Chapter Two
Darius…
Earlier that day…
With the world going to shit in a half-shredded, rat-eaten handbasket, you’ve gotta love it when a plan comes together.
That’s especially true when your success means getting to send a fuck-you on behalf of your entire werewolf pack to the rest of Witchingdom—especially the witches.
Fucking witches.
They think they know everything, control everything, win everything.
Well, not this time.
Not with the prize I’m about to have tucked away in my saddlebag.
It’s a spell book with some stupid Latin name (like anyone speaks that shit anymore), and it’s been all anyone can talk about on the Croesus Network for the past few months.
The thieves, crooks, and everyday villains who post on the LinkedIn of Witchingdom’s law averse called stealing the spell book the job of all jobs.
How was I supposed to walk away from a challenge like that?
When your name is Darius Aetos, and you’re the alpha of your namesake werewolf pack, there isn’t a way, and so I didn’t. Now the spell book is about to be mine.
How am I going to make that happen? The same way I do everything else: by putting together a plan all the way down to the minute details and then working that plan. No changes or substitutions allowed.
I don’t yammer about it or bounce ideas off other people. I don’t need to.
I learn by myself.
I observe by myself.
I act by myself.
Period.
It’s my system, and it works. I don’t need to mess it up by talking through ideas or being anything other than completely analytical about it all.
Feelings only fuck things up—all you have to do is take a look at the mess the past two alphas (my father and grandmother) have made of the pack to understand that.
Some thought it was my fate to be as bad of an alpha as they were.
My answer to that? Fuck fate. I don’t believe in it.
I decide my destiny and do whatever it takes to make it happen without any help from anyone else.
And the destiny I choose is to protect my pack, no matter what it takes. If, in this case, that means stealing the old-timey spell book that everyone in Witchingdom wants, then so be it. I’ll make it happen.
The thing about stealing the spell book, though, is that the people on the Croesus Network weren’t wrong.
Tracking it down was a giant pain in my ass.
Weeks of paying off or strong-arming informants across Witchingdom, however, had finally gotten us what we needed.
Leona Sherwood and Erik Svensen had the spell book.
They’d been road-tripping in a canary-yellow classic convertible with the spell book toward some secured facility where (once stored away) it would stay locked up tight for all eternity or some such shit.
Witches are such melodramatic assholes. That was their plan.
My plan was better, which is why my squad and I caught up with them right as they drove straight into the most dangerous place in Witchingdom—the pixies’ forest.
Oh yeah, you may be thinking, “Pixies, how bad could they be?” Let me tell you, they’re more unhinged than a toddler who skipped naptime after downing a five-pound bag of sugar and meaner than a badger shifter with a hangover whose access to greasy cheeseburgers has been cut off.
I had a run-in with the pixie queen a while back, and the less said about that, the better. Suffice it to say, I barely made it out.
Up until this minute, I had zero plans to press my luck with the pixie queen ever again. But now I don’t have a choice, because that ridiculous spell book is the one thing my pack needs to change its fortunes.
For that, I’ll do anything.
I take a minute to scan the forest for any sign of the vicious little gambling-addicted miscreants.
I can’t see them through the thick trees, but I know the pixies are there watching and waiting—and no doubt betting on if I’ll get out of the forest alive this time.
I can smell the dust of the chalk they use to keep track of their wagers, and my wolf sense can feel the flutter of their teeny-tiny wings as they hover in place like demented hummingbirds.
The last thing I want to do is go in there, but as my gaze drops to the tire tracks of the classic Cadillac convertible Leona and Erik are driving, I know there isn’t anything I can do to avoid it.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m letting anyone else take the risk of going into the pixie queen’s domain.
“You guys stay back,” I tell my squad. “We’ll meet up at the rendezvous point.”
Nikos, my second-in-command who’d love nothing more than to see me gone, stiffens. “Are you—”
I cut him off before he can argue. “I’ll see you there.”
His eyes turn into angry little slits, but I’ll deal with that later.
There are a few grumbles, but no one follows when I rev my motorcycle’s engine and head toward the tire tracks the ’57 Caddy left when Leona and Erik pulled into the forest.
I make it all of a quarter of a mile through the thick trees when a curvy, light auburn–haired witch appears exactly in the middle of the path.
I can tell from a glance that she’s a Sherwood.
The red hair and entitled air always give them away.
However, the witch giving me the up and down is not Leona.
It’s Effie, the Sherwood family’s resident troublemaker.
She’s the daughter most likely to throw a party in the woods, put a spell on your phone so every text includes an eggplant emoji, and go skydiving without a magic carpet.
The witch is a menace.
She looks exactly like she does in the pics and videos on her WitchyGram account.
(I’ll make your life pure misery if you let anyone know my alt account follows her.) She’s all lush curves wrapped in well-worn jeans; thick, wavy hair begging to be touched, tugged, and wrapped around a fist; and perfect, bountiful tits that could make a werewolf skip running through the woods during a full moon.
Other werewolves. Not me. I have more important things to take care of than finding out if Effie Sherwood tastes as good as she looks.
She flashes a wide, welcoming smile at me that sets off all my internal alarm bells at once.
“Well, if it isn’t Witchingdom’s resident bad boy alpha werewolf here to help little ol’ me out in a pinch,” she says, her voice warm and sultry.
Nope, I’m not gonna be even the least bit tempted by all that promised honey. I’m big, but that doesn’t mean I’m dumb. And the fact that she knows who I am? The Aetos pack is infamous in Witchingdom, so really it comes with the territory, so it doesn’t mean anything.
“I’m not here for you,” I tell her.
