Shadow Kissed (Magic Side: Wolf Bound Book 4)

Savannah

“I’m so glad you called,” Laurel said as I stepped into her kitchen. The sweet warm aroma of snickerdoodles hit my senses, and my mouth began watering.

She wore a paisley apron that was dusted with flour. “You look like you saw a ghost, Savannah. Tell me what’s wrong.”

My aunt looked at me with a troubled expression that twisted my gut. She was such a cluster of contradictions. I knew that in her dealings, she could be hard and ruthless. She was a lethal sorceress, and probably one of the most dangerous people in Magic Side. And yet, here she was baking me cookies from scratch.

I took a seat at the kitchen island and fisted my hands to keep them from shaking. Last time I’d been there, I’d used the Sphere of Devouring to destroy Dragan’s soul. There was no easy way to explain all the shit that had unfolded since.

But she needed to know. If anyone could help me sort things out, it was her.

So I spilled my guts and told her everything. The Dark Wolf God. What had happened at Pere Cheney. The Soul Knife. When I’d finished, a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, but Aunt Laurel looked pale and distraught.

A buzzer went off, and she jumped up and took two baking sheets out of the oven. The rich cinnamon scent wafted off the piping-hot cookies as she set the sheets on the stove to cool.

“I’ve heard of the legends of the dark one. Just pieces and hearsay, but this…” She paused and turned to me. Worry lines etched her forehead.

“Is bad,” I finished, the words catching in my throat. “I don’t know what to do.”

Laurel nodded and began moving the cookies to the silver cooling racks she’d set on the counter. “You’ve got a good start. Don’t panic, and seek help from people you trust. I learned that the hard way. When I was younger, I thought I had to carry the world on my shoulders until Rhia—an old mentor of mine—knocked some sense into my head.”

She broke the edge off of one of the cookies and sneaked it in her mouth. “I know I told you not to go to the Order before, but you were right to try to give up the Soul Knife. I’ll help you summon it, and I can remove the spell so you can bring it to the archmages and lock it away in their ridiculous vault.”

Hope and relief flared within me. “You could do that?”

She slid two cookies onto a plate and handed it to me. “Of course I can. I cast the spell, didn’t I? Together, we should be able to summon the blade. Removing the magic bonds will be easy.”

Thank God.

As I heard Casey stir upstairs, I bit into a cookie and moaned at the warm, sugary goodness. Hints of vanilla, butter, and caramel flooded my tastebuds. Being a wolf had its benefits, and heightened senses were top on my list. Everything tasted way better.

Or actually, in some cases, way worse. Burritos from gas station hot shelves, for instance.

Laurel took the stool opposite from me, and I brushed off the crumbs from my hands before placing them in hers.

“Focus on the knife like I taught you,” she said, closing her eyes.

Laurel’s magic wrapped around me like a familiar hug. I squeezed my eyes shut and went through the process that had always worked, envisioning the signature, the feel, the details of the knife.

But just like earlier, I couldn’t call the Soul Knife to me. It was like my tether was severed, or at least restrained.

Worry crept under my skin, but I reached harder, searching for any connection with the cursed blade. My aunt’s signature pulsed, and the buzzing of bees and scent of cloves filled the room as she intensified her efforts. The little symbols she’d drawn on my palm appeared, but the knife did not.

After a minute, I released the breath I’d been holding and pulled my hands free of Laurel’s. “It’s not working.”

“I can see that.” Her brow was furrowed, and the intensity of her gaze sent chills up my spine. “This is very unusual. I sensed the Soul Knife, but its connection with you is different.”

“Different?”

My palms suddenly felt sweaty. Different wasn’t necessarily bad. I’d always been different. But the way Aunt Laurel said it sent panic coursing through me.

“Like the spell has been tampered with. Altered,” she said. “Another magic has crept into the bond.”

Shit. “The Dark Wolf God.’

She stood up abruptly and placed her palms on the table. “I’ll look in my spell books to see if there’s any way to counter the magic that has reworked the original spell. There must be. But for now, you need to be extremely careful. Who else knows about you and the prophecy?” Laurel asked.

