Charmed Wolf by Aimee Easterling (best ereader for pdf TXT) 📕

Well, that’s not true. My friend wasn’t looking at Rune. She was fixated on the baby in his arms.

I should have had no way of communicating with a non-pack-mate from a distance. But it was almost as if Rune heard my desperation. Because he angled away from his original trajectory, placing himself in a location that Natalie could only reach by pushing her way through dozens of shifters...or by leaping across the blaze.

“Mom,” Kale repeated. “Come on.”

The bonfire had burnt down enough by this point so it would be easy to traverse even for a human. Still, Natalie was a scientist. She required explanations and itineraries.

Or she usually did. When her firstborn son grabbed her hand, though, and started running in the direction of her daughter, she followed. I held my breath.

And Natalie leapt. Up and over, her lips unwillingly curving upward with pleasure. There was no strange sparkle off either her or Kale either. No change in their appearance. Assuming Erskine had been right about the force fire, both mother and son were currently unaffected.

By fae that is. When Natalie touched down in the ten feet of space that now separated me and Rune, her eyes blazed with fury.

“Your child,” Rune murmured, handing over the infant.

Which was a pretty smart move since it prevented Natalie from starting a fist fight.

“I knew something wasn’t right,” Natalie spat out rather than greeting us.

Every shifter in my clan was watching, head cocked to ensure they caught the entirety of our conversation. I grabbed my friend’s free elbow and Kale placed both hands on her shoulders to push her forward. Between us, we barely managed to get her moving back toward her car.

“My mother told me I might as well go home,” Natalie continued, words moving faster than her feet were. “She said I was wearing a hole in her carpet. Which was literally untrue but metaphorically correct.”

Despite the dimness as we moved further away from the fire, I could see Rune’s mouth quirk. He thought Natalie was funny. I usually thought so too...when I wasn’t about to admit to doing far worse than dropping her baby on its head.

So I waited until we were out of wolf earshot, then I admitted. “I messed up. Your instincts were good. But I promise you, your family is safe now.”

“What happened to Hazel?” Natalie started undressing the baby right there in the chilly forest. She appeared to be looking for injuries while reciting the scientific names of bones under her breath.

Whatever. At least it kept her from hitting me. Now, if we could just move a little further away from the bonfire....

Because, along the pack bonds, I could feel the clan’s curiosity building. Before long, one or more would creep along our trail. They’d end up hearing me growled at...something a new Alpha could ill afford.

But a friend couldn’t afford to stifle well-deserved growling either. I’d take my lumps...as long as Natalie moved a little further away from my pack first.

I widened my eyes at Kale and he tried to help me. “Hazel’s fine,” Kale said from behind his mom’s back. “And Tara didn’t mess up. I did.”

The trouble is, Kale hadn’t taken the laws of maternal motion into account. Natalie turned so quickly Kale ran into her. Her voice was just as heated as previously, but the anger wasn’t aimed at her son. “You aren’t an adult,” she informed him. “Whatever happened, your job wasn’t to prevent.”

“Exactly,” Rune murmured at the same time I said:

“Listen to your mother.”

Now Natalie was running her hands over Kale’s face as best she could while still clutching the baby. “Mom, cut it out,” he complained after a second. “It was weird but I’m fine.”

I didn’t smell or hear any wolves creeping closer, but I couldn’t ignore Caitlyn pinging me down the pack bond. “Alpha. The party’s breaking up. Do you have further instructions?”

“Has everyone leapt over the bonfire?”

“No. Five haven’t yet.”

My silence as I considered the force-fire issue was filled by Rune. “Your son was charmed,” he murmured when it became clear I wasn’t going to offer an explanation. “Fae are able to use their magic to tie objects to them then use those objects to influence others’ behavior. We believe the glitter had been sullied and Kale was impacted by that.”

“Don’t force anyone to jump across the fire,” I told Caitlyn after a moment of consideration. “But make a game of it with those who haven’t done so as the focus. If they don’t want to play, let the matter be then let me know who held out.”

“Yes, Alpha. I’ll report in the morning, Alpha.”

Caitlyn’s repetition of my title was cute in a way Willa’s adamant use of the term wasn’t. But I probably shouldn’t have let my amusement show on my face because—

“You’re smiling at my son being taken over by faeries?” Natalie’s voice was now loud enough that my clan mates could probably hear her back at the bonfire. I grabbed her arm and drew her forward yet again.

“Natalie,” I whispered, “I swear to you that I took Kale’s charming very seriously. The bonfire wiped away the issue. Cleansed the glitter also.”

A moment of silence. Then—“I hope you kept a sample.”

“A sample?”

My best friend rolled her eyes, looking impossibly like her son as she did so. “For analysis. You’re saying my glitter was the problem. I want to study it.”

She wanted to study the charmed glitter. Giddiness of relief made a laugh bubble up inside me, but I squashed it. Natalie was sensitive to not being taken seriously. I couldn’t mess this up.

“Am I forgiven?”

“Not yet.” She glared at me the same way she glared at Kale when he chose to dabble in botany rather than finish up his homework. “You’re taking me to brunch tomorrow. 11 am. Cafe in town. You’re buying as much of the most expensive items on the menu as I can stuff in my stomach. And you’re telling me every little thing that happened to my children.” She