Sophie had only just recently learned that. Right about the time a certain wolf came into her life. Of course, she’d learned about wolves in witch classes, but she’d hated every single moment of those classes, so she rebelled against retaining anything in her memory.
The moon did make wolves stronger when it was full, though. Which was both a good and a bad thing. She knew Conall was weakened, and in pain—the mere thought made her palms crackle with the need to punish someone, end someone—and the moon would give him a burst of power.
But she also sensed that those responsible for his pain might be of the wolf persuasion too, making them stronger.
Not that she was overly worried.
Because she had something in common with the wolves. Not excess body hair—she was lasered from the neck down, thank you, human technology—but the fact that she gained power from the moon.
Witches either derived it from the day or night, sun or moon. Two castes. Not dark and light, but more like a representative of the kind of powers Nature blessed a witch with, magicks that related to both of the life-giving planets, and each witch was more powerful either on the rising or the setting of the sun.
It just so happened that Sophie was a moon baby too.
So despite having nearly expelled all her juice while travelling to Albania and healing the human and all that jazz, Sophie was getting a pick-me-up from the moon that her wolf howled to.
A branch whipped forward unexpectedly and smacked Sophie right in the face. She glared at it and then promptly cast a spell to make the whole branch, and the tree attached to it, wither and die.
“I fucking hate nature,” she hissed, stomping through the woods. Not very witchy of her, considering Mother Nature was the being Sophie had to thank for her powers, but whatever. Sophie had always been the bad witch, and she had to own her title.
And she liked nature.
Coffee came from beans. That was nature.
Vodka came from potatoes—nature.
And she lived for Ozzy. No way he came from anything but the magical nature.
Power hit her as she approached a clearing in the dense brush. She cast a quick spell to enhance her hearing. She’d already cloaked her scent before she left, mindful of the fact that werewolves could smell from great distances and it would totally fuck up her entrance if they scented her before they saw her.
“You are going to tell us, Conall,” a voice rasped. There was a low buzz and a grunt.
Sophie stiffened and her palms glowed, leaves withering all around her. They were using a fucking cattle prod on her wolf? They were so fucking dead.
She should’ve stayed and listened for longer, gained more intel, had surer footing to attack on, but her fury didn’t let her. Plus her footing was already fucked since she was wearing five-inch Jimmy Choos for this little nature walk.
She let go of her cloaking spell the same second she appeared in the clearing, Conall’s eyes tattooed her the moment she did so, his growl echoing through the woods. Though it was animal, it was coming from his human form. His fucking battered human form.
Sophie froze for a long moment as she ran her eyes over him. One of his eyes was swollen shut, which meant it was either a recent wound or he was too weakened to regenerate as he should. He was in a cage that thrummed with magic. It was spelled not only to stop him escaping, but to stop him changing, and stop him fucking healing.
It also had Nora’s magical imprint all over it.
Bitch wants war, then.
He was shirtless, his muscled torso spattered with bruises and puncture wounds. Blood soaked his left arm, which hung limply as if it had been ripped from its socket.
His aura was ripped, shredded, and bleeding.
He shouldn’t have been standing, let alone pounding at the bars as he started to do the second he’d seen Sophie. Elation, anger, desperation, and violence ripped through his fractured aura.
Sophie tore her eyes away from him with effort to focus on the three men in the middle of the clearing. There was not much there but a small fire, a cooler with a couple of half-drunk beer bottles atop it. And a variety of weapons.
The air buzzed with the power Sophie called up.
“Hey, boys. Little camping trip with a side of torture, is it?” she asked, sauntering forward. Insects crawled from holes in the ground, worms wiggling upward from in front of and behind her. Spiders scattered amongst the trees, advancing with a fury fueled by Sophie.
Two snakes slithered past her ankles, caressing them as she walked, hissing as they approached the suddenly pale-looking wolves. She muttered a command and the serpents both advanced on the man holding the cattle prod. He dropped it immediately to try and kick at the snakes, growling at them.
One went flying through the air as he swatted it away, the other latched onto his neck.
Sophie smiled at the other two slightly paler wolves, gaping at the creatures of the night around her.
No butterflies or ladybirds for this witch.
She grinned. “Harry Potter wasn’t the only magical badass who spoke parseltongue,” she said with a bite to her voice, a rumble that was familiar to the one who’d attached herself to her voice that day with Rick in the clearing. The day the power almost consumed her.
But nothing would be consuming Sophie that night. She held ironclad control over the power that had threatened to destroy her before. The moon seeped its strength into her, the natural pull giving her focus that complemented her fury perfectly.
The muscled wolves who’d originally been shocked and fearful of Sophie became less so as she strutted closer and revealed herself to be a petite, tattooed woman wearing leather hot pants and a ripped Yeezy tee shirt.
Their mistake.
As was the leer at her exposed pins.
“I will kill you for looking at my mate like that,” Conall snarled from his position trying to rip at the bars.
