Wolfs Magic

Chapter Seven

Leah landed on her butt, rolling to her side as soon as she made contact with the ground. Hearing an oomph, she saw Az land next to her. Raising her head, she looked around warily. The room where they were was darkly lit. Two lights made to look like lanterns glowed on top of two glass tables illuminated what, she quickly determined by the number of book shelves on the wall, was some kind of library or study.

“Az, is this typical?” She pulled herself up to her knees looking around.

“Yes, but most of the time the person knows what memory they’ve landed in. We’re going to have to hope it triggers something otherwise it’ll be a little like watching a play with yourself as the actor, I suppose.”

He stood and offered her his hand. She took it, loving the feel of his rough fingers closing around hers. Everything about him was so much bigger than her. She guessed it could make others feel small. To her, it just made her feel safe.

She looked around one more time. Az was right, like something out of an action play she watched herself stomp into the room. Her eyes widened as she recognized the sound of her voice yelling.

“I said no. I’m not going to speak to him. Not now, not ever.”

A tall man with silvering hair and high cheekbones covered in stubble entered behind her. She could see parts of her own face reflected in his. They had the same chin and the curvature of the top of her face looked like his.

She whispered. “I think that’s my father.”

“He looks like the picture in the articles I read. We don’t have to whisper. This already happened. There is nothing we can do that they can hear or be aware of. We’re not really there. This is coming out of your head.”

That was good news. At least it meant the memories were still in there somewhere.

What would have happened if there had been no memories? She turned to ask Az but then heard her past self screaming again. She noted that her hair looked like it had in the picture. Hot pink streaks but no multicolored stripes.

“Mom never would have wanted this. It’s exactly what she didn’t want. She told us ‘never ever go anywhere near the shifters or Kendrick Kane.’ She couldn’t have been more explicit. She’s not dead two months and you want to arrange a meeting with the man?”

“Leah, baby, your mother was overwrought. Do you think if there really were people who could shift into wolves that the American military and the government wouldn’t know about it?” He threw his hands in the air. “For goodness sake, I sit on the Senate Committee that gives out money to the military for special research. I would know.”

Leah shook her head. “Mom was adamant and she wasn’t given to flights of fancy. Other than this one subject she never said anything to me in my entire life that wasn’t down to earth and easily proved with facts and data. The woman was a biologist for god’s sake. She said she and I are wolf shifters and that Kane is dangerous. I’m choosing to believe her. I will not see the man.”

“I’ve already set up the meeting.”

Leah expected to hear her past self argue some more and was surprised that she said nothing else for a few moments. “Why would you do that?”

Her father sat on the edge of his desk. “You know how much I love you.”

She nodded. “I do know that, Dad.”

“I loved your mother that much too…which is why I always let her believe this little lie. Truth is, I think something terrible must have happened to your mom when she was a child. Kendrick Kane is barely thirty years old. He couldn’t have possibly had anything to do with it.” He ran a hand through his silver, grey hair.

“But maybe he knew her family; maybe you have some family left that you could know from her side. Now that she is gone there is no reason to continue on with this farce. Besides, if someone hurt your mother so badly she was forced to live her life with this delusion then I want to know who it was so I can hurt them.”

Her father exhaled and Leah in the future knew he looked tired. “Have you ever seen a wolf become a man or vice versa? Has it ever happened to you? Did you ever see it happen to your mother? Do you hear voices of wolves speaking to you in your mind?”

Past Leah shook her head. “No, Daddy.”

Next to her, Az swore. “I know exactly what happens.”

Barely able to form words, Leah looked at Az’s hard profile. “Tell me.”

“Your dad called him. It’s easy to get to him, especially someone in your dad’s position. Hell, I could get him on the phone right now if I wanted to. He told him who he was, mentioned your mother’s name. Kendrick remembered her. Arranged the meeting. He wasn’t here two seconds before he would have scented you as a member of our pack. Kendrick must have felt as if he stumbled on gold. He’d finally get to experiment on a member of our pack, the one thing he’d never gotten to do.”

