Crystal and Claws (Witches and Shifters: Griffin Coven #1)

Chapter 1

The strange wolf smelled rotten, wrong, and a little wild.

Mateo stalked the scent deep into silent pines blanketed with heavy snow the moment he arrived in the mountains.

It concealed another scent, as enticing as the first was horrifying. Every few miles, he’d catch a whiff of wild roses and woman, and his wolf was ready to abandon its pack to follow like an obedient puppy for the rest of its life.

What is wrong with you? he demanded of the beast that shared his soul.

But even his human half could smell it. It was fantastic, impossibly evoking Nonna’s lasagna, the brine of the sea, and the scent of baking bread that wafted out of grates outside bakeries on early New York winter mornings.

The third scent was the one he didn’t smell: his own trail the moment his paws hit the snow. That meant he didn’t know where his den was, which meant he was embarrassingly lost in the woods, and the rest of his pack was going to laugh him into the next state.

His wolf stood frozen in indecision: enemy ahead, paradise somewhere in the trees, and home vaguely behind.

The decision was taken out of his hands when a shift in the wind brought a fresh blast of snowflakes into his eyes and the stronger scent of rot.

The world fell away as his senses homed in on the strange wolf. The woods were profoundly silent, at least to his city ears, where his wolf was always overstimulated. He braced, though he could not have said what he sensed. His stalker was silent and invisible. A breath of wind? A dash of magic?

He turned his head just in time to miss a death latch on his throat by stained canines that snapped in the air an inch from his fur.

He snarled and danced back, and his attacker growled low, claws digging into snow-churned ground.

Mateo squared off, rapid calculations spooling through his brain as the wolf paced, reconsidering strategy now that they’d lost the element of surprise.

The stray was smaller than him, but most wolves were.

This wolf’s fur was matted and his breath was rancid, which meant it might be crazier and thus more dangerous than it seemed.

Mateo figured it was a stray, but now that it was close, he could smell other wolves on it.

This wasn’t a loner. It had a pack around here somewhere, all as pungent as it was.

The smell was bizarre. It lacked any hint of civilization.

Any wolf he met in New York always had an under scent of motor oil and polyester even in its fur. This guy smelled like wool and forest.

He wished he could shift and ask what the hell it was thinking.

Well, Nonna, you wanted me to get back to nature, he thought grimly as the wolf made its move.

The stranger feinted right, then dodged left at the last second, and Mateo’s wolf tensed. He roared as dirty claws sliced down his shoulder, missing his jugular by a matter of inches.

If that gets infected, you asshole… he thought before the wolf rammed into him, and they slammed into the foot of a pine tree.

For a second, he was distracted by a sweet scent of the scraped bark, a cross between butterscotch and vanilla. He scrambled to his feet, dismissing trees that smelled like dessert when they got injured.

The wolf growled, the sound vibrating from its claws to the tip of its tail, and Mateo braced.

Ninety-five percent of the time, his wolf was a big marshmallow because it was exactly where it wanted to be at the head of its pack.

That hadn’t been true when he was growing up.

To Mateo’s human half, content to spend his days getting lost in computers, it felt like he’d been sitting on a volcano.

His wolf had to submit and harbored a nearly endless rage because of it.

Keeping the beast remotely near the same zip code as sane was a dispiriting, exhausting slog filled with endless fights to the top of his pack, dragging Mateo kicking and screaming the whole way.

Now his wolf ran his family and answered only to his terrifying eighty-something-year-old great aunt, who was now a thousand miles away.

He’d forgotten this rage.

The crazy wolf in front of him didn’t know anything had changed, that it had poked the beast, literally, and now was probably going to pay with its life.

This is the stupidest way to resolve conflict, Mateo said without the slightest hope of success.

This time, when the strange wolf lunged, Mateo’s wolf exploded, launching off its hind legs with front legs extended and teeth bared, heading straight for the throat.

The other wolf had already launched and was flying through the air with no way to stop itself.

Even in a fight to the death, Mateo’s brain idly calculated the angles and realized they were going to hit each other and then a tree.

He tried not to pay close attention as his teeth sank into fur.

From the lack of an immediate rush of blood, they’d missed the jugular.

