Wolfs Magic

Chapter Four

Az stared at the woman in the photo displayed on his brother’s phone. She stood on a grassy hill, leaning up against a large tree. Dressed entirely in black, which meant that she wore black slacks and a black turtleneck, except for, of all things, hiking boots, she grinned at the camera. Her hair, black as midnight, hung stick straight to her shoulders where it suddenly curled under towards her neck. Blunt cut bangs completed the effect.

The look might have been severe was it not for the fact that she’d also dyed about one third of her locks hot pink. Ultimately, the look worked for her where on other women he might have found it akin to looking at an oddly striped zebra.

On Leah, however, it fit perfectly. He suspected it had something to do with the funny glint in her eyes or the way her thin black eyebrows lifted slightly like she was secretly laughing at the cameraman. His heart pounded in his chest as he was nearly undone with a completely unreasonable hate for whoever it was on the other side of the camera who had made her laugh. It should only be he who made her laugh.

Shaking his head, he forced the adrenaline-induced frenzy back down from whence it came. Theo had warned him, he was going to be extreme until he actually ‘mated’ with Leah. He placed his attention where it belonged: on the picture in front of him.

His mate’s eyes were a striking blue-grey in color, like a rainstorm just before swollen clouds rolled in to obscure the sun.

Her skin was pale, almost porcelain white, with a sprinkling of freckles over her nose. Belatedly, Az realized she was skinny, not just thin and curvaceous, but actually super thin. Looking at her wolf self out of the corner of his eye, he wondered if she came by that look naturally or if it was a starvation attempt that achieved it. If it was the latter, they were going to have to do something about that…

I don’t know that woman at all. Leah’s husky voice sounded so despondent, he reached out to stroke her soft fur.

Your memory may return when your physical form does.

He heard her sigh in his mind. Just ‘may’ return?

Until we know exactly what it is that was done to you, we won’t know when or if your memory will come back.

Az thought he’d known frustration caused by his inability to save the lives of his father’s created wolves. None of that was anything akin to this. He was a person who got things done, he solved problems. Hell, he had inserted a tracking device into Cullen and Summer that had allowed the pack to track them to Mexico. He’d climbed a building in the middle of a rainstorm to reinstall a more efficient lightning rod that let them harness some of their energy supply from lightning strikes.

Yet with his own mate, he couldn’t bring her back to her human form—he was going to have to rely on Tristan for that—and he couldn’t help her with her memory problem. If he were Leah, he wouldn’t want to mate with him at all. Out of the whole pack, he was the most useless member for her.

“Let’s move.” Tristan nodded to the group. “Maybe once we get her back into human form she can give us some answers.”

Az looked down at Leah. “Want me to carry you? I know you can walk. I just kind of want to.”

Don’t you get tired? I must be heavy for you to cart around.

He shook his head and tried to keep his amusement out of his voice. She didn’t know, he shouldn’t find that adorable, only he did. “I’m a shifter. We can carry roughly two and a half times the amount that a regular person can. So, no, I did not get tired and I can do it again easily.”

His wolf’s voice sounded in his head. Show off. Even if you did get tired you’d want to carry her now that you’ve seen what she looks like. Admit it, you think she’s hot.

Az smirked. He did and he’d gladly admit it but not to his wolf. It would give the damn canine way too much laughter at his expense.

Leah leapt up, surprising Az but he still caught her. Pulling her against his chest, he followed behind the pack, which was moving to what they referred to as the ‘east lawn’.

In reality, it was a grass filled clearing just east of the main residence. Surrounded by trees, it was the easiest place to do the magical spells hidden away and protected by the natural forest.

Magic had always irked Azriel. His mind—at least his human mind—didn’t like the ambiguity of the whole process. Sometimes magic worked, sometimes it failed miserably and it all seemed to rely on the personal knowledge of the person in charge of the ceremony. The pack had its own magic that depended entirely on the strength of the Alpha. Only women could perform the ceremonies necessary to ‘call’ on magical forces and yet you could never be sure which women held the powers to do what since none of them came into their abilities until they were mated.

He rolled his eyes. It would have been nice to have been able to just snap his hands and stop all the wolves his father created from dying on his lab tables.

