Chapter 9
Lucian finished the last turn on the pipe fitting under Goldie’s sink.
The water leak was fixed, but the chaos of the last hour—the flying familiar, the spilled sugar, and the raw, desperate hurt in Goldie’s eyes—had left him angrier than the broken pipe ever could.
He slammed his tool bag shut, the sound of a dull thud barely audible over the screeching of the grifflet locked in the bathroom.
He stalked out without a word, leaving the oppressive scent of her and the uneasy feeling that something about the morning hadn’t gone the way he’d convinced himself it should.
He was furious, driving the truck too fast down the narrow, tree-lined road.
But beneath the heat of his anger, a cold, unsettling doubt began to gnaw.
Something feels wrong. Goldie’s reaction to his accusations—the way she flinched, the genuine, unscripted devastation in her eyes—didn’t seem like someone guilty of calculated magical malice.
His jackal instincts, honed over decades to recognize a lie, were screaming a treasonous whisper: she’s telling the truth.
He clenched his hands on the steering wheel until his knuckles were white.
He knew what he had seen. The memory of the screenshotted text messages, the ones detailing the love spell and the magical concoction designed to bind his heart, was the single most solid thing he had held onto for ten years.
That evidence was his armor. His entire relationship with her—every kiss, every shared laugh, every dizzying emotion—had been crafted by magic, not by genuine, unmanufactured connection.
It had been a beautiful, glittering fake.
As he pulled the truck into the familiar gravel driveway of his family home, the internal battle reached a fever pitch.
He cut the engine; the sudden silence filled with his conflicting thoughts.
No matter how much he tried to believe the proof, no matter how many times he rehearsed the betrayal in his head, a small, stubborn part of him still believed that Marigold wasn’t the villain he had believed her to be.
He leaned his head back on the headrest, the worn vinyl cool against his neck, and squeezed his eyes shut to banish the haunting memories.
But they came back in full force, a brilliant, agonizing montage.
He remembered the clumsy, breathless confidence of the first time he asked her on a date, standing under the full moon, getting lost in the mossy depths of those eyes.
He recalled the shocking, dizzying clarity of the first time he had pulled her in for a kiss, the world fading away until it was only the feel of her hands on his chest. And then the last scene: the raw, visceral agony of the last time he saw her by the creek, standing under that massive oak tree as he ripped his own heart out and threw the bleeding pieces at her feet.
Growling, he climbed out of the truck. He pushed open the creaky front door.
The aroma of his mother’s simmering pot roast battled with the faint, persistent ghost of Goldie’s scent on his skin.
She doesn’t even need to be here, and I can still smell her.
He walked into the living room, where the soft, synthetic glow of the television illuminated the familiar scene.
His mother, Carrie, sat on the sofa, engrossed in a daytime drama, while his father, Luke, was reclined in his favorite armchair reading the local newspaper.
“Where were you, pup?” Carrie asked, not taking her eyes off the screen but instantly recognizing the tension in his posture. Her voice was gentle, edged with concern.
“Just went to Enchantresso,” Lucian said, shucking off his jacket and dropping it onto the coat rack. “Plumbing issue.”
Luke looked up from his newspaper, his bushy brows furrowed, and asked the question Lucian had been dreading. “Did you talk to her?”
Lucian kept his gaze fixed on the television, a pointless evasion. He shrugged. Luke sighed, a heavy sound that Lucian felt deep in his chest as his body tensed up.
Luke folded the newspaper up. “I always told you she didn’t do what you accused her of, son. That wasn’t her magic.”
“She was always the sweetest girl, Lucian,” Carrie said, twisting around to look at him fully. “Especially coming from all that tragedy with her parents’ death. I just remember the first time you brought her over to play when you were in… what was it, fourth grade?”
“Yep,” Lucian sighed, looking at the TV. The characters and voices were a blur; he couldn’t be bothered to focus on them. He debated if he left, would it end the conversation, or more likely, they would just start it up again later.
