Authors: Ava Walsh
Harrod
It’s my last night here. The sky is clear, the full moon shining brightly. But on the ground the visibility is low, with thick clouds of fog spread here and there. I am standing on the edge of the pit, waiting for the fight. Harrison is on the opposite side of the pit. My dad and Grandpa are watching from a projecting cliff about two stories high. We are surrounded by wolves on all sides, all in their natural form. The pups are here, too; the entire den is. There are yowls and howls in the air. The only human presence is that of Siobhan. I told her that she didn't have to watch, but she insisted on coming.
Then my Grandpa steps forward onto the cliff, to the very edge. I can barely make out his shape, as he is silhouetted against the bright moonlight. As he moves to the edge, silence spreads as every pair of glowing yellow eyes fixes on the cliff.
He looks to the moon and howls, a deep, guttural howl that reverberates throughout the forest, its echoes resounding in the distance. It’s showtime!
Harrison gets in first on all fours, and then I get in. The pit is a large circle filled with sand. My eyes are fixed on Harrison, his eyes on me. We circle around the pit slowly, without taking our eyes off each other. I know Harrison wants me to win, but he won’t lose deliberately. He’ll do his best to defeat me. The thought of losing, of getting my ass handed to me, is unsettling. The large, gray wolf standing opposite me is terrifying.
A thick, foggy cloud makes its way to the pit, standing between us. I stop, but continue looking in my brother’s direction, as the yellow of his eyes disappears behind the cloud. I am waiting for the cloud to pass when a shadow suddenly appears in the cloud, tearing it apart, growing, and then Harrison jumps out and lands a blow on my muzzle, catching me off guard, throwing me off balance. I get back up on my feet again and launch myself head first into him. I hit him in the abdomen, but he quickly turns around and pounces, kicking my paws.
I get up again, grunting. I search the crowd for a sign of Siobhan. As my eyes meet hers, a sharp pain shoots through my neck as Harrison’s fangs dig into my soft fur.
“No,” Siobhan screams, and starts toward the pit. Mishayev jumps out of the crowd, shifting back into human form, and grabs hold of her before she can enter the pit. As another cloud finds its way in, I move to the side and close my eyes, sniffing for Harrison’s scent. He jumps through the cloud of fog like before, except I am not there. I launch into him with full force, hitting him so hard that he flies out of the pit. He gets back to his feet and immediately shuffles back in. He launches into an attack that I dodge.
Siobhan is sobbing, shouting, pleading, “You have to win! You can do it! A win for me, please!”
He attacks me from the side and gets on top of me, his paws landing blows repeatedly on my face, disabling me. I have a good shot from here, I can take him down easily, but I can’t bring myself to hit my own brother. I’d rather lose. He slashes my skin and I feel warm blood ooze out and stick to my mane.
Siobhan’s sobs drown everything. Then she says something and I know there’s no stopping.
“You can do this, Harrod,” she shouts, struggling in Mishayev’s tight grip. “For heaven’s sake, you have to win. Win for me, win for the child that’s inside me.”
I strike hard under my brother’s abdomen and he yelps with pain, falling to the side, kicking up a cloud of sand. I get back up and howl, and shift again. This shift is unknown to me. No other wolf that I have seen here can shift like this. My bones crack and strain in my body as I shift into a hybrid form, a cross between man and wolf. There is a collective yelp from the crowd gathered, whether in shock or awe I can’t tell. My dad moves forward and stands beside my Grandpa on the cliff, spectating closely now. I can see them better somehow, more clearly.
Harrison is looking at Siobhan, taking in what she said. I howl at the top of my lungs and land a fierce blow to my brother. It knocks him out as he skids onto the sand in another cloud. A minute passes but he doesn’t get up. He whimpers in pain.
From atop the cliff, my Grandpa looks toward the moon and howls. My dad joins him when he howls for the second time. Mishayev lets go of Siobhan.
The entire wolf pack howls together with my dad and grandfather as they howl for the third time. The howls are eerie and echo through the trees.
“We have a winner,” my Grandpa says proudly. “We have a new Alpha!”
The wolves howl again, cheering for me. I rush to Harrison’s side as he shifts back into human form. “I’m fine,” he says. “Well played. I trained you well.”
Four werewolves from the infirmary come and take him away on a gurney, disappearing into the woods. Siobhan runs into the pit and wraps her arms around me. Everybody is standing still in their place.
“Members of the pack,” Grandpa continues. “I am proud to announce that we have a True Alpha this time. It is a rare happening, but it has happened. We have among us one that has blood moons for eyes and the impeccable control that allows him to maintain a form that is between animal and man. Precious,” he says cockily. “Simply precious.”
