Chapter 4 - Layla
Layla slammed the chalk down into the altar with a growl, white powder skittering away.
“Every time,” she practically spat, “I get so close, and then…”
She didn’t finish.
There was no point. She’d failed again.
She really thought she had it this time. She’d found mention of cord magics, of knots woven with intention, then unbound. The release of energy. The opening of a cage.
It seemed so right.
There her wolf was, trapped inside her. All she had to do was set the damn thing free.
And yet again, she had failed.
She pulled her hand back, flexed her fingers to work the ache out.
The outline of salt clung to her skin; she dusted it off against her skirt and watched the pale grains drop to the stone.
She wanted to smash the bowl. She wanted to burn the book.
She wanted to call up the stairs and ask Lunarion to come down and do it himself.
Instead, Layla did what she always did. Closed her eyes. Breathed. Reached for the margins where she’d scribbled notes.
Inhaling a sharp breath, she picked up her pen and adjusted a few symbols here and there. Dashed out a line.
It felt like the answer was staring her in the face, and she was just too stupid to see it.
She let her hand fall to her lap and tipped her head back until the base of her skull met the cool wall.
“I’m not asking for much,” she said to the ceiling. “I’m a shifter. I just want to shift.”
Her notes were mocking her now. Laughing at her inability to solve their riddle.
She pushed the book away in disgust, her eyes settling on the small crate in the corner of the room.
The one containing those grimoires that she’d learned through painful experience, she shouldn’t touch unless someone was dying.
For a moment, a crazy thought entered her head. She quickly pushed it away. That sort of magic wasn’t to be played with lightly, certainly not by a self-taught, semi-incompetent witch like herself. There were spells in there, rituals, that promised the caster the deepest desires of their heart.
But there was a price. There was always a price.
Witches before her had played with that kind of fire. Blood magic. Death magic. All young shifter children were taught about the dark spells witches had used a hundred years ago in their bid for power. Spells that boiled the blood, melted the flesh, froze every nerve-ending in agonizing torture.
Those women had likely started their descent into madness with just a bit too much curiosity.
There had to be another way. She would find it.
For hours she worked, though she didn’t feel them pass. Time always worked strangely in the basement. The clock upstairs had a way of moving on without telling her.
Eventually, after countless failures, she began to surface from the madness of her research.
She became aware of herself in pieces. Her jaw tight from clenching, her shoulders high up where stress kept the muscles taut, the thread at her wrist cutting into the skin.
She loosened it and retied it tighter, because the sting helped ground her.
The floor above creaked, the normal complaint of old wood. She ignored it. The radiator hissed. She ignored that, too. Her universe narrowed to the salt and the cord and the candle before her.
It flickered as she spoke the words.
Something tightened, almost like a grip finally taking hold, and she leaned into it as allowing herself to fall from a cliff—
—and the world upstairs exploded into sound.
The bookshop door slammed against its stop with a violence that shook dust from the basement beams. The sound dropped through the floor like a hammer.
Layla flinched so hard her hands streaked the chalk. Her heart went feral in her chest.
She was already moving. Raising her hands above her head, the room rearranging itself at her will. Books snapped closed, chalk dust melted away, smoke dissipated into clean air. The rug above muffled a second heavy step. She waved her hand and the candles burst upwards in columns of flame.
“Shit,” she muttered, wrestling her panicked magic. She closed her fist, and the candles extinguished as one.
Voices, one low and heavy, one quieter and colder, one she knew in her bones and never wanted to hear again.
She grabbed the lantern and ran for the stairs.
By the time she reached the top, the panel was closing behind her, and she was swallowing her fear, choking on it. The cold air slapped her across the face.
She burst out of the corridor and into the shop as the front door closed. The chime echoed through the dimly lit space.
Three men stood among the shelves, their presence too large for the room. They brought the freeze in with them, the air charged and crackling.
Dominic was the first she saw. He stood in front of the counter, the sharp line of his shoulders as unyielding as carved stone.
Julian lingered slightly behind him, as composed as a shadow could ever be.
And Theodore, her brother, stood off to the side, his eyes darting between the two men and the floor, as though he wanted to be anywhere else.