She nodded. Yes, that sounded right, familiar. Images flooded her mind. The meeting had gone well, Kendrick had been pleasant. She’d started to doubt her mother. At the thought, Leah closed her eyes. She could remember her mother now. Her sweet mother, never the typical politician’s wife. How could she have become so disloyal so fast?

As if he read her mind, Az stroked the back of her hair. “It would be normal to doubt her. If you’re not raised with it, it seems like the stuff of bad movies. If your mother never shifted in front of you or your dad, it’s ridiculous to think you’d just believe.”

Then the men had come. They’d grabbed her out of her bed at night, after having stormed the house like an army coming through the door. Before she’d known what was happening, she’d been gagged and in the back of the car. It had felt like a nightmare and that was only because she didn’t know what pain was yet.

She would.

Opening her eyes, she still stood next to Az but the scene had changed. Grabbing tightly onto his arm, she looked around. “Where are we?”

“Your memory, she-wolf, you tell me.”

Leah liked how he kept using the nickname he’d coined for her when they’d interacted in the lab. It made her feel more secure. He was still with her. She didn’t have to go through this alone. This was a man who had risked his life to get her out of the cage. No way would he fail her now. Not that she needed protection; she’d already lived this. Whatever happened had already happened.

She saw herself gagged and bound sitting in the center of a clearing. Instead of the grassy one on Westervelt this was a sandy desert during sunset. Men and women surrounded her with a man in the middle shouting.

“That’s Kendrick.” Leah was going to have to make a mental note about when Az did and did not call his father ‘dad’ versus calling him Kendrick. As she stared at her mate, she realized that his eyes looked dead. Seeing the man who had been responsible for his birth was killing him. She wished she could make this all go faster.

“You look like him.”

He nodded, his eyes still glassed over in that way that gave her the shivers. “But not as much as Tristan, Gabriel, or Rex.”

“You’re much better looking than he is.”

That earned her a half grin. “He’s trying to bring on your wolf like Tristan did.”

“Must not have worked as I never heard her until I came to Westervelt.”

After minutes of Kendrick screaming, he threw his hands in the air and pointed to a woman who stood next to him. Her hair was a golden shade of blonde and even from the distance where Leah stood she could see the violet of her eyes. “She’s a latent, this is pointless.”

“What’s a latent?” Leah asked Az.

“A half shifter who can’t shift.”

“But I’m not.”

“I know that.” Az kissed the top of her head. “Your wolf refused to answer his call. She did not want him as her Alpha. That’s huge. Most wolves do not want to be lone wolves. She must have really hated how he smelled.”

I did. It was awful.

“Kendrick probably wouldn’t believe he could be denied as your Alpha so he assumed you were latent.”

The man stalked to the edge of the circle, grabbing a petite woman with long black hair and striking blue eyes. “Carrie, I told you to get me witches who could make this happen.”

The woman shook in his arms. “I did. They’re the very best. Since the Westervelt group killed their leader, they’re still settling into this. If she’s latent, there isn’t anything to be done.”

Kendrick dropped the woman named Carrie—who for some reason Leah actually felt sorry for—on the ground, hard. Dust sputtered up into the sky where she landed. “Give her to the boys, change her over. If she can’t be one of the real deal we’ll make her one of them.”

His statement made, he stomped away, the circle dispersing as he passed except for Carrie and two men who still stood near the past Leah. Carrie stood and dragged herself more than walked in front of her. She knelt down.

“I’m sorry about this.”

Leah watched as her former self screamed and tried to speak through the gag.

“I wish I could make this stop. I know I can’t make you understand and even if I could why should you forgive me? Anyhow, if it means anything and maybe it doesn’t, I have no choice. I’m as trapped here as you are.” Carrie stood and looked at one of the men who remained. “Take her to the change chamber.”

Leah’s memory showed her that she had screamed, fought and that did give her present self some relief. As she watched the scene unfold before her, the memories seemed to pull out of what she watched and replant themselves into her mind. Now she could remember how hot it had been outside, how sand had gotten into her mouth around the sides of the gag and scratched her tongue. She could recall with perfect clarity that she’d been terrified and furious at the same time. Her mother had warned her this could happen.

