Chapter Five #2
Darius takes a step toward me, looking like he’s about to have me for lunch, dinner, and afternoon tea.
Before he gets any closer, though, a howl breaks the silence, and a second later, a wolf with pink-tipped fur bounds out of the woods and onto the roadway. It doesn’t stop until it’s standing near Darius and me, sniffing the air between us.
My heart is going a million miles an hour for a whole new reason. Of all the times for my magic to glitch, when I’m miles deep in werewolf country is probably the absolute worst.
My lungs are starting to burn, but fear has made exhaling impossible. This isn’t like with Darius. Yeah, he looks scary and tough, but it’s too easy to see through all that. He’s all growl and no bite—at least when it comes to me.
But this wolf sniffing my hand like it’s trying to determine every last detail of my recent past? I have no idea what’s going to happen next, something I don’t mind when it comes to an impulse vacation, but I really don’t like when the ending could be me getting gobbled up in the not-fun way.
I’ve been holding my breath long enough that the edges of my vision are starting to get dark when the wolf gives me one last snuffling sniff and steps back.
The wind stirs around us, and there’s a howl somewhere in the distance as the wolf transforms into an older woman with pink highlights in her steel-gray hair.
Unlike when Darius went from wolf to man, the woman is wearing a flowing, earth mother kind of dress threaded with a metallic purple that glimmers in the light.
Weird. I would have thought all werewolves shifted the same way with the same naked outcome.
“Hey-ya, big fella,” the woman says, reaching up and pinching Darius’s cheek before turning toward me and clapping her hands with excitement. “I knew you’d find her.”
My gut sinks a few feet because I have to be the her in question, considering how the other woman is beaming at me. Only the Fates know what being her means to the Aetos pack.
“Aunt Artemis,” Darius says, rubbing his cheek where she squeezed. “What are you doing up here?”
She takes my hand and flips it over, tracing the lines on my palm with the tip of her finger. “The leaves told me to come, and as soon as I saw the way the clouds were moving, I knew it had finally happened. After all these years, it happened just like I’ve always told you it would.”
Darius looks so exhausted at that moment, even as he tries to silence what had to be a reflexive, weary sigh, that I can’t help but like the woman.
He shakes his head in the universal signal for “don’t ask” when I lift an eyebrow in question at her words. Yeah. Like that’s gonna stop me from asking what in the world his aunt Artemis is talking about.
“What has happened?” I ask, because whatever it is, I want to know all about it and use the power myself if it made Darius this miserable.
“Darius found you,” she says in between hmms and mm-hmms as she examines the weaving lines crisscrossing my palm and then taps a spot where four lines intersect. “And you’re his fated mate.”
You’re.
His.
Fated.
Mate.
The words have about three seconds to sink in before my laughter takes over. It’s the worst case of the giggles I’ve ever gotten. Think three-in-the-morning-sleepover-after-too-much-sugar-and-caffeine giggles. How could I not? It’s ridiculous. Absolutely farcical.
Fated mates. That’s beyond unbelievable. That stuff only happens in old wives’ tales and horror stories. It definitely doesn’t happen in real life and most especially doesn’t happen with witches.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Artemis when I can take a breath. “I don’t mean to be rude.”
She shrugs, an unbothered expression on her face.
Still, I’m impulsive, not a complete asshole. “I’m sorry for losing it there,” I say, rubbing my stomach because I’ve used laughing muscles I didn’t even know I had. “It’s just too ridiculous. I’m not anyone’s mate. I’m a witch.”
That’s the other part of it beyond the whole fated-mates-is-an-old-tall-tale.
Witches don’t like werewolves, and werewolves don’t like witches.
We usually leave each other alone. They do their thing.
We do ours. Unless, of course, a werewolf steals a super powerful spell book, in which case we go after them and take it back.
“Exactly,” Artemis says. “The Fates promised this day would come, when werewolves and witches became allies with a love bond that was destined and unbreakable. Then the hex placed upon the pack by Darius’s great-great-grandfather’s heartbroken witchy lover would finally be undone.
And what better way to do all of that than to ensure the two most powerful families of the two orders are fated mates?
” She lets out a satisfied sigh. “The journey may take a while, but the Fates always deliver on what they promise.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head as I press my fist to my suddenly gurgly belly. “That can’t be right.”
“It’s possible I’m wrong, I guess,” she says, sounding beyond doubtful before leaning in close and whispering in my ear. “So why don’t you prove I’m wrong and poof yourself back home?”
Then she takes a step back, as if to give me space to gather my magic.
My gut goes from wonky to knotted in a heartbeat. “He did something to glitch my powers.”
I still have magic. I do. I can feel it winding its way through me, as much a part of myself as the scar on my knee from a magic carpet free-fall jump that almost went really wrong.
I don’t need to concentrate to feel the honeysuckle-scented power I was born with.
It’s here and ignoring my ass right now whenever I cast it with the intention of getting as far away from Darius Aetos as possible.
“Interesting,” Artemis says with a smug smile. “Well, until you unglitch yourself, it seems you’re stuck here with us, so we should all make the best of it. Oh, I’m so glad I added another lamb to the spit for tonight. We will have to have a proper welcoming for our guest.”
“Prisoner,” Darius says stubbornly to his aunt. “I kidnapped her.”
“Of course you did, darling.” She gives his cheek another pinch before patting it twice. “Of course you did.”
The crunchy orange leaves of fall swirl around her feet a half second before her Birkenstocks are replaced by the large paws of a full-grown wolf, and then the rest of her turns as her dress melts into fur.
She shakes it out, the pink tips practically glowing in the late afternoon sun, and gives Darius a quick nod before bounding off into the woods, leaving the Aetos alpha and me sulking in silence.
Which lasts for all of about three seconds, because my magic may be on the fritz, but that doesn’t mean my mouth is.
“Darius Aetos, I am not your fated mate.”
It’s ridiculous. I’m a witch. We don’t do that. And anyway, fated mates is bullshit.
Right?
Tell me I’m right, because otherwise, that means the fact that I can’t get away from the most one-grunt-for-yes-two-grunts-for-no grumpy-ass werewolf shifter in all of Witchingdom is more than a curse. It’s a life sentence—and I’m not the kind of witch who can do that kind of time.
His only response to my declaration is a weary grunt before he gets on his motorcycle.
I march after him, annoyance and frustration twining together like twin tornados inside me. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Ignoring my very valid question, Darius hands me his helmet and starts his bike, the engine a loud roar that almost drowns out the anxiety rushing through me.
He tips his chin to the space on the seat behind him. “Get on.”
Ha! Like that is going to happen. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
He shrugs those broad shoulders of his as if to say, suit yourself, and starts down the road.
I watch, holding my breath until he rounds the bend.
My lungs are burning by the time he disappears and the sound of his motorcycle’s engine starts to fade.
I give it another two seconds of pure what-the-fuckery panic before all the air whooshes out of me in relief.
The charm or cursed item or whatever it was he’d gotten on to me must only work if I try to leave, not if he does.
Well, Happy Fucking Samhain to me, because he is gone, and I am still here. Thank the Fates. Now I just have to figure out how to get—
The ground roils under my feet and the oh-shit realization isn’t even fully formed before everything disappears and in a blink I’m on the back of Darius’s motorcycle, tucked up tight behind him, helmet on, with my arms wrapped around his waist.
I have no idea how he keeps making this happen, but I know one thing for sure.
The Fates can kiss my ass, because I am not anyone’s fated mate—especially not Sir Grunts A Lot’s.