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

So I shook my head. “I’m fine,” I told him. “Make your own decision.”

Erskine was silent for a long moment, then he nodded decisively. “I choose....”

“Yes...?” The Queen leaned closer to the mirror.

“...The human world.”

“GO THEN.” THE QUEEN was furious, but she hid it well. Only because I was so close did I see the twitch of skin beside her eye before her face once again smoothed to fae perfection.

I saw and I was ready for her to take vengeance upon me. Instead, she clapped once and the mirror faded to gray. Gray then green as our view returned to the battle in Whelan territory.

The battle which was going far worse than I’d anticipated.

My pack was losing. That much was clear at a glance. Why else would pack mates be huddled up in a circle, children and non-fighters in the center, those with blades ringing the outside?

The cluster was far smaller than it should have been. Names echoed in my mind as I picked out those we’d lost.

I couldn’t see Ash. I couldn’t see Caitlyn.

Rune was still present, though. In wolf form, he ran frantic loops to protect the pack from a foe that couldn’t be protected against. He seemed to have found his footing inside the beast’s body, but his efforts wouldn’t be enough.

Not when branches lashed out from every direction, striking pack mates who should have been protected. Slashing and slicing, almost sword-like. I couldn’t hear screams, could only see faces contorting. Despite my intention not to show the Queen how much I needed the Guardian vanquished, I coughed out: “You have to make this stop!”

“And how do you expect me to tamper with a world beyond my reach?” The Queen’s eyes bored into me. “Will you grant me a toehold into your pack?”

“I offer you a connection, but only for an instant.” As I spoke, I twirled one of the last tethers I owned around my finger. The tether to Kale. The tether I hoped would let the Queen end this awfulness while at least a few pack mates remained.

Giving Kale a nudge had been part of our bargain. Plus, the Queen should have leapt at the chance to force the Guardian back to Faery.

But she tapped long-nailed fingers on her throne arm rather than accepting the tether I held out to her. She watched as a hole opened up in the earth of my forest, shifters falling into darkness and only a few scrambling back out.

After yawning once, she finally asked: “You have no other tethers? That one is puny.”

I swallowed, tempted to offer more if she’d hurry. But that was what the Queen wanted.

And I was Alpha. Even if there was only one pack mate left by the time this was over, I would fight for their safety from fae depredations.

So I didn’t speak as another hole appeared, this one closer to the center of the huddle. One second ago, my nurse had held a baby in her arms, two toddlers clinging to her legs. Now, they all fell into the earth together. No one reemerged.

I waited two more seconds, even though the time felt like an eternity. Then I told the Queen, “This tether is the only one available.”

She considered me, then shrugged. “Alright then.”

With a pop, the mirror darkened. A roaring wind swept through the hall, pushing fae back against the walls.

I clung to the arm of the Queen’s throne. She sat, unmoved. Watching. Smiling.

And when the wind broke, the most beautiful teenage girl I’d ever seen stood on the tabletop in the center of the room.

THE GIRL STRUCK A POSE as if she was a model and this was a catwalk. Jutted out her hip and grinned. She was the most beautiful being I’d ever set eyes on. It took an effort to tear my gaze away long enough to note the huddled twelve-year-old behind her back.

In one arm, Kale clutched Hazel. In the other, he clung to a bloody dagger.

So...this girl was the Guardian? And Kale, it seemed, had achieved his quest.

He’d won, but his face was impossibly pale and his voice came out as a squeak. “Tara, I didn’t think it through. Hazel.... You have to get her home....”

Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do at the moment to remove the baby from Faery. She—and Kale and the Guardian—were twenty feet away from me, separated by chairs and tables and a buttload of fae.

I couldn’t save Hazel, but I could make sure the Queen didn’t harm Kale or his sister.

To that end, I grabbed at the tether the Queen had been manipulating, fully expecting her to stop me. But her attention was on the Guardian. So much so that I was emboldened enough to yank the trailing edge of my chain out of her grasp as well.

The links slid free. The Queen didn’t even glance in my direction. Instead, she cooed out a question to her recovered lackey. “What do you have to say for yourself, child?”

The Guardian was no child. She’d made a deal with my grandfather decades ago. Still, she made no complaint about the appellation. Instead, she grabbed Kale’s wrist and raised it up, up, up, until she could lick the blood off the tip of his weapon. He winced, cringing away from her. And, smiling, she stabbed him with words more painful than any knife.

“Act like a man,” she admonished. “Not that you have a chance of becoming one.”

Then, having cut into the heart of Kale’s insecurities, she knelt, head bowed before her monarch. “My Queen, I’ve brought you changeling toys.”

Chapter 39

My breath caught. This was the reason the Guardian had always been intrigued by children? Not maternal instinct, but a realization that the young served as useful bargaining chips?

I lunged for Kale, but the hall was spinning around me and beneath me. When I caught my balance, the twenty feet that had separated me and the Guardian a moment earlier was now