“Good tidings, I told you,” Mishayev shouts to Siobhan.
I remember what Siobhan shouted at me.
“You’re pregnant,” I say, holding her firmly.
“Yes,” she says. “If you’re not happy, we can—”
“I couldn’t be happier,” I say, and kiss her before she can speak of the unthinkable.
Then my dad speaks from atop the cliff. “I have more good news for you,” he says to the pairs of yellow eyes. “We have a new union among us, for the new Alpha no less. And our pack is to grow, with a new pup on the way.”
The howls that ensue are elated and transform into claps as the pack shifts into human form to congratulate us.
“Union,” I say, looking at Siobhan.
“I told your father before I came here,” she says. “That’s why he sent me here.”
“You have known all along and you didn’t tell me? Who else knew?”
“I couldn’t wait to tell you, but I wanted to do it after the fight. I only told your father, but I think Misha knew too.”
“And the union?”
“Your father asked me if I wanted it, and I said yes. He said he’ll take care of the rest. I can say I changed my mind if you don’t want it.”
“Fuck, no,” I say, sweeping her off her feet and kissing her again. I get on my knees and plant a kiss on her belly. “This one’s for my pup.”
The crowd reaches us, surrounds us and lifts us up. Pats on the back, handshakes and blessings are showered on us.
Mishayev comes and snatches Siobhan from me. “Now she must see our doctor,” she says protectively. “You should go see one too.”
“I’ll come with you,” I say.
“You can’t be with Siobhan until the ceremony. You have already imprinted on her, but you have to do it properly. Once you form the bond, you’ll be considered married according to our customs. Until then, you can only meet her under my supervision.”
“I don’t mind,” Siobhan says. “He can see me whenever he wants.”
“I have already disregarded too many rules by sending you here, young lady,” says my dad’s raucous voice from behind. “I can’t break any more rules. We will hold the ceremony tomorrow and you will join in union. Until then, you must wait.”
“Lay down the Mountain Ash,” Grandfather chimes in.
“What’s that?” Siobhan and I ask simultaneously.
“It is something that is very toxic to werewolves,” Mishayev explains. “But humans help us with it when we need.”
“What for?” Siobhan asks.
“It forms a protective boundary when laid down in a perfect circle. No wolf can cross it. It is customary for us to lay it around during periods of mourning or celebration, so we are not attacked by rivals when we least expect it.”
Mishayev takes Siobhan and heads to the infirmary, but not before I steal her for a fiery make-out session. I can see in her eyes how much she hates being separated from me, and if the tent in my pants is any indication, I won’t be having an easy night either. In just a week, I have grown too used to her presence to spend a night without her. But the new sun is filled with glad tidings, and I can’t wait!
*****
THE END
Bonus Book 17: The Dragon Shifter's Twins
By:
T.S. Ryder
Description
A curvy witch looking for the perfect love potion PLUS a hot dragon shifter only interested in his motorbike PLUS a headmistress who comes between them!
Jessica Falls is a curvy witch who prefers to stir up love potions or sit by the fire with a steamy romance than to pour over textbooks at her magical university.
Her lack of focus is a cause of great dismay to Pearl Lancelet, the headmistress of the university, who runs the school like a 1950s boarding house, including ridiculous rules like no men allowed in the dorm rooms...
Despite Pearl's insistence that there are more important things to life than romance, at twenty-two and never having been kissed, Jessica doesn't care much what else there is to life. She wants a whirlwind romance full of steamy sex while she lands the perfect man.
And she knows exactly who she wants, too: her brother’s best friend...
Braden Clampett is a dragon shifter who leads the local group of young dragons who ride their motorbikes wearing their leather jackets.
Unfortunately, he has no interest in her whatsoever...
Can she stir up the perfect love potion to attract his attention? And will she be able to distract the headmistress for long enough to have her way?
Jessica Falls stood in front of the mirror, piling her black corkscrew curls on top of her head, imagining that she was wearing a white veil and dressed in a sleek, slimming wedding dress. It would be made of satin, with a dusting of beading on the bodice and the train. Maybe she'd also go with red trimming. She used to dream about having a full-on Cinderella ball gown, but that style just didn't suit her body type–not with her wide hips, ample bosom, and rounded stomach.
Sighing, Jessica let her hair drop and turned back towards the love potion she was brewing. It was a sickly yellow color, and it ought to be honey-gold by this time. Her brow furrowed. Had she forgotten to put in the lizard eyes? She sashayed over to the cupboard, imagining she was dancing with her one true love as she did so. With this love potion, she would soon be in his arms.