What are they going to do to me?

“It’s a magic circle where Ashlee, Summer, Faith, Jana, and maybe some of the other women will call you to the pack. It will literally force your wolf to shift into its human form then to your wolf form repeatedly until you are in control of the shifts yourself. I’ve only ever seen it once before and it was on my brother Tristan, before he became Alpha.”

Will it hurt?

He thought about her question for a moment. “If this is your first shift, meaning you have never been from wolf to human before then yes, it will hurt. However, I think that is highly unlikely. I think you’ve probably been made to shift a lot.”

Which would mean it won’t hurt?

“I’m not sure, Leah. See this is the trouble with magic—I just don’t have any solid answers for you. In science, if you can create something once, you should be able to duplicate the results. We know the first shift hurts; I know that from personal experience.” The image of his first time filled his mind’s eye. He’d been alone except for his father. It had been pitch black outside in the middle of winter. He hadn’t eaten for days… He shook off the memory. Leah needed him to stay in the here and now.

“Some people find some discomfort from it later on too. I think it kind of depends on your own tolerance for the reshaping your body goes through and how willing you are to give into the white light that surrounds you.”

Were you able to do that?

Az nodded, not wanting to elaborate more. “After a time. I have a tendency to over think things.”

What if I’m not a wolf? What if I’m a human?

“Then I’m not sure what will happen after you regain your body. It may stop right there.”

Leah closed her eyes. I’m so confused about all of this. I don’t even know how this happened to me.

“How could you not be?” Really, she was being remarkably calm. No screaming, no hysterics to indicate that all of this was driving her to the brink of losing her mind. How much should he tell her? He didn’t want to make her upset.

Everything. That was his wolf’s advice. How would you like to be kept in the dark?

“Okay, so there is a lot about you we don’t know but there are some things that we do.”

Leah’s eyes opened, her wolf gaze excited and trusting. Tell me. I remember nothing outside of your lab.

“You were brought to us from New York City by Malcolm and Jana.” Az looked for the couple off in the crowd. It still amazed Az to see Jana back. He’d known her his entire life, she’d been one of the ‘hot’ unmated females who the young males liked to look at and hope they were mated to. One day she’d been there, the next she’d been gone, and all the mated females were dead. It had been that fast.

How did they find me?

“You were part of a wolf pack that attacked them on Valentine’s Day. Presumably, you were being controlled by Jana’s former boss who had aligned himself financially with Kendrick.”

He felt her shudder in his arms. I attacked them?

“No one blames you for that. You’re under my father’s control. I tried to save all the wolves that had been part of your pack but only you survived. After that, when you were separated, your incidences of what you didn’t like called ‘lunacy’ started.”

Why am I under your father’s control? Az, I hear voices telling me to kill.

“That’s got to be all part of the same magic, which is why it drives me crazy. I have no idea why that is happening to you. My father is Kendrick Kane. While I was growing up, he was the Alpha of this pack. We were a huge number back then, several hundreds of wolf shifters. We resided on all these islands.” Az nodded off in the distance to show her the direction of the other islands. He didn’t know if she cared or not but to him life existed in the small details that made up the large whole of the universe. He would have wanted to know where the islands were.

She didn’t remark so he continued. “Dad was never very wonderful to me. The pack, however, loved him. We grew strong and prosperous. One day he met up with this man named Claudius. We’re not sure exactly what happened except that Kendrick—Dad—and Claudius hatched this plan to turn us over for scientific testing. Dad thought he could create an army of mindless wolves that he could control based on us. Somehow, he thought this would let us come out of hiding.”

And you’ve already told me the Alpha’s world is law.

She sounded so forlorn; he smiled and ruffled her fur. “There is a way to disobey the Alpha. You can challenge him for leadership. Only problem? Westervelt has to be led by a Kane. We’re magic controllers, meaning we’re strong in it, even if we’re men and can’t use it because only the women control magic. But male strength, specifically Kane strength, makes the whole pack better. So one of dad’s brothers, my uncle, was going to challenge him.”

Obviously he didn’t win or you wouldn’t all still be talking about your Dad.

