closer. Still got in Christian’s face. “She needs more from you.”
“I’m marrying her.”
Christian’s hand was on his sword and Fen could feel the magic gathering around his own body. He hadn’t been this close to an uncontrolled shift since puberty.
“I’m doing the best I can,” Christian said. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Love her.” It was the simplest thing in the world. Why couldn’t Christian grasp such an incredibly simple thing? Christian would love her and then Fen could stop.
Christian went very still, but his hand fell away from his sword. Elin stood there gaping and Fen felt suddenly sick. He thought about letting the change take him, shred through his clothes and favorite jacket. Sink into that altered state where everything was sharp and clear and simple.
“Is there a problem here?”
He swung around. Aiden was dressed in full leather armor and already mounted on his horse. His expression hard and unhappy. “We need to go. Fen, most of the hounds are already here and changed. They’re out creating a perimeter around the break. We need you.” His eyes flicked up to focus on Christian. “And you. Can you put whatever the hell this is aside for the moment?”
Not waiting to see how Christian answered, Fen turned and walked away. He stripped off his clothes and tossed everything onto the porch in a heap. They’d all seen him buck naked countless times—a hazard of being a hound, one that had long since ceased to bother him. Elin, far more polite than he was, walked away to make her own transformation. The crows...well, he’d never seen them shift before and not for lack of trying. And not, like Rane teased, to sneak a peek. Purely a professional curiosity.
He loved Rane and Elin, but not in that way. He didn’t understand why it didn’t bother Christian to have a relationship with a woman who’d been childhood friends with his great-grandmother. Letting the change take him, Fen felt some of his helpless anger ease.
He was told that the change appeared to be almost instantaneous, but it didn’t feel that way on the inside. He’d seen video in high school science class of the birth of a star, matter collapsing in the blink of an eye and then shooting outward in every direction. A blaze of fire and light. Shifting felt like being at the center of that. Not painful exactly, but shattering.
And then he was on four paws and his world continued to expand for several seconds as he adjusted to his heightened senses. He could hear the demons stumbling through the woods, feel their hunger in the stench of their sweat. He felt his pack, Ben taking down an outlier. Daniel and Jake moving to seal the break in their circle. The wind tasted clear and sweet and he swallowed it down before letting it erupt from his throat in a long shuddering howl.
Christian mounted and joined the other riders. Elin already circled lazily overhead. No room for thoughts of Rocky here. No doubt or guilt or shame. Only the hunt. Aiden signaled them forward and Fen threw himself into a headlong run, quickly outpacing the huntsmen to join his hounds.
The pack was coming and joy welled up inside him, lifted from his throat to the night sky. Beth’s horse shifted nervously as Fen darted off in the direction of the pack, taking the lead and letting himself fade away until there was only the rhythm of his paws hitting the ground, the blood pumping through his veins, and the huff and draw of each breath. He was the hunt. Death bringer and night stalker. He needed no one.
Raquel hadn’t expected her experiment to work, but watching Fen take off as if his tail was on fire and leaving her alone with the awful revelation that she wanted him made her need to do something distracting. And what was more distracting than finally taking control of your life?
She wasn’t completely reckless. This time she warded her bedroom first and made sure there wasn’t anything flammable in the circle. Well, except for her. But how much damage could she do with a marker and a damp washcloth?
When she’d gone back inside Fen’s house, she’d found the new design in his sketchpad, laid out on the coffee table all ready to go. She’d cleaned up dinner, putting the meatballs in the fridge and leaving the rolls on the counter. It took all of five minutes, and while she’d briefly considered waiting for him to come back, she remembered the expression of relief on his face when the phone rang. She shouldn’t have said anything. It wasn’t really Elin that had brought her to the decision about Christian. She hadn’t been crying about that—she didn’t know why she’d broken down. Everything was such a big tangled mess and she had no idea how to unravel it. But once she’d spoken the words out loud to Fen—
When she grabbed her coat on the way out, she’d seen the sketchpad again and on impulse took it with her. No one was at the house, her mother and Audrey on some mysterious shopping trip into town. She didn’t want to sit there alone and useless while Fen and Christian and even Lois risked their lives.
There was something she could do tonight.
She traced Fen’s design with her fingertip. As agreed, he’d taken Audrey’s suggestion and replaced the amplification rune with one that would mute her power instead. It went against every instinct. All witches wanted more power. It was a matter of pride and rank. But if she had to cripple herself to make this work, then she’d do it. She frowned at the sketchpad for a long time before uncapping the marker and setting to work.
She’d never been particularly good at art and trying to draw on herself was...difficult. She gave up on her arm and worked on her thigh instead. Her leg was more accessible and a much bigger canvas to work with. She didn’t worry about fancy. She placed the runes exactly as Fen had drawn them, in the exact alignment. When she finished, she could feel the hum of power coming off them like the other night. She wondered if she would get used to that once she had the markings permanently tattooed onto her flesh. She
Closing her eyes, she centered herself as she’d been trained, closing out every extraneous thought and bringing herself to that well of power inside her. Easy to find it, but again she was standing on the outside of a great wall. The Hoover Dam of magical blocks.
It felt different tonight. The surge might account for that. With more of their native magic leaking through the fault, it made their magic here on earth more accessible. A good night to try this. Perfect.
She pushed that thought away hard. She’d already asked far too much from him. She’d seen that clearly on his stricken face right before he ran. He wouldn’t betray his friend, and she couldn’t ask him to. He might be attracted to her, but he didn’t really want her. If she could figure this out on her own, he’d place the tattoo and she’d let him go.
Tonight there was a tension across the wall, like a hand barely touching still water. She paused as she considered the barrier—a force pushed outward, but something also pulled her in. A subtle current, but she focused all of her attention on following it. She came to a place that felt almost like a fault, the ragged edges knit together imperfectly. The seam was there. The source of that trickle of magic. Slowly, with extreme care, she pushed forward.
It was like bursting a bubble. Once she broke through that fragile skin, she was pulled inside a vortex. A blaze of power raced up her arms and flooded her mind, caused sparks to burst behind her eyelids as magic raw and unfiltered sang down every nerve. Her muscles began to shake as every circuit overloaded and began to shut down. Until she couldn’t even feel her body, couldn’t see her room, or hear herself screaming. She could only feel the energy coursing through her. There was nothing to anchor her.
She was on fire and this much magic...it could very well burn her to ash.
Christian wheeled his horse and surged forward, running down one demon while his sword slashed into another. Sloppy. He missed the neck and the thing flopped on the ground, dragging its nearly severed arm in the