Contrary to popular belief, love potions didn't make people fall in love. Rather, they directed the individual who drank them to the person that they would fall in love for life with. Or could, as the spell books liked to emphasize. Jessica didn't care about that small detail. Once she brewed the perfect love potion, she would find her lover and be with him for the rest of her life.
He was going to be tall and tattooed, with rippling muscles that allowed him to pick her up and carry her around as though she was a size zero supermodel. That way they could have sex standing against the wall, which was something Jessica really wanted to try. Well, she wanted to have sex in every available position. Her eyes misted over as she imagined a man kissing her breasts while fingering her, making pleasure course through her. Someday soon, she'd have that.
As she retrieved the lizard eyes and turned back to her cauldron, her left foot caught behind her right. She stumbled, lost her balance and went sprawling face-first. Jessica shrieked as her bottle of lizard eyes cracked open on the stone floor, sending the contents rolling every which way.
The twenty-two-year-old witch had once tried to cast a spell to make herself as graceful as a swan. It hadn't helped; she tripped over her own feet or knocked things over by simply walking into a room just as much as she had before the spell, only with the added inelegance of sprouting feathers. It had taken three days for the spell to wear off.
"Stop that!" she shouted at the rolling lizard eyes, scooping up the shriveled, dried balls and depositing them back into the broken jar. She held the glass pieces together, narrowed her eyes, and called on her magic. "Fix up."
The glass repaired itself smoothly, allowed her to gather up the rest of the lizard eyes and put them back where they belonged. Jessica would never be an extraordinary witch, but she excelled at repairing and cleaning spells. It was probably because she found herself using them multiple times a day.
Unfortunately when it came to things like potion ingredients, any magic directly used on them negated their magical qualities, and so whenever she had a mishap they had to be gathered by hand.
Just as Jessica made to stand up, cracking her head on a table in the process, the door opened. The headmistress of the coven's magical university, Pearl Lancelet, stepped in. Her alabaster features twisted and a delicate hand flew to cover her nose.
The witch gagged, her head swiveling as she looked around the room. "What are you doing in here?"
Jessica rubbed the sore bump on her head, glancing briefly at the potion bubbling over the fire. She ducked her head as Pearl's gaze followed hers. The headmistress's mouth thinned. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head.
"Another love potion? You nearly poisoned yourself with the last one!"
"I used outdated foxtail last time. This time, I made sure that all of my ingredients were fresh."
Jessica set the jar of lizard eyes down and put her hands on her hips. Pearl ran the university like it was a boarding house from the 1950s. The 'girls'–they were all women twenty years and older, but Pearl insisted on calling them girls–had strict rules that they were meant to follow. Privacy was unheard of. Pearl never knocked when she entered dorm rooms. She was probably trying to catch them doing something that was against the rules.
Love potions weren't
exactly
against the rules, but Pearl was very clear that she disapproved of them. Jessica didn't care–she was a grown woman, and Pearl wasn’t her mother! She hated how Pearl treated her and the other students like they were children.
"You've done something wrong," Pearl said, walking over to the potion. She swirled it around with a wooden spoon and shook her head. "This would give you a bad case of indigestion and probably make you declare your undying love to any red-blooded creature you came across."
"I was about to add the lizard eyes," Jessica muttered.
She wouldn't have come to this school if she'd had a choice, but unfortunately it was the only local magic university there was. Without the coven, Jessica didn't know where she would be. Probably dead in the gutter.
Pearl shook her head, muttering something that Jessica didn't catch. "Where is your brother? The faucet in the third-floor bathroom keeps dripping."
"It's his day off," Jessica said, putting her lizard eyes away again. "He's probably off with his friends."
Pearl was stringent about the fact that only members of the female sex were allowed into the dorms. She wanted to ban all males from campus, actually, but Jessica's brother, Stafford, was an exception because he was gay, and so Pearl deemed him 'not a threat' to the girls.
Because men are threats,
Jessica thought.
Because none of us actually want to have sex or find a happily ever after.
Apparently Pearl thought they all wanted to be nuns for their whole lives, just like her. It was an all-female university, but the students were constantly sneaking off to town to spend nights with their boyfriends.
"With friends," Pearl repeated, her eyes narrowing. "You mean that dragon, Braden Clampett, don't you?"
That was exactly who Jessica meant, but she shrugged. "We haven't talked today."
Pearl's piercing blue eyes narrowed and she shook her head. "That dragon is a bad influence on your brother. I'll have to have a word with him when he gets home."
Jessica opened her mouth to tell Pearl that Stafford never found it easy to make friends and that it was none of her business anyway, but the headmistress had already spun on her heel, marching away. The younger witch shrugged and let her go. Arguing with Pearl wasn't her idea of a good time.
