Chapter 2

Anna

 

“Anna!” The sound of Jason’s voice broke my concentration.

I sat up from where I had been lying on the cold ground, safely wrapped in magic that kept me warm. My two pups jumped up from where they had been lounging at my side and ran for the twins, who were heading across the lawn to me. I hurriedly released the barrier that I had been practicing with so that my two pups didn’t run full speed into it and hurt their little noses.

Jason crouched down to greet the two puppies and they happily jumped all over him and covered him with kisses. Mason reached down to give Eeyore a scratch on the head as he passed by them and walked toward me. I held up my hands, and he pulled me to my feet with a grin that made my heart stutter.

Gemma trailed behind them with a scowl on her face. That scowl would probably turn into a smile the second the twins turned around, but while she was out of their sight I got a glance at who she really was.

I narrowed my eyes at her but didn’t say a word as Mason pulled me to my feet and wrapped me in a warm hug. “I missed you,” he said in a husky voice that had my body responding. I tightened my arms around him and closed my eyes to bask in his warmth and his scent. Jason joined in by wrapping his arms around me from behind so the three of us were locked in an embrace. I enjoyed the moment while I could, wishing I could stay like this forever.

I ignored Gemma the first time she cleared her throat and clung to my twins even harder. I had been struggling the past couple weeks with just how much time she was spending with them. I got that she had a difficult past, mine hadn’t been easy either. But instead of bonding over common ground we found ourselves in a strange competition.

My hackles rose every time she spent time alone with my guys. I knew that I had nothing to worry about and my relationship with the twins was secure, but there was something about her that I just didn’t trust. It didn’t help that she acted one way when the guys were watching, and another when it was just the two of us. The deceit didn’t sit well with me.

“How was your day?” I mumbled into Mason’s chest. It vibrated with his chuckle.

“Better now that we’re with you,” he murmured into my ear, sending tingles through my body.

“Mmmm,” Jason agreed as he inhaled the scent of my hair.

“I thought we were going to make dinner,” Gemma said impatiently from where she stood several feet away. The puppies hadn’t bothered to greet her and were instead happily wrestling with each other to get out their excitement.

Jason groaned and was the first to pull away. “Cody and Austin won’t be back until later tonight, if at all,” I told the twins. “James just left on one of his mysterious errands, Talen is out communing with the forest, and Caleb is deep in his cave.”

“So it’s just us?” Mason asked with a gleam in his eyes.

“Just us,” I said softly, licking my lips in anticipation.

“I think we should have salad,” Gemma announced, breaking into our moment.

The three of us groaned. Gemma was a vegetarian and didn’t seem to understand that wolves needed meat to live. I tried my best to be respectful of her eating habits, but it was really starting to annoy me when she tried to press them on the rest of us. I wasn’t trying to force her to enjoy a nice juicy steak.

“Let’s order out,” I suggested. “We can go on a run while we wait for it to be delivered,” I said innocently.

Mason quirked an eyebrow at me, catching my meaning. Gemma couldn’t shift, which meant that I would get some alone time with my guys. We hadn’t had naked forest sex yet, but I was more than willing to give it a try.

“You can’t leave me alone in there,” Gemma whined.

“Caleb’s upstairs,” I told her brusquely.

Her eyes got big once she had the attention of the twins. “But I’m scared,” she whispered. One big fat tear trailed down her face.

I rolled my eyes, but Mason gave a resigned sigh. “Of course we won’t leave you alone,” he said gently.

He let go of my hand and walked toward Gemma as I glared at her. I thought I felt the barest trickle of magic, but when I tried to focus on it there was nothing there. That had happened several times in the last week, I must be using way too much magic if I was hallucinating it.

I sighed and trudged back toward the house, linking arms with Jason as we followed Mace and Gemma. Jason patted my arm. “I know she can be difficult sometimes,” he said quietly. “But you know she’s damaged just like us. I appreciate how cool you are when we try to help her out.”

I mumbled an agreement, but I couldn’t wait for Gemma to go back to her pack. I felt a twinge of guilt hit me when I thought about if our positions had been reversed. What if I had grown up in her situation and had the chance to experience a small piece of freedom? I would probably be clinging to it just as hard as she was and would be desperate to stay. Was I a bad person for wanting to send her back to her own private hell?

I resolved to try and be a little nicer to her tonight. Maybe she was just being defensive toward me because she sensed my resentment towards her and realized I wanted her gone. Maybe if I tried to be friends with her she would relax a little and retract her claws from my twins. Attempting to pull her stupid shiny hair out of her pretty head would probably only make the twins upset with me and drive us further apart. It wouldn’t kill me to be pleasant.

