Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
L iam woke, momentarily disoriented by the abundance of light and the lack of Kade’s dick digging into his ass. He hadn’t realized how used to the latter he’d gotten over the last few days.
A drawer slid shut, and he rolled over. Kade was propped up against the headboard.
“Morning,” Kade said.
“What time is it?” Liam asked, his voice rough from sleep.
“Ten past three.”
Liam winced. “I only meant to close my eyes for a minute or two, not multiple hours.”
“Grant’s entire pack will be out until tomorrow, and there’s not much we can do about Niall at the moment.”
Liam got out of bed and stretched. Kade could say that, but he’d still wasted the better part of a perfectly good afternoon.
A little groggy, he shuffled into the bathroom, splashed water on his face, and got ready for the rest of the day.
When he reentered the bedroom, Kade was standing with impeccable posture, projecting an oddly formal air, though he was in his usual t-shirt and jeans. Liam raised an eyebrow at him. Why did he look nervous?
Kade cleared his throat. “If you would be so willing, may I request your permission to allow me to escort you somewhere?”
Liam furrowed his brow in confusion. “What now?”
“Would you kindly bestow upon me the honor of accompanying me elsewhere in our humble abode?”
What was Kade doing? Besides freaking Liam out.
Kade tried again. “It is a lovely afternoon. Perhaps we might take this opportunity to experience a short promenade.”
Liam stepped into Kade’s personal space and squinted up at him. “Are you okay?” he whispered. “Did something happen? Blink twice if you’re being held hostage.”
Though Kade’s posture remained ramrod straight, he was clearly flustered.
“And why are you being so stiff?”
“I merely wish to obtain—”
“No, no, no. If you’re the real Kade, the only proper answer to a question about being stiff is some terrible line.” Liam put his palm on Kade’s forehead. Nope, no fever.
Kade’s shoulders slumped. “I want to show you something I think you’ll like.”
“Something you think I’ll like that requires you to be stiff?”
Kade sighed. “Please come with me?”
“You want me to come with you?”
The smirk that crossed Kade’s face made him look like himself again. “You know I do.” He winked, and Liam rolled his eyes, secretly relieved Kade had dropped whatever had come over him. Kade not cracking dirty jokes seemed as wrong as Aran passing up an easy innuendo. Not that he’d tell either of them that.
Kade led him upstairs into a dark attic. Liam was about to ask why when Kade turned on the light, and the question fled his brain as he stared in awe, trying to take everything in at once.
The attic was large, lit by a single bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling, but the numerous shelves and chests crammed into the space made it feel cozy. There were things that demanded his attention everywhere, from bookshelves stuffed with ancient volumes and trinkets to dressers with drawers hiding unknown wonders. The air was so saturated with magic that it stroked against his skin. It was foreign and old, but not unwelcoming, and for all that he would classify it as ‘foreign,’ there was a familiarity to it as well. Hints of Elijah’s magic were laced throughout, but it was more than that. It felt like Kade’s energy, the pack’s energy, but entwined with magic. It glittered with the balanced perfection Elijah’s spells now did.
He looked at Kade in question.
“This is from our pack mages,” Kade explained. “The books in here go back hundreds of years, if not further than that. Victor and Elijah thought you might be able to find something useful that could help with the spirits.”
Liam wandered around the room, taking in the bookshelves, chests, and dressers. Everything was so haphazardly placed on the shelves. There was no order to it, and while a heavy layer of dust had settled on most of the furniture, the books and other items showed signs of more recent handling.
He frowned. “When’s the last time someone went through this?”
Kade grimaced. “Elijah has been up here, but before that, we had to move everything to ensure that asshole mage didn’t get his hands on it. Rick and Will asked me to help. We boxed it up and entrusted it to Grant for safekeeping. We didn’t bring it back until after Victor’s father was exiled, Victor was in firm control, and that bastard was no longer in town. We didn’t worry about organization though. Just packed it up as fast as we could without damaging it, and when we unpacked it, we had no clue where things should go, so everything got put wherever it would fit.”