For a heartbeat, Layla forgot to breathe. The room felt smaller than it ever had.
“What…what are you doing here?” she managed, her voice thinner than she wanted.
Dominic turned at the sound of her voice. The movement was deliberate, controlled. When his eyes found hers, something unreadable flickered there before vanishing. “You’ve been speaking with my spymaster,” he said, “about hybrids.”
Julian’s expression didn’t change, though she saw the faintest trace of apology cross his face. Theodore only exhaled. He didn’t look at her.
He knew. There was no way he didn’t know. His errant sister refusing to follow his rules. Had he thought…had he thought she’d been discovered? Was this how he would react to her finally getting caught by someone other than him?
A bitter taste rose in her throat, sour and choking.
Layla swallowed, turning her gaze back to the Alpha. “He asked about records. I answered. That’s my job.”
“That’s your job?” Dominic repeated, voice low. He took a step forward, and the wood beneath his boots creaked. “I thought your job was to sell books and stay out of pack business that doesn’t concern you.”
She stiffened, her back hitting a bookshelf. She hadn’t realized she’d been backing away from the furious Alpha. “He said he was here on your orders.”
Julian’s calm voice slid between them. “I was. She was cooperative, Alpha.”
Dominic didn’t look away from her. “I’ll decide that.”
Layla forced herself to meet his gaze. “I gave him everything I had. Old references, sightings from a century ago, a few maps. That’s it.”
“Then you’re telling me,” Dominic said, each word measured, “that you had all this information at your fingertips, and only now deemed it appropriate to share with the pack?”
“That’s not what I said.”
He took another step closer. She could feel his presence now, heat, weight, the electricity of restrained anger. “Then say what you mean.”
Her pulse fluttered, traitorous and fast. She tried to hold herself upright.
“I don’t know what information the pack does or doesn’t have.
These books, these records, have been here for decades.
How was I supposed to know you had no knowledge of their contents?
Julian came to me with a question, and I answered it.
If you have more questions, I’ll answer them as well, if it’s in my power to do so . ”
Something tightened around Dominic’s mouth. It could have been a smile if it weren’t so savage. “You’ve always had an answer ready, haven’t you, Layla?”
The use of her name in his voice nearly undid her. It wasn’t gentle. It had never been. But it was full of memory. Of the times he’d said her name before. Angry, mocking, disdainful.
Soft.
Behind him, Theodore shifted uneasily. “Dom, she’s telling the truth.”
Dominic didn’t look back. “I don’t care what she says. She knows she shouldn’t be poking her nose into pack business.”
“Make up your mind,” Layla said before she could stop herself.
“Either I’m withholding information, or I’m interfering with pack business by giving information when asked.
You’re acting insane, Dominic.” The words came out harsher than she intended, but they were there now, hanging between them, heavy as stone.
Julian’s eyes flicked toward her, curious. Theodore went very still.
Dominic’s expression didn’t change. But something in the air did, sharpened, drawn tight as a bowstring. “Careful,” he said quietly.
Layla’s stomach turned to ice. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
Dominic’s gaze swept over the room, the shelves, the tables, the candle still guttering near the window. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but shut it. Then, abruptly, he turned away, pacing once before stopping near the far table. His hands rested on its edge, white-knuckled.
“She shouldn’t be involved,” he said finally to Theodore, voice low. “If the hybrids find out she has information on them…”
It was as if all the air had been knocked from her lungs. Blood roared in her ears, and something else. Laughter. It took a moment to realize it was coming from her own lips.
“That’s what this is about?” she asked as three sets of eyes turned to her, one curious, one worried, and one full of barely-contained fury. “You’re worried about me?”
Dominic pushed off the table, “Layla—”
“No,” she said, her voice frozen over, “no, you don’t get to come in here after all this time and accuse me of contradicting crimes, all because you can’t admit you’re worried about me. You don’t get to worry about me. You lost that right years ago, Dominic.”
“Layla,” Theodore said, his voice tense, “look, I know we were all sort of hard on you, but we were kids—”
“Stay out of this, Theodore,” Dominic said, his voice near-silent. And no less deadly because of it.
A frisson of fear ran up her spine.