‘The evil comes from the other half of the wendigo. Ones born here and those that want to rise in power tend to do very bad things. There are two ways to become a full wendigo. You find a mate to balance your power, or you drain a witch,’ Jared explained. ‘The men following us around chose not to drain a witch, and remain in their pledge stages. There are some good men here. I promise you.’
‘And your brother?’ Cassie asked, remembering the red-eyed monster that stared at her like she was its favorite snack.
‘Doesn’t know what he wants to be yet,’ Jared answered as they made their way back to the clearing by the barn.
Jared paused as they walked into the open. The moon was shining bright, and Cassie saw the way back to the house. Lights were on in various rooms, but there was one without a light. She didn’t need to see the silhouette in the window to know they were being watched. She could feel it through Jared.
‘My father doubts that we will bond,’ Jared explained the feelings Cassie could feel.
‘And he thinks a love potion will do the trick?’ she asked, seeing if her train of thought was right.
Jared’s father was a lot more observant than the rest of the wendigo and that worried Cassie. Nate had warned her that he was smart and cunning. She didn’t want him forcing Jared to look deeper into the thoughts she was trying to keep away from them.
‘Then I guess you better kiss me,’ Cassie replied.
Jared seemed momentarily shocked, but easily turned to her and pulled her close enough to kiss. Tilting her head back, she held onto the front of his shirt. He leaned down and met her halfway, and when his lips touched her, it made her stomach flutter. In the future she had seen, she had kissed him hundreds of times in secret. She remembered exactly how it felt, and it felt just as perfect now. There was something about Jared that was different than Nate. He didn’t kiss her with a desperation that she was leaving, but with the confidence she was already his. Pulling back, Jared smiled at her.
‘We still have an audience?’
‘Yep,’ he answered, and took her back to the house.
As they neared, Cassie could feel Ben through the bond. He was still in the house watching them as they entered. Jared turned and led her through the house to his bedroom. The evil presence followed them as they walked. Cassie kept her hand in Jared’s hand even though she wanted to run to his room as quickly as possible. Ben following them made her uneasy. So far he had been indifferent to whether they bonded or Jared killed her. She just didn’t want him to change his mind and decide she was more useful dead.
Opening his room door, Jared let Cassie in and shut the door without looking behind. Neither of them needed to see to know that his father was still stalking them.
‘He’s right outside the door now,’ he explained.
The barrier Cassie put up dulled her sense of him near. The bond was enough to show her Jared was right. Ben was standing just outside the doorway.
‘What is he waiting for?’ Cassie asked.
Jared shrugged. ‘My guess? He didn’t believe our kiss outside.’
‘Fine,’ Cassie replied, grabbing both of Jared’s hands and pulling him across the room.
Jared wasn’t expecting Cassie to do that and tripped, causing her to giggle.
“Not so graceful all the time I see,” Cassie teased.
Jared swept her into his arms. “You better hope I’m graceful now, or we both fall down.”
Cassie giggled more as Jared marched over to his bed, where he pretended to trip and dump her on it. She tried to roll out of the way when he fake fell to the bed, but instead got trapped beneath him.
“Hey, I’m stuck,” Cassie teased.
“Guess you need to pay me to get me to move,” he teased back.
‘Still there?’ she asked.
‘Yep.’
Cassie pushed up enough on her elbows for her lips to reach him. He was only momentarily shocked as he began to kiss her back. She could still feel Ben outside the room. What more would convince him? She needed to be more convincing but had no idea how to do so. She had never even had a boyfriend, and Jared was only the second guy she kissed, ever.
Pulling back, Jared gazed into her eyes. If she wanted, he was being an open book. The bond gave her access to his memories, but it was something different now. He was offering his past to her. He was offering everything to her.
Cassie took a deep breath. She had seen the future. She didn’t have real experience with boys, but her future would have been very different if someone hadn’t changed it all. She would have spent more time alone with him than anyone approved of. She would have been in love with Jared. Cassie thought of that future she saw and reached up to pull his face closer. She didn’t need to see his past now. She needed to remember what should have been.
