Page 65 of Hexy Beast

Not while I still have breath.

Digging my heels into the muddy ground, I manage to stay upright as I summon my power, reaching deep to tap into the strongest of it—and there’s nothing there but drips of magic when it should be a full river.

Heart hammering against my ribs, I fight to steady my breathing and focus on my spell when it hits me.

He isn’t pummeling me with just the usual kind of magic.

In addition to Kyle’s ham sandwich–smelling spell, there’s the dank, fetid scent of ancient magic—not the kind from The Liber Umbrarum spell book, but something older that has rotted in the dark for centuries.

The thought barely registers before he hits me with another blast of magic that slams square into my chest. My lungs have that burning, tingling feeling like when you’ve been holding your breath for too long. The point is to overwhelm, to make me panic, but I’m not about to do that.

Instead, I dig deep and grasp for the tendrils of magic that I can still feel inside me. I push it all at Kyle at once. It’s not much of a hit, but it’s enough to disturb his time spell, and the rest of Arcadia catches up with us.

Or at least it would if we were in Arcadia. The park and the gazebo and the mom-and-pop stores lining Main Street and even Atlas and Artemis waver like an oasis in the desert. Next to Kyle, Artemis has still gone full oracle, and I can’t judge if she’s really here or if I’m seeing her while she’s somewhere else, like in the cave the other night. Either way, her eyes have turned white, and her silver hair is blowing back like she has the massive fan from a swamp boat pointed right at her. The rope tied around her is glowing red with the spell’s effort to keep her contained, but even with that, Artemis’s magic shoots out from the pink tips of her hair.

There’s a loud crash of thunder along with a gigantic flash of lightning that reveals we aren’t in Arcadia at all—we’re still in the woods. I barely have time to process that fact before I hear Artemis in my head.

“Make the call.”

My magic beats against the bonds Kyle wrapped around it, but there’s enough leaking out that I send another SOS to my family as a follow-up to the one I made in a sign language spell before everything went completely pear-shaped.

“No. Make the call,” Artemis says, this time yelling the words out loud.

I have no idea what she means until I feel the softness of fur and hear the snap of long, sharp teeth inside me. Then there’s a dark warmth I’m not used to. My magic always feels sweet and light, but now it’s exciting and a little bit dangerous. There is a heady power here, a shifter power, an alpha wolf’s power—but this wolf and this power are mine.

That is what Artemis wants me to call.

The Sherwood family magic bypassing me as the heir, the Kardia-shaped pattern of freckles on my wrist, and the connection with Darius—all of it is because the Fates knew I’d be here. They knew I would find my fated mate.

My wolf howls as my wildness swirls around inside me, already at home because it has always been here.

It fills me with a kind of ruthless certainty about what I need to do next. It shows me my purpose. I just need some time to get everything in place.

And like the answer to a whispered plea, Artemis sends another thunderclap of magic that travels like a sonic boom through the woods, and the rest of the world is no longer in slow motion.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash of movement. Darius is in his half man, half wolf form. Terrifying and magnificent, he stands well over eight feet tall, his already muscular form even more ripped. His hair is longer. His bone structure more angular. With a flick of his wrist, razor-sharp claws extend from his fingertips like he’s just opened ten deadly switchblade knives. He slashes Nikos across the chest, but the other werewolf moves back just as he does, escaping the full brunt of Darius’s attack but losing his balance in the process. He goes down hard, and his head lands with a thud on top of a half-buried rock in the ground.

Darius lifts his head and lets out a bone-chilling howl, and my wolf returns the call.

“He is ours,” my wolf says inside my head.

He most definitely is, I agree.

Darius barrels toward Kyle, seemingly oblivious to everything except his target. Something in my periphery moves, and my wolf goes still, the cherry-chocolate fur on her back going into full mohawk mode as I turn my head toward the movement. It’s Nikos. The fucker isn’t any more unconscious than I am. I realize the danger and let out as much of a muffled scream as I can with my mouth sealed shut, but it’s not enough. Nikos leaps up from where he’s been playing possum and rushes toward Darius, tackling him from behind.

They roll over and over, slamming into trees and sending flocks of squawking birds skyward as the werewolves grapple for dominance. Pounding each other with blows that seem to crack bones almost as fast as their shifter bodies can mend them, they fight and attack. The other werewolves form a circle around them, and one Council henchman starts taking bets on how long it will be until Nikos lands the knockout punch. Since not-fucking-ever isn’t an option he’s offering, I’m not holding up my money.

Not that I could even lift my arm to signal my bet if I wanted to. Kyle and whatever magical charge-up he got from joining the Council has me literally tied up in a spell.

But don’t worry, I’m working on that.

As if he knows I’m up to something, Kyle slides his gaze from the two werewolves locked in combat over to me. I brace for another bitch slap of a hex, but the asshole just shoots me one of his signature slimy dickhead smiles.

“Don’t worry, Effie, I’ll finish my business with you in a minute,” Kyle says, turning his attention back to the werewolves now on their feet exchanging haymakers. “First, I wanna watch this.”

Darius picks that moment to pull back and land a right hook with enough power to obliterate Nikos’s cheekbone. My man might be a grumpy pain in my ass sometimes, but he has beautiful timing.

“Come on, Nikos,” Kyle grumbles with all the pent-up fury of a man who’s bet his last twenty dollars on a sure thing that is about to go bust. “Kick his ass.”