ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (25 page)

“How do we break this?” he asked. He had more control now, but his voice trembled slightly and his calm was brittle.

“Unless she dies, there’s no way out of this spell.”

“She?” I asked.

“The witch that placed this spell on you. It’s a fertility spell, men can’t do it. She’s a woman, and she’s strong. The spell is from the old country, sacrifice feeds it. One wolf died, and the power it unleashed was used to put it on you.”

I thought back to that night. Hilary had died when it had come onto me. I shuddered. This was the blackest form of magic I’d ever heard of.

“If you die it will only give the spell the power to jump to the next person. But if
she
dies, the spell will die with her.”

“How do we kill her? The witches don’t just die – we know how it works.”

Mariah studied her hands. I felt Dalton’s anger building again, but I patted his hand. He took a deep breath and I felt him fight for control.

“I have silver. With the right spell, it can cause death. Witches can die through their own magic if it is done right.”

“What do we need to do to have it done?” Dalton asked. His voice was a deep growl, proof of how close his wolf was.

“I will do it for you,” Mariah said. “A gift to the alpha, to show that I mean no harm. I am but a lone wolf with no ill intentions.”

Dalton nodded curtly and got up. I stood and reached out my hands, taking both her hands in mine. The moment we touched I felt a surge of magic, like electricity coursing through me. She looked at me, her eyes unnaturally bright.

“Thank you,” I said. She only nodded, and I turned to follow Dalton.

The next full moon was less than a week away. We drove back in silence. We both knew what it meant. Either I would die in five days’ time, or we would beat this thing. There was no other way out.

“Thank you for doing this with me,” I said.

“It’s our child, Andrea,” he answered like it was normal. The first sign that this baby wasn’t just accepted, but wanted.

Chapter 7

The next five days dragged by. I was in a constant state of panic, and Dalton was in a bad mood all the time. Our combination was toxic, and we didn’t speak so we wouldn’t fight. We lay together at night, in each other’s arms, saying everything with our bodies we couldn’t do with words.

We couldn’t afford to jeopardize the strength of the pack, each other’s strength, but something going wrong now.

The baby inside grew. I could feel it get bigger and older, moving and kicking, and sometimes shifting. It was like the pregnancy, the change, everything that made the baby a werewolf, was pushed into hyper drive.

By the third day a package arrived. A long, narrow box was dropped off at our door. When Dalton opened it, he drew out curved sward, almost like a scimitar. The metal was silver, I could feel it as he pulled it out. My skin itched like an allergy. Werewolves and silver just didn’t go hand in hand. Dalton bared his teeth at the sensation, but he didn’t show any other reaction.

Silver was the easiest metal to put a spell on.

I shivered, looking at the weapon. It was big and ugly, violent. I could feel the magic on it, pouring off in waves and humming through the room. There was a lot of magic on that sword. Dalton handled it, swinging, testing it, finding his balance. He would be the one to kill. I was relieved it wasn’t going to be me.

He looked at me, and in his eyes I saw revenge, rage, and determination. It was a deadly combination on a wolf, but right now we could do with deadly.

By day five my nerves were fried. Dalton and I were both strung out. The witch was already winning. With Dalton being this highly strung he was already not completely controlled. How was he going to control the pack if he couldn’t even get a grip on himself? How was he going to control me? It wasn’t even full moon yet and I felt like we were going down.

He spent time every day working with the weapon. I was nervous that he wouldn’t be able to control its magic, either. It felt like everything was coming undone at the seams. I felt untethered, uncontrolled.

The night of full moon we got ready to go. He held me, and I felt the power surge through him, and into me. I was giving me a dose to back me up to start off with. I kissed him, and when I looked into his eyes there was no fear. It was only me.

“We’re going to be fine,” Dalton said.

“I know.” I didn’t believe him at all. I was terrified.

“I can smell your fear, Andrea. I’m not going to let anything happen to you or the baby.”

“What about the pack?”

