‘They need to be some place we can remove on our own, no back, upper chest, upper arm.’ Nate looked at them with Cassie.
Cassie glanced down the front of herself. She really didn’t want them anywhere, but if it allowed her past the spells, it was worth it. And they were safe. There was no way Jared would give her something not safe. Cassie lifted up her shirt and pointed to her left hip. It was close enough she could take it out if she needed, but would almost always be covered up.
‘That will work,’ Nate replied, moving closer with his knife. ‘Give them both to me. I’ll put them in both of us quick enough since my healing will take over if you’re too slow.’
Cassie normally would have protested his bossy attitude, but he was right, and they didn’t have time. Jared was holding the bond off and wasn’t going to last much longer. She relented and gave the spells over to him.
‘I’ll make it as quick as I can,’ Nate promised her. Cassie put her hands on his shoulder to balance as he bent down. ‘Ready?’
Cassie was never going to be ready for the pain she knew was coming. Nate didn’t wait for her to speak as she didn’t feel the knife until the cut was made. She did feel as he placed the spell under the skin and the skin tightened around it as it knitted back together.
‘Hey,’ she complained, smacking his chest as he stood. ‘You didn’t wait for me to say I was ready.’
Nate gave her her favorite lopsided smile. ‘You were never going to say you were ready.’
He had her there. Nate took her arm and opened the door to meet Jared again. The bond with him snapped back into place, and Cassie realized that she didn’t notice when it was gone. Jared nodded to Nate. She didn’t know how long the camaraderie would last, or if it was just because Nate’s father had just been killed, but it wasn’t going to last forever. As she wasn’t ever going to be ready to purposely be cut, she wasn’t ever going to be ready to have to choose between them. She liked it much better when they were best friends rather than enemies.
Cassie sat on a hay bale in the old loft at Nate’s house where they had spent hours as children playing. Jared was seated beside her while Owen was across from them, taking his time glaring at Jared and Ryder. No matter how much Cassie told him to stop it, it seemed like Owen couldn’t help himself. Whitney was still sitting with Jack and talking as if they picked up right from earlier when Cassie found them outside waiting at Jared’s place.
It was strange to see Jack being nice. She pretty much only saw him as evil after he had tried to skin Nate and bond her to the whole wendigo clan. Even though Jack understood her protection spell better than she did, that still didn’t make it right. And there was no way anyone could convince her that taking Nate’s tiger from him was right, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop Whitney from chatting away with him. Whitney hadn’t been herself all week with her family missing, and it was like she actually was back for a moment. Good old Whitney was back, even if only temporarily, and Cassie wasn’t going to change that; even if her cousin was a bad guy in disguise right now.
Jared held his hand up, and everyone in the loft became silent. The small gray box in front of them crackled as Nate’s voice came across.
“Come in.”
Nate was down in his father’s office waiting for the coven’s high priestess to show up. They would be the first to stop by. Everyone assumed that Nate didn’t know the clan business as he was still a teenager, but he had bugged his father’s office years ago and had been listening in on everything since. Even after his father noticed, he didn’t stop. It was a good initiative of Nate’s to learn, and he let him continue to observe.
“Nathaniel, we are sorry to have to come to you at a time like now and bring up coven business,” one of the ladies said. Cassie didn’t know how many people came to see him or who “we” really was.
Cassie closed her eyes and tried to get a better sense of what she was listening to. Like a door opening, her mind was flooded with images. They slowed down, and she focused on the one in front of her. She was in Nate’s father’s office—rather Nate’s office, now. In front of him stood two women. Cassie recognized the coven leader immediately; she was the same one that had locked Cassie in her uncle’s house to keep her from being taken by the wendigo. The other one Cassie had never seen before.
‘Cheryl, the seer,’ Nate informed her.
“Have a seat.” Nate offered the chairs in front of him.
Both ladies lingered by the door, choosing to keep standing as Nate sat. Nate didn’t blink an eye at them, but Cassie could recognize the disrespect he was feeling at the slight. They wanted to be higher than him. Technically they couldn’t get higher than him since he was the alpha, but that didn’t seem to matter to them. The body language told them all they needed to know. They thought they were in charge.
“What business do you need to discuss urgently?” Nate asked, standing to meet them eye-to-eye. Well, not exactly eye-to-eye since he towered over both of them, but then again, that was on purpose, too.
Cassie was beginning to see that with the night humans, actions spoke as loud as words. She was going to have to watch closer now. She was able to see that things ran differently with the night humans, but seeing it from Nate’s eyes was a bit more of an intro into how it really was.
She wondered, too, what the urgent business was. The witches were the reason everyone headed back to Nate’s house instead of going to talk to Cassie’s uncle and aunt about everything. The priestess and seer demanded an immediate meeting with Nate.
The priestess moved from her spot behind the chair and sat down. The seer did the same. Only then did Nate sit, but he didn’t relax. They acted like they were old friends going to have a chat, but Nate knew better. They were technically the two most powerful witches in the clan, or at least they thought they were.
“Your mate isn’t here?” the seer asked, looking around the room like there was somewhere Cassie could be hiding.
“She’s busy at the moment,” Nate answered, refusing to elaborate.
