ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (24 page)

“Something’s very wrong,” I said and stood up, heading for the door. It felt like it was dragging me down, lead in my stomach and I couldn’t breathe. My skin crawled with magic even though it wasn’t around us, here at my sister’s home. Something inside me pulled, an answer to a call. A ripple of fear washed over me, wondering if the baby would feel the pull too. But it was still small. We were still safe. For now.

“We have to get out there,” I said.

The three of us charged out through the front door. Cherise was on the front lawn first, and she shifted into a wolf. It was quicker that way. I followed suit, feeling my body stretched, aching and bending, and then the release when I fell into step next to her. My mind was on the baby, and I took a quick inventory of my body. But everything was okay. I didn’t feel like I was tearing apart.

Harold was right behind us, bigger and faster, and he passed us and took the lead, leading us around the house and into the clump of trees that stretched away from their perimeter wall. It felt good to be between the trees, the night air in my fur and the smell of pines and mulch in my nose. It felt good to shake off the fear and the panic.

But the feeling overpowered the thrill of being on the run almost immediately. As we got closer to the clearing, the magic grew. Harold growled in his throat and Cherise snapped her jaws. They could feel it too, now. We were getting closer to where the problem was.

As we drew closer to our meeting place we ran into darkness. Not the darkness that usually surrounded us this time of night, with the dense leaves above us and the shadows hanging between the trees. This darkness was complete and it
felt
dark.

The witches were here. Attacking outside of full moon. A shiver rippled over my body. I could hear a fight going on ahead of us but I couldn’t see anything. I was running on blind luck, hoping I wouldn’t run into a tree. Or worse, a witch.

When we finally broke into the clearing it was like we broke out of the darkness too. We could suddenly see, the only darkness around us the natural inky black of night.

The witches were everywhere. The inner circle – the strongest wolves in the pack, just below Dalton – were already there and fighting. Some were bloodied and limping, dragging across the ground. A brown lump of wolf lay on the other side and a feeling of dread laced through my veins. We’d already lost someone. We’d lost someone and I hadn’t felt the divide. I hadn’t felt him being torn away from us. That scared me more.

And I had an idea it was our fault.

The magnetic pull had been Dalton calling his pack because he needed the help. They all did. My guess was that it had been an inner circle meeting and the witches had attacked them. Dalton was in wolf form, bigger and stronger than the others, vicious with muscle coiled under his coat. He launched with bared teeth at a creature that looked like a mixture between a wild cat and a panther, but with smooth skin like a dolphin.

That’s the thing about the damn witches. They never fight their own fights. They use their spells and make creatures that can murder, or curses that can do it for them, but when you kill them they just disappear into the void they were conjured from. They never died. The only way to kill them, rumors of the old country foretold, was with their own magic.

I jumped into the fight. There were creatures everywhere, fighting the wolves. It was a fair fight, but I could feel how volatile we were, our imbalance in the air. The pack wasn’t as strong as it needed to be. And come full moon the witches are always stronger. And that meant that we wouldn’t make it.

I had my teeth in the warm flesh of a cat-like creature that disappeared into nothing when I saw two were going at Cherise together. She had no chance and Harold had his own fight. I launched for her and tackled one down to even it out, make it fair. The cat was stronger than the others, and a witch caught my eye, slender like a wisp, and a smile curling around her lips like she was enjoying the bloodshed. I could feel her magic try to get under my skin. This was a strong one.

I made eye-contact with her, briefly, but it was enough. Something moved inside of me, shifted like it was alive. It was happening again. It was her, the witch that had started it all.

I pulled up my lips in a snarl and lunged at her, but she disappeared. No cat to fight, no magic to subdue me. She was just gone.
Coward
I would have yelled if I were human. And I knew it was wrong, because she’d already won.

We fought until the witches fled. Eventually they all did, and the cats disappeared. When I looked around I noticed how many of them had made it here. Almost all had answered to Dalton’s call, and it was only because of our pack’s size that we won this time. One by one the wolves shifted, taking on human form again. Bodies were covered in blood, bruises flowered across skin everywhere, and moans and groans filled the air.

And through it all a whine of sorrow laced the night. I looked around. Four wolves hadn’t changed. They lay curled up on the ground, humps of fur. Sorrow racked my body and I sank to my knees, lifting my hands to my face. They were red with the blood of someone – something – and nausea intertwined with the sadness that ripped through me. When I looked up, Dalton stood in front of me.

“We can’t do this,” he said to me, his voice rough and throaty. I could feel the sorrow in him. It was tearing him apart. Losing the pack was like losing family. Each and every one of us were connected to the Alpha, and he felt the losses more than any of us.

“I know,” I whispered. This was all our fault. If we’d spoken, sorted things out instead of avoiding each other for almost four days, this wouldn’t have happened. Four days. A wolf for every day we’d been unreasonable. Dalton sat down next to me and draped his arm over my shoulder. I leaned into him, the top of my head against his jaw.

“They did something to me,” I said. “The last time. It didn’t realize until now. But it’s bad, Dalton. Really bad.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you. You’ll have this baby, and we’ll keep it safe.”

I nodded, but the shift inside me happened again and it fueled my disbelief. How were we going to beat this? I really hoped he was right, that we could beat this thing.

Chapter 6

“Don’t know how you can even suggest that. I’m the
alpha
for god’s sake.”

I closed my eyes and counted to ten in my head before I opened them again.

“Well, we’re running out of options, aren’t we? Do you have a better idea?”

Dalton pursed his lips together. I was getting tired of fighting with him. Lately it seemed like it was all we did. Where were the days where we were so in sync we didn’t have to speak to know we were on the same page? It felt like since I’d fallen pregnant, everything had gone haywire. I didn’t want this child to rip us apart.