“He never got the chance. Dad went and found a witch—”

She interrupted. A witch?

He raised an eyebrow. She was too cute. “I admire your skepticism. However, I have to point out that you’re trapped in the body of a wolf. You want to argue about the existence of witches?”

Good point. He heard the amusement in her voice.

“So I don’t know where he found the witch—turns out there are a lot of them—but he found one willing to place a curse on us. All mated men were cursed to kill their mates, the women they loved. You see, mating is a little complicated for a wolf shifter. Once we mate, we mate for eternity. When one dies, the other is driven to die too through a process of ritual suicide. We simply cannot live without the other one.”

No second marriages, then?

He shook his head. “No, it’s a onetime shot, this life and the next one. To not follow your partner is akin to living a half-life; evidently it’s all but unbearable. Again, I don’t know how it works. It’s magic.” If there was disdain in his voice when he said the last word he couldn’t help it. “The idea my Dad had was that he would have the men kill their women and then be driven to end their own lives. The pack would be left with unmated men, always considered the most volatile and weakest members. Plus, he’d be able to hold our unmated future brides over our heads to make us behave.”

And this happened? Her voice held so much horror in its intonation he wished he could lie to her.

“Almost.” He took a deep breath. Images passed in front of his eyes. Another day like this one. He’d awoken to the screams. Women were dying all over the islands and not just dying, gods, it was so brutal. The men they loved, trusted with their very existence, the fathers of their children were murdering them. He’d tried to help. He reached up with his left hand to stroke the side of his face that still held the scar from his last attempt at stopping a man he’d looked up to his entire life from murdering his own wife. Hell, the man had once taught him Latin and Greek. In that moment, he’d been a wild, murdering beast.

Az?

Leah’s voice broke him out of his memories of the past. Why was that happening so frequently? Usually, he was really good at keeping the past where it belonged: hidden.

“Sorry, she-wolf, I went away for a minute.” He shook his head not wanting her to ask him any questions. “Um, Mom got wind of what was happening. There wasn’t much time and she knew if Kendrick caught her she’d be dead so she did the best she could and got the unmated women off the island. Casting a spell to hide them from us until it was safe for them to return, we saw no other females—save our widowed aunts who endured the half-life to keep the magic alive on Westervelt—we waited helplessly for thirty years. Drifting might be a better description than waiting. We drifted for thirty years.”

Ah…how is that possible? You look all of thirty.

“I’m eighty years old, next week I will turn eighty-one. We stop aging, physically, at thirty until we are mated or commit ritual suicide, except for the Alpha. He and his mate stop at the age at which he became Alpha. So Ashlee will always look twenty-two even though she is twenty-seven now and Tristan will always look thirty even though he is over one hundred years old until he steps down or is challenged and killed.”

She was silent and he thought perhaps he’d finally scared her off with too much information. Are his eyes always like that?

“Like a wolf? Yes, that’s another Alpha trait.”

Okay this is a lot to digest. I’m still trying to figure out how I could fit in. I have a father who is a senator so I’m obviously not one of your missing women…

“No, but you could be the daughter of one of the missing women, like both Ash and Summer. Or you could be human. We do mate humans.” As soon as he said the words he wished he could take them back. He hadn’t told her they were mates; he was sure she’d heard it earlier but still you didn’t just launch that information on someone—especially if they were a human ‘someone’ and not used to the idea that their love was predestined for them. Az swallowed a lump of anxiety. What if she wasn’t attracted to him? Could that happen? The woman in the picture was a goddess and he was…well…out of all of his brothers he was the shortest.

And you spend so much time in that stupid lab you look paler than the snow that’s melting on the ground.

Leave it to his wolf to know just what to say to make him feel even worse.

They arrived on the east lawn behind the others. Tristan stood in the center of the circle. Ashlee and Summer stood on both sides of him, Jana was positioned behind and Faith was moving to a position near his front. Three other newly mated women—Claire, Moira, and Tatiana formed a triangle on the outside of the first four women.

Upon their approach, Tristan raised his hand and beckoned them to the center of the circle with his index finger. It was an annoying trait his brother had picked up since becoming a father but there was no way in hell he was going to tell the Alpha of their pack that he found that mannerism to be appalling.

