the mission he had set himself.
It had been a few days since he’d disappeared from the den, and by now, his brothers would have been losing their minds. He wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t knocking at the wards already, but he hoped they weren’t dumb enough to try.
Picking up her phone from the bedside table, he dropped into the armchair in front of the fireplace and typed in his brother’s number into the keypad from memory.
They weren’t technically brothers; they were just a close group of friends who were leaders in the den.
All of them were quite different, actually.
Their den was made up of many different shifters, dragons, crows, basilisks, cats, griffins, and pegasuses, mostly.
A fairly standard spread of species. His closest brother was Ciro—the one he called now.
The line rang twice before he picked up.
“Hello?” Ciro’s voice came through, gruff and pissed off. He had woken up a slumbering dragon—oops.
“It’s me,” Felix said, low, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the little witch wouldn’t wake up.
“Felix? What the fuck? Where have you been? Have you been sleeping with that porcupine shifter again? I told you he was into some weird shit.”
“What? No. I’m on Caerwyn.”
Ciro went silent. “Come the fuck again?”
Felix laid it out for him: the ritual, the bond, the riddles to undo it.
“You don’t think she’s your—”
“No. It’s not possible.”
“Yeah, well, last week I thought a bond between a witch and a shifter was impossible too, but here we are.”
“Look.” Felix pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you have any ideas, or are you just going to continue being useless?”
“If you were here, I’d punch you for that.”
“You’d miss.”
“Fuck you.” But it was a relieved kind of fuck you, the kind that came from knowing that your brother was safe enough to be an asshole. “Actually, holy shit.” The sound of rustling sheets came over the line.
“What?”
“Remember that case I was working on where shifters were going missing?”
“Yeah?”
“I haven’t been able to find a lead for months; all of them are dead ends.”
Realization poured over Felix, something cold settling in his chest. “Until now.”
He was one of the missing shifters. This was where they could be ending up. But if that were true, why hadn’t any of them reached out? A phone call, a message—anything. Unless they couldn’t.
What frustrated him more than anything, more than this witch, more than this absurd bond, was a question without an answer. Something almost feral in him refused to let it lie. It was borderline obsessive. It was also why, at thirty, he’d clawed his way so high up the ranks.
His instinct was right, though. Witches had something to do with it, and now, it pissed him off enough that he intended to find out what exactly they were doing with them. He felt a tingle in his balls that it wouldn’t be good.
“Exactly,” Ciro said.
“Tell me everything.”
“It’s been happening for over thirty years; all of the shifters disappeared without a trace, and we haven’t heard anything from them. In the last week alone, three more have gone missing from the London Conglomerate.”
Felix’s tail went still as he sat up straighter, the armchair creaking under his weight. “Fuck. How many in total?”
“At least thirty,” Ciro exhaled. “The human government swears they have nothing to do with it. The witches are as uncooperative as usual.”
“Do they have anything in common?”
“Apart from them being from London and above the age of eighteen, no, there’s not. Every single lead I’ve had has gone cold. I fucking knew the witches had something to do with it.” He paused. “The witch you’re bonded to, do you think she’s behind this?”
He glanced at the little witch on the bed, at the way a hint of drool made its way onto her pillow. “No.”
“Are you sure that’s not the bond talking?”
“Yes.” Felix’s voice was strained, clipped. It was a fair question, but it still made him want to throttle him for asking.
Ciro made a low whistling noise. “Touchy.”
Felix ignored him. There was no way she had anything to do with this—someone else was pulling the strings.
Were there other shifters on the island?
Were they bound to witches like him? Whether it was the goddess or someone else entirely, he intended to find out who was behind this.
It was already personal, but this was a war against the shifters.
They needed to solve the fucking riddle so he could question the goddess.
It sounded insane. It also sounded like the most solid lead he’d had all week, which said a lot about his week.
Felix stiffened as the little witch stirred, rolling over so her back—her very nice back—was to him.
The dry drag of a cigarette came through the line. “Someone on that island knows something; you need to find out if there are others and how the fuck they’re making them disappear.”
“I’ll investigate.”
“Be careful. Eimi would murder me if something happened to you. She’s already been hounding at my door every goddamn hour for an update.”
The corner of his mouth pulled up. The small cat shifter was his rambunctious sister, his actual sister. “Tell her I’m fine, but for the love of god, don’t tell her where I am.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t, she would storm the island herself.”
The line went dead, and some of the tension unspooled in his chest. It was good to hear from someone familiar.
It grounded him in the insanity that had been the past few days, and Ciro, as insufferable as he was, had been it.
Felix rubbed his temples. What a shit show.
There were too many variables, too many questions.
Felix decided to be logical, just like he would in any mission. He approached it the way he approached everything—methodically, before the frustration could eat him alive. The only lead he had was a fucking talking tree, which was laughable on so many levels. But it was a start.
She still slept soundly, and he decided that now would be the best time to try to find some answers.
He crossed to the window, unlatched it, and shifted.
The sandstone bricks offered enough ledge to navigate him down without breaking anything.
He bled into the shadows of an oak tree, his magic near invisible, and slipped past the enforcers who were conversing amongst themselves.
“Transfer students are coming tomorrow,” a red-haired enforcer said.
“Really? Where from?”