But just as he predicted, the two wolves tangled together and slammed into another tree, landing hard beneath it and scrambling for the upper hand as snow tumbled off all the branches above them onto their heads.

It was wet and heavy, and Mateo was shocked by how much had accumulated just since he’d left the cabin. There had to be at least a couple of inches on top of weeks-old snow.

His wolf launched again, and the other yelped as Mateo’s got a good hold on the scruff of its neck. It couldn’t kill from this position, but it could immobilize the other like a helpless pup. Before it could let go and aim for its throat, Mateo hauled on the reins as hard as he could.

We don’t know where we are. If we kill him on neutral territory, his entire pack has grounds to come after us.

The wolf sent back a series of images of fighting every wolf in the state.

What would Nonna think of you provoking a war? You’re supposed to be out here looking for a mate!

His great-aunt had sent him back to the original territory of their pack, insisting there was magic here that would somehow get her grandbabies.

He wasn’t entirely sure how a state with far fewer people was going to help him meet someone, but he would do just about anything for the old woman.

Including, apparently, committing murder.

His wolf insisted it had attacked first in a series of flashing images. The beast spoke to him through his senses—sights, sounds, and memories—in a language almost as fast and fluent as words. It was telling him not to leave an enemy alive.

The stray struggled to get up, bleeding freely from the back of its neck.

His wolf shook the wounded shifter, and Mateo grimaced. He’s down. He attacked, so you retaliated. You’re done.

His wolf sent him a series of snapshots of old enemies.

You leave your enemies alive all the time. There are four packs in New York City. You don’t attack any of them.

They know their place, the wolf insisted, with pictures of all of them avoiding him on the streets.

Mateo made wild jazz hands in his head at the bloody, dirty specimen before them. I think this guy got the message.

His wolf let go, and the stray flinched away.

See? Let him live, Mateo said, putting steel in his voice.

The wolf took a single step back, now directing its rage at Mateo, but he did not waver.

Shifters fought for control every day of their lives, and those who could not tame their beasts could not live. Mateo rarely ever exerted that authority, mostly because in his current life at the top of the heap, he didn’t need it. His wolf was al settimo cielo, in seventh heaven.

Mateo was terrified that, in a moment like this one day, he would lose it, and there was no one strong enough to stop him.

He took a deep, heaving breath as his wolf took another step back and realized this was not the day.

He had a sudden vision of his office in New York with his perfect chair and the fastest internet that money could buy, with bagels from Russ’s, pizza from Joe’s, and the whole of his pack on the roof of his building grilling steaks.

He had every art, every sport, and everything else he wanted at his fingertips. Why the hell had he left?

His wolf remembered it had a pack and did not have to kill half-feral strays with no manners and allowed him to take another step back.

They kept walking backward, and he was surprised to find himself in a clear spot free of trees that started up the hill and lasted for another fifty feet below him, where he could see round boulders freshly covered in snow.

A rockfall had taken out a bunch of trees.

Here, the snow was already high. This wasn’t the first storm of the year, clearly, and the snow was packed and unsteady under his feet.

He definitely had not walked this way, which meant he had to turn back.

He’d done it. He put his paws on the dirt. He’d seen his great-grandfather’s land, the birthplace of a new pack.

It was… really snowy.

Now, he could go home.

There were no wolves in the second generation. No child born in the last ten years had shifted. This trip was supposed to help with that, but that made even less sense now that he was here.

It was a slog to get through the steep snow. The wind had blown more here without the pines to block the ground, and his paws slithered with every step.

Packs everywhere were birthing fewer and fewer wolves. The magic was dying. No one knew why or what they could do about it. His Nonna was desperate and grasping at straws.

We’ll see her tomorrow. Hell, we’ll grab the jet and see her tonight.

You’ll be up to your elbows in pasta by midnight, he told the wolf, who did weirdly love pasta.

It couldn’t eat it. They had to be human to enjoy more than a bite or two, but it was one reliable way to get him to shift for vicarious enjoyment.

The crunch of snow. The flash of dirty fur.

He had a second’s warning, but this time it was not enough.

The enemy, limping and bleeding, with his head hanging low from damaged neck muscles, plowed into him.