“Just me, Jaxson, and Sam. And Neve at the Order.”

My aunt looked at me knowingly. “It might be safer if you move back in with us. If the rest of the pack gets wind of this…”

They’d kill me?

I shook my head, even though doubt crept into my heart. “I’m safe with Jaxson.”

“Are you certain? I don’t trust those wolves, Savannah.”

Heat flushed my neck, and I had to tamp down the defensiveness that surged. “I’m a wolf, and I trust him more than anyone.” And that was the truth.

Laurel stiffened and turned to the sink to vigorously clean the dishes. “I know you share a bond. Trusting him that much makes sense, though I don’t understand the ins and outs of such things. It’s not like you have a choice about it.”

Somehow, her tone was frustrated and disapproving and hurt and accepting all at once—but it was her words that sliced deep. “Every choice I make is mine.”

Fuck the fates.

I stood to leave, the legs of the stool scratching against the linoleum floor.

“That’s not what I meant, dear. The fates push us toward things, but the choices are always ours. I just know how strong the mate bond is, and I know that what you feel for Jaxson is real. I may not like it, but that’s not for me to decide.” Sadness floated around her, dousing some of the flames of my anger. “You’re my niece, and I love you.”

I bit my lip. “All of me, or just the LaSalle half?”

Laurel reached out and placed her hand on my arm. “All of you. You may not believe it, but your mother and I…we weren’t like sisters, but we had an understanding. A closeness, even. We both loved your father so much, and that gave us common ground.” Her hand dropped away. “I’ll try to remember that. After your parents died, and I thought I’d lost you, too, I let bitterness get the best of me.”

I wanted to leave it there, as if her feud with the pack had been about her brother, but I couldn’t. I knew better.

My gut tightened with the fear of what I’d learn. “Your issues with the wolves go deeper than that. You’ve got dossiers on dozens of North American packs. And you’ve been keeping them updated.”

She flinched, and shock and anger crossed her face. “What were you doing snooping in my office?”

I squared my shoulders, trying to hide the guilt and shame. I’d trespassed and violated Laurel’s privacy, but the information she’d collected on the werewolves was dangerous and motivated by bad intentions.

“I was desperate. I was trying to deal with becoming a werewolf. I asked you about my mother over and over, but you were hiding something. I was looking for anything I could find about her, anything to explain what was happening to me. I didn’t expect to find…werewolf profiling.”

Her signature crackled. “You shouldn’t have gone in there. You had no right.”

Unwilling to back down, I balled my fists in frustration. “You should have told me the truth about my mother when I asked. You had no right to keep my heritage from me. What I did was wrong, but that doesn’t make your lies or stacks of dossiers any more ethical.”

Laurel pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose and slumped back against the wall. “I know.”

A long, stiff silence dragged out between us before she finally sighed and looked out the window. “It doesn’t make me any less culpable, but your grandfather collected most of that information. Knowledge is power, and I’ll admit I’ve made use of it, even added to it. But only ever to protect our family and our interests. Your grandfather had different intentions, but I swear to you, I’m not him.”

My stomach twisted, and bile rose in my throat. He’d died fifteen years before, but I’d met his ghost lurking in her office. He’d called me a dirty little half-breed snoop, claimed that Laurel would skin me alive if she caught me in there. “He hated my kind.”

Laurel’s jaw stiffened. “Your grandfather…he is part of the reason we have the reputation we do. He was a loyal but hard man. And when it came to the werewolves, he was bitter, vengeful, and filled with hate. If he could have wiped the Laurents out, I think he would have.”

I was glad I’d never met the bastard while he was alive. I dug my nails into my palms. “Why? Why do we have this feud?”

She looked at me with broken eyes. “The death of his brother. Before that, the death of a Laurent, and before that, a LaSalle. It goes a long way back.”

A cycle of hate repeating over and over. Like the death of Jaxson’s sister, Stephanie, and the plans on Billy’s wall to kill our whole family.