She turned to her failed love potion and sighed. It was now a putrid green. There was no salvaging it. Her only option was to dump it out and start over.
As she lugged the cauldron to the sink, her thoughts turned to her brother. Both of them had been adopted as babies, and Jessica would rather not remember her childhood. Her parents had been strictly religious and, from an early age, any sign of magic in her was severely punished. Not as badly as Stafford had been when he had come out to them as gay, but neither of them had any contact with their parents anymore.
Jessica told people that they were orphans; the people who raised them didn't deserve to be called parents. Stafford had been sixteen when they left, Jessica twelve. The coven had taken them in, and the two had never looked back.
***
Several hours later, Jessica's hair was standing on end from leaning over repeated failed love potions and, as she was out of althea root, she settled into the overstuffed chair in her room and plucked one of the well-worn romance novels from her shelf.
Her room was full to the brim with her special things, from magical supplies to porcelain dolls and, of course, her collection of books, which Stafford liked to call 'shelves of trash.' So what if she preferred historical bodice rippers to Charles Dickens? It wasn't like his comic books were any better! Besides, Shakespeare's writings were full of crude jokes, yet he was considered to be a great artist. Why were her romances 'trash', then?
Just as Jessica had gotten to the really good part of the novel, where she stopped reading and started daydreaming about the events happening to her instead of the heroine, she heard the sound of motorcycles outside. She jumped to her feet, abandoning the novel, and raced to her window. Her room was on the third floor, but a great big oak right outside her window blocked the view of the road. She caught sight of the back end of a few motorcycles and heard Braden's voice. Her heart jumped to her throat.
Instantly she chastised herself–she shouldn't react this way just from the possibility that she might see Braden! As her brother's best friend, he was completely off limits. Even if he was taller than an oak and sturdier than a bridge, with muscles that looked like they had been sculpted by the hand of God himself. She leaned further out the window, holding her breath.
A few of the bike's owners were in sight now, and they were definitely the dragons that Stafford and Braden rode with. The windowsill cut into her belly as she strained to catch a glimpse of the alpha dragon, the beautiful, incomparable creature that was Braden Clampett.
The carpet beneath her feet slipped. She gasped as her feet went up and her head went down; suddenly she was plummeting towards the ground. The wind howled in her ears but, before she even realized she was falling, strong arms plucked her from the air.
Braden hovered in the air, tightening his grip on her. Jessica squeaked as she threw her arms around his neck. He was in a half-shifted state, wings crumpling his leather jacket, his long black hair standing in spikes and his mouth full of razor teeth. His normally black eyes were electric blue.
Stafford rushed over to them when Braden landed.
"Jess, are you okay?" He reached to steady her when Braden set her on the ground.
Jessica ducked her head, straightening her dress. Her face felt like it was on fire, and she pulled away from her brother. "None of you better have looked at my underwear!"
The other dragons, Braden's 'flock' as Jessica liked to call them, all chuckled. One of them whistled, but a black glare from Braden silenced them. He was always like that, treating her like she was his little sister, making sure that none of the other dragons flirted with her, let alone anything else. At first, she thought it meant that he was possessive of her, and she imagined him sweeping her off into the skies, but as the years passed it had become painfully apparent that he didn't feel that way about her.
So, really, Stafford forbidding her from expressing interest in his best friend was a moot point.
"Pearl was looking for you," Jessica said to her brother, trying to cover up her embarrassment. "There's something wrong with one of the faucets in the bathroom or something. And she's not happy that you've been hanging out with the dragons again."
Braden snorted. He was shirtless beneath his leather jacket, and detailed tattoos rippled across his chest as he breathed. Jessica had to work hard not to stare at his perfection.
"That woman is the worst thing to happen to dragons since the dark ages," he muttered, shaking his head. "Old bat… but anyway, Jess, you ought to stay away from downtown tomorrow."
She hadn't been planning on going anywhere, anyway, but Jessica frowned. "Why?"
"It's the spring equinox. Dragons go crazy around that time." Braden's expression darkened briefly, but he shook it off and gave her the smile that always made her weak in the knees. "So just do me a favor and stay on school grounds, okay?"
Jessica shrugged. She seemed to recall being told this before, but she never really paid attention to that sort of thing. "I'll probably stay in and read."
Braden nodded. He clapped her on the back in a gesture that was far too brotherly for her liking and turned back to his flock. "Better get away before the old bat decides to hex us. See you in a couple days, Ford?"
"Yeah," Stafford replied, lifting a hand to wave then dropping it. "See you."