Well, not this scenario exactly. She couldn’t imagine the woman who raised her ever envisioning a day when her only child would be hauled around the desert, forced to endure terror at the hands of her former Alpha. She couldn’t have imagined it because she’d made her husband swear to keep her, Leah, away from Kendrick Kane, something her father had immediately neglected to do. Maybe it was unfair, maybe it was petty, but Leah blamed the senator—her father—for this happening to her.

A thought struck Leah. She whirled around to look at Az who was watching with anger in his eyes as her previous self was dragged away. “Why is my father still alive? As her mate, shouldn’t he be dead? Shouldn’t he have made himself die?”

Az turned his regard to her. She shivered under his gaze, the intensity, the hotness that permeated through his eyes into her soul. God, she wanted him. “There are two scenarios for that not happening. The first is that there is a young, young child involved and the living parent remains alive until that child is old enough for he or she to leave. I don’t think that is the case with you.”

Neither did Leah. She was certainly an adult. “What’s the other one?”

“The remaining mate lives in utter agony every day of their life until they follow.”

Leah shrugged. “My dad looked a little upset earlier but not in agony.”

“My aunts denied themselves death to keep pack magic alive after their mates were killed in the curse. Ironically, my uncles were the only ones not to kill their mates. They killed themselves instead.”

“You Kane men are nothing if not loyal to your wives. I’ve only seen you a little while now but that was obvious from moment one.”

Az nodded. “Tristan fought tooth and nail, even burning down a building, to not hurt Ashlee.” He stopped speaking for a moment. “This still doesn’t explain the issue with your father. It bothered me earlier that he didn’t ‘get’ pack. Even non-shifter, she should have spoken to him in his mind. He should have believed. That’s what happened with Ashlee and Summer’s father.”

“Az, when she died it was so awful. She and my uncle were both killed on their way back from a charity event. It was instantaneous, which is something, I guess, but I thought I was going to just shrivel up and die.”

“Your uncle? Your mother’s brother?”

Leah sat down on the sand. Why wasn’t the memory changing? “No, my father’s twin brother.”

Az’s foot started tapping on the sand and she looked up at his face. His expression was guarded however she could tell that inside his head he worked out a problem.

“Tell me about your uncle, she-wolf.”

“He was an artist, a local guy, never became big time but really talented. My mother used to bring me over there every day when I was young. He taught me to paint. My dad hated it, thought the whole thing was a waste of time.”

Az knelt down in front of her. “Of course I can’t know for sure, but my bet is that your uncle is your father.”

“What?” Leah leapt to her feet standing over Azriel. “Oh hell.” She chewed on her fingernail as she paced around. Some of it made sense, she supposed. Her uncle was artistic—so was she. She looked like her father but her uncle was her father’s twin brother, it was a familial resemblance. Her mother had always gazed lovingly at her uncle. Once she’d caught her crying…

“Why would she do that?” Leah grabbed onto Az’s shirt. “Why pretend Nathan St. James is my father?”

“I can’t answer that question.” Az ran a hand through his hair. “I guess maybe she thought she could keep you safer as the daughter of a United States senator. St. James is a strong, powerful man. I don’t know who your mother was—if I see a picture maybe I can identify her—but assuming she fled for her life in the middle of the night to get away from Kendrick’s plan to kill all the women, then perhaps her goal was to set you up as strongly as possible to be safe.”

Leah shook her head. The idea was horrifying to her. “When she used to talk to me about being a shifter—she never hid it, which is funny because if I had told anyone she would have been in big trouble.”

“Only you didn’t, obviously.”

“Maybe I knew inherently it was important to be quiet about it. Anyhow, she told me about finding a mate.”

Azriel looked down at the ground. “What did she say?”

“That it would make me know myself like I never had before.”

“Everyone is so tightlipped about the mating. I don’t even really understand what happens.” He blushed and she wanted to giggle. “I mean, I do understand a lot of what happens. I think there must be more to it than anyone talks about otherwise what triggers the change in everyone? Cullen practically became a puppy after he mated with Summer. Theo came back from the brink of madness and Tristan stepped up to finally become Alpha.”