That never worked with Kelsey… A little voice inside my head whispered. I had spent years in a toxic friendship with Kelsey, convinced that everything wrong with our friendship was my fault. I had finally wised up to her manipulation once I met the guys and experienced what true friendship was. Was this another Kelsey situation? Or was this just me being paranoid and jealous of another female in close proximity to my males? I wished there was an easy way to tell.

After another argument with Gemma over dinner, we compromised on baked barbeque chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn with a side salad. I was very kind when I told Gemma that the amount of barbeque sauce I slathered on the chicken before I shoved it in the oven was more than enough to mask the smell of cooking meat that she found offensive. The sweet and tangy scent wafting through the kitchen was enticing enough to cause my tummy to grumble and my mouth to water.

The twins set the table and then claimed the opposite side as their study area, spreading their books and laptops out. “How’s the studying going?” I asked as I took a seat near them. Gemma was still busy chopping veggies for her salad while the rest of the food cooked.

Mason shrugged. “We just need to pass.”

I rolled my eyes. I had been one of those crazy people that had to get an A on everything, back in my school days a B- would have caused me to shed tears. I also had no friends and spent my Friday nights in the library studying so I could spend all weekend working. Most of my classmates who spent their time partying graduated with passing grades and were pharmacists just like me, so maybe I was the one who made the wrong decision. They had enjoyed their time in school while I toiled away, and yet we had all ended up in the same place in life. I was starting to realize that relationships and friendships were more important than work and perfect grades.

“How many finals do you have?” I asked curiously.

“Two finals and a paper due Monday,” Jason complained.

“How’s the paper going?” I asked as I peeked over Mason’s shoulder as he typed. “Do you need me to proofread?”

He reached out to muss my hair. “I’m about halfway, but Jase hasn’t even started his.”

I gave Jason a worried look.

“It’s fine,” he assured me. “It’s not due until Monday so we have plenty of time.”

“Okay,” I said anxiously. “But make sure you’re finished by Sunday so I have time to give you feedback.”

Jason chuckled and gave me a mocking salute. “Yes, ma’am.”

I swatted at him. “Don’t sass me, you know your grades went up once I started helping you.”

Mason laughed and pulled me onto his lap. “Believe me, we know all the ways you made our lives better.” He kissed the side of my neck , sending shivers down my spine. I squirmed a little, and he groaned. “I’m definitely less motivated to get work done now.”

“I don’t know why you are wasting your time going to school,” Gemma criticized. “They don’t really teach you anything useful and Austin’s going to give you the same job whether you graduate or not.”

The timer for the chicken went off and I escaped to the kitchen before I ruined my nice streak. The twins were working hard to get through school and were determined to prove that they deserved their spot here. I think they looked up to Austin for how successful he was with all the business ventures that the pack was involved in, and they wanted to contribute to that in a meaningful way.

I poked at the chicken to make sure that it was done and tuned out the sound of Gemma’s voice. My two pups watched me as I pulled the chicken out of the oven and I could see their little noses twitching with interest. They knew better than to get too close and I was very proud of them for sitting so patiently.

I speared one of the chicken breasts to make a plate for Caleb. He would be too busy right now to take a break for dinner, but he could eat while he worked.

“Dinner’s ready!” I called to the twins. “I’m going to take a plate up to Caleb, but I’ll be right back down.”

Jason was the first one to the kitchen. “I’ll make you a plate for when you get back,” he offered.

“Thanks, Jase.” I gave him a grateful smile and ran my hand down his back. “Leave a piece of chicken so I can cut it up for the pups.”

“Of course,” he murmured, his attention fully on the food.

The pups scampered behind me as I carefully made my way up the stairs to bring dinner to Caleb. I made it to his room without dropping or spilling the plate and headed over to his desk to see what he was working on. He had a bunch of different screens open and was typing away like a madman.

Caleb tore his eyes away from the computer monitor to give me a grateful smile. “Thanks for the special delivery. I meant to come down, but...”

I chuckled. I knew that Caleb could get lost in his work easily when he was faced with a difficult project. He thrived on the challenge and wouldn’t give up until he got what he needed.

“How’s it going?” I asked as I ran a hand through his soft brown hair.

Caleb shrugged and picked up his fork. “This is going to be an all-nighter for me.”