“Yes,” Carrie continued. “She had those huge, sweet, sad eyes. From that first day she followed you around like a lost puppy.”
“And the boy,” Luke drawled, pointing a finger at his chest. “Made sure she went everywhere with him. Every vacation we took, every weekend getaway he invited her before we could even talk about it.”
Lucian felt the unfairness of their solidarity against him. “Give it a rest,” he snapped, the patience he hadn’t known he needed would not appear. He didn’t want to defend the memory of the text messages, or the decade of self-imposed solitude based on them. He just wanted silence.
“Boy,” Luke grumbled. “You had goo-goo eyes for that girl before we even met her. So, I am not sure why—”
He turned and walked down the hall toward the refuge of his old room.
As he walked, he could hear his father’s voice get louder. “Why do you think she’d put a spell on you when you would have followed her off a cliff? Did she make you—”
The door clicked shut behind him, cutting off the persistent words of his parents.
He sat down on the bed, the old mattress creaking under his weight.
Even though he could no longer hear their voices, he could still hear the question, ‘Did she make you a spelled drink to make you fall in love when you were kids?’ How could he explain to them how devastating it was to see those text messages; to realize the one person he would have given his life for was using dark magic to control him?
Then throw in the fact that no matter how much time had passed, he still felt the pull of those eyes whenever he felt them on him.
That her scent had butterflies fluttering in his stomach.
Looking down at his hands, he wondered how much of this he would be able to take before he finally snapped. “Apparently, today was enough,” he sighed. “I was going to kill her damned familiar if I had gotten my hands on him.”
Dinner had been tense; the pot roast Carrie had made filled the air with a hearty, savory scent that was supposed to smother all conflict.
But no matter how much his mother tried to make the evening comfortable, the conversation kept flowing, like a stubborn, redirected stream, right back to Goldie.
“It’s a beautiful roast, dear,” Carrie said brightly, pushing the serving platter toward Luke. “I picked it up from the butcher while I was in town. Did you hear about the new paint color at the church? They went with sage green. A soft, subtle choice, I think.”
Luke, his other hand steadying his water cup with a forced grip against the Claw Tremor, didn’t even glance at the plate. “Best pot roast in Pumpkin Hollow,” he sighed—a heavy, theatrical sound that felt directed entirely at Lucian.
Carrie smiled. “Flatterer.”
Luke reached for another roll. “Only other person who cooks half as well is Goldie. Remember when Goldie brought you soup when you were sick a few months back?”
“Nasty flu. That girl won’t let anyone go hungry,” Carrie laughed. “I was thinking of planting some new flowers this spring. Change things up in the yard.”
“Didn’t you see Goldie today, pup?” Luke locked eyes with Lucian. “Really see her?”
“I saw enough,” Lucian grumbled.
“She built a whole life out of that little coffee shop after you left,” Luke continued as if he hadn’t heard Lucian. “Never running off to the city like you did. You think a witch who was truly using dark magic would chain herself to Pumpkin Hollow?”
Lucian stiffened, chewing slowly on a piece of potato that had suddenly turned to sawdust in his mouth.
Here we go again. Every gentle probe from his father, every heavy sigh, steered the conversation back to Marigold and the decade-old betrayal.
His jackal ears twitched furiously. He stared at his plate, refusing to engage in the debate he knew he couldn’t win against their combined goodwill.
“Luke,” Carrie warned softly, trying to redirect the conversation again. “Let the boy eat his dinner. We were talking about plants. What type of flowers do you think we should have this time?”
Luke just waved a dismissive hand. “The boy needs to hear reason, Carrie. He needs to realize he was mooning for that girl before she could cast her first spell. Why would she waste a spell on a boy who’d already handed her his heart?”
Lucian laughed once—a hollow, humorless sound.
“Because she wanted to keep it.” The silence that followed was suffocating.
Lucian felt the unfairness of their solidarity.