She couldn’t help but tease him. “Maybe the sex is just that good.”

He smiled and looked at her again. “Now if that isn’t pressure, I don’t know what is.”

The scene shifted around them and Az grabbed her, pulling her into his arms. She knew she wasn’t at risk, these were only memories, they couldn’t physically hurt her but she loved that he wanted to protect her so she snuggled close and let him act macho.

Leah saw herself strapped to a table. Four hooded women stood over her. She knew they were women because their long hair fell down over their shoulders. Leah pulled out of Az’s arms.

“I want to see their faces.”

Walking fast, she stood next to her remembered self and stared at the people who would, she knew, change her into something out of a horror movie. Funny, they didn’t look horrible, just like four regular women she might see walking down the street.

Az, they look so…regular.

My father looks like a nice guy when you first meet him The first lady, the one who seemed to be conducting the spell, had long blonde hair.

Her locks fell almost to the floor. Her face was long and horse-like with a strange looking nose that she’d either been unfortunate enough to be born with or butchered by a plastic surgeon to receive. It didn’t fit on her face.

Next to her was a set of twins, gorgeous women with curly black hair and grey eyes.

Leah actually shivered as she looked at them. They scared her. Blondie with the bad nose might be leading the ceremony but those two were the power behind it. The other woman looked mousy with dirty brown hair and sad eyes. All in all, it was an odd bunch of people to be performing such monstrous acts of destruction.

The blonde looked down at remembered Leah on the table. As she watched, Leah could see sweat forming on her forehead. She didn’t need to remember this part and wished they could move on.

“Az, do we have to watch?”

“From a pure scientific perspective, I would like to see what they do. However, if it’s going to cause you pain, then no, we do not have to. I can pull us out.”

He was right. There was knowledge to be gained here. “Alright, let’s witness it.”

The women started to sing. Not words exactly, it was more like high-pitched vowel sounds. Their voices were not what anyone would call beautiful. Leah closed her eyes and covered her ears, trying to tune out the onslaught of pain listening to them caused to her. All at once, the ladies raised their arms towards the ceiling and Leah heard herself—

even through her covered ears—scream on the table. The change was coming.

She couldn’t watch, turning her back to the scene so that should she even accidently open her eyes she wouldn’t have to see it.

“Alright enough, I’ve seen enough.”

Az’s voice cut through the agony of sound in the room and the next thing she knew she landed on her behind again. Looking up, she uncovered her eyes, and saw sky scrapers above her. Snow fell lightly to the ground.

“What the hell? I tried to send us home.” Az sounded annoyed so Leah stood to get a better look around.

“This is New York City.” She’d been there enough to know. Pointing in the distance, she indicated the Empire State Building ahead. “See.”

“I haven’t been here in ten years.” Az scratched his head. “We should be back in the ‘now’ and out of your memory.”

“Look, there I am.” Leah watched herself walking fast out of a drugstore. Behind her a man was yelling. In her arms, she carried…hair dye.

“Stop, that woman is shoplifting.”

Leah’s former self took off running down the street and before she could stop herself, Leah ran after with Az behind her. After a few minutes, she followed herself into a McDonald’s bathroom.

“You were already a wolf by now. What are you doing?” Az sounded confused.

Leah laughed. She couldn’t help it. She knew exactly what she was doing. “I’m dying my hair, Azriel. It’s a small act of rebellion. I can’t remember any of this—my mind was warped by the forced wolf change—except I know myself now. I’m going to paint my hair like this.” She grabbed her damaged locks. “Somewhere inside of me, I still existed enough to cry for help. This was the only way I knew how.”

Just like that, the world went black. Moments later she opened her eyes to the warmth of Az’s bedroom.

She knew who she was: Leah St. James—wolf shifter and survivor. Now the question was what should they do next?

Az stood. “Shift with me, Leah. I need to run.”

The bright light filled the room and the body of her mate became a glorious dark wolf. Not needing another invitation, she followed suit. As far as she could remember, she’d never run just for the fun of it on four feet before.