Jared’s lips met hers, this time ready for her. She didn’t think as her hands roamed down his chest and began to undo each button of his shirt. When the last button was undone, Jared stood back up and silently crept to the closed door.
‘He’s gone. That round was convincing enough,’ Jared told her silently.
Cassie nodded. She’d go with that. She didn’t want to admit the real truth to him. For a brief moment, she forgot she was supposed to be convincing Ben that they were deeply in love. She was living in the memory of a future which would never happen. She wasn’t playing a part; she was feeling the emotion hidden in her heart.
An hour passed and Ben didn’t return. Jared and Cassie stayed near each other in the room in case he did, but he didn’t. Time passed slowly as Cassie watched Jared. She really knew nothing about him now. He was as much a stranger as Nate, yet somehow she was still connected to him. Kissing him felt as perfect as it did with Nate, and Jared was a lot more empathetic to her not wanting to be bonded to anyone. She wanted to be free to make her own choice, no matter how right it felt with either guy. She was worried the bonds would confuse her. Maybe she wouldn’t have felt anything if they hadn’t forced her to be their mates. Okay, that wasn’t true. She’d had a crush on Nate for years. And Jared had filled in her memories now.
Jared spent time on his phone and then his computer. Cassie didn’t dare turn on the TV in case that dulled the sound of Ben returning. She didn’t have much to do beyond think.
Was it bad that the coven was gone now? They were trying to force her to bind to Nate, and they wanted to drain all her witch powers as it sounded like they did to her mother. Without the coven, her life would have been much different. Then again, if she had the future she saw as a kid, her life would have been different also. All Cassie could figure was her life was supposed to be different. But that didn’t matter now. She needed to figure out what she wanted from her life at the moment and go with it. She had two great guys that wanted her in two completely different night human worlds. Their short term plan looked like it was working, but that was just it. It was a short term plan.
Jared glanced up from his phone. Cassie didn’t know if he was looking in on her thoughts. At this point, she kind of didn’t care. It wasn’t like she was hiding the fact that she was confused and wanted the world to freeze and let her off the crazy night human train.
“We should probably get ready to go. My dad likes to start everything at one, but we might want to go scope it out beforehand. Your cousin didn’t like my protest against binding you to everyone, and he left a bit easier than I expected,” Jared explained, finally talking.
“In that case, give me a minute here.” Cassie went to the kit and pulled out some ingredients. She hadn’t thought of it before, but there was one thing she could do.
She didn’t need much time to make a counter magic spell. It was easier than something from scratch. All they really had time for or needed was to make anything Jack tried to bounce off them. Cassie mixed the plants and squished the liquid from the leaves.
“Come here,” Cassie said to Jared, who had been watching her out of the corner of his eye.
Jared walked over and stoo
d in front of Cassie. She could feel the curiosity coming off him and through the bond, but she ignored it, just like she ignored the feeling of wanting to kiss him. She knew how the bond worked, and it played with her emotions. It was a mating bond after all, but Cassie had no intention of mating with anyone.
“Down here.” Cassie waved for him to bend down while she still held onto the mortar and moved the pestle out of the way.
Jared leaned down. Cassie dipped her fingers in the green goo and then dabbed it on his head. She added a bit of her own magic into the mixture.
“And this would be?” Jared asked, trying to look at his forehead.
“I like to call it my ‘I’m rubber, you’re glue’ mix. Whit and I figured this one out years ago to get through high school. It’s a reflection spell. It basically throws back at the spell caster what they just did. It only works once, so if something goes down, we’ll have to act from there,” Cassie explained.
“One chance, huh?” Jared asked, not touching it.
“Hey, that’s better than nothing.”
She still wished she knew how those sidhe magic users fought so easily, throwing magic out of their fingertips. It would have been helpful. She was going to have to make a note to call Devin some time and ask him or Nessa. They owed her that much, she hoped.