“Lloer, Aberm?r, Talgarth”
“Lucky bastards. I didn’t get to go anywhere until I graduated.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m meant to meet them at the ferry tomorrow to escort them.”
Interesting.
No time to stay and chit-chat, Felix had places to be. He peeled away from the tree, sticking to the shadows and—
“Hey!”
Fuck.
Felix froze, one paw hovering above the ground.
He turned his head slowly to see the auburn-haired enforcer jogging toward him, his fox familiar running after him.
He didn’t move. Running away would likely be suspicious, as familiars only had one mode, and that was blindingly obedient to witches.
The other enforcer’s hand moved to his rifle, a subtle movement, but one Felix definitely noted. He only had one option.
“What are you doing here, little kitty?” the enforcer said. Barf. The indignity. He crouched to Felix’s level while the fox circled him with obvious curiosity. “Bit late for a midnight stroll, don’t you think?” He grabbed hold of Felix’s collar and read the nameplate.
“You’re Avery’s new familiar, aren’t you?”
Fuck.
He had no choice but to do the most degrading thing he had ever done in his life.
He meowed. Pitifully.
The enforcer’s expression immediately softened. “Poor little guy, must have gotten lost.”
Felix did his best to play the part of a helpless house cat. Including widening his eyes and tilting his head so they twinkled in the starlight. This would be a memory he would never forget; it would haunt him when he tried to sleep at night. How low he had fallen.
This is the part where you leave me alone now.
“Aww.”
He reached out slowly. Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t—no! No!
The enforcer scooped him up. Felix twisted, squirmed, made himself as inconvenient as physically possible, but he only held tighter. Every instinct screamed at him to shift, to kill this fucking witch and his fucking grabby hands.
“Come on, buddy, let’s get you back to your witch.”
There was nothing Felix could do but dangle helplessly like a furry potato sack in his arms as the enforcer carried him upstairs back to the dorm where he had just been ten minutes ago.
There had to be a better way to move around than parading as a lost familiar.
If he wanted to go anywhere on this Island, he couldn’t risk being caught so far from his witch.
The enforcer talked at him while he climbed the stairs. “You know, I’m glad Avery finally got a familiar. I was worried about her. We all were, after what she went through last year.”
Felix’s ears perked up.
“She tried to stay strong after her dad passed, but anyway, I’m glad she has you now. She needs someone she can trust.”
A wheezing cough escaped Felix. He truly had no idea.
“Can you do me a favor?” he said, scratching Felix’s head. He gritted his teeth so hard he thought they might snap. “Can you convince Avery to go on a date with me soon?”
That was it. He had to kill him. Absolutely the fuck not. He would not watch his witch go on a date with him; she is mine. She is—
A knock at the door interrupted his spiraling thoughts. They both waited for a moment. But there was only silence from the other side. “Guess she’s asleep, huh, buddy?”
He was not his buddy.
The enforcer grabbed a bunch of keys from his belt and found the one to her door far too easily.
The enforcer creaked the door open and put him down at the threshold.
Felix turned around and glared at him from the ground.
It wasn’t threatening by any means, but it made him feel better.
That was positively the worst thing to ever happen to him.
He wouldn’t let anyone manhandle him again.
An idea formed in his mind as he stepped through the door.
The enforcer lingered in the doorway for a moment, his gaze catching on the little witch longer than he could tolerate. “Sleep well, Avery,” he said.
God, he was creepy. Felix didn’t like the protective feeling swelling in his chest. He wanted to remove the enforcer’s eyes for looking at her like that. Just before he was going to hiss and scratch him, the enforcer moved away, quietly shutting the door behind him.
Felix listened as the footsteps faded away and then shifted back into his human form. He ran a hand through his hair, looking at the witch who was blissfully ignorant of what had just occurred.
For a moment, he just stood near the bed, watching the rise and fall of her shoulders. The dappled silver moon threw light over her freckled skin, enticing him closer and closer.
It was a terrible idea, but he did it anyway.
He crawled into the bed with her, lying down carefully so he didn’t wake her. The scent of cinnamon reached him. He hated that it was actually comforting to him now.
Unconsciously, she turned around. He stiffened.
He shouldn’t be doing this; he should shift back into a cat.
But as he watched her, her lips parted, he had the strange urge to kiss her again.
To fill the space between her lips with his own.
Instead, he just let the warmth of her breath against his shoulder be enough.
Because that was all it could be. Because that had to be enough.
Their bond would be broken, and he would be free to go back to… however he had been before.
Gently, he shook his head. That was all this was, just the bond calling out for its other half.
It wasn’t really him. For a few minutes, he would indulge it.
He would shift back into a cat when he was about to fall asleep.
Just a few minutes. Something spread within his chest, a foreign feeling.
Whether it was the bond or not at that moment, he didn’t care.
She shifted again, this time her hand finding his wrist. Instinctively, he wanted to rip it away.
For a few moments, he did nothing but let it linger.
Feeling the gentle touch of another that wasn’t during sex.
When was the last time someone had touched him like this?
When was the last time he had let someone touch him in such a way?
It means nothing. I just don’t want to wake her.
He told himself. Even while his thumb started to trace hers.
Even when he moved so close that there was hardly any space between them.
Just a few more minutes.