Liam nodded. It was too much to ask for a cache of books like this to be organized in a manner he’d approve of.
“Why are you showing this to me now?”
Kade glanced away, uncomfortable. “You had books we needed to go through, and Victor and Elijah suggested I bring you up here today.”
Liam narrowed his eyes, but didn’t call Kade on his evasiveness. He wasn’t answering that question fully—something he did a lot—but Liam had more important matters to take care of. There were so many grimoires up there. Who knew what they held?
His gaze landed on a pile of books and vials and miscellaneous things on the floor. While the whole room was in disarray, that was the worst of the clutter. He walked over to it.
“I assume that was in the chest Elijah used to capture the decay spirit. Rick or Will must have dumped out the contents before they brought it to the clearing.”
For once, mentioning that spirit and what had happened that night didn’t seem to be causing Kade anxiety.
Liam sat in front of the pile and started to sort through it, setting the jars and vials upright. Nothing had been broken, though his breath caught when he found a vial of wolfsbane. That was not something he would have guessed he’d find in a pack house. There were four books mixed in with the mess.
He paged through the first. It was full of botanical drawings, the paper yellowed by the centuries, a multitude of notes scribbled in the margins. While it wasn’t the type of book he preferred, Aran would love it. He’d have to check with Elijah and Victor, but it felt like something Aran should have. He set it aside.
The second book was modern looking. He doubted it was more than twenty years old; an outlier in the attic. When he turned to the first page, he nearly laughed. In a script that was elegant if shaky with age, there was a note that almost felt like it had been addressed to Miles.
Our family doesn’t have a history of healers, but these are the handful of healing spells we’ve developed. For obvious reasons, they’re geared toward wolf shifters. There’s plenty of room for more to be added.
The book contained spells meticulously transcribed from elsewhere, including marginalia written in a variety of colors to help differentiate the various writers, and there was indeed room for additional spells. Grinning, he set that book on top of the other.
Even more curious, he picked up the third book. It was a hefty volume, leather-bound and not particularly old, a few hundred years at most. The fourth book beneath it was the second of the matched pair.
He opened the cover and his eyebrows shot up at the single word on the title page.
Index
Index of what?
He turned the page, and his eyes widened at the contents listed there.
Untitled Grimoire of Ward Magic—p. 7
Illusions and Glamours—p. 10
Collected Incantations for Elemental Control—p. 12
Untitled Book of Ritual Circles—p. 15
Binding and Protection Runes and Related Spells—p. 18
Untitled Spellbook of Hexes and Curses—p. 20
Blood Magic Rituals—p. 23
The list continued. Hundreds of entries. He looked at the nearest bookshelf, at the index, and then back. Were all of these books indexed here? It wasn’t digital, but still.
He flipped to page seven.
Title: Untitled Grimoire of Ward Magic
Description: A comprehensive history of our family’s wards and related magic
Appearance: Brown leather, leather cords, dating back to the early 1600s
Contents:
Simple Protective Barrier—p. 2
Entryway Barrier—p. 4
Reflective Wards of Defense—p. 7
The list took up three pages. The final spells were written in different hands, updating the table of contents started decades earlier.
Cradling the book in his lap, he reached forward and opened its twin, wondering if there were books listed in it too. There weren’t, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t an index. Instead, each page consisted of a drawing of some type of magical object, complete with a summary of what was known of its history and use.
“Did you—” he started to ask, glancing at Kade, only to find him leaning against a wall, engrossed in a book, a soft smile on his face. “Kade?”
Kade jumped and hid the book behind him, like it was a reflex.
Liam cocked his head. “What are you reading?”
“Ah. This is…” Kade winced, looking embarrassed. “It has the accounts of how the mages in our family met their mates.”
“What?” Liam didn’t care that the word came out as a half-strangled squeak. “You have historical records like that and never told me?”
