Page 8 of Magic Claimed
Eike’s brows drew down over his eyes. “What will Esoti do?”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. How could I tell them he’d kill me over and over? If there was one way to assure them I was magical, it would be to tell them I couldn’t die. “He’ll track me down. He’ll come here and he’ll find me. If you don’t let me go, you’ll bring the wrath of Esoti down into your territory.”
“Spoken like someone who has something to hide. Come, spy. We’ll get to the bottom of your lies.” Jarom dragged me to the desk. I struggled as best I could, but I was no match for him.
Jarom held out my shaking arm. Alerick took the dagger. If I didn’t stop them now, they’d learn my secret. Not that an immortal slave was a well-known thing. It was that those out of the castle were forbidden to speak about it upon pain of death. Esoti was very persuasive. It only took for him to kill a man and his whole family for it to be kept a castle secret. These shifters would have heard of someone not being able to die, gossip would have travelled, but they wouldn’t know it was specifically me. I shuddered to think what they’d do to me when they found out. Dying and reanimating time after time because someone wanted to prove the theory didn’t sit well with me.
Firelight struck one of the glass paperweights on the map on the desk, calling my attention to it. My hand closed around the paperweight and I swung it towards Alerick.
Eike’s steel grip lashed about my wrist. Alerick took my other wrist and sunk the tip of the dagger into my palm.
A flash of light blinded me. Pain streaked through my body, white-hot and intense. Every cell of my body exploded in bursts of starlight. I soared into darkness, where a minute glimmer of gold twinkled before it winked out so fast I thought I might not have seen it at all.
I was lost in a sea of darkness before golden light trickled into my awareness, mixed with threads of silver and electric blue. The colours swirled, reaching for me, calling for my very essence, and I responded without question. Rose threads made from light and sparkles threaded with silver, copper-gold and cyan and the essences of two more souls merged with mine.
One was stark and stern, with solid walls that hid a deep well of intensity and scared me as greatly as coming face to face with an enraged Esoti. The other was no less intense, but a hint of warmth melted through me. It was beautiful and enduring and brought tears to my eyes. I’d never known such acceptance from anyone. I floated in the warmth, content and happy for the first time in my life.
I revelled in the mix of light, not wanting to leave it, but then I was pulled back into my body and reassembled into a different shape. Every bone felt as though it was cracked, every muscle cramping in agony, and when I cried out in pain, there was a whine instead of my voice.
I forced open eyes that wanted to stay closed, and the world morphed around me. Colours were sharper, more intense, but the angle was wrong. Sounds filtered through my confusion; the snap of a log in the fire, loud as a shot. Scents mingled in the air. There was the spice and fresh earth scent that was Jarom, but there were two other tantalizing, rich scents. One was smoke and whiskey. Eike. The other was oak and cinnamon. Alerick. How I knew it was them, I couldn’t fathom but then I didn’t care as three enormous wolves surrounded me.
There was Jarom’s dark brown wolf I recognized, but the wolf next to him was light grey shot through with silver, and the last was a massive jet black wolf, a head taller than both the others. Alpha.
The weight of magic pushed against the back of my head, taking me to my belly. My belly? I looked down to see two huge white paws in front of me. I scrambled backwards, and the paws slipped over the floor. I couldn’t control my legs and then I was aware that I had four. All four feet scrambled for purchase on the floor, finding none. Sharp sounding yips bounced off the walls. My yips. My whines. I tried to talk, to ask what the hell was going on, what the hell they’d done to me, but no words came out because I had a snout full of sharp teeth and a jaw that couldn’t form sentient speech.
A flash of magic and the sharp tang of ozone pricked my senses and the three wolves turned into three naked men. Jarom, Eike and Alerick stared down at me with a possessive hunger in their eyes that speared my core.
Alerick reached out and grabbed the thick coat of my neck, while Eike placed a hand on my head, and Jarom ploughed his fingers through the fur on my back.
“Mate,” Jarom said again, and this time the word was unshakeable.
“Mate. Mine,” Eike spoke, a whisper of wonder and a promise of something warm and wonderful in his tone. He looked at me with reverence. As though I was the greatest marvel of his life.
My gaze swung to Alerick. His cruel, sensual lips parted and his possessive words shook me to my core. “Beautiful. Mate.Ours.”
There was a sense of completeness. A fullness of my soul that couldn’t be denied no matter how much I didn’t want it to be. No matter how much I might wish this to be a nightmare, I knew this was undeniably true.
I’d shifted into a wolf, and Jarom’s question had been answered in no uncertain terms. I was his mate and Eike’s.
And the alpha’s mate as well.
Chapter Six
They couldn’t be my mates.
I wasn’t magical. I wasn’t a wolf shifter.
I scrambled away from them and jammed myself into a corner of the room. Their hands fell from my coat and I missed their touch immediately. The noise that came out of my mouth was sharp, scared and foreign. My eyes told me what my mind refused to believe. I was a wolf! There’s no way I could be a wolf, but the evidence of four legs, a tail and white fur covering my body was undeniable and completely unbelievable.
“Easy. We won’t hurt you.” But Alerick had already hurt me. They had all hurt me.
Fine lines fanned out from the corner of Eike’s eyes as he smiled with a kindness unlike anything anyone had gifted me with before. I was never on the receiving end of something so wonderful, but then my heart hammered like a humming-bird locked in a cage too small because I knew I couldn’t let his smile affect me. I couldn’t let him close. They would use me and punish me. If Esoti found out he would…
Esoti would…
An invisible band tightened about my rib cage and squeezed. White noise roared in my ears and fire ran through my blood. I was already slave to an immortal psychopath. I wouldn’t be a slave to three more men. Wolf shifters. An alpha and his seconds.
Eike approached me, palms outstretched towards me, trying to placate me. Close. Too close. I was already scrunched as tightly as I could be into the corner, but I was a wolf now, wasn’t I. I was quick. If I could get out of this room, I might outrun them. They wouldn’t expect their mate to run from them, but as I glanced at the closed door and the window that was shut tight, the three of them surrounded me in a wall of naked flesh and solid muscle blocking me into the corner, I knew I would have to do something desperate, and that’s what desperate people did. Desperate, stupid things.