It had been his insistence that Cassie remain in the loft with everyone else until he was sure that they came alone. The two older witches weren’t a problem, but if they brought more people, Nate wanted Cassie out of their crosshairs. He didn’t trust the witches to just let him take over as the alpha. They were always playing games with his father, so he was sure it would be the same for him, too.
“She’s why we came over here urgently. The full moon is in two more nights, and that’s the best time to do the rituals to make you alpha. But we can’t make you alpha unless you are bonded to your mate,” the priestess said, flicking her blond hair behind her shoulder with practiced ease.
“Don’t we normally do bindings on a full moon?” Nate asked innocently like he didn’t already know everything about the coven.
The seer nodded her head with a slight shrug.
“Ideally,” the priestess responded. “But we can arrange for your bonding tomorrow and then you take over as alpha the next night. There should be enough pull with the moon close to full for the bond to work completely.”
Nate nodded along with them. He had already explained to Cassie that the ceremonies were all fake. They didn’t need to do a ceremony to bond. That much was obvious. He explained that the alpha had nothing to do with ceremonies of the witches either. When an alpha died, the next powerful, mated skinwalker was the next alpha. They just did all the formal stuff to keep the coven happy and feeling like they were in control. Cassie did have to promise to never tell anyone in the coven that.
Nate’s head snapped to the door at the sound of a knock. The priestess and seer were slower to respond.
“Yes?” Nate called loudly.
“We need your help right now,” Owen said as he stuck his head in the door.
Cassie hadn’t noticed that he had left the loft as planned. Nate was all ready for them. His plan was to lure the witches into his office alone and feeling comfortable to talk so that everyone could h
opefully hear some of their intentions. Leaving once they were there was all part of the plan.
Nate looked up to Owen. He nodded to him. Owen was great at acting. No one would guess there was something going on.
“I’ll be back as quick as I can,” Nate told the two women.
They both look surprised that Owen was there, or that anyone would want Nate’s attention beyond them. Nate stood up and walked past the two seated women. He was relieved at leaving the room. He didn’t like dealing with them any more than anyone else.
Cassie snapped back to the room around her. Whitney was still seated with Jack, but not talking now. Ryder was leaning against a hale bale next to Jared, and Jared was seated, staring at the receiving box of Nate’s microphone in his office. He had obviously been listening in on the conversation and watching along with Cassie.
Jared was an asset to have around when dealing with the witches because he had already done so more than he ever wanted. According to Jared, the witches provoked most of the disagreement between the skinwalkers and wendigo. It was true that most of the older wendigo disliked the skinwalkers because they had been kicked out, but the younger generation had no reason to feel the same hatred. Everything they felt was provoked by the witches.
It took only moments for Owen and Nate to return, but the women didn’t wait long to begin talking.
“He seems to be easy to manipulate,” the seer commented.
“At least easier than his father. We need to thank whoever did that for us. It was getting hard to control Mikel. He was starting to lean toward letting Cassie keep her powers,” the priestess added in disgust.
“Not a problem now,” the seer replied.
That surprised Cassie. She assumed that with the wendigo not responsible for Mikel’s death, it had to be the witches. That didn’t seem to be the case, though, either. It was some mysterious person they were looking for. Cassie was unsure what that meant. There was a third party involved. It was hard to fight someone you didn’t know was playing.
Someone in the room stood, and rustling at the desk could be heard. Papers shuffled more. Cassie looked up at Nate as he stood at the doorway. He concentrated on the box, waiting for it to give them more details, but Cassie felt the underlying anger. They were going through his desk.
“I should go back with you,” Cassie told him. “Just to be sure they didn’t do anything with magic to your stuff.”
Nate nodded from his spot but didn’t come any closer.
“Will there really be enough time to get everything set up for the draining on top of the binding?” the seer asked. “I know we need the power from the draining to bind Nate to us instead of us to him, but aren’t we cutting it close? Maybe we should drain her on the full moon and bind him on the next.”
“No, we have to work fast now. If we work hard tonight we can get it all set up,” the priestess replied. She was closer to the microphone and likely the one going through Nate’s stuff, or rather Mikel’s stuff. “We can’t let him have a month to make decisions without our approval.”
“What do we do if Maria and John catch on to what we’re doing?”
“Maria has as much sight as you do,” the priestess replied. “She won’t know until it’s too late, just like everyone else. We can send her away today and tell her she can be back in time for the binding on the full moon. We never do this on the day before, so she won’t suspect a thing.”
There was more shuffling of papers. Nate motioned for Cassie to join him. She stood up, and Jared reached for her hand. She gave it a squeeze before letting go to reassure him nothing bad was going to happen. The priestess and the seer were strong, but they weren’t the assassin, no matter what they were looking for in Nate’s stuff.
“Are you sure we need to take all her power?” the seer asked hesitantly. Cassie paused at the doorway. “Like couldn’t we strip half her power? Then, at least, she’ll still be part of the coven.”
“Getting cold feet now?” the priestess replied. “Her mother was trouble, and she will be also if she grows into her power. We have to keep the coven safe, and this is the only way we can do that.”