The bald and muscled werewolf who reeked of beer and cruelty grinned. “You’re mated with a witch?” he spat, his eyes centered on her tits. “Well I’m going to have some fun with her.” He glanced to his slightly shorter and less-muscled companion, the cattle prod one still trying to wrench the snake from his neck. “We’ll both take her.” He glanced back to Sophie. “Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you—at the beginning, anyway. Wouldn’t want to spoil our fun later.” His words were full of male arrogance that came from a terrible upbringing, lack of brain cells, and the belief that muscles and a cock meant strength and superiority.
Sophie was so happy she was going to be the one to give him a much-needed education.
She put her hand on her hip, licking her lips and gazing at the trio through her lashes.
“People, more specifically immortal alpha males, seem to keep underestimating me,” she said conversationally as the men ripped free of their human form and exploded into snarling werewolves three times their size. They advanced on her slowly. The third one had rid himself of the snake and was now sporting an angry and swollen-looking bite that had streaks of red running upward from his chin. It might kill him, the venom, but he was immortal, so it’d likely just piss him off. Sophie was not perturbed.
Conall obviously was, if the roars from inside the bars were anything to go by.
Sophie ignored him and focused on the werewolves in front of her. “I’m especially underestimated if these immortals can turn into big and scary werewolves who think they can scare little damsels like me.”
Just as the wolves prepared to strike, she cast out a wave of power, knocking all three of them back at least the length of a football field. Each hit a tree—felled a tree, actually—and crumpled amongst the trunks, morphing into their human selves and not moving.
She suspected they might be napping for a hot minute.
She hadn’t actually killed any of them as she itched to. It wasn’t the time to go around killing immortals willy-nilly.
Not now at least.
She might come back for them later.
“Now you see I’m not a damsel. I’m actually a wolf, bigger and badder and better than any of you,” she yelled at the unconscious men, for dramatic effect more than anything else.
“Sophie!” Conall roared from the bars, his skin pulsating with his need to change, to get to her.
She glanced at him. “I’m coming! Can you not let a girl have her moment?” she huffed, stomping over the leaves to get to the cage. She clung to her façade as she came closer to see exactly what those assholes had done to him.
“Okay, I’m totally changing my mind. I’m going to kill them all,” she hissed, her voice shaky. It didn’t matter that she was seriously tapped out. It just meant she had to tap into something she’d been avoiding because she was scared she couldn’t handle it. Scared it might destroy her.
Seeing Conall—her wolf—covered in cuts, bruises, and blood, his cheekbones gaunt and hollow from obvious lack of food, that tortured look in his golden eyes, she welcomed destruction if it meant she could get revenge.
“No,” he commanded, voice so strong and sure it gave Sophie pause.
She locked eyes with Conall.
“You are not to kill them,” he said. His eyes bored into her, as if he could see what she would need to do to spill death blood that night. “Unlock me, and let me feel you so I know this is not a dream. Let me fucking taste you,” he snarled, his eyes wild.
A slave to his command, Sophie did just that, muttering a spell that yanked away the enchantments keeping Conall in. She was about to do the same with the rudimentary lock, but Conall ripped it off its hinges and sent it flying toward the spot where she’d tossed the men.
It fell short.
She grinned. “I can throw farther than you,” she teased.
But then she wasn’t grinning or teasing because her wolf pounced on her, his hands tangling in her hair, yanking her mouth to his, and absolutely ruining her with his kiss. It was like the first breath of oxygen after suffocating to death. Or the taste of water after perishing from thirst.
It was everything. The ache that Sophie had been carrying didn’t diminish, though. It only increased with his nearness, her utter need for him unyielding and urgent.
“Conall,” she rasped, pulling her lips back and meeting the eyes of a wolf—her wolf. She didn’t flinch away, merely clutched him tighter. “I need you.”
He growled, his body flexing with his need to change. She understood it then. However long he’d been trapped in there, he’d been unable to unleash his beast. She knew a wolf needed to change on a regular basis, that being deprived of such a thing was some of the worst torture imaginable.
And he was fighting that need, that intrinsic, basic need that was etched in his DNA.
Her heart slammed in her chest, her power pulsating in her fingertips, the need to kill leaving her as her need for the wolf eclipsed everything else.
“Sophie,” he gritted out, his voice barely human.
She lifted her hand to stroke his cheek in a tenderness she didn’t know she was capable of. She used the skin-to-skin contact to run the last of her magic through him, to knit his bones together, seal his cuts, erase his bruises. It took everything she had, even with the full moon, because she was also fighting the power she’d called up to fight with the werewolves.
Not that she cared. She would’ve given Conall everything.
Though he was almost beyond human comprehension, all his effort going to stopping the change. He blinked at her in amazement, then anger.
“You are not strong enough to heal me and protect yourself,” he growled.
She grinned. “Well, that’s what I’ve got a big bad wolf for.” She stopped grinning. “For now, at least. This is a onetime thing, since I feel bad about not coming to your rescue sooner.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, not saying anything, but she knew he wasn’t at all hot on the idea of her riding in and saving the day.
“Conall,” she prompted, pushing his chin up to face the moon. “I think I was promised a big bad wolf.”
His eyes swirled from gold to silver, enchanted by the moon, transfixed by it. Her fingers slipped from his chin as he grew larger, his bones cracking to make room for the new ones hidden by whatever magic it was that made a man turn into a wolf.