God, how many times had he babbled about his theories on mage and shifter history to Kade? How he wished he had access to books that covered the period before the abductions. Kade had known this book existed. He’d found it and settled in too quickly for that not to be the case. But he hadn’t told Liam.
Guilt squirmed through their bond. “It’s pack history, and I didn’t think… Well. You know?” Kade gestured at Liam.
Liam’s gut tightened. “Oh. Yeah.” He wasn’t pack. He didn’t have any right to know pack history.
“But I should have reali—” Kade shook his head. “I should have asked Victor sooner.”
He came over and sat next to Liam, holding out the book for him to see. It was small and one of the oldest books there, its cover worn and faded, but well cared for. A protective spell was wrapped around it, and all the other books, and Liam itched to examine it. They put similar spells on the books in the library, but what they used to preserve those didn’t begin to compare to this.
“I’ve read the entries I can. None mention what happened pre-abductions. Like here,” Kade said, flipping to a handful of pages toward the back of the book in a handwriting Liam was already starting to recognize. “This is my grandparents’ story. They met when they were six. Grandma’s mother came to visit our pack mage—our great-grandmother. Grandma and Grandpa spent the entire visit fighting and calling each other names, but after she left, Grandpa declared they’d get bonded when they were older. Twelve years later, she showed up to do her apprenticeship with our great-grandmother and never left. The story before that is our great-grandparents’, and so on. But I can’t read the oldest ones, so there could be something there.”
He handed the book over, and Liam marveled at it, perusing it backward into history one generation at a time. Each entry was written in a more antiquated style until he hit the first dozen, which had all been recorded by the same hand in Old English. They were prefaced by a paragraph with more subtext than words.
Owing to recent happenings, circumstances necessitate the preservation of a faithful chronicle of our history. What is set down hereafter is all that can be recounted of how the wolves and mages of our pack came to be bonded.
Liam read the words over and over, finally tearing his eyes away from the book to glance at Kade. “This was started during the abductions, but the initial chunk of entries is from before that.”
Kade’s shock was evident. “Seriously? I didn’t know it went back that far. What does it say?”
Liam skimmed the first story. “This one. This is from well before the abductions. From when your pack was founded?”
Kade nodded. “That’s in our oral history. Our pack was formed when there was a dispute over who would take over leadership. There were two betas, both equally strong, both with support from pack members. They fought, but neither could bring themselves to concede or kill the other, so the pack split. The larger group stayed on the pack territory; the smaller group left. We’re descendants of that smaller group. Our history says they searched for new territory and wound up on what was essentially the land of a family of mages, though, I mean, not as strictly defined.”
Liam leafed through the pages. “The first handful of shifter-mage pairs came from…” He trailed off as he read.
“Came from?” Kade prompted, and Liam shook himself.
“Sorry, I can’t get over finding something like this. But I think I was right about historical interactions between mages and shifters. If mages suddenly discovered a pack of wolf shifters uninvited on their land today, there would be so much suspicion, but there’s none of that here. The mages weren’t happy the shifters were trying to establish their pack on territory the mages were holding as neutral, but it seems like annoyance rather than distrust.”
“Our history says mages joined our pack after we stumbled onto mage territory, but it doesn’t give many specifics beyond that. The details have been worn away with time. Mainly, it focuses on the first bonded pair. The fact that our pack alpha, almost immediately after founding the pack, had a true bond with a mage is seen as fortuitous. It set the course of our pack. It’s why we’ve had so many true-bonded shifter-mage pairs.”
“This has more…” Liam’s words faltered as he scanned the next page.
“More?”
“Uh, yeah. More. There’s some of that high heat you were looking for.” Liam’s cheeks warmed. “This couple, the fourth entry, bonded during a sex ritual, and there are significantly more details than I would have expected to be passed down a few generations to be recorded in this book.”
“It’s not like you can hide sex in a wolf shifter pack. Especially if there’s bonding. What happened?”
Liam translated the entries to Kade, starting from the beginning, when the new alpha and the head mage had argued over territories and borders until they’d… come to an agreement.