“Place her here, Az.” Tristan stepped out of the way indicating that Az should put Leah down where he had been standing. Gently, Az leaned down and placed Leah’s wolf form on the ground. As her paws connected with the earth, she started to shake.

Oh wow, Az, I’m really afraid.

He wanted to tell her that they didn’t need to do it, that they’d be okay if they didn’t but he couldn’t. She had to go through the ceremony. There was no moving forward if she didn’t and he wasn’t even thinking of their mating—well not entirely about it. Leah needed to be human so they could find out what happened to her, so they could learn what she knew about the process their father used to turn ordinary people into wolves who only lived a few months. She had to return to her original state so they could contact her father. There was no other choice.

“I’m going to be there.” He pointed to an open spot in the circle. “That’s the Kane position in the power circles. We’ll all be lined up there.”

Leah let out a nervous giggle. I learned something else to put in my pretend ‘all about me’ book.

“What’s that?”

I don’t do well in stressful situations.

His heart shattered into a million pieces. He scratched the top of her head because it was all he could do. “You’re doing fine. This will all seem like a memory soon.”

As he stood to his full height, he turned to face Ashlee. With a growl in his throat, he refrained from grabbing his sister-in-law by the shirt. “She’d better not get hurt.”

“Brother, did you just threaten my mate?”

Tristan sounded like he wanted to kill and even though Az’s wolf went nuts at the fact that he’d all but threatened the Alpha’s mate, Az really didn’t care.

“Oh hush, Tristan.” Ashlee’s voice rang out. “You remember what it was like before we mated. I thought you were going to kill Rex in the back of my father’s SUV. Let’s get started and save the posturing for later.”

Az moved into his spot next to Tristan. Normally Cullen stood on Tristan’s right side but he’d quietly given the spot to Az without comment. He liked that about Cullen. The man might have been the boogeyman of his youth but he knew when to shut up and not utter a sound.

Ashley turned around and said something to Leah that he couldn’t hear. For a second, he considered contacting her telepathically to ask her what it was. The thought quickly swept from his mind as Ash raised her arms to the sky, threw her head back and spoke to the heavens.

“Guardians of the western sky, your daughters who you sent here to serve you salute you. We beseech thee—hear us.”

A shiver ran down Az’s spine. This was the magic he hated. How did they know they weren’t all about to blow up? Next to him, Tristan made a noise in the back of his throat as he watched Ashlee. His older brother looked proud.

Summer spoke next. She raised her arm and threw her head back. Cullen’s mate had once been a singer and she knew how to project. The silent woods surrounding them rang out with her voice. “Guardians of the eastern sky, your daughters who you sent here to serve you salute you. We beseech thee—hear us.”

When it was Faith’s turn she raised only one arm to the sky. His other sister-in-law was extraordinarily powerful. She’d once held the essence of a fire demon inside her.

Shifters sometimes whispered that the universe seemed to move when she talked.

“Guardians of the northern sky, your daughters who you sent here to serve you salute you. We beseech thee—hear us.”

Jana was small in stature but strong of will as she immediately lent her voice to the ritual. “Guardians of the southern sky, your daughters who you sent here to serve you salute you. We beseech thee—hear us.”

Around them the wind picked up. Az couldn’t pull his gaze from Leah although he didn’t dare speak to her. There were too many unknowns. What if his contact with her altered the ritual and something happened? He clenched his fists at his side wishing they’d hurry.

Ashlee moved forward. “As you have brought us the wind, we know you are with us.” She raised her hand to point to Tristan. “Our Alpha would call his pack. Call to them, our chosen one.”

Next to him, Tristan took a small step forward. “Come to me, my wolves. Answer my summons.”

Az’s ears rang. His Alpha had called to him and he would obey. A howl started in his throat. Around him, he heard the calls of all their pack mates answering their Alpha.

What was happening to Leah? He couldn’t look as the warm white light demanded his total surrender. Closing his eyes, he let it take him—there was no other choice.

As his body reshaped into its wolf form he let out a howl to Tristan, the moon, and any gods that were listening to keep his mate safe.