Laurel stepped up and took my clenched hands. “But I’m not him, Savannah. Your mother changed that. Your birth changed that. I had to change.”

“He was why my mom and dad left,” I whispered.

She nodded, tears brimming in her eyes. “In part. If he knew that your father had fallen for a wolf, he’d have hunted them both down.”

“I know. I found the photo album on the shelf. And the letter from my dad.” I fought back my own tears and anger. If it weren’t for my bigoted grandfather, life might have been different for them. For me.

She worked her hands into mine. “It was the wolves, too. Your father was just as afraid of them as he was of your grandfather. Maybe it had something to do with this prophecy. All I know is that this feud took my brother and sister-in-law from me, and I thought it had taken you, too. I hated them all for that.”

“If this feud took so much from you, and if you’re not like your father, then why do you still have stacks of files on werewolves? Why can’t you just let it go?”

Laurel stood and fetched a copper teapot from the cupboard, and began filling it. She set it down hard on the gas stovetop and leaned against the oven. “Insurance. The pack hasn’t been kind to us, and the Laurents have been at our throats since our family settled on this island. Jaxson’s father, Alistair, is much like mine. Though you may know Jaxson, so do I. And I’m not certain that he’s that much different from his father.”

Frustration tore at me. I didn’t believe that. I’d never met Jaxson’s father, but I knew who Jaxson was. Every day we’d spent together, I’d seen more and more of his soul.

“I don’t care what you think you know. He’s brave, he’s loyal, and yes, he can be ruthless. But he’d do anything to protect his pack, even swallow the death of his own sister.”

Laurel’s shoulders wilted. “That was a horrible accident.”

Unable to face that story right now, I shoved it out of my mind and crossed my arms. “Ending this feud would protect our family and theirs. So end it.”

Laurel gave me a mournful look. “You’ve changed so much since you first showed up on our doorstep. If you can do that, if you can adapt to all this madness, then maybe there’s some hope for the rest of us.”

I opened my mouth, but at that moment, Casey trudged into the kitchen halfway through a giant yawn. He patted me on the head as if I were a favorite family pet. “Hey, Cuz.”

Casey made his way around me and pulled a box of Count Chocula out of the cabinet. He paused midway through setting it on the counter and looked between me and Laurel. “Wait, what are you doing here? Did you two make up?”

Laurel, her sad expression hidden at the first sight of him, gave him a kiss on the cheek as she fetched two mugs and a box of loose-leaf tea. “We did. Or we’re getting there, I hope?”

She glanced at me, and my chest loosened.

Laurel accepted what I was and had forgiven me for what I’d done. She loved me, and she was willing to change. We might not agree on everything, but we’d cleared the air, at least. “We’re all good, but I’d better get going.”

“By the way, did you ever figure out what that key I gave you was for?” Laurel asked as I turned to go.

The key. Damn, I’d forgotten about it. My mother had given it to Laurel, and Laurel to me. I rummaged through the coin pouch of my wallet and pulled the tiny gold-plated key out. It was a peculiar shape, with an ornate G on it. “I haven’t had a chance. You have no idea?”

Laurel shook her head. “It was just for safekeeping. She didn’t say.”

“That thing?” Casey asked through a spoonful of cereal. “That’s a key to a safety deposit box.”

Laurel and I looked to my cousin, who stood there with mussed hair and a dribble of milk on his chin.

“What?” he asked, suddenly confused.

I held the key up. “You’re telling me that this key is to a lockbox?”

He nodded and shoveled another spoonful of sugary cereal into his mouth. “Yeah. That’s what I said. That one belongs to Gold Trust Credit on Sixty-Third and Razorback.”

Holy crap. My cousin was either a genius or full of shit.

Laurel folded her arms over her chest and lifted a brow at her son. “And how do you know this?”

“Because I have boxes all over town. I use them for…uh, you know. Keeping stuff?”

I wrapped my arms around Casey and gave him a squeeze. “I love you.”

His spine straightened, and he looked down at me suspiciously. “Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my cousin?”