Kade listened with rapt attention as Liam gave voice to the tales in the book. Liam’s index finger skated over the pages, and Kade’s eyes followed along like he was trying to understand the language he couldn’t read. Liam hadn’t realized he was doing it until he reached the couple that had done the sex ritual and glossed over it.
“Oh no,” Kade said, amusement in his tone. “That entire page you just breezed by did not say, ‘And then they did a ritual and bonded.’ You skipped too many words for that.”
Liam tried not to squirm.
“Read it to me.” Kade’s voice dropped lower, taking on a gravelly note.
Liam swallowed. “They’d been circling each other for a while, not quite courting, but the pack agreed their scents were compatible and they should start. On the night of the full moon, the mage wanted to try a certain ritual, but needed someone to do it with.”
“Ah, that classic pickup line. ‘I need some supplies for this ritual. Mind if I borrow your dick?’”
Liam snorted. “The shifter was very neighborly and more than willing to lend a helping—”
“Dick?”
“Yep. During that kind of ritual, the shifter isn’t supposed to move or touch the mage.”
“Sex rituals operate under stripper rules? The mage can touch you; you can’t touch the mage?”
“Obviously it’s different for bonded pairs, but otherwise, yes. However, in this case, it seems like the shifter’s wolf was too close to the surface to behave, and they both forgot what they were supposed to be doing and ended up bonding instead of completing the ritual.”
“Is that it?” Kade’s smirk was knowing as he pointed to the final paragraph on the page.
“Fine. It says, ‘The sounds of their vigorous coupling and bonding rang joyous through the territory. Until the breaking light of dawn colored the horizon, their repeated amorous congress was known to all by sound and scent and, to a few most daring, by sight. They emerged from the forest with marks of passion on their bare skin and swiftly sequestered themselves for the traditional period of conviviality with such ardor that none in the household could sleep for a fortnight.’”
“Well done, my however-many-times-great-grand-relatives.”
Most of the stories in the same hand weren’t quite so lurid, though a number did sneak in lines about melting together or attending the service of Venus or riding below the crupper, and a memorable one noted that a particular couple spent a month ‘clicketting like foxes,’ which had made Kade huff out a laugh.
The subsequent stories were considerably less discreet. Apparently when recounting one’s own bonding, the mages felt zero compunction about divulging salacious details, and Kade had a sixth sense for knowing precisely where those parts were, regardless of the language they were written in.
“You missed these two paragraphs,” he said, and Liam cringed.
“Um, those paragraphs? They start with ‘As his knot began to swell inside me…’ and get more graphic from there. Do you really want me to read that?”
For a moment, he thought Kade might say yes, but in the end, he groaned. “No. Not while I can’t do anything about it.”
He didn’t call Liam on abridging the racy parts after that, though his curiosity shimmered between them. It was almost enough to make Liam read even the most explicit paragraphs out loud, but he didn’t.
Each entry specified how the mage and shifter had met. Many were acquaintances of the mages already bonded to pack members. Often there was initial suspicion of the pack, and shifters in general, but slowly it was overcome. As mages and shifters grew further apart, Kade’s pack always managed to have at least one true-bonded mage, usually mated to the alpha.
Liam was reaching the point where Middle English was transforming into modern English, the last entries Kade hadn’t read, when one stopped him cold, his words catching in his throat as his eyes raced down the page, a furrow forming between his brows.
“What is it?” Kade asked.
Liam finished the entry before answering. “This mage theorizes that the amount of mage blood in your pack makes your energy different from other packs. When a shifter and a mage have a child, that child will generally be a shifter, right?”
“I guess? That’s how it’s worked in our pack. It’s the same with shifter-human pairs. The shifter side wins out more often than not.”
