Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Matehood. Meera’s rational mind reeled. No wonder Thane’s behavior during his first meeting with Ditch had been so peculiar. He must have been thunderstruck! And then Ditch had spoken blandly of cannibalism and made crude observations about lupine behavior. Yet somehow they’d ended up together last night?
“How sick,” Rose hissed. “Being with a Lykae beast would be like bedding an animal.”
“Not really.” The words slipped out before Meera could stop them. “You can still see flashes of the man, and the beast is sentient to a point.” She would give anything to behold Lowell’s beast, especially on the night of a full moon. Its appearance would mean they were mated.
Rose recoiled. “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. Ditch betrayed this coven.”
“She’s playing with him,” Meera said firmly. “There is no way she’d ever surrender to him.”
Wait… Lowell’s face flickered in her mind. He had to know about Thane and Ditch. He’d known all along! He’d courted Meera for information—made her believe he desired her.
With her sensible shoes and muffin-top waist.
Heat spread under her skin, betrayal made palpable. Her palms burned; light bled through her clenched fists, casting wild patterns on the walls.
“Great Häxa,” Rose breathed. “More of that anger, witch! I have plenty of it on tap, but your magic’s pure fuel.” Her own power sparked in reaction. Had her healing arm given a spurt of growth, stretching the bandage?
Meera blinked, chest heaving. “Why are you so angry all the time?” she demanded. “You’re young, untouched by war, yet you’re bitter. Why?”
Still riding Meera’s anger wave, she snapped back, “I don’t know! I was born angry. Like a cauldron that never empties.” Her good hand trembled. She looked startled at her own admission, her guard cracked by pain and regeneration. “I’ve never known peace. Don’t even want to!”
A born firebrand. A weapon that knows it’s loaded. “Some of us do want peace.” Meera’s heart beat too fast. She drew in a slow breath, forcing her magic down, feeling like she drowned in Rose’s anger. I’ve got enough fury of my own. Because of Lowell.
Yet that wasn’t entirely true. When she’d been young, she’d melted into pools of it, affecting everyone around her. Her mother’s last words to her: Control your power, or it will control you.
Mother was the reason she’d fought against it all her life.
Rose tilted her head. “You always wonder, don’t you—if people want you or that rush they get when you flare?”
“I don’t usually release my magic outside training.” But Lowell had seen it, had drawn it out of her again and again. Was the easygoing wolf attracted to the violent shimmer of magic in her blood?
Either he used her for that…or for information. Or both. But he didn’t want Meera alone.
Darkness settled over her. Sinking realizations.
Her encounters with warlocks had likely been so lackluster because a witch like her—buttoned-up magically and figuratively—had underwhelmed them. Those males had no ulterior motives to feign passion; Lowell did.
When she caught Rose studying her, Meera forced herself to calm. “Aren’t we a pair? You burn rage. I produce it. Dangerous.”
“Powerful. We’d make a killer team, Meera.”
She smoothed her cardigan and said easily, “I believe that anger without sense is never welcome.” Such a combination can kill a good witch.
“You’ll get there one day. Once someone gives you a real reason.” Rose’s lips curled. “Ditch has. She’s got to go. Help me take her down.”
“Asking me to spy is one thing.” Meera turned toward the door. “You’re talking outright sedition. I won’t be a part of it.”
“Because you’re weak!”
At the door, Meera looked back, voice low and cutting. “And you’re foolish. You’re stumbling right off the block.”
“At least I’m on the block. You hide your gift until it’s shriveled”—she raised one stump—“like this arm. One day we’ll need your fire, and you’ll have nothing left to give.”
Meera’s pulse pounded. “That so, huh?” Rose didn’t realize how much she’d just sounded like Ditch.
***
Rose
When Meera left, the air cooled in her wake, and regeneration slowed once more.
As bone eked inches beneath her taffy skin, Rose started to doubt her earlier schemes.
She hadn’t expected Eyrun to take an arm and a leg.
Bitch.
And that Valkyrie’s beast form continued to haunt her sleep. She’d never seen a Lykae fully risen before. Now that monstrous vision stalked her dreams. Massive. Shadowed. Its roar threaded every nightmare like memory.
Yet despite suffering from her last scheme, Rose actively worked on her next, mainly to distract herself from sinister visions of Lykae.
Ditch had to go.
Maybe Meera too.
That meek little mouse was hiding claws—Rose could sense them under all that cardigans-and-cutesy nonsense. Let the others underestimate her. Rose wouldn’t. When the time came, she’d move against both of them.
Akelarre was distant; power here was ripe for the taking, and all the Skein’s thrones trembled.
She could sense it thrumming beneath her skin—the promise of rule, of vengeance, of something she’d always known she was meant for.