With effort that amazed Sophie, Conall wrenched his gaze from the moon to stare at her, to stop mid-change.
“You’re mine,” he gritted out, his voice guttural.
She blinked at him.
He glared back in expectation, waiting despite every muscle quaking with exertion. The very moon waiting so it could take its control back.
Then Sophie realized it.
He’d stopped in the middle of one of the most strenuous and uncontrollable changes in the supernatural world to make her admit that she was his. Fuck, he took alpha male to a new level. She had a vague urge to snap Isla a pic and say, ‘My boyfriend’s more hardcore than yours.’
But then she would have to stop looking at the wolf.
Her wolf.
“I’m not yours,” she said, taunting the beast who could literally rip her throat out. It was known to happen, even with friends and wives. When changed, things simplified for the wolves; they could still understand human words, but they could only take basic meanings from them, unable to distinguish complicated undertones.
In other words, Sophie was playing with fire. She could taste the danger in the air, so much starker than it had been with the three wolves who’d wanted to rape and kill her.
“I’m not yours,” she repeated. “But you’re mine.”
The danger passed like a plastic bag floating away in the wind.
Conall let out a growl and then faced the moon, happy enough with Sophie’s subversion on the classic alpha male declaration to let the lunar god take control.
Sophie watched, unable to look away as Conall morphed, changed, grew.
She’d never thought he’d be more magnificent—not that she had really admitted to herself that’s what she thought he was until now—than what he was in his human form, everything ruggedly beautiful.
But she was wrong.
The wolf he let out of the cage of his skin was more than merely beautiful. The silken fur covering the beautiful beast was the shimmering gold of his eyes, like it had been melted down from the crowns of the most powerful of monarchs. It shined against the silver of the moon, reflecting off it.
He was larger than the wolves she’d dispatched earlier. Much larger. He towered over her, hazel-flecked eyes focused so intently on her that she could see the reflection of herself in his irises. His gaze betrayed everything that Conall—human Conall—always did; nothing was lost in his transformation. It wasn’t unnatural or jarring, though. This was Conall. A beautifully dangerous and deadly part of him.
She stepped forward, lifting her hand so she could sink it into his golden fur. She shivered coming into contact with him, the warmth running through his entire form shooting into her very bones, giving her a burst of pure energy that was as natural as she had ever experienced. As pure.
It chased away the chill that calling up her grave power had given her. Chased away all that dread she’d been carrying around for months. The death that stalked her. That was attached to her very soul. Chased away everything until there was just that moment. There was just the comforting glow of the moon, the intoxicating stare of her wolf.
Just her and Conall and the woods surrounding them.
It was the most natural thing in the world for her to fist his coat while he kneeled so she could climb onto his back.
If someone had told her a handful of months ago that she’d be riding the werewolf who she was vaguely obsessed with, Sophie would’ve laughed in their face and then kicked them in the shins. Maybe cursed them with a never-ending hangnail if she was feeling sassy.
But there she was, feeling like everything in her life had built her up to that moment. Like it was a fault in fate, to put a damaged and death-stained witch with a tortured and dangerou
s werewolf.
Under the lingering and watchful gaze of the moon, they tore into the night.
Chapter Nine
Sophie’s booted heels landed with a crunch on the gravel, the ground feeling foreign and wrong to her when she’d been flying for so long.
That’s what it had been like. Hurtling through the night, above the ground, watching as the world flashed by in a blur. Utter freedom.
Witches didn’t fly, whatever popular culture said. Broomsticks were literally utilized for sweeping kitchens—and in Sophie’s case, snapping in half and used to impale an annoying demon.
It was addictive, that feeling. Like she’d just taken a hit of heroin—not that she’d ever done it, but she imagined this was like a drug. Total euphoria, a singing of the blood, a haze over the eyes, a rapid yet comforting heartbeat. And then it was being yanked away as the wolf in front of her shrank, sank back into the man who replaced him.
“We have to do that again,” she breathed, eyes lazily taking in Conall’s beautifully muscled and scarred body. It was healthy, fuller, more vibrant than it had ever been, like someone had come in and oiled him up to prepare for a GQ shoot.
Her eyes moved lower, past his delightful V pointing to the most exciting spot on a male, and then she paused, snapping her eyes back up to his. “How is it that your clothes aren’t, like, ripped to shreds?” she demanded, looking at the stained and ripped jeans he’d been wearing before. “That’s just totally weird.”
He smirked. Smirked!
Well, not exactly. The corner of his mouth turned up the slightest amount. It could’ve been a trick of the light, but Sophie was choosing to classify that as a smirk.
He stepped forward so his hands bit into her hips and pushed her backward so the cold metal of her Jeep pressed into her back. “The woman who commanded serpents and insects is telling me what’s weird?”
Sophie grinned at him. He was making a little joke. Who was this man? “You’re in good spirits for a wolf who’s literally been locked in a cage and tortured for… how long did they have you in there for?”
“Eight days, four hours, forty-eight minutes,” he replied, voice rough but not full of that pain she’d expect from someone recounting their time in brutal captivity.