“Hey. I wasn’t knocking it. It’s more than I’m contributing.” Jared surrendered with his hands in the air. “Actually, after you go look upstairs at what you get to wear to the meeting tonight, you might regret sharing that with me.”
Cassie opened her eyes and was about to ask what he meant, but Jared pushed her before she could. “Upstairs.”
Jared went into the large walk-in closet in the room and pulled out a white bag just like the one Whitney had brought their homecoming dresses into school just weeks ago. After placing the bag on the bed, he backed up. Cassie looked at him, and he motioned for her to open it. How bad could it be? Whitney brought her essentially a shirt to wear to a dance. What could the wendigo want her to wear?
Cassie unzipped the bag. Deep purple fluff came out of the bag like it had been packed tightly. Cassie looked up to Jared. There was a lot more poof to the dress than the last one she wore.
“Not me. This is all my father. He kind of has this thing about wanting the ceremonies to be all fancy,” Jared explained.
“Then where’s your tux?” Cassie asked in reply.
Jared kind of shook his head. “Let me rephrase that. My father wants any women presented in front of the clan to be all fancy. If you couldn’t tell, we don’t have too many women around, and my father likes the ones we do to be dressed up.”
Cassie nodded. “Double standards.”
Jared nodded with her. “Yep. Double standards. Not my say, though. I’d rather much more of you be covered up. With your neck exposed, you’ll be a tempting meal for anyone there.”
She pulled the dress free from the bag and held it up by the hanger. The almost black dress was a full-length ball gown. The top was jeweled from the almost strapless top that was held by the thinnest spaghetti straps, down past the hips where all the extra material flared from. The dress wasn’t close to Cassie’s style, and the floor-length skirt seemed a bit counterproductive since Jared was expecting a fight.
“Where exactly are we going for this tonight?” Cassie asked, hoping they only had to go downstairs to the grand dining room. Her aunt said something about a ritual space in the woods. The dress wasn’t for hiking.
“The woods.” Jared tried to look away as he talked.
“The woods?” Cassie asked as if she heard wrong. Who would take a girl out into the woods in a dress like that? Is he serious? she thought.
“We have a stone outcrop that we use when we deal with the full clan,” Jared explained.
“The full clan?” Cassie asked. She was glad she was getting more details, but wasn’t sure she really wanted to hear them. When he said she would be a tempting meal, she was imagining for a few wendigo. She had no clue how big a full clan would be.
Jared shrugged. “Me becoming a full wendigo means that I’ll move into the spot as my father’s second-in-command. I become the beta to my father the alpha. It’s kind of a big deal.” Jared rubbed his head, pulling back his brown locks. He seemed embarrassed by it all.
Cassie rubbed her forehead. Life just couldn’t be easy for her.
“I wear this dress to go for a walk through the woods to some stones, to meet with the whole clan that will view me as a meal? Didn’t your father say something about witch blood being enticing? Is this safe? How the heck do I run away in a dress like this?”
Cassie wasn’t looking forward to all of it anyway, but the wendigo still scared her. She saw them every night in her dreams. Their red eyes haunted every moment her eyes closed for the past week, except for when Jared was holding her. The bonding thing was getting less and less inviting than it already was, and that was hard to do since bonding to another night human in front of a bunch of hungry, scary night humans was the last thing she wanted to do.
“Cassie, I will never let anything happen to you,” Jared told her solemnly, picking up on her fears.
“Let? I don’t doubt you would try to keep me safe, but let’s be real. I’ve seen enough in the past two weeks to know that we have very little control over anything.”
Jared stopped looking at the dress and picked up her hand.
“As long as I’m breathing, you’ll be safe. No one will harm you before or after this ceremony.”