I rubbed his shoulders as he took a bite of the chicken. “Take a few minutes to eat, and I’ll bring you some caffeine when I come back for your plate.”

Caleb looked at me guiltily. “Thanks, Anna.”

I gave him a warm smile. “No worries, you take care of me all the time. Let me take care of you today.” I gave him a kiss and left him to get back to work.

When I got back downstairs, it made me grin to see that Jason had picked out the juiciest pieces of chicken for me and scooped some extra barbeque sauce on top, just the way I liked it.

We shared a smile and I dug into my food.

“Let’s watch a movie after dinner,” Gemma suggested.

“Can’t,” Jason said in between bites. “We have papers to write.”

Gemma pouted, but before she could come up with an argument, Talen came through the door.

“Hey,” I was the first to greet him. “Dinner’s on the stove if you want some.”

Talen shook his head and looked at me. “We have work to do.”

I sighed. “Ten minutes?” Dinner with the twins was my favorite part of the day, and I didn’t want to give up any of it. But I at least needed enough time to scarf down my food. Magic took a lot out of me.

Talen took a seat at the table. “That’s fine.”

He looked at Gemma pointedly. “Today Anna and I are working on inverted magic.”

I narrowed my eyes. This was a very weird conversation. Gemma didn’t even have enough magic to shift, there’s no way she would know what Talen was talking about.

A look I couldn’t identify flashed across Gemma’s face before it settled into a bored expression. “That’s nice. Today the twins and I are working on business papers.”

I looked between the two of them, confident that I was missing something. Was this a jealousy thing? I could only hope that Gemma would set her sights on Talen instead of my guys.

The twins were oblivious to whatever was going on between them. “Don’t work her until she’s too tired to go to bed,” Mason cautioned Talen. “I don’t want to find her passed out on the floor again.”

“That was one time,” I muttered before taking another bite of my mashed potatoes.

“That’s going to be the only time.” Mason gave Talen a hard look.

Talen shrugged. “I already apologized for leaving her there to sleep peacefully,” he said sarcastically. “Next time I’ll shake her awake.”

“Next time you’ll come get one of us, and we’ll take her to bed,” Jason corrected. “She doesn’t sleep on the floor.”

“She’s a wolf,” Gemma said callously. “Isn’t sleeping on the ground normal?”

The twins gave her dirty looks so she relented immediately. “Not that I know anything about being a wolf,” she said sadly.

Mason’s hard gaze softened, and I gave a snort before turning back to my food. I looked up to see Talen staring at me pointedly before glancing at Gemma. Then the two of them then glared at each other. Once I got Talen alone I was going to question him about how weird he was being with Gemma.

Talen broke his stare down with Gemma and shifted his gaze to me. “Anna, I’ll meet you outside when you’re done.”

I nodded because my mouth was full of the giant bite of buttery mashed potatoes that I just had taken.

“We’ll clean up after dinner so you can focus on your magic,” Mason assured me.

“Thanks, Mace.” I shoveled the last of my food in my mouth and stuck my plate in the sink. My two pups danced at my feet, ready for their share. I cut up the piece of chicken that Jase had set aside for them and put it in their bowls with some of their kibble. They were more than happy with their dinner and sat to gobble it up.

“I’m going out with Talen!” I called to the twins as I headed for the patio door. I instinctively wrapped a barrier around myself as I stepped out into the cold winter night. Virginia winters were much milder than the ones I had grown up with in Buffalo, but there was a bite to the air tonight. It was nights like this that I preferred to shift into my wolf form. My arctic coat was more than enough to keep me nice and warm. But I couldn’t communicate with Talen as a wolf, so I was stuck in my human form for now.

Talen was waiting for me on the patio and walked out to the lawn when he saw me coming. I waited until we were both seated before questioning him about Gemma.

“So… what’s going on with you and Gemma?” I asked casually.

“Nothing’s going on with me and Gemma,” Talen said pointedly, staring into my eyes as if he was trying to say something without saying it.

“The twins?” I scoffed. I pretended that was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard, but I felt a little kernel of doubt unfurl in my gut.

“Not on their end,” Talen said shortly. “At least not yet.”

“Not ever,” I snapped at him. Gemma could try her hardest, but I knew what I had with the twins was real. They would never betray me. Never.

Talen shrugged. “None of my business. Let’s get started.”

I took a deep breath and got control of my temper. When I was angry, I had a more difficult time staying in control of my magic. If I wanted to have a productive lesson then I needed to clear my mind and focus on what I was doing.

