Instead I ran my fingers through my hair. “Ah, I’m sorry about Rowena. She was a good witch. I knew her a long time.”
Tatiana nodded. “Thanks.” Then she pulled out her wand and I stepped back a pace. I was peaceful with the witches but I didn’t like their magic. It was unpredictable and made my hackles pull up.
She flung her wand towards Rowena’s body and muttered a few words. Suddenly, like an invisible blanket had fallen over the witch. She was gone.
“I’ll deal with that later,” she said.
I was going to comment, ask her what the plan was, when I felt them. Lines of power coming at me like a flashlight searching in the dark. My pack.
Two black SUVs turned the corner and pulled up next to us.
“What’s the emergency?” Brayden, my second-in-command, asked. I’d asked him to bring all of my dominants and meet me at the witch shop. I didn’t want to say what it was about over the phone.
“Nyx has awoken early, and we need to shove her back into her grave before all hell breaks loose,” I stated.
Brayden didn’t cow, but lines of worry crossed his face. He was old enough to remember the days when Nyx ran rampant across North America, conjuring demons and making my life a living hell.
The back seat window of the SUV rolled down, and Nick Pichette looked Tatiana up and down like she was a piece of meat. “We’re partnering with the witches?” he asked seductively.
‘Look at her again and I’ll kill you.’ I told him, infusing alpha power into my command. He lowered his head then and rolled up the window. Nick was a little, twenty-year-old punk who needed to learn his place with women. He would not be doing that with Tatiana. She was mine. If he weren’t so dominant and such a good fighter I wouldn’t have allowed him to come.
Brayden grinned, he knew I’d just bitch-slapped Nick. “Do you know who woke her?” my second asked Tatiana respectfully, keeping his eyes above her neckline where they belonged. For a woman who claimed to not like getting hit on, she sure liked to wear cleavage popping shirts and tight jeans a lot.
Tatiana sighed, and it puffed out her already plump lips. “No one but a very, very powerful witch could have awoken Nyx early.”
My head reeled in her direction. “What are you saying?”
She put up her hands. “I’m saying someone in my coven probably woke her. Someone you’ve slept with I’m sure,” she added rolling her eyes.
Ouch. “Hey, I’ve only slept with like, three people from your coven and I’m over a hundred years old so that’s one every thirty years or so.” I defended myself.
She laughed wildly. “Don’t make me add them up in front of your boys.”
Fear gripped me. Jane, Willow and Frannie. That’s it. Oh wait, Mariah. Four, only four and I didn’t just sleep with them, I dated them. I was a goddamn grown man—I could do what I wanted!
“Adrianna,” she started to list and I’d totally forgotten about the New Years eve bash of 1993.
I put my hands out to stop her. “Okay, we get it. You think I’m a man-whore. Let’s just catch Nyx already, because I have a hot date tonight.” I smiled smugly.
She stepped off the curb and opened the back door, shooing Nick in order to scoot him over. “Take me to the cemetery,” she asked Brayden.
“Is that where she is?” I questioned her rationale. For all I knew, she’d muttered some tracker spell on Nyx.
Tatiana glared at me as I opened the door, making Brayden sit shotgun so I could drive.
“Witch magic works similar to pack magic. She killed Rowena so the coven magic fell to me, if she kills me, the coven magic falls to her as third in line.”
The very thought of Nyx trying to hurt Tatiana had my inner wolf rattling my skin like a cage, threating to break free. And the thought of Nyx ruling the Lightwood coven was beyond sickening.
“So she’s after you?” I asked, looking at her through the rearview mirror.
She nodded curtly. God, she fucking hated me.
I was an alpha. I needed to know the detailed plan. What didn’t she understand about that? “So we’re leading her to the cemetery, where she’ll try to kill you and we’ll hopefully put her back in her grave?” I asked her.
Tatiana clapped, looking around at my boys in the car. “He’s a genius,” she told the car.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel until my knuckles were white. Shoving my foot onto the gas, I took off.
Tonight might be the worst date of my life but I was determined to make this woman fall for me sometime this decade, and she was getting a spanking for that comment.
Three
Tatiana
Dax was getting on my very last nerve with all of his questions. Acting like he cared what happened to me or my coven. He was the self-centered, hired muscle and he needed to act like it. I had enough on my mind with my life at stake I didn’t want to have to dodge his advances while I was at it. He’d literally been hitting on me since the day I moved here from North Carolina two years ago. On top of all this Nyx drama, I had to figure out which of my coven mates betrayed us and resurrected her, no doubt in a bid to become her second.
When Dax pulled the SUV up to the cemetery, I saw that my coven was here, standing in a circle, looking up to the new moon for guidance. I’d have to tell them about Rowena, I’d have to appoint a second but I didn’t want to do that until I knew who’d betrayed us. My best friend Lydia was the only one I truly trusted but her lineage was not powerful enough to make second. She’d weaken the coven.
“Can you have your wolves surround the place?” I asked the alpha.
He nodded, and without a word his boys exited the car in unison and started stripping naked, shifting forms. Trading their lean chiseled human forms for their wolves. I never understood the werewolf male obsession, I was more of a vampire girl myself, maybe even a human before I’d date a were.
I popped open the car door and got out, then I reached down to gather my wand and a few other items, and when I looked up, Dax was standing right in front of me, shirtless, in low slung jeans and no underwear that I could see. Desire flushed through me, and I scolded my body for betraying my feelings.
“Would you like me in human form or wolf?” he asked in a husky voice.
His eyes were glowing orange and I knew that meant his wolf was close to the surface.
I cleared my throat. “Wolf. I’ll need all the teeth I can get.”
With that, he grinned and in one swift motion dropped his pants.
I swallowed hard, and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to look down at the dangling appendage I could see in my periphery. I hated Dax Cohen with every fiber of my being, but I’d always wondered what he looked like naked. Before I had to wrestle with the situation any longer, he started to shift, and I side-stepped him and began to walk to my coven. It took me a moment to catch my breath after seeing him naked like that. Cocky asshole or not he was nice to look at, even though I would never admit that out loud.
My coven was looking at me with worried eyes. They stood over Nyx’s churned up grave with a hundred questions, I’m sure. I had to play this smart, otherwise I was going to lose my head. Literally. Pulling out my wand, I traced a few protection spells up my arms, powerful ones similar to the kind Rowena had traced onto Dax. When I got within earshot of my coven, I wasted no time getting right to the point.
“Nyx has been resurrected, and Rowena has ascended,” I told my kin.
Their faces fell into shock and confusion, some were openly crying, holding onto each other as they simultaneously mourned our high priestess and dealt with the news of Nyx’s resurrection. Seraphina Pluckhart however, was not carrying a worried look. She looked… nervous.
Gotcha.
“One of our own has betrayed us and conjured her. I’m sure of it.” I stated as Seraphina slowly pulled her wand from her pocket.