I scratch his neck. “Can you take me to my girls?” I ask.
He nods his huge head and then points his snout at his back. I’ve known him for years, so I know what he wants. I climb on top of him, and he shakes once. His shadows surround me, and we become one with the mist rolling out of the swamp.
Jiggy carries me through the prison walls and out into the black oaks. I take one last look and promise Corwin that I’ll be back for him when I can. In the meantime, I have a coven to reunite, and it’ll be no more Miss Nice Witch.
If the Brotherhood wants a war, they’ve got one.
The End
About the Author
Tiegan Clyne has been writing for longer than most of her friends have been alive. Armed with university degrees in Spanish, anthropology and history, she writes reverse harem and LGBTQ fantasies with dark, kinky edges and mystical elements. She also sometimes writes harmless fluff pieces about magical animals and the witches who love them. She loves music, could not stop writing if you paid her, and is a crazy cat lady in training.
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Nicked
A Prequel
(Avarice: House of Mustelid)
Emma Cole
About Nicked – A Prequel
A group of four hunters, known as a quad of Enforcers, are on the hunt for a thief making trouble for the Ghost Clan. Unbeknown to Vaughn, Bane, Iliam, and Lorca—the thief aka Avarice, is their mate. In this short story prequel, they find out what the consequences are when they don’t follow orders.
18+ due to content – Reverse Harem/WhyChoose
Vaughn
"You sure about this gig?" My quadmate Bane was getting on my last nerve. This was the third time he'd asked since we'd arrived in Ghost territory. Not to mention the twenty other times from when we took the job up until we got here.
"Dude, this should be a cakewalk. We catch this 'Avarice' asshat that's been robbing the Ruscov family blind, then we can get on with hunting down our bondmate. I swear I felt something when we came through town." Where Bane was our resident pessimist, Lorca was our glass half full member.
He wasn't wrong though. And as quad leader I didn't want to be irresponsible and get their hopes up, but I thought I'd felt the spark of a mate bond already. When I'd caught sight of the back of a female in a hooded sweatshirt with a lock of white hair escaping it, I'd had an insane urge to follow. It felt as if I were being tugged by a rope, leading in her direction. Unfortunately, we'd been under orders to pick up the slim dossier on the thief and set up immediately.
We'd been hired because we were one of the best groups of hunters. Only the single quint group held a higher success rate by one catch.
"Alright, let's get set up and then we can go over the dossier over dinner. Illiam? You mind ordering pizza while we sort the rest of this?" I redirected my team to get on task and lead them away from the mating talk. I'd gotten a bad feeling about this during our conversation, but I couldn't pinpoint why.
I adjusted my balaclava to help hide my face and tucked a black beanie over my snow-white hair. Over that I put up the hood on my snug-fitting sweatshirt, angling it to shade my violet eyes. Tonight's job was paramount to retrieving the leverage my uncle held over a forger. He was using the man's family as collateral to force his compliance, and it was my mission to get them out of the crossfire. The little girl and her mom hadn't asked for the man in their life to dip his toes into organized crime. Unfortunately for them, a toe-dip is enough for the Ghost Clan to swallow you up. It didn't use to be so– awful. Sure, we'd been shady when my parents ran things, but the locals were terrified and the tariffs my uncle kept imposing were slowly strangling the town. No one could afford them.
I concentrated on stealthily escaping the compound and my mission to liberate the innocent. There wasn't a lock that could stop me, hence the Ghost Clan legend. The ability didn't appear in every generation, but when it did, it was usually heralded by the telltale albinism I carried.
Iliam
Something was off with Vaughn. I could feel it. Rarely was any of our intuition wrong, and mine was just as in tune as our quad leader's. We all sat absorbed in the information as we went over our packets and inhaled the pizza I'd ordered.
According to the information in the dossier, the target was suspected to be a Ghost. That meant this was an inside job and a betrayal to the entire clan. I'd imagine the Regent would want to keep it quiet that one of his own had turned on him. There had been whispers about goings-on that the leaders who oversaw the shifters wouldn't approve of happening in the region. If they were true, then it was some pretty devious and nasty shit. The Therian Council rarely got involved unless it was something that would expose the supernatural to the world at large.
A grunt from Vaughn had me narrowing my eyes at him, and I was done pussyfooting around. As second, it was my job to keep the peace and step in when it was warranted.
"Spit it out already. What's going on?"
Surprisingly, it was Lorca