“You’ve met some of the most powerful fae in the Winter Court,” Talen began. “But there are more of the lesser fae than there are of the nobles. And not every fae has a form like ours.”

I nodded in understanding. I had encountered some of the lesser fae when I was taken to the king. I had ended up draining magic from a lot of them and used it to kill their king, so they probably weren’t that fond of me.

“There are quite a few fae that use their magic to make themselves appear different than their true form, we call that a glamour.”

I nodded to show that I was following along in the lesson.

“In order to hide the fact that it’s not their natural form, these fae will invert their magic so that not everyone can sense their true form.”

“I saw Drake invert the magic that he used on Cody,” I said with a frown. “I couldn’t sense it until we were linked together and I could see his magic.”

Talen’s eyebrows rose. “Fae don’t generally link together unless they plan on forming a permanent bond with marriage.”

“I know,” I sighed. “My father warned me about bonding with someone too often, that it could become permanent.”

Talen nodded slowly. “It can. But linking with someone isn’t the only way that you can sense their magic.” He focused his attention on his hand and created a glowing ball of light. I watched carefully at what he did before it abruptly winked out of existence. “The ball is still there,” Talen told me. “You can’t see it and you can’t feel it, correct?”

I nodded. Obviously.

“What I want you to do is close your eyes and try to feel for something wrong. I’m going to move the ball around and have you try to pinpoint it.”

I sighed. A lot of Talen’s magical instruction involved really vague directions like this. He was always telling me to use my instincts, to feel for things using a sense that he couldn’t define, or to focus my intent. I was getting better at staying focused on my intent and just letting the magic flow, as opposed to trying to micromanage individual strands of magic to make them do what I wanted.

I did as he asked and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t help but think of Star Wars. Talen had me looking for a disturbance in the Force. I held in my chuckle as I relaxed and let my awareness drift. I could feel Talen’s unique magical signature from where he sat in front of me. I could feel the faint presence of the twins back in the house. If I stretched a little further I could sense Caleb as well. I didn’t sense Gemma, but I hadn’t expected to because she didn’t have magic the way that we did.

I tuned into the air as it moved around me and the ground underneath my butt, just like Talen was always encouraging me to do. I was just about to open my mouth and tell him this was ridiculous when I felt it. It wasn’t that I felt the ball of magic, but I felt a distortion of everything else that should be there.

I opened my eyes and pointed behind Talen’s left shoulder. “There!”

Talen gave me a genuine smile. “Excellent. Now let’s work on uncovering what I’ve hidden.”

We worked for hours on identifying and trying to uncover inverted magic. I was getting a lot better at spotting it, but still hopeless at uncovering it. “You need to pick at it until you get a hold of a thread that you can unravel,” Talen told me for the one-millionth time.

“That’s not helping,” I growled as I stared at the last ball of magic he made. I was getting more frustrated the more that I failed and I just wanted to go to bed. I grabbed hold of the magic, but instead of tugging on it to pull something loose, I just pulled on it the same way I had when I had taken magic from other fae. I slurped that ball of magic up like a milkshake and absorbed it into myself.

I looked at Talen in satisfaction, but he had a look of complete horror on his face. “You can’t… You shouldn’t…. How…?”

I shrugged self-consciously. “The magic’s gone, I have it now.”

“That’s dangerous…” Talen spluttered. “You shouldn’t be able to just take it inside of yourself like that. Magic from other people won’t mesh correctly with yours. You’re going to have to use it as quickly as you took it in.”

I frowned. “Morpheus and Drake both took magic from me, and nothing bad happened to them. So did the king.”

“They took pure unformed magic and held it in a pocket designed for that. You just… merged a magical construct with your own source magic.”

“I feel fine,” I told him honestly. “If I was going to die from this I would feel something wrong by now, right?”

Talen nodded, still looking a little pale.

I focused on my magic and made a little glowing ball of light that looked similar to the one that he had inverted before I ate it. “All better, see?”

“Yeah,” Talen said faintly.

“And I was told that I don’t have a specific type of magic,” I said thoughtfully. “That I can use all kinds where the other fae are limited to one type or another.”

Talen cleared his throat. “I’ve noticed that. Most fae have magic related to their nature, but yours is more… pure.”

“Maybe that’s why I can take in different types of magic without any side effects.”

“Maybe.”

I laid back on the ground and stared up at the stars in the sky. I didn’t ask to be weird or different, for most of my life I had wanted nothing more than just to be normal. And yet here I was scaring the fae with my bizarre magic.