He shoved his fork down and gave a sharp, defeated shake of his head.
“Give it a rest, Pop. I saw the proof. A lecture on her altruistic acts or cooking skills will do no one any good. I just want a single meal where her name isn’t on the menu. "
Carrie who had been watching the tension, her carefully constructed wall of neutrality finally crumbling.
She pushed her own plate away, her expression settling into one of profound sadness that was worse than any argument.
“Maybe,” she whispered, her voice gentle but firm, “if you just made up. Even as friends. Then you could finally move back home for good, pup. Let all that hatred and anger go. It’s been eating at you for too long. "
That was what broke him. The idea that his return, his father’s health, and his entire future here hinged on repairing a relationship that lies and witchcraft had poisoned.
He slammed his chair back and stood up, the noise loud in the small room.
He didn’t know how to explain to them that the phantom scent of her still clung to his clothes even when she wasn’t around.
That even after all these years, his jackal still knew the taste of her.
He could remember how her soft skin glowed in the moonlight, a memory so visceral it made his jaw ache.
Somehow, every road in his mind still led back to Goldie—the betrayal he couldn’t forget, the hurt he couldn’t forgive, and the impossible sweetness he couldn’t stop remembering.
Feeling a volatile, restless energy that his jackal shifter instincts were screaming, he grabbed his jacket. “I need air,” he gritted out.
He peeled out in the beat-up old truck, the groan of the worn suspension mirroring the ache in his chest. He drove with no destination in mind, just wherever the winding road led him. Then he pulled into a dirt parking lot; other than one other car, the lot was empty.
The path he knew so well stood before him.
He felt the armor of a decade tremble at the sight of the treelined path.
The nights he had walked it to meet up with her crashing into his thoughts.
He tried to figure out which feelings were real and which were manufactured by the love spell for the millionth time.
His golden-brown eyes narrowed as he desperately tried to hold on to the conviction that his entire relationship with her had been a “beautiful, glittering fake”.
Then he thought of the question he’d heard a million times, his father’s voice ringing in his ears: ‘Did she make you a spelled drink to fall in love with her when you were little kids?’ The words echoed as a lingering, cold, and unsettling doubt tried to push at his certainty.
The memory of the proof felt foggy, blurred around the edges as he tried to remember those text images, the words on the screen.
Shaking his head, he knew he had to get out of his head. Looking at the dirt path, he realized how.
He threw open the truck door, the sound of a dull thud in the night's quiet.
The restless, volatile energy coursing through his muscles demanded release.
Stepping out of the truck, he took in the barren dirt parking lot.
He saw no one but the empty car. He stepped behind a group of thick, dark bushes and stripped, his clothes falling carelessly to the pine-needle littered ground.
The cool, crisp breeze immediately brushed his skin, but the sensation was fleeting, replaced by a sudden, building pressure.
He closed his eyes, welcoming the pain and heat from shifting into his jackal form.
It was a wrenching, exhilarating transformation—the sudden lengthening of his spine, the explosion of coarse, brownish-blonde fur across his skin, and the sharpening of all his senses. His bones snapped and reshaped.
When the shift completed, the world was no longer blurry with human emotion; it was sharp, immediate, and guided purely by instinct. Running down the path, his powerful paws silent on the leaf-strewn earth. The breeze blew through his fur. He took a curve with barely a whisper.
His jackal’s nose caught wind of it before he saw her. The scent was unmistakable, weaving through the damp earth and pine: Goldie. That signature aroma that had been his first love and his lasting trauma.
He turned direction abruptly, crawling through the brush, a silent predator moving against the faint moonlight.
At the brush’s edge leading to the creek, he halted, hidden by the gnarled roots of a massive oak.
He saw Goldie sitting by the creek. She wasn’t crying; she was just sitting there, curled small against the cold stone, her arms wrapped around her knees, looking sad and profoundly forlorn.
He listened to the softly spoken spell she cast, his insides twisting.