Starting a New Life (Cedarwood Pack #2)

Prologue

Alexander

Five months prior

It was already dark outside when I turned on the blinker and left the main road.

A quick glance at the dashboard told me it was almost midnight.

Usually, it’d be way too late to check in with my coven leaders, but I’d been ordered to drive straight to the coven house.

No detours. Not even to change clothes after the fucking twenty-hour-long drive.

My hands trembled, and I gripped the steering wheel tighter as my little beat-up Prius rumbled over the hidden driveway. It was little more than a beaten path overgrown with brush, which was scratching the sides of my silver car.

And that was the reason I didn’t buy a new one. Well, one of the reasons. The other one was me being broke. Which was ridiculous, considering I’d just made the coven more than half a million dollars with what equated to a week’s worth of work.

But I didn’t get to keep any of it.

A hollow laugh escaped my throat.

Everything about this was ridiculous.

Dread coiled in my stomach. The air felt charged, and the darkness surrounding me seemed darker than usual, the forest looming pitch black.

Something was off.

I’d known when Amanda had called to order me to the coven house right away, but this feeling cemented it. The creeping darkness, as if something were hiding in it… or being kept hidden from me. The electricity in the air. The tension. My senses screamed at me to turn around.

My car rumbled over a root, the motion shaking me from my stupor. I hardened my jaw and pushed my shoulders back.

Show no weakness—that was my motto. A damn sad one, but it was what it was. As the only mage in a coven of witches and wizards, I was the go-to punching bag.

Just leave, the voice inside my head said.

The voice that was fed up with it all, convinced things couldn’t possibly be worse elsewhere, even though I knew that was wishful thinking.

Things could be a lot worse. Yeah, I was the coven’s favourite punching bag, but at least they protected me. They kept me safe.

But do they really?

I wanted to close my eyes, but with how dark it was outside my windshield, I could barely afford to blink, much less close my eyes for multiple seconds.

This definitely wasn’t natural darkness.

I’d lived here all my life. I knew the Californian summer nights, knew the indigo sky dotted with sparkling white flecks.

I knew this forest. I knew the shadows the trees cast, knew how the nights sounded.

This wasn’t normal.

The air always tasted like sulphur and herbs, but tonight the taste was particularly strong, and the hair on the back of my neck rose while a cold shiver ran down my spine. Goosebumps spread all over my skin, and I started trembling, even though it was a hot night in the middle of summer.

Turn around, my senses screamed. It’s not too late. But when I looked into the rearview mirror, the driveway was pitch black. As if there was nothing behind me. Nothing at all.

A spell, I realized. The coven had cast a spell. A spell to hide something from me.

Why?

My mind was racing as I took the last turn and the coven house came into view.

I swallowed upon seeing the figures standing on the steps leading to the double-winged doors of the old Victorian mansion.

There were seven of them. Six of them dressed in sapphire-blue cloaks, while the figure in the middle was dressed in blood red. From the dress to the cloak, even her hair and lips were red.

Amanda—the coven leader.

I shivered again, but kept my shoulders squared.

Show no weakness, I reminded myself as I killed the engine and exited the car, my black cloak a stark contrast to the colourful ones the rest of the coven were wearing.

Another difference, another detail that separated me from them.

I was the mage, the outcast. The one they didn’t want in their coven.

The one they only kept around because I was making them a shit-ton of money.

The one everyone hated. I was—quite literally—the black sheep.

“Alexander,” Amanda said, her voice ripping through the eerie silence of the night. There were no cicadas, no rustling leaves, no distant car engines—nothing. Just… a foreboding, unnatural silence.

Run, the voice in my head shouted, sounding shriller, more urgent than before. Run!

“High Witch,” I said, dutifully lowering my head in acknowledgment of her position, before I did the curtsy that was expected.

“You took your merry time. I expected you back hours ago.” Her cold voice cut through the air like a knife.

I didn’t flinch, at least not externally. Internally, I was on high alert. Something was seriously wrong.

“Being the beginning of summer break, traffic was hell,” I explained, using all the calm I could muster to keep my voice firm and steady.

Show no weakness.

Years of bullying and torment had taught me well.

“A heads-up would’ve been nice.”

“I’ll remember next time.”

The witch next to Amanda smirked, and my body turned cold. Eloise had always been cruel, and the gleeful smirk on her face was a dead giveaway that there was something I didn’t know.

The darkness encroached on us, the nothingness drawing a tighter and tighter circle around us. No one appeared bothered by it. No one but me.

“We’ll see.”

The second the words left her mouth, I realized there wouldn’t be a next time. This was it. The moment I’d been waiting for my whole life. I’d made them enough money, so I wasn’t worth keeping around any longer.

“Why don’t we keep this short?” I said, proud that my voice didn’t falter for even a second. “No need to draw this out. I’ll just leave. Do you want the cloak back?” That was the usual symbolic gesture. Handing over the cloak meant officially leaving the coven.

I highly doubted she’d let me do it, it would signal that leaving was my choice, not something that was forced upon me. They’d probably want to rip the cloak off me as a gesture of being cast out.

