Page 8 of My Hexed Honeymoon

“Stop looking with your human eyes and open your third eye,” Riven instructs, and I’m fairly certain they mean me. “A proper teacher would’ve instilled enough faith in yourself to trust your senses. I see that’s been beaten out of you, your Sight eclipsed by your survival instinct for too long…”

Riven glances at my mother, disgust in their expression. “Too bad. Now we don’t have time for proper training. But it’s still there, I can sense it.”

“That makes one of us,” I mutter, and a muscle flexes in Diego’s jaw. Irritation or amusement, I’m not sure, and I try to convince myself I don’t care.

“It’s that spark you feel…” Riven’s smooth voice wraps around me like silk, awakening the tingling energy that I’ve retreated into during my loneliest stretches. There were alotof lonely stretches.

But there was sensing the frog jumping from lily pad to lily pad in the pond at our backs, and then there was finding a mythical object in a realm I’d previously deemed fictional.

“That’s not how my powers work.” The ability to see the glowing framework that connects us all showed up around adolescence, but it was a while before I could sort the glittering latticework that drifted up from the plants and trees from the individual imprints of souls. “It’s not some kind of magical GPS. I’m not a hound dog who can pick up a particular scent. I only see the auras of what’s already around me and…”

I’m not sure I should admit this part, but in for a penny, in for a dollar or whatever. “And yes, I can sometimes see the pathway to find them.”

Betrayal and fury gleam within the depths of Mother’s gaze. Her lips don’t move, but inside my head, she calls me a liar, and I’m the one who curls closer to Diego this time.

She can’t hurt me anymore. Not physically anyway.

“But it’s only ever worked on something with a heartbeat—I’ve never used it to find an object. I’m much better with critters. People tend to blur together and read mostly the same.”

“We’re not talking about a regular object,” Riven says, their tone almost reverent. “We’re talking about a weapon with a powerful signature.”

I can’t help it, I’m cautiously intrigued.

“Which is where you come in.” Riven lifts an eyebrow at me, and my pulse kicks up. “Because getting in and out of the Hollow requires a witch who can navigate the astral.”

“The astral?” I ask, wary. There’s something they’re not telling me. “I can’t imagine a group of vampires came all this way and risked a confrontation with werewolves to watch me get lost in the astral plane.”

“We came to get back what you stole from us,” Helena snaps, and Riven places a calming hand on the other vampire’s shoulder.

“While I can see the threads that map out the universe,” Riven says, reaching out and dragging fingers across the wispy golden strings like an angel plucking a celestial chord. “I can’t weave them or bend them to my will.”

“Neither can I,” I say, and Helena clenches her jaw, her eye twitching like she’s about to lose her temper and choke the life out of me.

Diego must sense it too, because a low, threatening noise emanates from the back of his throat.

But even as I say it, when I stretch out a finger, those golden threads bend and swirl around me, which is new.

“You’d better hope you’re wrong,” Riven says simply. “Or else we have no reason to forge an alliance. There’s a supernatural storm brewing, and whether it’s this month or the next, hunters are coming for us all.”

Hunters.

That’s a word I understand all too well. We’ve flown mostly under the radar since the whole Salem Witch trials era, with hunters mostly focusing on vampires and werewolves. But once they discovered and slaughtered a coven in Toronto, we were added to their search and destroy mission.

“The vampires are ready for war.” Riven’s gaze moves to Diego, a challenging gleam in their eyes, the color of a cloudless summer sky. “How about you, Wolfie? Brand new to leadership and chomping at the bit. Are you?”

CHAPTER FIVE

This is a setup.

Has to be.

First, the witches force a marriage on me that I don’t want. Then, mere minutes later, we’re hit with a curveball about retrieving some weapon from some mystical place only my new bride can go?

I don’t trust a damn word coming out of their mouths, and the same goes to Andromeda.AndNatalia, for that matter.

“You want to go to war, I’m happy to rip your head off and get it going right now.” I let my desire to follow through with the threat ring through the words, my teeth elongating in my mouth.

“Patience, Alpha. There will inevitably come a time when we’ll need your brute force and penchant for violence.” Riven examines their flashy, bejeweled fingernails as though we’re discussing the weather. “Right now, we need you to support your new bride as she gets a crash course on her real weaving powers. The threat is amping them up, yes? You find yourself in the in between more and more?”

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