Dax Cohen, covered in blood, had fallen through the entrance of my shop. His forearms were glowing with protection symbols. Rowena’s magic.
His abdomen was leaking blood and upon further inspection, I noticed a gash. It looked deep, and he held the wound with one of his massive hands. At his heel was his pet dog, a Cocker Spaniel aptly named Cocker. Why the alpha of the most powerful pack in the Northwest had a tiny adorable dog, I would never know, but he took him everywhere. That mutt was like a child to him, and he whined and jumped up on Dax’s leg as the werewolf fell onto me, resting his two hundred pound weight on my small frame.
“What happened? Rowena!” I rasped. I was still in shock, complete disbelief, but the power that flowed through my veins did not lie. My priestess had ascended, she was with the Goddess now.
Dax breathed in slowly, wincing at the pain. “Nyx.”
That one word flushed complete terror through my veins. With one flick of my wand, my shop door slammed shut and the lights outside turned off, two more flicks and I’d thrown up enough magical wards to keep the entire town out. It wouldn’t keep Nyx away but it would buy me some time.
Nyx… it wasn’t possible. The most vile witch I’d ever learned about as a child who’d been put into a five hundred year sleep by my own mother, had awoken?
I dragged the big ass werewolf behind the counter to my back room and lowered him onto the couch in my office. Cocker leapt up onto his legs and whined while pawing at his jeans.
I rubbed the mutt’s head, infusing his aura with a calming spell, and his whine died off as he lay on the alpha’s lap and rested.
Peeling back Dax’s hand from the wound he was staunching, a spurt of crimson gushed out into the room. I tore open his shirt to get a better look at the wound and the dark magic imbedded in it.
“You trying to kill me woman?” He growled as his wound continued to leak blood all over my clean floor.
I thought about that. I could let him bleed out right here and be done with making his potion every month. The contract only said I had to make it for him, not his pack.
“Tatiana!” he scolded me, and I rolled my eyes. Pointing my wand at his stomach, I uttered half a dozen healing spells and he finally sighed in relief.
“Tell me what happened,” I demanded.
He grimaced, sitting up to rub behind Cocker’s ear. “I was coming to the shop to get the potion when I felt… a darkness.”
My brow furrowed. Yeah, if Nyx had been resurrected, darkness would follow everywhere she went.
He continued, “I turned the corner and saw Rowena on her knees, black tendrils of magic around her throat. Standing before her was… Nyx. In the flesh.”
I frowned. “That can’t be! She’s supposed to sleep another hundred years at least!”
He shrugged as the wound on his stomach stitched itself before my eyes. Werewolf healing. I only needed to remove the black magic, and his body did its thing. I tried and failed not to notice the way his heavily defined muscles looked enticing.
“It was Nyx alright,” he confirmed. He was old enough to know, so I’d have to take his word as I’d never met her in the flesh, thank God.
“And how did you survive the blackest witch to ever live?” I raised one eyebrow at him.
He reached out and fingered a lock of my red hair, giving me a cocky grin. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t want to kill something so beautiful.”
I rolled my eyes.
He sat up, slowly putting Cocker on the ground. He was in my personal space and not backing down, just staring at me with dark green eyes, threaded through with bolts of orange.
“You need to stop her or she’ll pillage the whole town, killing your entire coven in revenge,” he stated.
I exhaled, feeling the tension build in my shoulders. “I know that.” I growled.
If someone had resurrected Nyx early, she would be fueled by vengeance. It was my coven that put her into the night sleep in the first place, led by my mother with Rowena as her second. With Dax’s pack having helped… That was over a hundred years ago, before I was even alive, but they’d done us a great favor by helping, which was why we owed them the moon sleep tea every month. With Rowena dead, I was sure we couldn’t do it alone. I had the power of a high priestess now but not the training. I was only two years into my education as a high priestess’s second hand. Something most witches did for a good fifty years before they took on the title. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. The last thing I wanted was to look weak in front of an alpha.
“Dax Cohen, Alpha of the Moon Called pack, if your werewolves help us, then I, High Priestess of the Lightwood coven will owe you a debt. Name your price.”
My hand lit up with blue magic as I held it out to him. He would name his price, such as moon sleep tea until the end of time, and we could shake. Then that would be it. Magically sealed forever.
A sly grin crept over his face, and I should have called it off the moment I saw those dimples form in his cheeks. “I pledge Moon Called Pack to help in this deed if you Tatiana Ravenwood will go on a date with me when it’s done. Dinner, movie and a nightcap, at my place.”
“A powerful witch offers you any favor you can think of, and you want a date?” He couldn’t be that stupid.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation.
He was that stupid. I rolled my eyes and extended my hand further. “Deal.”
Cocky idiot.
We shook on it, and magic zipped up my arm and tingled along my elbow. It was law now. If we survived this, I was going on a date with Dax Cohen. I could only hope he would die on the quest so I wouldn’t be put through such an atrocity.
Two
Dax
Tatiana Ravenwood was the most uptight woman I’d ever met, and she hated me. Absolute hatred. So, naturally I wanted to sleep with her. Not just sleep with her, I wanted to take her out and show her I wasn’t the cocky asshole she’d somehow believed I was. I wanted to, needed to, change her opinion about me. Maybe it was the alpha in me, brother wolf's need to control everything. I wanted to control the way she thought about me. I wanted her to beg me to kiss her. I wanted what I couldn’t have. That red head would be mine.
“Are you coming?” she snapped, annoyed, as we exited her shop.
I reached down and pet the spot between Cocker’s eyes. ‘I’ll be back for you later,’ I told him.
‘No. Cocker go with.’ He growled.
I chuckled. My thirty-five pound dog wanted to take on Nyx, the darkest witch I’d ever met. ‘Not safe buddy. Stay here.’ I gave him a little shove and shut the door, locking him inside. He’d be okay in there as long as he didn’t eat any of Tatiana’s weird witch shit. That woman had threatened me with so many potions in the years I’d known her, and I had no doubt she could make my dick fall off and render me impotent for life. God knows what Cocker would find in there.
‘Don’t eat anything in there.’ I told him through the door.
He ignored me. He was mad. I’d have to bring him a double cheeseburger later to make up for it.
When I turned around, I nearly slammed into Tatiana. She was watching me with wide, green curious eyes. “Did you just speak into his mind?”
I flinched. “How can you tell?” That was one of my secrets. I didn’t tell many people I could speak to the mind of any animal.
She reached past me and locked the shop door, leaving the scent of vanilla and sage in her wake. “One of my new gifts as high priestess I guess. I dunno, I saw it,” she answered, seeming flustered.
She glanced ahead on the sidewalk. Rowena lay on her side, dead, black bands of magic tightened around her neck giving her a pale, ghoulish look.
Tatiana choked on a sob as she stared at her fallen high priestess.
Shit. I wasn’t sure what to do. If I tried to comfort her by patting her back or something, she might rip off my hand.