“We’re going to be fine,” he said.

“You can’t take care of everyone, Dalton,” I said. “Save the pack. If you have to choose, choose them. You can’t sacrifice them all for me. I’m just one wolf.”

“I won’t lose you,” he said with a raised voice.

“Don’t lose them instead. You’ll lose everything if you lose the whole pack.”

“
You’re
everything,” he said softly, and leaned his head against mine, eyes closed. Emotion washed through him, and I felt a lump rise in his throat. He took a deep breath and blew it out with a shudder. I took his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me.

“Whatever happens,” I said, trying to speak around the tears that were threatening. “I love you.”

He nodded and a wave of emotions rocked his body and then mine.

“We’re going to be
fine
,” he said with a growl in his voice.

We set out, walking into the trees. We didn’t run. We didn’t shift. We had to hold on to our humanness as tightly as we could. If we shifted now we wouldn’t shift back until daylight. I broke out in a cold sweat. The moon was full, a bright gleaming circle in the sky. And it called to me, waking up the wolf. I could feel it shaking itself out and pacing, ready to show itself. We weaved between the tree trunks until we reached the clearing. Most of the wolves were already there, all still human and the strain was clear on their faces – the tension in the air was so thick I could reach out and touch it. Chaos ruled the night. It felt like every wolf was untethered, loose, not connected to the Alpha. We couldn’t afford to have no control like this.

“Dalton,” I said, holding my hand out to him. I was terrified.

“We’ll be fine—“he started but he never got to finish. Witches appeared through the trees, one by one they filled up the dark spaces between the trunks. They wore white robes that were so thin I could almost see through them. They were like ghosts, wisps of terror in the night. The breeze tugged at their clothes, and it rustled through the trees like whispers. A cold shiver ran down my spine, and the ice that accompanied them hung in the air.

Some wolves lost it and changed with low growls. The youngest wolves always went first. Fear laced the air, and wolves responded to fear. It pushed some into the change.

The witches didn’t hesitate. They launched their attacks with animals that looked more like monsters than cats this time. They were larger, bigger than most wolves, with skin that was black and shiny, dripping with something slippery.

They had teeth that were so long their mouths couldn’t close, and they moved like they were made of water. Fluid and graceful. And deadly. One hissed nearby, a challenge, a warning of an attack. My wolf dragged out and heat rushed through my body. I felt Dalton in me, stopping it with a big hand that forced calm into me. One of the wolves close to me dropped and shifted, and then a cat-like monster was on it.

“Dalton, help them not me!” I shouted. Dalton hesitated, looked around, but then he turned his attention away from me. My wolf realized right away she was free, and ripped through me. I fought it, but by body started changing. All I could do was slow it down. I felt a burning in my stomach at the same time, and I was terrified. This was it.

It happened in slow-motion, my bones shifting under my skin and fur crawling over me like a blanket from my spine. I closed my eyes and growled, trying to fight it, but it wasn’t working.

When I opened my eyes she was there, looking at me, smiling. She knew I was losing this fight. Losing this baby. I could feel it ripping inside of me, a little wolf that was already affected by the moon and for some reason already pissed at the world. It wasn’t a little person anymore, instead it was a little monster, and it was growing by the second. Around me wolves were being attacked, picked off. I was losing, and so was the pack. We were going to fail. This was where the witches would win.

The witches knew it too. Laughter echoed around us, bubbling from their throats and surrounding us, crawling over us. It felt like allergic reactions, the laugh a rash on my skin. My bones pushed through my skin and pushed forward, empty and naked, raw, before my fur slowly caught up. I felt something move in my stomach, ripping and tearing like something was going to burst out of me. The pain was excruciating. I was going to die. The baby was shifting inside of me, and it was going to die once its transformation was complete.

I looked up at the witch again, her eyes smug and her smile full of pleasure.

