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

The memory of the blood I’d spilled for the Guardian made me shiver. For a split second I wondered.... Then I shook my head. No, I wasn’t going to let myself doubt the bedrock of my own existence.

This time, when I grabbed for a knife, my hand came down on the blade. The pain made me flinch, which scared the cat. The feline leapt onto Natalie’s knees, claws extended, before skittering away.

And those claws did the same thing the dagger had done to me. My friend gasped, eyes still cloudy but clearing. Meanwhile, my tongue, I found, was finally able to move.

“What does this have to do with Natalie’s children?” I interrupted. Rune might have fond memories of Lenny’s wife, but I didn’t. My fingers shifted until I was grasping my dagger’s hilt...and then I was clutching a cookie instead.

“Have a bite, dear,” Lenny’s wife tempted. I raised the treat...and a flash of silver swept it out of my hand.

Rune’s sword hovered where the cookie had a moment earlier. “Forget ancient history.” Rune’s persimmon scent exploded around me, so strong it overpowered the lemon. His voice was harsh now. “Get to the point.”

With her audience turned against her, the fae wilted. Her mouth opened then closed, the effort to cut through the faery tale and provide unadorned information apparently beyond her.

To my surprise, Natalie was the one who helped our enemy out. “These stories always go the same way.” My friend’s eyes were as clear as mine now; her mind was considerably sharper. “Your sister needed a little more and a little more and a little more. Then she took too much and...?”

Lenny’s wife’s nodded gratitude before falling back into tale-telling patter. “I gave her my true name and she used it to suck everything I had out of me. She used that power, not to make herself beautiful, but to slip into the Between nearly a century ago. Apparently, the Queen thought she was a daughter but my sister considered Court a mere stepping stone in her path.”

“And you?” Natalie asked, her scientist’s mind for the moment requiring answers beyond the safety of her children. “Did you slip into the Between after her?”

“No.” Lenny’s wife shook her head. “I crossed all the way over this past Samhain. But it’s taken me this long to gain enough energy to consider stopping my sister. I...didn’t want to take much from Lenny.”

She cleared her throat before continuing. “His son’s girlfriend worked in your glitter factory, and it was a simple matter to ask her to deposit a charm. It pulled tiny snippets from so many, no one was unduly affected. Once I had enough, I intended to stop my sister before she could turn anyone else into a stepping stone.”

The fae peered at us, eyes as violet as the flowers in her lawn. She seemed so defenseless...and she was using innocent children to do her bidding.

“What,” I demanded, “have you done with Kale and Hazel?”

The fae’s head bowed. “You’re right. I’ve been as bad as my sister, using them. But surely you must understand that the ends justify the means.”

“No,” I ground out. “They don’t. Your sister is irrelevant to me. I want my pack safe, and that includes Natalie’s children.”

Her brow furrowed. “I thought I’d made it clear who my sister is, dear. But I haven’t, have I?”

I shook my head, but my friend’s chin was bobbing in the opposite direction. “The Guardian.” Natalie rose off the porch swing and straightened to her full height, all five feet three inches of it. “You’re sending my children like a spear into the Guardian’s heart.”

“I DIDN’T SEND THEM,” Lenny’s wife countered. “Kale wanted a quest to prove himself and I gave him one. I charmed a dagger to guide him—Lenny brought it over with the scones this morning—but the child went of his own volition.”

None of this made sense. The Guardian was, well, she was our Guardian. She wasn’t an evil supervillain.

The only obvious villain here stood in front of me. “Nice hair-splitting,” I told the fae. “But it changes nothing. We run you through, you return to Faery, and Natalie’s children...”

“...Wander alone in the Between until they starve?” The fae’s eyebrows—or the penciled-on replacements for them—rose. “As I said, the children will be fine as long as I’m here to guide them. Right now, they’re walking between your earth and Faery. Time is different there. They won’t grow hungry or tired. I wouldn’t have sent them if I’d thought they’d be hurt.”

I didn’t even notice Natalie’s hand moving until she’d slid one of my backup knives out of its sheath. Brushing past Rune, she menaced the fae. “You’re telling me my children aren’t terrified?”

“They might be a little frightened,” Lenny’s wife acknowledged, eyes trained on the weapon. “But if you help me, this will all be over quicker. And it’s for your own good, dears. My sister isn’t a guardian, no matter what she calls herself. How many more decades do you intend to let her pull the wool over your eyes?”

The fae’s words made grammatical sense, but the Guardian had kept our pack safe for generations. My father had raised me to serve her. She was the bedrock of our family traditions. Cognitive dissonance made my head ache.

So I sidestepped the issue. Drawing my own knife, I came up beside Natalie. “What do you want from us?”

“Nothing you’ll miss.” The scent of lemon expanded, pressing back Rune’s persimmon and making my eyelids saggy. “My sister is deep in your pack bonds—it’s how she’s grown so powerful since crossing over. Your friend’s boy is attached to you and he can use that connection to track my sister down.”

“Kale?” I blinked, trying to focus. Natalie’s son wasn’t pack, wasn’t a werewolf. His attachment was mere human emotion.

And yet, when I dug through the tangle of bonds that flew out of my person, I did find one that smelled like twelve-year-old human. I tugged it and....

“Eh, eh, eh, dear.”