“You’ve always been a mouthy one, Alexander,” Amanda said, clicking her tongue in obvious annoyance.

A thrill of satisfaction coursed through my body, and it cost me all the restraint I had left not to smile. My time with the coven was ending, but I didn’t want my life to come to an end too.

And that’s what this was, what they’d been hiding.

The darkness surrounding us? It was to keep me from running. I really should’ve turned around when I first noticed it.

“So, I guess I’m not getting paid for my last job?”

It sucked. I had a bit of money hidden away in my apartment, but my bank account was almost completely empty.

Was this the reason they hadn’t wanted me to go home?

To keep me from grabbing my go-bag? The one I’d hidden beneath the floorboards under my bed, heavily warded with my personal flavour of a protective barrier, woven around the hidden compartment so tightly that not even the combined forces of the coven would be able to break through it.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to keep it as a… fee. Just look at it as compensation for having to put up with you for so long.”

I shrugged, trying to keep myself calm and my senses alert. “Worth a try. So, if our ways are to part, let me say bye. I can’t say it was a pleasure.”

Amanda cackled. “Still so mouthy, Alexander.” God, I hated that fucking name. “But I’m sure Alpha Knox will get rid of that brattiness in no time.”

Everything in me froze.

Time froze.

For a moment, the world surrounding me turned black and silent. There was nothing.

And then the glamour lifted.

Suddenly, I heard snarling. I heard growling. I heard the wolves hiding between the trees.

“What have you done?” I breathed, desperately twisting and turning, but there were wolves everywhere, emerging from the woods—at least a dozen.

One of them was in human form, a giant of a man with deep scars running over his face, but I didn’t pay much attention to that.

My eyes were caught by the metal gleaming in his hands.

A collar.

My blood ran cold. I couldn’t look away, my eyes fixated on the heavy-looking piece of metal that could be my future. My worst nightmare coming true.

“You see,” Amanda said in a sickly-sweet voice. “Since one stream of revenue inevitably dries up tonight, we thought we’d get money off you one last time. Alpha Knox has wanted you for years. He’s been pestering me to sell you ever since you recharged his pack’s barrier five years ago.”

I shivered, vividly remembering. It was the first time the coven had sent me to a pack on my own. It was the reason I’d started keeping a go-bag. That visit had taught me that all the bullying and torment in the coven wasn’t that bad compared to what a pack could do to me.

Alpha Knox stepped up next to the giant holding the collar. The Alpha was in animal form, as were the rest of his wolves. He snarled, baring his fangs at me, daring me to run.

“Be a good boy and don’t make a scene, Alexander. Alpha Knox told me you’ll have a good life by his side.”

Even without Eloise’s cackling, I’d have known that was bullshit.

After all, I’d already visited Alpha Knox’s pack.

I knew how bad it was. I knew the conditions most of the regular wolves lived in.

I knew about the forced fights. Knew about the Alpha picking random pack members to warm his bed, whether they wanted to or not.

Hell, I’d heard he preferred it if his playthings didn’t want to.

I shuddered.

Oh, I knew exactly what kind of life was awaiting me if they managed to get that fucking collar around my neck—I’d rather die than live like that.

Taking a deep breath, I braced myself. It was a good thing I’d finished the real work on the barrier a week ago, so my magic had had time to replenish.

And it was a good thing no one in the coven knew exactly how much magic I possessed.

They couldn’t be bothered to learn about our differences, deeming my magic unworthy and primitive.

I reached for my magic and sent it through my skin, enforcing it, creating a shield in the shape of my body. Then I sent it out, feeling for the wolves, and for coven members possibly hiding in the trees.

There were none.

I couldn’t hide a smirk as I realized they thought they had me cornered.

“This was fun,” I said, reaching for the deep well of energy in the middle of my chest, right next to my heart. “But I’m afraid it’s time for me to go.”

On the last word, I pushed a wad of energy into the ground beneath my feet, catapulting myself thirty feet into the air.

I heard screams.

Angry snarls.

Paws on the forest floor.

Drawing all the light inside me, I cast the air surrounding me into darkness, then used the time the wolves needed for their eyes to adjust to the lack of light to reform my shield, forcing it to project what was on the opposite side of it, rendering me invisible to them.

I couldn’t silence the dull thud my body made as I hit the forest floor several feet past the tree line, and neither could I suppress a pained grunt, but I could keep my scent within the constraints of my shield.

Now the wolves could neither scent nor see me.

But they could still hear me.

Without wasting another second, I started running, using tiny bits of magic to propel my body forward with every step. It felt as if springs were attached to my shoes, and it took all my concentration not to lose balance.

Behind me, the sound of paws came closer. There was a lot of snarling, a lot of howling, a lot of shouting.

But I drowned it all out.

I ran and ran and ran.

Until my lungs were burning.

Until my legs were giving out under me.

Until my magic was the only thing keeping me upright.

Until I reached the edge of the forest.

And further, until the howls became quieter in the distance.

Until the shouts weren’t audible anymore.

Until my vision started swimming.

I never stopped, not until I reached the next town and climbed onto the bed of the first truck I saw waiting at a stoplight, praying it’d get me far, far away from here.