I looked around for Dalton. He had the scimitar up above his head, and the blade gleamed in the moonlight. His eyes were manic, the power surged around us like fire. The witch’s face looked confused, and then fear crept over her features, distorting them, making her ugly.

She thrust her hands forward, toward Dalton. Suddenly four creatures,
four,
attacked him. I screamed as he went down. Roars filled the night. The sword felt to the ground and with a flick of her hands she shoved it away into the trees. When I turned my face back to her she looked furious. Her eyes were deep pools of black. I forced myself to look away from them. They were drowning deep, and I feared she would draw me into them.

The change was completely. I lay curled around my stomach, the pain ripping through me. I yelped and whined, squirming, but nothing made it better. I felt my insides pulling, and soon something had to give. When I looked at Dalton, he lay on the ground, not moving. The animals were gone. This was it. I was losing it. I was going to die. If Dalton was already dead, let it be. I was uninterested in a life without him.

Suddenly the woods fell quiet. The fighting stopped. The pain let up, eased off, and I could move. I rolled up and onto my paws. The witch stood in front of me, her face white and her mouth rounded in an ‘O’ of surprise. She looked down at her chest, where the long silver blade of the sword protruded from behind, dripping with blood. Horror slowly crept over her features until she looked just as horrible as I’d felt. Her features twisted and she crumbled to the ground.

Mariah stood behind her, holding onto the grip of the sword with two hands. She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling, and her eyes were a striking green. The sword was red and dripping. She looked at it, threw her head back and howled, making a sound with her human throat that only a wolf could make. The other wolves around us joined in the chorus.

I was a wolf. I’d answered to the moon But my baby hadn’t. I didn’t know how I knew it. I just did. I looked at Mariah again, looking crazed and wild, before she dropped and shifted too. The knife sword dropped, and I could feel magic radiating off it like a poison that made me cower away.

Almost at the same time, I felt the big warm hand of Dalton’s control stretch across the pack and calm the wolves. When I looked at him he stood, bloodied, clothes torn, but alive and strong. His eyes met mine, and power surged through our bond. The witches withdrew, and within minutes we were alone in the trees. They’d lost, and they knew it. A sliver of magic slipped through me, and Mariah’s wolf came to stand next to me. Dalton walked up to us. He patted my wolf’s head and calm flowed through me. Mariah squirmed at his feet, and he patter her head too.

“Thank you,” he said to Mariah.

“You saved the pack, and our future.”

She whined and curled at Dalton’s feet. She wasn’t pack, but Dalton was treating her like a member of the family. She’d honored the alpha couple by saving me, by saving him. I sat next to Dalton, and the wolves milled around us. Together we waited for dawn.

Chapter 8

“Come on, baby girl, that’s it. You can do it.” Dalton sat with his legs spread on the floor, his arms stretched out to Jodie. She had her pudgy hand against the wall, eyeing the floor space between her and Dalton.

At eleven months old she was an angel. She had chocolate brown curls and a mouth that smiled just like Dalton’s and she had the challenging attitude he had, too. She was Dalton’s baby in every way. Except her eyes. They were sparkling green, two jewels that stared into your soul. The only wolf that I’d seen with eyes like that had been Mariah. I couldn’t help but think her help had had something to do with it.

Jodie was powerful. We good feel the power in her, still dormant, but there.

Dalton glanced up at me where I stood with the video camera in the doorway, and grinned. He was the best father any child could ask for. It was hard to believe he’d been so difficult about the pregnancy at first.

Jodie took one step away from the wall, only the tips of her fingers touching. This was it. This was going to be her first step. Dalton and I had been waiting for this moment for days.

Jodie looked at me, straight into the camera, and smiled. She had a few little teeth, and her face lit up. My heart overflowed with love for her. As I watched her through the lens her face changed. It became longer, animal-like. She dropped to the floor and changed. When she stretched out again she was a puppy, bundled in fluffy fur, wagging her tail. She lay on her sprawled on her stomach, front paws together, back legs stretched out behind her.