Nate nodded to Jared behind Cassie. She turned back to see Jared looking at Nate. Cassie shook her head at the guys as they seemed to pass her off from one to the other like a child that needed protecting. Cassie needed to figure out how to do the seer thing, and quickly if she wanted any chance of being able to help everyone.
The priestess and the seer were surprisingly sweet to Cassie when she showed up back in Nate’s office with him. At a quick glance, the room seemed untouched, but Cassie could sense magic in spots randomly around the room. She kept her eyes on the two ladies, even though she felt more than enough to know that it was possible her friends weren’t the only ones listening in on the conversation.
Nate picked up on what Cassie felt and cordially sent the two ladies on their way with promises that they were excited to bond and get everything official. Once he closed the door, Cassie walked around the room and showed Nate which objects all had magic on them.
‘Do they seriously not know what happened last week?’ Cassie asked silently as she felt around the bookshelf. There were many little objects, and she didn’t want to miss a single one that might have magic on it.
‘What do you mean?’ Nate inquired as he looked through the papers on the desk, trying to remember exactly what had been there.
‘That I stopped the fight between the wendigo and the skinwalkers by being bonded to both of you,’ Cassie replied.
Nate shrugged. ‘They think that it was only from our mate connection. I might have told them we can’t communicate through our minds, and they think that means that everything isn’t complete, and we need the bonding ceremony.’
Cassie turned around and gave him a look that said, “you've got to be kidding me.” She didn’t need to give him a look as he heard her thoughts.
‘So this crap tomorrow is all your doing?’ Cassie asked.
Nate shrugged. ‘I guess. I mean I told my father the truth, but he suggested that we keep it a secret for now. Kind of my fault, but mostly his.’
‘Sure, blame the one that can’t defend himself,’ Cassie replied, pointing to another knick-knack in a shape that she couldn’t recognize.
‘A polar bear,’ Nate told her, seemingly randomly.
‘A what?’ Cassie was confused.
‘You didn’t know what it was. Seventh-grade art. As you can tell, sculpture isn’t my best medium,’ Nate joked.
Cassie looked back at the object that was very obviously made by a kid. She laughed a little. She would have never guessed Nate made it, or that it was supposed to be a polar bear. And the fact that his father kept it on display was adorable. Cassie looked closer at all the objects on the shelves.
There were art projects like the ceramic polar bear, but also trophies from various sports Nate excelled at, awards in frames from everything from second-grade Spelling Bee champ to being Student of the Week in fifth grade.
‘He really loved you,’ Cassie said as she realized everything on the shelves was something that reminded her of Nate.
The only memories of Mikel Cassie had from her childhood included him at formal meetings. He was never there to hang around with the kids when they got together. He was never there watching as they learned to ride horses, or to take them to the beach to swim in the lake. He wasn’t there when Nate’s mother would order enough pizza to feed a football team, and Nate and Jared would compete with who could eat more. In fact, Cassie couldn’t recall a single memory of Mikel that wasn’t official. Mikel was more an absent father than anything, but it wasn’t by choice. He kept his office decorated with things that reminded him of his family. Pictures dotted the walls and sat around the room in frames, but every single accomplishment of Nate’s were on display directly across from his desk for Mikel to see every day.
‘He did the best he could,’ Nate replied with a shrug.
Cassie couldn’t help but t
hink of the future that could have been. It was Mikel that made Nate understand that Cassie was off-limits. Cassie had to wonder if Mikel knew the truth that the seer could have a mate, or not. Did he keep Nate away to keep him safe, or because he truly didn’t know?
Startled, Cassie looked up as Nate stopped right in front of her. She hadn’t noticed that he had moved across the room.
‘You keep thinking of that vision, but you won’t let me see all of it,’ Nate complained.
Cassie smiled up at him, faking it as best she could. ‘I thought you guys saw everything in my mind.’
‘Most of the time yes, but with that, no. You keep that from me. Why?’
Cassie shrugged. It was nice to know she could keep secrets, even if she didn’t know how.
‘That’s all I could find. I can come back again and look once you get rid of everything,’ Cassie suggested, changing the subject.
Nate nodded. They had agreed that he would remove everything once she was gone so that no one knew it was her that actually found them. They had to keep everyone thinking she was weaker than she really was to keep the surprise ready for when they needed it.
Cassie glanced back one last time at the desk. A small glint of magic stood out to her.
‘Wait,’ Cassie told Nate as she hurried over behind the desk. She picked up a few papers to leave the offending one at the top. Cassie didn’t mean to touch it, but when she did, she felt a tingle zap from it, like a static shock. It forced her to close her eyes.
Cassie reopened her eyes to complete darkness.
‘Nate?’ she called, but there was no response.
Torches ignited around her and her eyes adjusted to the near darkness. Cassie sucked in her breath as she noticed she was standing in the middle of a witch casting circle.
“Cassandra and Nathaniel, are you both ready to commit your lives to each other forever?” the priestess’ voice came from the darkness.
Cassie glanced around. She had no idea where she was or what was going on. Standing in the middle of a circle was not a good thing. Faintly she could make out people all around it. Cassie’s heartbeat picked up. This wasn’t good.