“Her theory is that blood is still there. Even if the shifter can’t use magic like a mage would, that link to magic doesn’t disappear. Basically, she believed it acts as an amplifier. It makes any connection easier and stronger, and it increases exponentially as compatibility increases. So on one end, an average mage with zero compatibility with a shifter from your pack would find it easier to use their energy than that of a shifter not of your bloodline, and on the other end—”
“Victor and Elijah? Stupidly compatible from the start. Ridiculously, insanely strong together.”
“Exactly.” Liam paused, considering. “Are Rick and Will your blood relatives, or did they join the pack more recently?”
“Distant relatives, but yes. They have mage blood in them.”
Liam pulled out his phone and sent a few quick messages to the group chat.
Liam
Hey, Miles, Aran.
How easy is it for you to use Rick and Will's energy?
You don't need blood to make a connection, right?
As he waited for their answers, he thought it over. Even before they’d bonded, using Kade’s energy had been effortless. Not to the extent Elijah had described channeling Victor’s, but it had been far more accessible than he’d anticipated. How much mage blood was required to have that amplifying effect?
“Is your pack related to any others? Was there another split in your history?”
“No. No other splits. We occasionally have a member go off to join their mate’s pack, like new members join ours. There are a small handful of packs we consider sort of cousin packs.”
“But none have the same history with mages your pack does?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Honestly, the ones we’re related to the closest are probably Grant’s and Niall’s packs. We’ve lived side by side on good terms for a hundred-plus years. There was bound to be some mating between the packs.”
Liam’s phone vibrated, and he brought up the group chat.
Aran
Surprisingly easy. Way easier than the few shifters I worked with during my apprenticeship. No blood needed.
Miles
Same here. It's been nice.
I was worried I wouldn't be much help capturing the spirits, but I've been able to do more with Will's energy than I expected.
Thinking about what Kade had said, Liam sent another question.
Liam
How was Grant's?
There was a long pause before Miles answered, the three dots appearing and disappearing multiple times.
Miles
He was so depleted, I'm not entirely sure. I was concentrating on not using too much of the little he had left.
But it did seem easier to connect to his energy than normal, and yeah, no blood needed for me either.
Interesting.
“Are you related to Grant?” he asked, and Kade shrugged.
“Very distant cousin, I believe.”
Liam’s mind swam with the possibilities. If he was correct and mages and shifters had formed true bonds more often in the past, and if this mage was also correct about mage blood and shifter energy, then they were stronger together. The closer they were, the more they mixed, the stronger they became.
As far as he knew, transactionally bonded mages and shifters rarely had children, so ever since the abductions and everything that followed, the mage blood in shifter packs would have become more diluted, making shifter energy harder to use. And from what he understood, shifters found pack magic less offensive smelling, which got them accustomed to the scent of magic in general and allowed them to be closer to mages, making it more likely for them to be in a position where they’d end up bonded to a mage.
It spiraled. Whichever direction it went, it spiraled. The further apart they got, the fewer reasons for them to be around each other, causing them to get even further apart. But the opposite had to be true as well. If more mages and shifters bonded, if their magic and energy intertwined again, what would they be able to do? Would it be like the pre-abduction times he’d only glimpsed in his research? Would they stop living as two completely separate groups?
He looked up to find Kade watching him, grinning.
“What?” Liam asked.
“Whatever your brain is doing, it’s like a light show in my head.” Kade’s voice was a gentle caress.
“I think we’re meant to be together,” Liam blurted out.
Kade’s eyes widened, bright shock flashing through their bond. “What?”
“I mean, not us.” Liam rushed to clarify. “ Us . Shifters and mages. I think Elijah and Victor are what we’re meant to be.”
He surveyed the room with a fresh perspective. There were hundreds of books in there, each written by mages who had been close to shifters most of their lives. What would he discover in them? Given this book’s explicitness, he doubted the rest had censored themselves.
“Are there books about sex magic in here?”
Kade tilted his head. “Why would I know that?”
“Because you knew about this book? And it has plenty of sex in it? I figured you’d located every single book dealing with sex. Like you have some sex book radar.”
