Page 26 of Cursed Bonds: An Alpha's Destiny

She let out a shuddering sigh. At first, she spoke in quick, nearly panicked bursts, but as she continued telling me the story, she calmed down. A discussion with her father had made her question things, and then she’d discovered an album with photos that made no logical sense and found the letter taped in the back.

The photo of her grandmother was easy to recognize—she looked like Kirsten. Her coronation ceremony would have been around the time when her powers manifested and she truly became a witch. One of my eyebrows rose as Kirsten recited what had been written in the letter, though. That made little to no sense. How could Kirsten’s great-grandmother and grandmother have had the same visions? Could my curse have something to do with these visions?

“It said I would meet a man who would be drawn to me,” Kirsten said, then laughed again, her cheeks going red. “Is that you?” she asked with a desperate lilt to her voice.

After a few moments of chewing my lower lip, I stood. “I think I need a strong drink to get through all this. What can I get you?”

“Oh, thank God. Yeah, I could use something to take the edge off.”

“I’ve got wine.”

“How about a Jack and Coke?”

My eyebrows shot up in surprise, and I chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve got that. It’s actually what I was going to have.”

“Great. Hell, make it a double.”

“On the way.”

In the kitchen, I pulled down glasses and bottles, trying to figure out the best way to explain things as I made the drinks. By the time I was done and walking back to the den, I still had no clue what to say. Kirsten took the drink eagerly, taking two heavy swallows before I sat down again.

“This is going to be complicated,” I began.

“Oh, good,” she said. “Everything so far has been so simple.”

I grunted. “Fair enough. First question, what do you know about shifter history?”

Kirsten took another sip of her drink and shrugged. “I don’t know. You guys have been around for, like, hundreds and hundreds of years. You turn into wolves. Stories say you have two minds or something?”

“Sort of,” I said with a nod. “Our inner wolf. It’s not really two separate minds, but more like a symbiosis. But that’s beside the point. I meant, do you know how we came to be?”

Her eyes widened, and she leaned forward, narrowing the distance between us. My wolf whined with desire.

“No, I don’t. I didn’t think anyone did.”

“It’s a fairly well-guarded secret. I can give you the basic story.” I took a gulp of my drink, then settled back in my chair. “Centuries ago, a green witch—a witch who works with nature and plants—came across an injured wolf in the forest. This wolf was on the verge of death. The witch took pity on the creature and spent days and weeks nursing it back to health. Once it had recovered, the wolf was indebted to her. The two became inseparable. Witches live much longer than humans, and ages and ages longer than animals, so with time, the wolf aged. The witch knew that one day, her trusted companion would die, but that simple truth was too much for her to accept. She went about creating a special spell. What she attempted to do was increase the wolf’s life span to one closer to hers, but something went wrong with the spell. Once it was cast, the wolf became something different. It transformed into a man who could shapeshift into a wolf on command.”

“Seriously?” Kirsten asked, frowning. “That’s how it happened?”

“According to all the legends. The story has been passed down from father to son, alpha to pack, for as long as anyone can remember. Witches are real, and they created us.”

“Wow.”

I frowned at her, confused by her reaction. “You seem a little more freaked out that your grandmother never told you than by the fact that witches are real. I’m not trying to be an ass, but that’s kinda strange.”

Kirsten had already finished half her drink, and she shrugged as she took another sip. “I thought about it in the cabin. I mean, like you said, shifters are real. You guys can literally change into a living, breathing wolf at the drop of a hat. Between that and a woman who can cast spells, which seems less probable?”

“Fair enough,” I said. “As I was saying, witches and shifters spent centuries as allies. Our numbers grew, and things were fine between us for a long time. Our numbers were always much larger than theirs. In the days of old, witches would live on shifter pack lands, either solely or as part of a small coven, and they would help protect the lands with spells and wards.

“That’s where things took a turn for the worse. After years—centuries—of this partnership, many alphas began to view witches as tools. Property to do their bidding. They would ask more and more of the witches on their pack lands. Alphas who had no witch would seek out and kidnap witches, forcing them onto their lands to assist with protection. It got bad. Witches fled and went underground, leaving behind their long-time companions, the creatures they had created that had become their greatest enemies.

“They hid among mankind, masquerading as humans. They have ways of masking their magic. It has a scent—I forgot to mention that. The smell is intoxicating to shifters. If we get around fully unfiltered and unmasked magic, we can…” I trailed off, remembering that night a century ago. “Well, we can get sort of drunk on it, and we, uh, we make bad decisions we never would otherwise. It’s hard to explain.” I cleared my throat. “The ones who didn’t want to hide shielded their homes with wards to keep shifters or anyone with bad intentions out.”

Kirsten sat her now-empty glass down. “So Nana was a witch. I guess it makes some sort of sense,” she said with a faint smile on her lips. “I mean, she looked like a very spry and healthy woman in her mid-sixties, but if the dates on those photos are to be believed, she was well over a century old.”

I nodded, running a finger around the lip of my glass. “You said she got sick?”

“Cancer,” Kirsten answered sadly.

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