Cassie gave him a weak smile. She used to be optimistic like him, but that had changed. She now lived in the real world and knew what was waiting for her. Jared was honestly pledging his life to her and because of the bond, there wasn’t much they could do that didn’t involve the other, but that still didn’t mean things would easily go their way. Cassie had felt Jared’s father at the doorway through the bond. He was making sure his son was really going to bond with Cassie, but she felt something else. He wasn’t just being the nice, doting father. There was something behind him that she couldn’t put her finger on. Ben was just one more mystery for her, one that scared the crap out of her. When she looked in his eyes, she only saw evil. Jared’s pledge was nice, but Cassie knew they had less control than he realized.
CHAPTER 10
“You’re not serious,” Cassie complained for the second time.
She was standing outside in the cool night air in nothing more than a spaghetti-strapped prom dress. Jared had just explained it would be quickest for her to let him carry her to the meeting place because it was far away.
“When you said in the woods, I don’t know, I kind of pictured taking a car somewhere and getting out close by,” Cassie complained.
She really didn’t want to be in the thick of the woods at nighttime to begin with, but Jared taking her meant she had no chance to know where she was going or how to get back to the safe room she had created with her spell.
Jared didn’t wait for her to agree as he scooped her into his arms.
“I can take you, or we can go find Jack. I’m sure he would be more than willing to flash you over there, but you’ll either have to wait here or there for me to catch up.”
Cassie pouted. She really didn’t want to wander around the wood in a prom dress or without shoes. That was the kicker of it all—they expected her to stand around the woods without shoes. She kind of got the sense that was planned to keep her from running, but she wasn’t about to say that out loud. Jared was already embarrassed by the weirdness of all of it.
“It works best if you keep your eyes closed. Otherwise you might get a little motion sick,” Jared explained.
“I know. Not my first time carried through the woods like a sack of potatoes. Whitney’s carried me around before.” Cassie added the last part as she felt the jealousy rise in him when she mentioned it wasn’t her first time. “She, at least, lets me stay warm.”
Cassie tucked her arms into the light coat Jared was wearing and huddled
against his bare chest. It seemed his clothing choice was made for him and included only a pair of elastic waist pants that would be too short when he finally transformed.
“See, not so bad,” Jared commented, obviously enjoying the snuggled together position.
“Speak for yourself, buddy,” Cassie replied. Jared mocked being hurt since he could feel her emotions just as she could feel his across the bond. “You’re not being dragged off into the woods in a ball gown and no shoes.”
“Hey, half naked here. Not much better off. No shoes either.” Jared picked up a foot, wiggling his toes for her to see.
He had her there. He wasn’t in any better clothing position, but at least he didn’t care about the cold. Normally Cassie didn’t mind the cold either. She loved the winter and the few snow storms that came with it, but while her nerves were becoming unraveled, she didn’t need the cold to remind her how messed up everything was.
“Ready?” Jared asked, glancing down at her in his arms.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Neither of us does,” Jared answered with the truth of the matter.
His father’s order was bothering him. He wanted nothing more than to make his own choices and not have his life dictated to him. His father walked a fine line with Jared. Ben knew enough to back off every now and then and pretend like Jared had an option, but Cassie could see it through Jared’s memories that he had no option in anything. His father was grooming him into his second-in-command, and there was no out for Jared. She knew that feeling all too well. She had yet to find a way out herself.
Jared began with a couple of slow steps before picking up speed. Closing her eyes, she pressed her face into his chest. Jared laughed as he ran faster. If she opened her eyes, she would see nothing. When Nate attacked him the day before, she had seen that Jared moved almost as fast as the wind.
The bond was clear to Cassie as she pressed against him. He was enjoying his run and actually considered slowing down to have a few more seconds. His feelings were loud and clear. He was in love with her and had been since they were children. Had their lives turned out as they were supposed to, Cassie would have been in love with him, too. But her life wasn’t that way. Part of her tried to convince the rest of her that she remembered him. In reality, she knew Jared even less than Nate. At least, she had seen Nate five days a week for the past eight years as they went to school together. Jared was still a mystery she was learning more about.