Page 48 of Hexy Beast

I don’t say anything for a minute, which is a record for me. There are a million things I want to say, another billion that I wish I could, but I can’t give in to the impulse. There is no spell for this, no hex to take it all away. We all have to come to grips with who we are and the fact that it’s not always who we want to be.

We can fight it. We can hide from it. Or we can find a way to accept it and make it work.

Learning that lesson sucked, but it’s a canon event. Now it’s Darius’s turn.

“When I was ten, I thought I’d figured out what was wrong with me, why my family’s magic picked my sister Leona to be the heir instead of me,” I tell him.

I have to stop for a second. It’s been years since I thought about how lost I’d felt. How angry. How sad. How confused. It’s like I’m that girl all over again, and it hurts so fucking bad. I suck in a shaky breath and blink away the hot tears in my eyes. Darius doesn’t say anything, but he moves me so that instead of lying beside him, I’m draped over him. He wraps both arms around me, cloaking me from the outside world and all of its bullshit.

I take in a breath, soak up his strength while double fisting my own, and continue. “I had become obsessed with finding the answer. I researched and compared and charted and gathered data, and one day it hit me. The magic chose Leona because she’s the responsible one, and I was too reckless to be entrusted with our family magic. So I decided to mend my ways. I ignored that part of myself that took risks, tried new things, and embraced Witchingdom as a place where anything could happen if you put your mind to it. For six months, I kept that part of me stuffed into the deepest, darkest corner I could find and pretended it didn’t exist.”

He starts rubbing steady, comforting circles on my back. “What happened?”

“I was fucking miserable,” I say with a strained laugh. “Seriously, it was the worst spring and summer of my life. Do you know how long a day is when it’s nothing but obligations and no joy, when you’re not you, but you’re the person people think you should be? Really fucking long. Then my dad pulled me into his study one day and got me to spill the whole story.” I kiss the wolf tattoo over his heart. “He told me life is too short to hide from yourself. He wasn’t wrong then, and he isn’t wrong now.”

I pull out of Darius’s hold. It kills me a little, because I swear I can feel the freckles on my wrist that match his Kardia tattoo warm whenever he’s near. Touching Darius is starting to feel as necessary as breathing, but I need to see his face for what I’m about to say next. He’s not going to like it, but it needs to be said. I just hope he’ll be able to hear it.

“Just because your grandmother and dad were awful alphas doesn’t mean you should deny a part of yourself so you don’t turn into them any more than I should have ever tried denying part of myself so the Sherwood magic would decide I was worthy.” I press on despite the way he’s squared his jaw and is looking a lot more annoyed grumpy than sexy grumpy. “Now, I’m just a witch, but we are in a situation where nature is always shifting, and the only way to navigate those changes is by instinct. So you have to admit that in times like this, a werewolf’s greatest asset is his wolf.” I reach out and take his hand, bringing it close to my heart and holding it there. “Aren’t the stakes here high enough to make it worth loosening your hold on the leash so we make it back in time?”

Chapter Eighteen

Darius…

This is going to be uncomfortable.

“You bet your hairless ass it will be,” my wolf says, smug as ever.

I look back at the cave’s entrance. This morning it’s disguised by a trio of pine trees standing together like the three Fates. Effie is inside communing with her magic, which looks a lot like floating yoga mixed with shadowboxing. It seemed like the perfect time for me to do a little connecting with my own nature. In my case, though, that means having to deal with the furry asshole who lives inside me.

Standing in a small clearing in the woods, I close my eyes to get ahold of my annoyance and tilt my face up toward the bright fall sun. Listening to the birds chirp and the squirrels jump from branch to branch, I ignore the snarl of frustration coming from my wolf. The knowledge that this is the last thing I want to do has my gut cramping up and the vein in my temple bulging like it needs its own pump cover. This is so fucked up, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s the only way to get back home. The woods have been messing with Effie and me for a reason.

“Think of it as just a test, not a permanent situation,” I tell my wolf, and yeah, I’m talking to my nerves when I say that as well. “I loosen up on the leash a little bit, and you promise not to go completely feral, and we see if maybe we can do it again sometime in the future.”

My wolf flicks its bushy tail back and forth. “Are you going to admit that you need me?”

“We’re a part of each other,” I say through my gritted teeth. “Isn’t that what you’re always saying?”

He lets out a harrumph and lifts his snout in the air, turning his head away from me and toward the puff of black smoke that is my wildness lurking in the back. “You’d know if you ever listened.”

“Are you pouting?” It’s out of my mouth before I can stop it.

“Would it matter?” my wolf asks, his nose pointed so straight up in the air that if it rained inside me, he’d drown (yes, I know I’m killing it with the metaphors, but you know what I mean). “I do have feelings, you know.”

Again, my mouth moves before my brain catches up. “You have emotions?”

The plume of my wolf’s tail swishes around. “You’re being very offensive,” he snarls.

Shit. This is exactly why I don’t usually talk unless I’ve had time to plan out what I’m going to say. People really discount the noncommittal importance of grunts.

Okay, time to do a little de-escalation.

“Look,” I say, keeping all the just-do-what-I-say annoyance out of my tone. “This is new territory for both of us.”

“Only because you’re a stubborn control freak and have kept me under lock and key for years.”

My frustration leaks out, and I snap, “Because you have no sense of propriety or boundaries.”

“I’m a wolf,” he says. “I’m not supposed to.”