Page 1 of Starting a New Life

Prologue

Alexander

Five months prior

It was already dark outside when I turned on the blinker and left the main road. A quick glance at the dashboard told me it was almost midnight. Usually, it’d be way too late to check in with my coven leaders, but I’d been ordered to drive straight to the coven house. No detours. Not even to change clothes after the fucking twenty-hour-long drive.

My hands trembled, and I gripped the steering wheel tighter as my little beat-up Prius rumbled over the hidden driveway. It was little more than a beaten path overgrown with brush, which was scratching the sides of my silver car.

And that was the reason I didn’t buy a new one. Well, one of the reasons. The other one was me being broke. Which was ridiculous, considering I’d just made the coven more than half a million dollars with what equated to a week’s worth of work.

But I didn’t get to keep any of it.

A hollow laugh escaped my throat.

Everything about this was ridiculous.

Dread coiled in my stomach. The air felt charged, and the darkness surrounding me seemed darker than usual, the forest looming pitch black.

Something was off.

I’d known when Amanda had called to order me to the coven house right away, but this feeling cemented it. The creeping darkness, as if something were hiding in it… or being kept hidden from me. The electricity in the air. The tension. My senses screamed at me to turn around.

My car rumbled over a root, the motion shaking me from my stupor. I hardened my jaw and pushed my shoulders back.

Show no weakness—that was my motto. A damn sad one, but it was what it was. As the only mage in a coven of witches and wizards, I was the go-to punching bag.

Just leave, the voice inside my head said. The voice that was fed up with it all, convinced things couldn’t possibly be worse elsewhere, even though I knew that was wishful thinking. Things could be a lot worse. Yeah, I was the coven’s favourite punching bag, but at least they protected me. They kept me safe.

But do they really?

I wanted to close my eyes, but with how dark it was outside my windshield, I could barely afford to blink, much less close my eyes for multiple seconds. This definitely wasn’t natural darkness. I’d lived here all my life. I knew the Californian summer nights, knew the indigo sky dotted with sparkling white flecks. I knew this forest. I knew the shadows the trees cast, knew how the nights sounded.

This wasn’t normal.

The air always tasted like sulphur and herbs, but tonight the taste was particularly strong, and the hair on the back of my neck rose while a cold shiver ran down my spine. Goosebumps spread all over my skin, and I started trembling, even though it was a hot night in the middle of summer.

Turn around, my senses screamed. It’s not too late. But when I looked into the rearview mirror, the driveway was pitch black. As if there was nothing behind me. Nothing at all.

A spell, I realized. The coven had cast a spell. A spell to hide something from me.

Why?

My mind was racing as I took the last turn and the coven house came into view.

I swallowed upon seeing the figures standing on the steps leading to the double-winged doors of the old Victorian mansion.

There were seven of them. Six of them dressed in sapphire-blue cloaks, while the figure in the middle was dressed in blood red. From the dress to the cloak, even her hair and lips were red.

Amanda—the coven leader.

I shivered again, but kept my shoulders squared.

Show no weakness, I reminded myself as I killed the engine and exited the car, my black cloak a stark contrast to the colourful ones the rest of the coven were wearing. Another difference, another detail that separated me from them. I was the mage, the outcast. The one they didn’t want in their coven. The one they only kept around because I was making them a shit-ton of money. The one everyone hated. I was—quite literally—the black sheep.

“Alexander,” Amanda said, her voice ripping through the eerie silence of the night. There were no cicadas, no rustling leaves, no distant car engines—nothing. Just… a foreboding, unnatural silence.

Run, the voice in my head shouted, sounding shriller, more urgent than before. Run!