Shadow of the Wolf

“Give me a sec.” He could hear sheets rustling, knew his brother was climbing out of bed. “Right. According to The Registry, Evans … where’s she from?”

He checked her driver’s license. “Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”

There was the sound of rustling pages, then the creak of an office chair. “Dude. The Evans family practically rules Philadelphia.”

Christopher groaned. “Wonderful.”

“Hey, at least she’s not a warlock.”

“Right. I need a mate who distrusts my kind, not a mate who tries to feed me to demons.”

There was a pregnant pause. “Did you say mate?”

Christopher gritted his teeth, cursing himself silently for the slip of his tongue.

“Yes.”

“A witch.”

“Gareth.”

“You? You mated a witch? ”

Christopher hung up the phone. Gareth could laugh his ass off all by himself, thank you very much.

Chapter Three

Christopher woke to the feel of a rough tongue on his cheek. He opened one bleary eye to find Alasdair staring at him and purring.

He lifted his head. His workshop. He’d fallen asleep in his workshop. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that, and he doubted it would be the last. He looked down at the book spread out below him, The Registry of Wizards, Witches and Warlocks, and groaned.

Alannah Evans. A witch, not a wizard.

Well. That will teach me to be careful about how I phrase my summoning spells.

He’d rechecked the runes, the copy of the paper he’d burned that night a month ago, and slowly realized his error. He hadn’t specified a wizard mate, just one of an older lineage, someone who was born from power, with magic to complement his own.

Apparently the Lord and Lady had seen fit to send him a witch. Joy.

And it was beyond too late now. His wolf was completely delighted with the woman upstairs currently curled up in their den, leaving her scent behind on his sheets and pillows. He wanted to go up there and wallow in that scent, have it wash over him until he couldn’t tell where he ended and she began.

And that was only the beginning. He wanted to lick every inch of her body until all he could taste, would ever taste, was her. He longed to thrust inside her, pulling climax after climax out of her until they were both limp and sated, then do all of it all over again.

He buried his head in his hands and groaned. Now what do I do? Witches and wizards tended to avoid each other, and with good reason. The precise way wizards performed magic was the antithesis of the breezy way witches performed the same tasks.

The hours spent carefully crafting spells would drive any self-respecting witch insane.

The way witches tended to pick up seemingly random objects and blithely cast a spell that garnered the same results drove wizards nuts. Add in the resentment witches felt about how wizards could do things they couldn’t do, and the contempt some wizards openly showed towards witches, and you had one hell of a mess destined to give one tired, grumpy wizard a serious migraine.

And the sad part was, just speaking to her last night had shown him he had no choice. Even if he could reverse the summoning, demand a redo from the Gods, he wouldn’t. She was just so … beautiful to him. It wasn’t her shoulder length, dark brown hair. It wasn’t those wide chocolate eyes, her strong jaw, her full lips, or the way she barely came to his chin, causing every protective instinct he had to go on high alert.

No, it was the glimpses of her he’d seen last night that sealed his fate. Funny, smart, warily cautious but following him anyway, she’d been brave, strong, resilient. His.

He’d have to woo his reluctant little witch. He smiled, remembering her reaction to him last night. If he had any doubts about whether or not he could succeed, remembering the quickly banked hunger in her face removed them.

And he’d have to deal once and for all with Cole. If Cole tried to lay a hand on Alannah again Christopher wouldn’t be able to keep from killing the son of a bitch.

Standing with a sigh, he headed back up to the kitchen, hoping a nice warm breakfast and some hot coffee would earn him a nice warm reception from the woman in his bedroom.

* * *

Lana picked up the phone next to the bed and dialed. “Hey, Grammy.”

“Well?”

Lana frowned. She pulled the aqua colored sheet farther up her body and wondered yet again when her underwear had disappeared. Tricky dog. “Well what?”

“Did you do the dirty?”

“Grammy!”

“Well, sweetheart, I looked him up in The Registry. I must say, he’s … exquisite.

And a Beckett, a very powerful family.” Grammy paused. “Are you saying you told him no?”

She doesn’t have to make it sound like I’d be insane not to do the horizontal bunny hop with the man. “I didn’t get the chance.” Lana slapped her hand over her mouth, horrified. “I mean, we talked. Just talked.”

“Well, look him up, dear. I think you’ll be surprised.”

“Grammy, something … odd, is going on.”

“Which odd, dear?”

“He turns into a dog. A wolf, actually.”

“Of course he does. He’s a Beckett.”

Lana gritted her teeth. “You told me shapeshifters were a myth.”

“No I didn’t. I told you natural shapeshifters are a myth. Cursed shapeshifters actually exist.”

Lana resisted the urge to bang her head against the wooden headboard until the pain of this conversation stopped. “There’s a difference?”

“Worlds of difference, sweetheart.”

“Oh. Of course.” She remembered what he’d told her the night before. “What happened to the witch that cursed them?”

Grammy was silent for a moment. “Have you ever heard of Theresa Langhorn?”

“Theresa Langhorn? Isn’t she the one who—”

“Yes.”

Lana shuddered. Damn. Just, damn. “I’d say she paid.”

“Threefold, dear. Threefold.”

The threefold rule: whatsoever you sent out into the world would return to you threefold. It was the one major check on the power of a witch or wizard that whatever you did would be done to you in triplicate. If you sent out love, peace and happiness, that would return to you. But if you sent out hatred, pain and degradation…

No one was quite sure how warlocks got around that little impediment, and no true witch or wizard was willing to find out. Grammy liked to say they were probably on a deferred payment plan.

But every now and then a witch lost her temper enough, or a wizard became enraged enough, to show the rest of the magical community why they followed the threefold rule.

Theresa Langhorn was a perfect, shining example. “Does she still have people in to comb the fur between her toes?”

“Now, dear, we don’t speak ill of the stupid.”