“You’re getting better,” Talen offered. “But you need to practice more so that you can recognize the presence of inverted magic easily. With enough experience, it will come naturally to you. That way if someone walks up to you in disguise, you’ll immediately be able to sense it.”

“I’ll keep practicing,” I promised him. When I first learned to make a barrier from my magic, it had taken intense focus and concentration, but now it came easily to me. Right now, I could recognize a source of inverted magic if Talen told me it was there and I concentrated to try and locate it, but my enemies wouldn’t announce their presence and wait for me to uncover them.

“Is everyone as slow as me when they first start learning?” I asked in frustration.

Talen chuckled. “Most fae learn magic along with learning how to read and write. You missed out on twenty-odd years of magical instruction. Be patient, you’ll get it.”

“Yeah,” I said wistfully. While I couldn’t say that I wished I had grown up with Froston in his castle, I did wish I grew up with my mom. She had been a white wolf, just like me. How would my life had been different if she had just run with me and not hidden me with the humans with the intention of coming back for me later? My mind drifted as I imagined what it would have been like to have a loving mother growing up. Maybe she would have taught me magic, and we could have done amazing things together.

“Let’s get you back inside so your men don’t threaten me again,” Talen said softly. The sound of his voice snapped me out of my reverie. There was no point in lamenting the past or wishing for something that would never happen. This was my life now, and I needed to play with the hand that I had been dealt.

“Those weren’t threats,” I corrected Talen. If my guys had wanted to threaten Talen he would have known it.

He gave a sigh. “You’re lucky, to have people who care about you so much.”

I turned my head to look at him with curiosity. Talen never talked about his life in the fae world. “Do you have family back home?” I hadn’t thought about what he must have given up to come here.

Talen shook his head. “Not anymore.”

I waited to see if he would share his story with me. I didn’t want to press him and I had a feeling that it was deeply personal.

Talen gazed up at the sky. “I’m not from Winter,” he said quietly.

“I noticed,” I said gently. Talen’s magic felt more like Spring than Winter. He was good at things like turning the grass green and bringing dying plants back to life. His magic was fresh and green where Froston’s was icy and cold.

“I was young once, and stupid. I thought I knew better than everyone around me,” Talen said with a shake of his head.

I murmured a quiet agreement, afraid that anything I said would distract him from his tangent of thought.

“Winter and Summer don’t mix for a lot of reasons,” Talen told me. “Our magic is too different, we’re too different. But I met a girl…” He hesitated, lost in his thoughts. “I had never met anyone like her before. She was dark and mysterious, whereas all the girls I knew were light and whimsical. I thought I could have something real with her, something lasting.”

I turned to watch Talen, and the grief on his face was heartbreaking. “I left my world for hers but our relationship quickly turned sour. Her people targeted her as a traitor for being with me.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “She couldn’t take the strain and ended things. My people wouldn’t take me back, saying that I had made my choice.”

“That’s terrible,” I said sadly.

Talen gave me a sad smile, but his eyes were unfocused. “I don’t belong in Winter, being there drains my magic. I struggle just to survive. I thought that coming here would give me a second chance…” He shook his head. “But being cut off from both fae worlds is painful. I don’t belong here any more than I belong in Winter.”

“Is there anyone you could talk to in Summer?” I had no idea that being a Summer or Winter fae designations was anything more than a social construct, but I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me. Their magic was such an integral part of who they were. Talen being trapped in Winter was probably like a spring flower that bloomed too soon and struggled to stay alive through a late frost.

Talen laughed bitterly. “My king exiled me, no one will even speak to me.”

We sat together in silence, and I was at a complete loss of what to say. There was no way that Talen would be comforted by any words that I could utter. “Do you want to go back to Winter?” I asked cautiously. Was Winter the lesser of two evils?

Talen sighed. “I don’t know.”

“The fae ancestors of the wolves found ways to survive in this world,” I said slowly. “Maybe we can find out how they did it.”

“Did they?” Talen asked me with a sharp look. “Fae are immortal, where are they now?”

I looked at him in surprise. That was true. Where were our fae ancestors that had colonized this world?

“It’s more likely that they survived just long enough to mingle with the humans before fading away or being slaughtered by enemies,” Talen said quietly, his face hopeless.

I reached out and took his hand. I couldn’t say anything, but maybe just knowing that he wasn’t alone in this could be enough for now. At least until we could figure out a way to get him back to Summer. Talen gave my hand a squeeze, and we both stared up at the sky, wondering what life had in store for us.