Page 44 of Cursed Bonds: An Alpha's Destiny

Unsure what else to say, I leaned over and scanned the passages in the book, hoping to help her find some sort of counter-curse to help me or a ward to protect her house—not that I knew what to look for, but I had to help in some way.

“Here,” Kirsten finally said, pointing to a passage. “I think this is a basic recipe for a ward. Can you go outside and grab a few of these herbs? I think I have everything. I’ll get the other stuff.”

I checked the list and headed out to the flower bed outside. Kirsten took a small knife and the book to the edge of the yard. As I plucked leaves from the seedlings I’d brought for her, she gathered items and cross-checked them with the pictures in the book. When I was done, Kirsten joined me on the porch, carrying a strange assortment of things.

“What is that?” I asked, wrinkling my nose in disgust.

“An earthworm, seven inches of oak bark, an ink cap mushroom, and what I hope is bird poop.” She held out the blade covered with white-brown paste.

“Gross. Is this what magic is?” I asked.

“Again, you are not talking to an expert. At least it’s not ‘eye of newt’ and ‘toe of frog’ like in Shakespeare. Come on, let’s see if I can make this work.”

Kirsten dumped everything onto a cutting board and began dicing the items into a paste while scanning the recipe.

“Can you check in the bathroom for a bottle of witch hazel? Saw it when I was cleaning. Bring it to me, please?”

Feeling like a child helping his mother cook dinner, I hurried to fetch the new ingredient. The bottle was where she said it would be, crusty with old dust but more than half full. When I gave it to her, she dumped the entire thing into a pot on the stove and turned the heat on.

Kirsten deftly finished chopping everything up and dumped it into the pot of boiling witch hazel. For someone who said she had no idea what she was doing, it looked like she’d done it a million times before. She was a natural at this.

“Could you not stare?” Kirsten said. “You’re freaking me out.”

“Sorry.” I chuckled and moved to the other side of the kitchen.

I settled on a spot closer to the fridge than the stove, looking over her shoulder to see what she was doing. Once the pot was steaming, she plopped the hairpin into it and stirred.

“Seven times counter-clockwise,” Kirsten read from the book. “Then nine times clockwise? I can’t imagine how many times some Stone Age witch had to try to make this before getting the numbers right.”

“Trial and error, I guess.”

Kirsten snorted. “Good Lord, that sounds miserable.”

Despite my promise to give her room, my curiosity won out, and I slowly inched forward. Would the concoction burst into colored flame, or maybe start swirling on its own?

Before any of that could happen, Kirsten pulled a small ladle from a drawer and grabbed a small glass jar.

“I don’t have any delicate little vials like the other one. This will have to do,” she explained as she unscrewed the lid of the jar and set it aside. She ladled the concoction into the jar, the hairpin plinking against the edge.

“Can you hand me the lid?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

I picked up the lid and handed it to her. Kirsten put it on, spinning it tightly to seal it.

“What now?” I asked.

“It says I need to name the people I want to keep out.” Kirsten shrugged. “Don’t hold this against me if it sounds dumb.”

“Absolutely not,” I promised.

Raising the jar, she said, “I hereby ward this property from any and all men, women, or creatures that might wish to do me harm. Most importantly, I bar Eren Miller from accessing these grounds.”

I leaned closer, eyeing the jar, hoping to see some spark or something to confirm that it had worked. In doing so, my forearm grazed Kirsten’s. She gasped, and I felt a rumbling, pulsing shockwave tremble across our skin. It was similar to what I’d experienced earlier when I’d held her fingers, except this was more powerful. My eyes widened in surprise, and my inner wolf flinched back, whining as the magic took hold.

What looked like a small, noiseless explosion rocked the liquid inside the jar, and then the liquid vanished, leaving only the hairpin. The cabin doors flew open, and another loud pop had me and Kirsten jumping apart.

“It worked,” Kirsten breathed almost reverently.

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