“Wooooo-ooooo-w.” She draws the single-syllable word out in a way that’s like sandpaper against my more economical way of talking. “That’s quite the way to make a girl feel special.”
She’s taunting me. I know it. I shouldn’t feed into it. I should just ignore her and drive around her, deeper into the forest.
Instead, I put a little extra growl in my voice and say, “Get out of the way.”
Her freckle-covered cheeks turn pink, her hand goes to the deep V of her dark blue sweater, and she toys with the edge, drawing my attention to her tits (as if I need the help), before she says with a flirtatious wink, “You’ll have to make me.”
Who in the fuck would fall for that one?
Me, it turns out.
I knock the kickstand of my bike down and get off, straightening to my full height of six feet seven inches.
I plant my black motorcycle boots firmly on the forest floor and cross my arms over my plain black T-shirt before giving her the kind of don’t-fuck-with-me look that makes people cross the street when they see me walking toward them.
The stance also emphasizes just how solid I am.
I’m not exaggerating when I say I could take a hit from a Mack truck and walk away without a limp.
No, I’m not showing off for her. I’m giving her a chance to reconsider her life choices.
It’s a mercy, a kindness…Fine, it’s an ego boost when I see that flash of desire in her eyes.
“You don’t even reach my shoulders,” I say as I walk toward her. “Moving you is not gonna be hard.”
She bats her eyelashes at me as if we’re flirting and not getting ready to throw down. “Haven’t you ever heard that powerful witches come in small packages?”
“So your sister Leona is even smaller than you are?” Low blow considering it’s gotta scrape her ass that she’s the oldest but wasn’t picked to be her family’s magical heir? Yes, but I’m not here to make things nice for a family of witches. I’m here to steal that stupid spell book.
“Ouch,” she says with a little gasp as if she’s hurt, but there’s a sparkle in her eyes that promises she’s having fun. “You really hurt my feelings with that one. I just might cry.”
“I doubt it,” I scoff as I come to a stop right in front of her.
She lets out a soft chuckle that actually sounds genuine. “Why, you just see right through me, don’t you, Wolfie?”
She doesn’t seem the least worried that I might literally eat her for dinner.
Most people are. They look at me and see a big-as-fuck, tatted-up biker and get a worried look in their eyes.
Then they notice what kind of tattoos I have and that my eyes have a very un-humanlike amber hue to them.
Then there’s the fact that if I shave at dawn, I have a five-o’clock shadow at nine in the morning, which is why I’ve had a short scruff of a beard since I was thirteen.
That’s when they go from oh-shit to moving away as fast as possible.
But this little witch is different.
Lucky fucking me. Really, is it too much to ask that a plan not get fucked up for once?
To make things even worse, my inner wolf perks up and cocks his head. He’s interested in Effie, which is never a good sign. I shove him back down so he can’t make trouble.
Controlling your inner wolf is one of the benefits of being an alpha.
I don’t need a full moon to shift into my wolf form, nor do I have to shift all the way.
You’d think that would mean I barely notice my wolf side.
You’d be wrong. My inner wolf prowls around inside me like a tangible being, offering his opinions, stirring up shit, and trying to get me to stop taking things so seriously.
I ignore him as much as possible. It’s the only way I can maintain focus on my plan to save my pack. Let the wolf loose?
Abso-fucking-lutely not.
There’s not an inch of Effie that doesn’t fit in my shadow, but it still feels like she’s about to break out of its confines at any moment. The woman is always in motion, even when she’s standing still. Fucking fascinating. Also? Totally not the point right now.
“Move aside, witch.”
“You obviously know my name since you know who my sister is.” She leans forward and does a walking-with-her-fingers-up-the-center-of-my-chest thing, setting off a whole trail of fuck-me-yes in its wake. “Why don’t you use it?”
I grab her wrist, encircling the tiny thing in my much larger hands, careful not to hold on too tight, and yank her hand away from my chest before I go and do something stupid like start to enjoy her touch. “Because we’re not going to know each other long enough for it to matter.”
“That part’s true”—she slips her hand free—“but not the way you think.”
The scent of honeysuckles fills the air, and the wolf inside me perks up again. He raises his snout and inhales in a long, deep sniff before getting up, doing a big stretch, and then starting to pace.
“I like her,” my wolf says in my head.
I ignore him. He likes every woman with a testy attitude and a great ass. He has a type.
Effie looks past me toward the edge of the forest where the rest of my squad is waiting in the roadway like I ordered them to. No, we can’t actually see them because of how thick the trees are, but I can feel them. When you’re a werewolf, your pack is always a part of you.
“Oh shit,” she says, her eyes rounding in surprise. “That’s not good.”
I whip around, ready to go after whoever dares to approach my werewolves, before my brain has a chance to hey-dummy me.
By the time my mind catches up with my body, it’s too late.
Effie Sherwood’s sweet, juicy ass is sitting on the leather seat of my motorcycle, and she’s revving the engine.
Then with a smart-assy wink, she blows a kiss my way, and the next thing I know, she’s speeding straight into the heart of the Killjoy Forest.
And what am I doing? Standing here with my mouth open as she gives me a jaunty little wave and then races deeper into the forest. It’s like I can’t make my brain process what just happened because it shouldn’t have happened.
No one steals the alpha’s motorcycle—especially not a wild witch with an attitude problem who fails to realize she doesn’t have the upper hand.
But she did.
“And,” my wolf notes rather smugly, “she looks damn good doing it.”
“Shut up,” I tell him.
He lets out a snort. “Oh, now you’re talking to me.”
I’d tell him to fuck off, but all my attention is focused on catching a chaos witch—but I can’t do that in my current form.