“But it’s not just—” Kade cut himself off. “I haven’t gone through the grimoires. Grandma showed me this book specifically. She told me to make sure Victor’s mage, and other mages connected to the pack in the future, wrote in it. After she passed, I kept track of it to do that.”
Liam thumbed to the last entry—Kade’s grandmother’s—and the empty pages that followed. More than enough room for Elijah and anyone who came after him. “We’ll get Elijah to write his and Victor’s story in here.”
He returned the book to Kade and grabbed the index. At least someone in this pack had known how to catalog books.
It took scanning through the table of contents, but eventually he found what he was looking for.
Title: Untitled Book of Sex Magic
Description: Various sex magic spells and rituals
Appearance: Green leather quarto with gilded decoration, dating back to the 1850s
The contents list had Liam’s eyebrows rising.
Kade, reading over his shoulder, whistled softly. “Damn. I had no idea mages could be so… inventive. Is there any spell you can’t make into a sex ritual?”
Evidently not. Liam cleared his throat, his gaze darting around.
“Let’s find this book of yours.” Kade stood and offered his hand to Liam. When Liam took it and their skin touched, he shivered at the warmth of Kade’s presence in his mind.
It was not his book, but he didn’t bother correcting Kade.
After some searching, they found it, and Liam opened the cover, only to slam it shut again.
Kade snickered. “Nice. That was no Richard Knotz screencap, but for a book written in the nineteenth century, that did not look like Victorian sensibilities.”
“Good to know you had some skilled artists in your pack.” Liam cracked the book open.
Yeah, there was no avoiding the illustrations, but he had a question, and it didn’t take much skimming to answer it.
“Yes!” He pointed to a page. “This is exactly what I wanted!”
“Pretty sure that’s what the mage in that drawing is saying too.”
Despite himself, Liam chuckled. “No, not that. Do you remember when I mentioned that book with the vague line about how sex rituals were best suited for incompatible shifters and mages? And how I thought it was warning that there might be consequences if compatible couples did them?”
“Other than getting carried away mid-ritual and ending up bonded?”
“Well, that too. But no, this says that if a highly compatible shifter and mage exchange a lot of magic and energy, there is a possibility it will forge the start of a tether, whether it’s intended or not. And until that tether is properly established or severed, it’s unstable. It warns that if the pair is compatible, the mage needs to be extra careful with how they sever the tether at the end of the ritual. This aligns with what I was thinking happened to Elijah and Victor. We even made a bet about it, and he totally owes me. The next three times my mother tries to set me up, Elijah has to run interference. Though, I suppose it’ll be harder to collect the winnings now that we’ll never be living in the same state.”
A sharp stab of unnamed emotion came through their bond, but Kade’s face was carefully neutral for a beat before he leered at Liam.
“Any chance anything else in this book could be enlightening?”
“Sorry. We won’t be needing this.”
“That’s too bad. The illustration on page fifty-three seemed like something worth exploring.”
“I’m not that flexible.” Liam’s cheeks burned at the confession.
“I am.”
Jesus fucking Christ, the mental image that painted.
To distract himself, Liam cast his gaze around the room. “I’ve been going about this all wrong, looking in the wrong places. I’ve been trying to archive the library’s books, but those books are what the council allows in the library. The real knowledge is in places like this, in family libraries scattered throughout the world. This is the stuff I should be archiving and sharing so we can learn from each other and not be constrained by limited information. Would Victor let me archive this? When everything is over with the spirits? Maybe if I start with this collection, other mage families would be willing to share theirs. My family would, for sure.”
“You’d have to ask Victor and Elijah. If the books reveal private information about the pack, Victor might not want those made public, but I don’t see why you couldn’t do the rest.”
That seemed fair. The book on how the mages and shifters in their pack had bonded was important, but it was also pack history, and he could understand Victor being reluctant to share that.
“So do you think there’s anything in here that will help?” Kade asked.
“Only one way to find out.” Liam walked to the index. “Let’s see what there is about binding contracts.”