But I didn’t want to lose the baby. If I had to choose between the child and Dalton?

It scared me that I didn’t have an answer to that. Not too long ago the answer would have been Dalton without a moment’s hesitation.

“She’s a witch. A
witch
Andrea.” I’d told him about Mariah, the woman Dr. Brian had suggested I see about this.

“She’s not a witch,” I said and then backtracked. “She’s not
just
a witch. She’s a werewolf. She just has… extra talents.”

“Talents?” he snorted. “Like magic.”

“Well, magic is the problem, isn’t it? Fight fire with fire, and all that?”

He opened his mouth to argue, and closed it again. I had him there. There was nothing else we could do. We’d lost Hilary. Other wolves had died. And if this pregnancy carried on and I was further along, the same would happen to me. The baby would rip out of me, and I would die. The witch wouldn’t even have to be present for it like she’s been with Hilary. The baby shifted by itself. I could feel it.

Dalton didn’t want to go, and I didn’t blame him. If she had anything to do with witches, who was to say that she was the enemy?

“I can’t lose this child,” I said softly. “It would tear me apart.” I only realized what I was saying after the words had left my mouth. The atmosphere was dark and depressing around us. I could feel Dalton’s indecision, the struggle within himself. The wolf in him hated the idea of going to a witch. And the father, the husband, in him wanted to do this.

“Okay,” he finally said, and it wasn’t a friendly concession. But it wasn’t a no. It was something. I left the room before he could change his mind.

We parked in front of a house that was sandwiched in a row of houses that all looked the same. There only difference was that there were succulents and a birdfeeder on the porch, and the door was painted red instead of blue. Dalton walked up the steps first, and I followed. I could feel the tension radiating off him. It wasn’t fear – more like expectation – he was ready for whatever would happen.

A fist of nerves clamped down on my gut and I swallowed hard enough for Dalton to glance at me. He was prepared. I was petrified. It went against my werewolf nature to go to someone who was part witch. Even if she was part wolf – you threw away a rotten apple, not for the flesh that hadn’t rotted yet but for the flesh that had. A finger of ice trailed down my spine and I shivered. At the same time I felt baby move inside me. I hated that I didn’t know if it was a change or just a kick. A steely resolve settled next to the fear that lodged inside me.

The door opened before Dalton knocked and a woman stood in front of us. She didn’t look Dalton in the eye – nodded toward his chest – but she looked at me. Her eyes were teal, a color that looked out of place even on a werewolf, but her beast slid behind them, and I knew that even if she was one of them, she was also one of us. A witch would have looked Dalton in the eye – a direct challenge. And the animal wouldn’t be so apparent.

She was an arty looking woman with layers of clothes and a scarf wrapped around her head with big hooped earrings. Her smell was different than that of the wolves I knew. Animal, wild, yes. But there was something unfamiliar about the wolf I could feel inside her. She was a mixed breed somehow, but not the way it was when it was human blood in the mix. And she wasn’t aggressive. It was more like she was hardly there at all, an animal that didn’t stand out. There was nothing challenging about her. 

Dalton’s tension released and it was like it unwound the nervousness in me, too. There would be no fight today.

“I’m so pleased you’re here,” she said. “Please, come in.”

Her movements were precise and submissive. Dalton stepped through the door and I followed him. Her house was strange, with ornaments of every style and era covering shelves that were set around the entire room. It made the room seem a lot smaller but it wasn’t cramped and I didn’t feel trapped. She disappeared into the kitchen and a moment later reappeared with a tray. There were three cups and a pot of tea, and nothing matched. The lack of symmetry and uniform threw me off.

“Will you tell me what’s wrong?” she asked. She was being overly polite. Dalton was an intimidating alpha, and she didn’t belong to the pack. She didn’t belong to any pack. There were no ties to her wolf, I could feel it.

Dalton looked at me, letting me do the talking. He was unsettled, I felt it through our bond. I explained about the attack, about Hilary, and my baby, the doctor’s visit. The panic rose again when I talked, and Dalton reached out and took my hand. I felt him calm me, a wave coming from him. It just made it worse. The pack couldn’t afford him to have divided attention. He was doing exactly what I didn’t want him to.

“Dr. Brian gave me your number. I don’t know what to do,” I said. “If something happens… if the baby shifts… and I can’t expect Dalton to keep me calm, to stop the baby from shifting. The pack needs him. The witch attacks are getting worse.”

When I said ‘witch attacks’ I glanced up at her face. I didn’t want to offend her. But she was carefully expressionless, listening. Dalton squeezed my hand.

When I was finished talking she took a deep breath.

“I’m not going to lie to you, or give you false hope.” If she lied we would be able to smell it anyway, but it was nice of her to say so. “I can’t do anything about this kind of spell.”

“What?” I cried out. My hands trembled. I’d come here with hope, holding onto the idea that maybe there was a way out. She saw the panic in my face and took a deep breath.

“I can feel it on you. It runs through your veins, magic from the old country. The same magic that lets you change. The first wolves in the old country were the strongest, pure, and their change courses through your veins, powering that baby of yours.”

We’d all learned about the old country, where the first werewolves had run by the light of the moon, bringing magic and spells over the seas to settle here. But the old country had always been in stories, something that never really existed to us.

“You can’t do anything to stop it?” Dalton asked. “Not even with your magic?”

Mariah shook her head.

“Aren’t you a witch? Can’t you undo the spell?” Dalton was getting angry. The kind that was driven by fear. It filled the room, crackling like a storm. Mariah didn’t move – point for her – but she cowered on her seat. I put my other hand over Dalton’s had where he was still holding on to me. I took a deep breath and released his anger I felt through the bond. This was how we helped each other. This was what being the alpha couple, being married, meant.